Chapter 1

A Hell of a Wedding

 

 

She wasn’t going to stand for this.

Cecile gnashed her teeth as she glared out the coach window at the beautiful and vast white castle peering over yonder. The maids sitting across from her, meanwhile, were at a loss for what to do, but that failed to matter. She was so furious that she refused to spare them a glance.

Gazing down at the outfit she wore, she took in her finely woven lace bridal veil, her white silk gown—smooth enough that one’s hand could simply slide off it—and the array of sparkling crystalline pearls that composed its hem.

Yes. She was dressed for a wedding.

Cecile was moments from her marriage, but she wasn’t happy in the slightest. The closer she got to the castle, the tighter the illusory vice upon her throat seemed to get. A band awaiting her arrival began to play once her coach passed through the city gates, yet despite the undeniable beauty of their performance, their music echoed through her ears like a funeral march.

If she were to go inside that castle… she’d surely die.

The instant this thought crossed her mind, Cecile’s face grew even paler. “Save me…” she muttered, incapable of stopping herself from unconsciously begging for help.

The maids across from her didn’t inquire as to what she meant. They merely nodded, comprehension and pity upon their faces. “We’ll die if you run away,” one of them said in reply.

Cecile remained silent because, come on. Would it have hurt for them to comfort her even a little?

She renewed her audible teeth grinding and shot a glare at the bouquet she was holding. Why? The reason was simple: there was a big problem with her husband-to-be, Emperor Estian.

Why did she have to marry him?!

He may have been her groom, but he was a horrible, insane tyrant and that was a fact. Honestly, he was such an awful guy that no one would even be surprised if he chose to murder his bride on their wedding day. How did things end up like this?

Cecile recalled the past month.

 

* * *

 

Cecile was the illegitimate child of the king of Navitan. In a drunken stupor, the king had bedded a maid and as a result, a child bearing the characteristics of the Navitan royal lineage was born. She was the spitting image of royalty. With beautiful platinum blonde hair and green eyes, the king had no choice but to acknowledge Cecile as his own.

That didn’t mean he had to love her, however.

Her mother passed away shortly after she was born, so she was sent to a royal villa at a corner of the palace. The intention was that she’d grow up there, but although she was educated as a princess, the education she received only covered the bare minimum required of her and she was treated no better than a maid in comparison to others of the same title she bore.

Still, she didn’t feel wronged. At the very least, she was glad that she was even so much as acknowledged as a princess in the first place. Had she not been acknowledged, she would’ve been cast out as an infant. In a way, she had lived comfortably with what she had been given. The king never called for her and nothing really happened as she spent her time idly within her villa. It was a life of eating, sleeping, and playing without having to labor. The days dragged on and on, and it was a bit of a tedious and repetitive lifestyle, but it was still better than suffering.

Occasionally, Cecile would offer her mother flowers, placing them upon the grave located in a corner of the villa. “Mother,” she’d murmur, “I’ll just keep on living like this until I’m sold off to some old, rich military aristocrat as his wife, won’t I? That’s how it always is in the books.”

All she knew of the world existed inside books she had read because she could not freely travel outside. Even then, the books were mostly brought in by her maids. If her mother had been alive to hear her, however, her mother would have begun to holler. “That’s because all you read are romance novels!” she’d cry, smacking her on the back.

But the dead have no words to offer, so Cecile was left to murmur on alone.

“I’m not living a fairy tale, though,” she mused. “I’m sure there’s no chance the husband I’ll eventually be forced to marry would turn out to be a northern grand duke who’s cold but actually gorgeously handsome and devoted solely to his wife…”

She had read the novels her maids enjoyed, learning what end was to come for a princess in her position. Illegitimate princesses were unloved despite bearing all the characteristics of the royal family; therefore, they were excellent products to be guiltlessly sold by their kings.

If she had been born ugly, however, perhaps she could have been afforded some more security. Once, she had clung to a mirror, peering at her reflection. “So unnecessarily pretty!” she cried. She was lovely to behold, even if she were saying so herself. Alabaster skin with plump red lips, willowy limbs, and green eyes akin to a vibrant forest beneath the summer sun. She would sell high without a doubt.

She was the pretty one, so how come the king was the only one who would benefit in the end? Looking in the mirror sometimes irritated her. Still, harboring such thoughts did not mean she did not appreciate her beauty, at least. Or that she wanted it gone.

In any case, Cecile’s days passed aimlessly by until one day some attendants from the main palace suddenly barged into her villa. They claimed that the king had called for her and they practically dragged her away with them. “Come right this instant?!” she echoed, incredulous. “Hang on! Let go, will you?! Why are you doing this?”

“You will know upon arrival,” an attendant told her. “It will be something good.”

