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chapter 1…
“Her Majesty the Empress… is infertile.”
A ripple of noise swept through the council chamber.
Sharp intakes of breath.
Sighs of disbelief.
Whispers saying they had expected as much.
A man who had been observing the commotion with his chin resting lazily on his hand slowly lifted one corner of his mouth.
“The Empress is infertile?”
His low, unhurried voice almost sounded amused.
The chamber fell silent, as though doused in cold water. Every murmuring noble snapped their mouths shut and turned their eyes toward him.
The royal physician who had delivered the news bowed deeply, his face heavy with gloom.
“Yes, Your Majesty. It is a most regrettable diagnosis, but—”
“You seem familiar,” the man cut in smoothly. “Weren’t you the one who conducted the Empress’s fertility examination at the wedding ceremony a year ago?”
“Y-Yes… Yes, Your Majesty.”
The physician swallowed hard, bowing even lower at being remembered.
“In that case, it appears you’ve gone senile in just one year.”
“…Your Majesty?”
“What a pity, at such a young age. Guards!”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
“It seems the royal physician has lost his mind. See that he leaves the palace and spends the rest of his life in peace.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Two knights immediately seized the physician by the arms to drag him away.
Marquis Zephir, who had brought the physician and served as the Empress’s guardian, stepped forward in alarm.
“Y-Your Majesty. Please, at least hear him out. An Empress who cannot produce an imperial heir is no longer of—”
“Silence, Marquis.”
The man fixed him with a frigid stare.
“You claimed to cherish the Empress like your own daughter when you presented her to me. And now you treat her like livestock ready for slaughter.”
“Y-Your Majesty! How could you say such a thing? I only think of the Empire’s future—!”
“Take him away.”
Cutting off the Marquis’s protest, the man barked the order.
The royal physician, pale as a sheet, cried out desperately.
“Y-Your Majesty! The results from a year ago and now can naturally differ! Fertility is greatly affected by lifestyle! Surely Your Majesty knows the Empress’s habits are not good! She barely eats properly, and it’s common knowledge she burns incense laced with hallucinogens every day!”
His voice rang out in desperation, but it seemed not to reach the Emperor’s ears.
Reduced in a single morning from the Empire’s most respected physician to a disgraced fool, the man writhed as though coughing up blood.
“My diagnosis is correct, Your Majesty! You must not take as your consort some barren daughter of a mere baron! You should wed a woman worthy of your station!”
An Empress who could not bear an heir was discarded.
That had long been the Empire’s custom.
If Empress Lucrezia truly was infertile, she too would be unable to escape the disgrace of deposition.
But—
“Shut that mouth.”
The Emperor’s gaze cut like a blade.
“And make sure that lying tongue is rendered useless.”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
As the physician’s screams faded, the Emperor fell into thought.
Lucrezia… infertile?
Impossible.
She was a woman who had secretly chewed poisonous herbs just to avoid conceiving. The memory twisted his expression with disgust.
“Summon the Empress.”
“Y-Your Majesty…”
A palace chamberlain, face drained of color, whispered urgently in his ear.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty… but Her Majesty the Empress cannot be found.”
The Emperor’s head snapped around.
“What?”
“At lunchtime, when they knocked on her bedchamber door, there was no answer. They entered, and… no one was inside.”
“In my palace?”
His voice dropped, cold and deliberate.
“Are you telling me my Empress has vanished?”
“I-It seems so, Your Majesty…”
The chamberlain trembled as he bowed.
The Emperor rose abruptly, fury simmering in his eyes.
The Empress belonged to him. And nothing that had ever been in his grasp had escaped it. No one had even attempted to.
Yet at this moment, an unpleasant premonition coiled in his chest. Something that should have been impossible… might have happened.
She might have fled of her own accord.
From the imperial palace. From his side.
“…Damn it.”
He clenched his fist until it nearly cracked.
“Mobilize every search party and every hound!”
His decision was swift; his resolve swifter.
Fire burned in his eyes as he strode from the council chamber.
So she had dared to do this after all.
He had thought her too gentle, too weak to ever defy him.
What had pushed her to this?
Was it because he had taken a mistress?
Because he had told her she would never bear his child?
Because she had witnessed his monstrous side?
It no longer mattered.
He would drag her back to his side and ask her himself.
Grinding his teeth as he watched the search parties and hounds assemble, the Emperor vowed it.
Panting. Gasping.
Her breath scraped at her throat, but Lucrezia did not stop.
Her hair, once shining like threads of light, was dulled with dust. Her skin, once tended daily with milk and honey, was scratched and torn.
