Empress of Another World

Ninety Seven

The celebration was finally over.

Other than the incident with Princess Ludia, nothing major happened.

Unfortunately, “accidentally” throwing wine at the princess was considered a big deal. Even considering her rude comments at me, Lucretius overreacted. Genoa was a powerful nation, and this was an unnecessary incident.

I sighed deeply.

Why did he do that?

I glared at my husband, who followed me into my bedroom as if he owned it. Lucretius shrugged and asked, “What?”

“What were you thinking? I get you got angry, but they are from Genoa, not Aeal.”

He chuckled annoyingly and nodded. “It’s true. Genoa is definitely nothing like Aeal.”

“So why did you do it?!”

He gave me a chilling smile.

“Because they needed to be reminded.”

“…”

When I gaped at him in shock, he smiled to reassure me.

“Don’t feel bad. It wasn’t your fault at all. Because of the former emperor’s stupidity, other kingdoms have been becoming arrogant. I need to show them I am not like my weak father.”

His smile looked excited as if he wanted… a war. Was that why he mentioned the “Blue tear of the goddess?” Was he planning something?

I got goosebumps all over myself.

***

As we got into my bed, he asked me, “Now that this event is over, would you be interested in working on something else?”

I looked up at him in surprise. Under the dim light, he looked like he was choosing his words very carefully. I became suspicious.

“What kind of work?”

He replied slowly, “Normally, it is something an empress would take care of.”

“Pardon?!”

When I reacted negatively, he calmly explained, “Don’t be like that. It’s not a big deal. The dowager empress is supposed to be doing it, but even when the former emperor was still alive, Katleyanira showed no interest. She, in fact, stole the budget for this job and used it for personal reasons. The former emperor knew this, but he didn’t care.”

I became curious. “What is it?”

“It isn’t really even a job. It’s more like working as the face of the royal family. An empress flaunting her generosity and kindness to the public.”

“Hmm…”

“Rombrook is overflowing with the poor. It had always been like this, but during the former emperor’s rule, it became much worse. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been a solution to this.”

“Oh!”

“During his rule, our economy wasn’t great. As I said before, my grandfather was a great emperor, but the former emperor ruined everything my grandfather achieved for this land. Now, what we have left is years of poor crops and an epidemic that destroyed the southern land.”

“Oh, no…”

I was unaware of this. For all the time I spent in this world, I had never been out with regular people. I lived in the Aeal castle for a year, and the rest of the time was spent in this castle. I was ignorant of the sickness and bad crops.

“Poor crops? Was it bad last year too? I wasn’t told about this at all!”

This was the beginning of the year. If we had a poor harvest last year, this would be a difficult year. When I was about to panic, Lucretius calmed me down.