Yeah, right. If it was something good, why were none of them capable of looking her straight in the eye? Just as she had expected, her father, the king of Navitan—whom she was meeting for the first time ever, by the way—spouted nonsense at her immediately upon laying eyes upon her.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Your marriage partner has been decided!”

He was acting as friendly as if he had just spoken to her yesterday. At that, Cecile politely issued him a formal greeting, exasperated. “First of all, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Father,” she droned. Despite the fact that she had waited for twenty years since her birth to finally speak to him, she felt no joy, affection, or anything else of the sort. Nothing at all.

How is it that they did not resemble each other in the slightest? Apart from his platinum blond hair and green eyes, her father looked like a complete stranger. Perhaps her mother, whose face she had similarly never seen before, was who she took after. Maybe she had been an amazing beauty.

“You mentioned a marriage partner?” Cecile continued.

The king nodded. “That’s right. My heart’s been aching with worry that you’ve yet to marry despite being of age, but—”

“Oh, like hell it was,” she muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. Please continue.”

He coughed, clearing his throat. “As I was saying, I was searching far and wide for a suitable groom when I happened to receive a fantastic proposal letter.”

Really now, who on earth was the sender to cause the king to make such a big deal out of it? She waited for him to speak, her expectations rather bland. She didn’t think she’d be startled by whatever name he had up his sleeve.

“To my utter surprise, the letter was from...”

“From…?”

“Emperor Estian!” he exclaimed.

A horrific scream immediately tore from Cecile’s mouth at the revelation. She hadn’t braced herself enough, apparently. Like, what? Emperor Estian? Huh?

The king laughed aloud. “You must be so happy that you’re screaming with joy!”

“N-N-No—h-hold on a second—”

“For you to be so thrilled you’re even stuttering… Oh, what a relief! Now then, prepare to leave for the Empire at once and—”

“Are you nuts?!” Cecile shrieked. She suddenly didn’t give a damn who she was talking to, king or not. “Why don’t you just kill me now, instead?!” She had prepared herself for an eventual arranged marriage to some opportunistic nobleman, but not this. After all, she knew who Estian was. He was a notorious tyrant and a man dubbed as the continent’s greatest madman.

As soon as he ascended the throne at the young age of sixteen, he personally lopped off the heads of countless relatives, sparing no one, whether they were from the maternal or paternal side of his family. He convicted them of treason and hung the heads he cut at the entrance of the imperial palace as if to purposefully exhibit the gruesome sight to the masses, intent on striking fear into their hearts. One official bravely denounced him as having committed a grave moral transgression, but he didn’t even blink an eye as he captured the official and the official’s family, seeing to their end.

“You wouldn’t have dared to speak in such a way had you tasted the poison I had taken. So, I had it prepared. I fed your firstborn son a dose,” Estian had said. The official paled at the words, blanching dreadfully. “Why the face? It almost looks as if you know how painful the poison can be.”

“Y-Your Majesty, I…”

The official could hardly speak. Meanwhile, his eldest son writhed on the floor, bleeding from every orifice in his body until he eventually died. It was then that Estian tossed the official’s second son a sword and a bottle of the same poison his brother had just suffered from, saying, “Make your choice. Kill your father and live, or take the poison and die.”

The official’s second son took in the sight of his brother’s corpse and picked up the sword. Stepping forward, he stabbed his trembling father. The official crawled helplessly along the floor, impaled upon harsh steel, but Estian gazed down upon him indifferently.

“It appears he still breathes,” he said, his voice low, “so feed him some of the poison as well.”

Hesitant, someone protested weakly. “Your Majesty, that…”

“A fine way to die, wouldn’t you say? Knowing firsthand the potency of the very same poison he had ordered.”

With that admission, people had come to realize that the official crawling at the emperor’s feet had once sought his life. From then on, the voices of dissent that once riddled the empire vanished. Following his succession, the emperor became a frenzied warlord, waging battle as if all of the world’s nations were the bane of his existence. A decade later, there wasn’t a single country out there that wouldn’t kneel beneath him.

Naturally, that was also true of the kingdom of Navitan. Be that as it may, however, one must still wonder: why? How come?

“Wh-Why the hell would Emperor Estian send a letter proposing marriage to a tiny country like this…?” Cecile asked. She simply could not comprehend it. The continent was packed with other countries he could order a wife from, so why pick Navitan?

“Tiny?” the king exclaimed, completely missing the point. “Our country of Navitan is most definitely—”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Why did he send the letter?!”

Cecile’s mighty shout effectively cowed the king, reducing him to stutters. “Th-That is to say…” He trailed off, handing her the letter of proposal stamped with the emperor’s crest.