She almost laughed at her own condition.
A lowly baron’s daughter who had ascended by sheer fortune to become Empress. That was what people whispered.
Who could have imagined that same Empress now fleeing in rags?
Has the royal physician reached the council by now?
Is he telling them I’m infertile?
She knew the rest all too well.
An Empress who could not produce an heir would be discarded. Stripped of her title. Exiled to another nation, perhaps.
That would be the ordinary course.
But that man—the Emperor—would never allow her freedom.
Not after she had seen his secret with her own eyes.
He’ll come to kill me.
The thought did not even make her flinch.
There had once been a time when merely glimpsing the hem of his robe filled her with happiness.
When she longed for those blood-red eyes to look at her just once.
Now, this was the conclusion.
By now, the Marquis she had once called Father was surely presenting the fabricated diagnosis of her infertility to the Emperor.
For the first time in her life, Lucrezia had chosen to run before she could be discarded.
One year.
That was how long she had lived as Kirion Winchester’s wife.
Far too long, for the daughter of a monster who dared to sit beside an Emperor.
‘The blue cage.’
Just as that man had told her.
It meant her destination was near.
Though her strength was at its limit, she could not collapse. If she did, they would drag her back.
Back to that palace—
The place that had given her both the sweetest honey and the bitterest poison.
—Woof! Woof!
The distant barking of hounds reached her ears.
Her spine prickled.
Had he already unleashed the search parties?
“There.”
An open clearing came into view.
At its center lay a flat stone. Nearby, an ash-gray dagger rested exactly as she had been told.
Grabbing it, Lucrezia shut her eyes tightly and raised her trembling hand.
She did not hesitate.
“Ah—!”
Sharp pain exploded through her as the metallic scent of blood filled her nose.
Her vision blurred instantly.
“Aah…”
The wound burned fiercely.
As her blood dripped onto the stone, a crimson magic circle flared to life.
‘It worked.’
Her body trembled with pain and relief.
The ancient spell would soon carry her far from the Empire—across the continent, to a place where neither her father’s name nor her husband’s could reach.
Her eyes fluttered slowly, on the verge of closing.
“Lucrezia!”
A rough, urgent voice.
A hallucination, surely.
He would never call her name like that.
Through blurred vision, she saw a figure racing toward her. Someone dismounted recklessly and ran straight for her.
Even from afar, the red eyes were unmistakable.
‘Kirion.’
The man she had once loved beyond reason.
The first person to whom she had given her whole heart.
Her fingers trembled.
That face had once been enough to make her feel full just by looking at it.
Now, it made her heart plummet.
She tried to shut her eyes. The magic had already begun. Not even the Emperor of the great Empire could stop it.
Please, let it activate.
But the earth goddess did not grant her wish.
“Lucrezia! Damn it!”
He reached her in an instant, grasping her bleeding hand as if to stanch the flow.
The sting made her flinch. He glared at her and growled,
“How dare you flee from my side and wound yourself at will? How do you intend to atone for this sin?”
She could not answer.
She had never imagined she would see his face again—this close.
Suddenly, he crushed his lips against hers.
“Mm—!”
His hand gripped the nape of her neck, pulling her in deeply.
His tongue invaded her mouth, hot and insistent, leaving her breathless.
She let out a helpless sound, as though she had been dragged back to the days she was confined in his bedchamber.
“Y-Your Majesty—!”
“Let’s go back, Lucrezia.”
He held her tightly, as if he wished to become one body with her.
“I was wrong.”
“S-Stop…”
“I never should have let you take even a single step outside.”
His wet lips brushed her ear as he whispered,
“Yes. I never should have given you something like freedom in the first place.”
His crimson gaze blazed.
He looked unfamiliar.
In his eyes, which had always retained a sliver of composure even as he drove her to her limits each night, madness now flickered.
He tried to lift her.
That was when her fingertips began to fade, as though dissolving into the air.
The magic had activated.
“…What is this?”
The Emperor stiffened, staring down at her body as it grew pale and translucent.
Her form continued to fade. Soon, the earth beneath her became visible through her.
“Lucrezia. Damn it!”
He tried to grasp her, but his hands met nothing.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered if this was all a dream.
His face was so unfamiliar.
Why are you making that expression?
Distorted. Pale.
She had never seen him like this.
Even when executing traitors, he had always been calm.
Now he looked as though he had been wounded.
Was he simply enraged that she dared to flee?
Even as she thought that, she could not shake the strangeness of his expression.
Moments later, her body vanished completely from the clearing.
As though she had never been there at all.