She took it and began reading only to erupt mere moments later, astonished and disbelieving. “‘I had harbored no plans for marriage, but I have to get married anyway because people are getting up to no good since I lack an heir’?” she read aloud. “And he chose the country to send this letter to by lot? And this, what’s this? ‘Send me a healthy princess capable of bearing children well since I need a successor’? What does he think I am?! His broodmare?!”

“In-Insolence!” the king interjected. “That’s a letter from the emperor himself! Watch your mouth!”

“You think I care about that right now?!” She hurled the letter to the floor in fury. The king immediately rushed to pick it up, carefully handing it over to the head chamberlain afterwards.

“Regardless, with things being as they are, you must go. I feel relieved to hear your voice so full of vim and vigor. Here.” The king began to signal his attendants. “What are you all doing? Prepare for the princess’ departure!”

“What?! Since when have you ever treated me like a princess?!” Cecile protested.

“Since today!”

Heeding the king’s commands, attendants scurried to Cecile’s side, taking hold of her and pulling her with them. On her way out, her brothers and sisters—whom she had never met before, either—waved farewell as they stood off to the side, watching her go.

“I love you, Cecile!” they said. “We shan’t ever forget you!”

“I’ll remember you, Cecile!”

“It was nice knowing you! Let’s never meet again!”

“I’ll take good care of your corpse!”

Cecile seethed. Remember her? What? She didn’t even know who they were! And even after putting that fact aside, was any of that what someone would say to their half-sister after finally meeting them for the first time? Why didn’t they all just curse her instead, for crying out loud!

As fellow princes and princesses, they all had green eyes and platinum blond hair almost eerily identical to Cecile’s, yet they cheerily bid her farewell as she was dragged away against her will. So, of course, she flipped them all off.

 

* * *

 

That had been a month ago.

Eventually, Cecile was brought to the Empire. There, she stayed at a mansion near the imperial palace to study the empire’s etiquette and history for a month. Her studies covered things ranging from the emperor’s likes and dislikes to even as far as matters regarding the bedroom.

All her tutors were wrought with sympathy. “I pray that you survive,” they told her. When the day of the wedding finally arrived, they saw her off, dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs as she climbed aboard a coach. No matter how she looked at it, the sight they made was less ‘sending a bride to her wedding’ and more ‘sending a hearse to a funeral’.

She wasn’t dead yet, but, well… She would be soon. She had listened to many stories about Estian while staying in the mansion and for the most part, they were about how often he murdered people. Sometimes she’d hear talk about how curious the Empire’s citizens were as to how long she’d last before he would kill her, too. How many days would Cecile, the emperor’s newfound wife-to-be, survive?

As she was lost in thought, the coach came to a stop at last. Imperial attendants opened the door of her coach, revealing the striking spectacle beyond it. Cecile sucked in a sharp breath. Countless soldiers were positioned in an impressive array alongside a long red carpet as petals danced in the air.

To think she’d march to her death amongst such extravagance… She felt herself boiling with further anger. She had lived quietly up until now, all cooped up in her royal villa and prepared for a life where she’d be sold off, but still, wasn’t it too much to just leave her to die? Ire shot through her every pore as she thought of the kingdom of Navitan. After washing their hands of her, they just picked their nice, comfy lives back up, huh? Wasn’t that right?

If she was going to die anyway, she wasn’t going to roll over quietly. It would be fun to take some people along with her. Enough to stave off the boredom she’d feel on the road to perdition, at least.

Since they couldn’t be together in life, then let them meet again in death. This she swore to her precious father and her dear half-siblings.

“Princess Cecile?” an imperial attendant called, confused. Since she wasn’t getting off the carriage, they had to try for her attention. “His Majesty is waiting. You must hurry.”

A corner of her mouth curled up. Well, she was going to die anyway, so why not raise a little hell? With an air of firm determination, she parted her lips to speak.

“No,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“I said I don’t wanna.”

“Wh-What do you…?”

Cecile beamed at the bewildered attendant. “I’m not taking a single step out of here until His Imperial Majesty comes and picks me up himself.”

And thus began her quest for madness.

 

* * *

 

A very long time ago, Cecile said something to her maids at the royal villa. “Someday, I wanna do something that’ll make others think, ‘Is she crazy?’ at least once,” she began. “Whatever happens after, don’t you think that’d be fun?”

She had pondered over several ideas pertaining to this concept at the time: switching up the signs in the royal palace so they’d all be incorrect, ordering lots of different kinds of food only to take a single bite out of them, walking around wearing winter clothes on a midsummer’s day… None of what she imagined involved putting her life on the line, yet, here she now stood: lobbing absurdities at the emperor in a bid for a swift death on her wedding day.

As soon as she began to truly register the words that had passed through her lips, her heart began to hammer wildly in her chest, practically slamming itself against her ribcage. It was yelling at her. “Are you nuts?” it seemed to say. “What have you done?!”

“I’m sorry, Heartie, dear,” Cecile thought in reply. “Must be tough being you when Brainie and Mouthie are so insane.”

This was the first time she had ever had to offer her own heart condolences, and as she lamented the fact, she surveyed her surroundings once more. The attendants and knights who had been near her just a while ago were now gazing upon her with eyes of combined compassion and pity. The look was identical to the one the people of Navitan would adopt after catching sight of her. It foretold of the life awaiting her if she were to quietly do as she was told today.

If she had a future, it’d involve being married to a man whom she held no fondness for. She would spend nights with him and days tip-toeing upon thin ice around him simply to keep her neck upon her shoulders. Then, when her breath would finally leave her, she’d be buried somewhere without a care. With no one to care.

It was her mother’s fate. The very same, with no one besides her forgotten daughter left to lay flowers upon her grave.

Cecile didn’t want to live that way.

The tutors who had spent the last month teaching her also told her, in detail, of how many people the emperor had killed so far, as well as how he killed them. Listening to their accounts, she realized that her life must’ve been akin to a fly in his eyes. Actually, no. It must’ve been even worse. At least a fly could fly away!

It was better to go out with a bang than to live in constant fear of death. She thought about what people might say about her after she was buried today and came to the conclusion that, at the very least, her death would leave more records behind than her mother’s.

 

* * *

 

“Excuse me? What did you just say?”

The astounded voices of the ministers rang throughout the cathedral where the emperor was currently present, awaiting his new bride. They stared disbelievingly at the attendant who had brought the news, flabbergasted at what had just left the attendant’s mouth.

“S-Spoken word for word,” the attendant nervously reiterated, “Princess Cecile… Has declared that, as per Navitan custom, she will not move a single step until her groom, His Majesty, comes to escort her in person.” The attendant paused. “And…”

“And?”

The contents of this message so far sounded dumbfounding enough, yet there was still more to it? It was all so ludicrous that it elicited another rising octave of protest from the surrounding ministers. In fact, the pontiff standing behind them had already begun to make the sign of the cross for Cecile, looking to the heavens as he whispered, “O Lord, I pray that thou embrace the soul of thy poor child now coming.”

The attendant continued to stammer. “Th-That is to say…”

“Speak, will you?!” the ministers urged.

“Furthermore, she asked, as per Navitan custom, for His Majesty to carry her into the cathedral in his arms!”

The ministers could not suppress their thoughts in the end. “Huh? Is the princess out of her mind?” they cried. “Asking whom for what?!” Faces pale, they chewed over this development. As a mere princess from some small, backwater country coming to marry the emperor of their powerful empire, it was only right for her to consider everything an honor and simply do as she was told, yet she dared to issue such a demand? Going as far as to have the emperor come escort her himself? And have him carry her in, at that?

Their temples began to throb. At first, they had been relieved that no blood would be spilt as today was an auspicious occasion of holy matrimony, but they did not expect things would turn out like this. At this rate, they’d see the bride’s blood spilt before anything had even begun. None of them expected the bride to bring this upon herself.

Surprisingly enough, the attendant continued, still just as anxious as before. “A-And…”

“Are you saying she still has more to ask?”

“That was only the beginning.”

They paused. “What?” Only the beginning? Those two requests were ridiculous enough on their own, but there was even more?

The attendant looked plenty agonized himself as he stood before the shocked ministers. He had to shut his eyes tightly to compose himself first before he opened up a list and began to read from it. “As per Navitan custom, she has requested for the flower petals being thrown around to be changed from white to red. And, also as per Navitan custom, male attendants are to wear red hats, female attendants are to wear red floral crowns, and…”

The never-ending litany of demands leaving the attendant’s mouth finally pushed the ministers to their limit. They exploding, shouting, “Enough! Navitan this, Navitan that! Is the princess unaware that this is the Empire?! Here in the Empire, we follow Empire laws, Empire this, and Empire that! What gall she has, raving on about following such customs!”

“Ah, regarding that…”

The ministers paused. “‘That’?”

The attendant gulped. “‘I’m sure His Majesty won’t be so petty as to reject these minor requests, seeing as how I’ve come such a long way,’ she said.”

At this point, the ministers couldn’t even keep their astonishment up anymore. They had asked for a bride for their emperor, but instead they had gotten a psychopath. Never before had they born witness to such a novel means of declaring war. In the minds of the ministers, the kingdom of Navitan had just been added to the list of countries that were eventually going to be razed down. They burned with enmity despite having never visited Navitan even once.

At that moment, a low voice silenced them all at once. “Are there really such customs in Navitan?” it said.

The ministers turned toward its source. Right before the altar was an expressionless young man, standing tall in a white tuxedo. Estian, ruler of this nation, remained quiet unlike his floundering ministers. He seemed lost in thought.

They renewed their squawks. “Your Majesty!” they began. “What does that matter? You need only give the word and your loyal subjects will behead that lunatic outside before setting off immediately to obliterate the whole of her tiny kingdom!”

The knights present knelt, their swords rattling by their hips. “Pay no heed, Your Majesty!” they assured Estian. “Their country will disappear as of today, and as such, their customs will also become nothing!” After all, how many countries had their swords felled at the order of the emperor? One more could surely be added to that count.

Estian gazed down at a minister who had also knelt before him and clicked his tongue. “Didn’t you say to keep wars limited to three instances a year?”

“Upon careful consideration, I believe four times will also be fine,” the minister replied.

“Is that right? Then I shall initiate war with the dukedom of Etia next month. Adjust my schedule accordingly,” Estian said. He had made the declaration as casually as one would when deciding on what to have for dinner. Then, he began to walk away.

“Your Majesty! Where are you heading?”

“What do you mean ‘where’?” The corner of Estian’s mouth curled up slightly. “It’s only right for a generous groom such as I to accept the requests of my bride after she’s come such a long way, is it not?”

The ministers’ screams died in their throats as they beheld the emperor’s expression. He had smiled. They hadn’t seen him do that since his coronation.

 

* * *

 

Right or left? Cecile was lost in thought as she listened to the band’s music and the ambient sound of flower petals floating through the air, wondering what direction her head might roll once it got lopped off. The doubtlessly enraged emperor was bound to give the order eventually.

As she waited for the verdict, bathing in the now-furious gazes of the other people around her, she yawned in boredom, covering her mouth slightly as she did so. The malignant looks sharpened after the yawn, satisfying her immensely. Inwardly, she wanted to cry out to them: “Hate me more, please! Hate the Navitan princess!”

Reading the current situation, it honestly seemed like even without her acting any further, Navitan had already secured itself the top-most spot on the Empire’s doomed list. Such scary looks they gave her! Everyone was exceedingly displeased with her after causing this uproar, that was for certain. Nevertheless, regardless of the vitriol in their eyes, Cecile didn’t feel the slightest bit remorseful.

Her emotions surprised her, actually; despite essentially dragging a country straight to its ruin, she didn’t feel an ounce of guilt. “Me thinks that I’ve been born with quite the talent for being a bad girl,” she mused to herself. Alas, what a shame it was to have discovered such a talent so late in life. Awakening her genius upon her death day meant she didn’t have any time to flaunt this newfound ability of hers.

She plucked at the petals of the bouquet she held in her hand, taking each one by one. Making up all those customs definitely had her stretching things a bit, but she had spoken without fumbling even once. She had lied to the attendants with a perfectly straight face. Honestly, her tongue was basically made out of pure silver. Nothing but nonsense left her lips and she blamed every bit of it on Navitan for added authenticity.

How did the emperor feel about her home country after the attendant delivered her demands? Surely, his face had to have contorted more and more every time he heard the kingdom’s name.

Stretching, Cecile gazed at the cathedral’s shut doors. Then, she cupped her chin, resting her head in her hand. Her maids hemmed as if to protest her bad posture, but she paid them no mind. Maybe she should consider writing a will now that she had nothing else to do?

On second thought, she shook her head. She had no family or relatives to receive the will, anyway. Besides, even if she did, she didn’t have anything to leave in their possession. Perhaps her will would go to the emperor if she died after being wed? He’d legally be her family by then, after all.

The thought brought her a tinge of regret. She probably should’ve raised hell after the wedding, that way she could’ve written a bratty will, too.

Suddenly, the cathedral doors opened and through them came a man decked in a white tuxedo. He began walking toward her coach. Cecile didn’t even have to ask who he was because the knights knelt in salutation and the people that had once been throwing petals in the air knelt down, pressing their foreheads to the ground.

This had to be the emperor.

Cecile fixed her eyes upon him and gulped nervously. She instinctively scanned him, searching his form for a sword that might’ve been affixed to his side. Noticing that he hadn’t carried one, an involuntary breath of relief escaped her lips, making her chuckle in self-deprecation. Even after making all this mess, it turned out that she still wanted to live.

Maybe his sword was too precious something like this. Maybe he’ll borrow some random knight’s sword instead.

She shook her head. No, that couldn’t be it. Considering all the stories she had heard about him, he could probably just kill her with his fists. Apparently, in the midst of war, he had once killed an enemy his bare hands after his sword broke. He was born with herculean strength, or so they say.

Estian’s inhuman strength was another reason why people feared him, but, of course, she always thought that accounts of it must’ve been exaggerated. How could it be possible to punch through another person’s body with one’s fist alone?

As he drew closer, Cecile was able to examine him better. Then, her eyes grew wide. “Eh?” she squeaked. He had smooth black hair and equally dark eyes. Sloe-eyed and expressionless, he gave off a sharp, severe impression. However, that last bit didn’t matter all of a sudden. When he came to a stop before her at last, her lips parted of their own accord. “Hello, beautiful,” she murmured, entranced.

She hadn’t heard about this? Like, whoa. She felt utterly bewildered. Never had she entertained the thought that he could’ve been handsome.

Why did she just assume he’d be ugly? No one had ever told her that he’d look hideous, so why did she end up expecting him to be?

Then, the reasons as to why struck her. For starters, she had never seen a portrait of him before. Nobles would usually leave piles upon piles of portraits depicting themselves in a variety of poses upon every new commemoration they underwent. It could get bad enough that they’d even have to build a separate mansion just to store them all. If nobles acted like this, then royals—no, imperials—had to be much worse, right? But she had never even heard tell of somebody seeing a portrait of him.

Come to think of it, portraits were actually supposed to come along with the letter of intent when sending marriage proposals. One should never send a proposal without one, but the king of Navitan had never presented anything of the sort to Cecile. In other words, it probably didn’t exist, because he surely would’ve gone, “Behold! Does he not look marvelous?!” if he had it on hand. Although, she would’ve just insisted it was all a scam if that were the case.

Secondly, no one had talked about the emperor’s appearance. When she combed through her memory for anything related to his looks, all she recalled were words describing the ‘bloody devil of the battlefield’ and the ‘god of war’s incarnation’.

The god of war was ugly, though. The mythos surrounding him depicted him as heavily scarred and disfigured. If people sang about Estian resembling such a deity, how could anyone expect him to be such a beauty?

Well, it was partly her fault for not asking. She hadn’t had the tiniest interest in the emperor as an individual, so she never asked about the color of his hair or how he presented himself. Not even on the very day of her wedding did she think to do anything about it. Nevertheless, shouldn’t someone have given her some sort of heads up at least once if he was actually this gorgeous?

Cecile discreetly wiped away some saliva peeking from the corner of her mouth as she took in another look of the man before her. Still lookin’ good. So good, in fact, that if it wasn’t for the situation she was in, and if he wasn’t the emperor, she would’ve invited him to have a seat beside her. Then, she would’ve asked for his name and his address while she was at it. Maybe not-so-accidentally accidentally grab his hand or something…

Oh, come on. Really? Someone this hot was the worst tyrant in history?

The cognitive dissonance was getting so bad that she began to suspect the rumors about him were all mistakes somehow. He looked more like he’d belong on a theater stage than a battlefield.

While Cecile was stuck ogling Estian, he began to speak. “The tutors who were assigned to you.”

Confused, she tilted her head. What about them?

“I should kill the lot of them,” he finished.

Those words were freezing water, right then and there. All over her head. They jarred her right out of her trance. He might’ve been gorgeous, but he was still the notorious emperor, and he was definitely going to kill her.

“Wh-Why would you…” she began, but right as she was going to ask what her tutors might’ve done to deserve such a thing, he stepped closer to the coach and leaned in. Reaching out to take her arm, he pulled her toward him, leaving her no time to even scream in surprise as she felt herself begin to fall forward at the behest of his powerful strength. Reflexively, she squeezed her eyes shut tight, bracing for impact with the ground. Much to her surprise, however, it felt more like she had begun to twirl in midair. “Eh?” When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in Estian’s arms. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Incredulity displaced her surprise. A bridal carry all of a sudden?

“Didn’t you say this was one of Navitan’s customs?” he prompted. “I’m doing as you wished. What’s so strange about it?”

“You won’t kill me?”

“Why would I?”

Cecile blinked. “I was merely brought here from a minor country to give birth to an heir. I was chosen by lot, yet I began to spout nonsense about having you pick me up and personally escort me inside. I even demanded you change the color of the wedding flowers.”

Before replying, he took a moment to simply stare at her. “I chose by throwing dice, not drawing lots,” he said eventually. “Ah, and not by number, either. I just settled on whatever county the dice rolled on.”

That rendered her speechless. Whatever the case, his choice was made without any tact whatsoever, wasn’t it? Too dazed to do much else, he managed to carry her into the cathedral before she knew it.

She turned her head to look around, and things were just as she had expected them to be. If the looks people gave her outside were bad, the looks on the faces of everyone here were practically akin to daggers being thrown in her direction. The keen edge on the gazes of some of the more notable gentlemen—who were clearly ministers of the empire—were harsh enough to make her skin prickle.

Well. Okay. She thought the emperor would be the one reacting to her like this. What was going on?

Despite the menacing atmosphere, the emperor made a beeline for the altar. Then, he looked to Cecile. “In Navitan, is the groom required to hold his bride throughout the entirety of the ceremony?”

She hesitated. “No…”

There were never any customs about grooms escorting and carrying their brides into the church at all to begin with. It was merely something she came up with because it had been a tradition portrayed in one of the romance novels she read some time ago with her maids back at her villa.

Things were going a little differently than what she had expected.

 

* * *

 

The wedding was over in the blink of an eye.

“Have all the ceremonies finished within ten minutes,” Estian ordered.

“But that's impossible, Your Majesty!” the pontiff cried, looking on the verge of tears. What kind of wedding gets finished in ten minutes? “Even if the proceedings are reduced to the bare minimum, prayers would still need to be given and hymns still need to be sung, so how—”

“Then just pray fast and sing faster.”

The pontiff fell hopelessly silent. “Are you not capable of this much?” the emperor’s gaze seemed to ask. All the pontiff could do was gape in response.

“Why? Can’t do it?” Estian prodded. Then, he shifted, looking away from the pontiff so he could point to the high priest behind him. “You there. You look like a man who can pray and sing well enough.”

The man in question startled. “Yes?”

“You look like you can pray and sing pretty fast, too.”

“Y-Ye… Yes?”

“You’re the pontiff from now on,” Estian declared. “Well, what are you just standing there for? Both of you, swap clothes.”

And just like that, the pontiff was replaced. The priest who succeeded him managed to work a miracle, chanting all the necessary prayers and singing all the hymns in an impressive nine minutes. He collapsed right afterwards, though, because he was long past breathless by then.

The wedding ended and around thirty minutes later, Estian was sitting in his office. The imperial palace, visible through the windows, was still decorated beautifully for the wedding, yet the groom-turned-husband felt not a stir in his heart.

So. It had begun.

It was a publicly known fact that he had only went through with the marriage to silence the officials that had been pestering him about it. However, although he had done it to ease a disturbance, he had a feeling that it would bring about an even greater one in the coming days. His work had always been the same up until now. Most of the time, he’d just take care of state affairs and wage a casual war from time to time. Those two things managed to compose his daily routine on a consistent basis ever since his enthronement. Today had been the only day to differ.

‘Cecile’, was it? Her name, that is. He had heard one of the officials standing next to him mutter it on and on. Pulling a document from one end of his wide desk, he began to read it.

Around that time, someone knocked upon the door. “Enter,” allowed Estian.

The door opened and Kane, the imperial knight commander, entered the room. He was a knight of strong build and Estian’s right hand.

“Regarding that order of yours from a while ago…” Kane began.

“Which one?”

“The one about the tutors who had been in charge of the princess’ education.”

“What, you’ve killed them all already?” Estian asked. “Were they that close to each other?” He had ordered their deaths because Cecile had called him handsome as soon as they met. This indicated that those so-called tutors hadn’t taught her about how he utterly despised talking about his looks.

It wasn’t because they forgot, either. No, it was clear they omitted that fact so that Cecile would earn his ire and invite her death.

“No, Your Majesty,” Kane said, shaking his head. “I was preparing to act when I suddenly received word that they were already dead. Suicide by poison.”

Estian nodded, unmoved. He had seen this coming. If they were caught alive, then the culprit behind them would have been revealed. They were either taught to off themselves before it was too late, or they were forced to do so. “Unsurprisingly, it appears a company of connivers have made their move,” he said.

“Was this not by your design?”

“Why do you assume so?”

“Because, you would have been closely monitoring everything otherwise. You were apparently all too indifferent to the wedding procedures, were you not? That’s why the enemy snatched the opportunity up despite the suspicions they might have held. What a great bite this was from the start,” Kane mused. “Ah, how was the new empress? Did she look well versed in the sword? Or poison?”

Kane’s curiosity had Estian sorting through what he could recall of Cecile. Versed in the sword? It would’ve been remarkable in and of itself if she could even lift one with her dainty arms, let alone swing one with expertise. Poison? Possibly, yes. He didn’t sense the dark vibes characteristic of someone who wielded poisons on her, though. In fact, it felt like just a touch of it would be enough to make her keel over and die.

“I don’t know about that,” Estian settled on saying. “She was just pretty.”

Kane looked astonished. “Pardon?”

Estian remained indifferent to Kane’s reaction, opting instead to resume reading the document he had been prior to the knight’s entrance. It was a report regarding the woman in question. It contained detailed information as to Cecile’s status as a princess, how she lived, and even whom she had come into contact with following her arrival in the empire.

“Predictable,” he murmured. Be it the tutors who had educated her after coming to the empire or the maids who frequented the mansion she stayed at, there wasn’t a single person listed who wasn’t suspicious.

It was so suspicious that she may as well have been their mastermind. It was a reasonable conclusion to come to after noticing how she had practically been swarmed by nothing but questionable people from the beginning.

Nevertheless, Estian easily perceived the scheme at the root of it all. The situation was perfectly set up so that if anything were to happen, Cecile and the kingdom of Navitan would take the blame for everything.

Estian put the document down and closed his eyes. For some odd reason, a flashback of Cecile looking upon him seemingly fearlessly, saying, “Hello, beautiful,” kept disrupting the state of order in his mind. A wave of irritation rushed through him at the unfamiliar sensation.

The plan was to bring in a suitable woman and smoke the culprits out. It would’ve been even better if they wrung their own necks.

What he got wasn’t a ‘suitable woman’, though. Instead, he got something a little stranger.

“Hell if I know,” he muttered to himself, leaning against his chair. “Whatever. I’ll finish what I need to do today.”

“And your schedule for the day is…?” Kane trailed off.

“I got married.”

Realization dawned on him. “Th-That means—”

“Yeah.” Annoyance spread across Estian’s face. “Uninvited guests will come calling.”

Kane fell silent.

“Well then? If you’re done reporting, leave,” Estian continued. “Today you’re responsible for the security in the empress’ palace. It’ll get a little noisy after dark, but play deaf because I’m going to have an absolutely incredible night.”

Kane stiffened. “Un-Understood,” he stuttered.

After he left, Estian opened a drawer in his desk. Inside it, there were dozens of daggers neatly arranged side-by-side. He picked the sharpest one out of them all and placed it on the desk’s surface. If things were going to play out as he predicted, tonight was going to be pretty hot and wild.

 

* * *

 

When was the emperor coming?

After the wedding was over, Cecile was immediately surrounded by imperial attendants and they led her to the room she was currently waiting in now. When they had first arrived, the attendants bustled about, getting her changed, washed, and ready for the night. By the time she had regained her senses, she was left all alone in the large room.

The room was far bigger and more luxurious than anything she had ever seen in the Navitan royal palace, but it wasn’t the only thing that oozed with extravagance. Be it the bed—so wide one could probably roll ten consecutive times on it without falling—the table, chairs, or vanity, there wasn’t a single thing sitting around that didn’t scream ‘premium’.

Upon the table sitting at one side of the room was a veritable mountain of fruit, other foods, and alcohol. The arrangement was pleasing to the eye, but the quantity was simply tremendous. There was so much there that one could even mistake this room for a banquet hall.

Cecile drew near the plate of fruits, peeking around cautiously despite knowing that there wasn’t anyone around, and cautiously took a bite out of a neatly sliced orange. The refreshing sweetness seemed to erupt in her mouth as the orange’s juice rejuvenated her tastebuds. Her mouth had grown dry from all the tension she had been under.

“Yum,” she hummed. Back when she was living at her royal villa, fruits were a luxury that she could only have during large events. Navitan was a country with a poor climate, so fruit supplies were mostly dependent on importation. It pained her because she was rather fond of them. Once, she had valiantly attempted to grow a fruit tree in the garden of her villa together with her maids, but it hadn’t been a very successful endeavor. Still, all this wasn’t to say that she hadn’t had any fruits at all. She snuck into the main palace’s greenhouse to loot its treasures plenty of times in the past.

Soon enough, she was gobbling up fruit after fruit as she savored the nostalgia of her fruit-scarce upbringing. Suddenly, however, something occurred to her and she paused. Estian wouldn’t grouch about her eating first, would he? Just a little while she waited for him?

The thought brought the emperor’s face to mind. Along with it came a question she had forgotten in the fever of her impromptu feast.

Why didn’t he kill her?

She had heard his officials crying for blood in the distance as the attendants hauled her off following the wedding’s conclusion. “We must wipe out the kingdom of Navitan!” they cried. “I’m ready to wage war this very instant! I’ll burn them off the face of the earth!” they seethed. “They sent us such a crazy woman—simply outrageous!” they hissed.

“Yes, my sentiments exactly!” Cecile thought to herself in response, silently cheering them on with fervor. “Smash ‘em up good!”

For a long while, she puzzled over why the emperor hadn’t decided to kill her on the spot back then, but she just ended up giving up on speculating, flopping herself onto the bed. The pleasantly springy mattress felt like heaven against her form, and the soft bedding felt like bliss against her face.

She might actually enjoy being an empress if it meant living like this. She couldn’t help but bubble with joy, lying on a cleanly kept bed after a meal of tasty fruits. Before the wedding, her entire mood consisted of the sentiment that she might as well just die, but now the thought was fading at such a heightened speed that one might even consider her shallow.

A moment later, however, Cecile’s face grew dark once more. What was the point of having such thoughts now? The deed has already been done. While she didn’t know why the emperor spared her for the time being, her fate was nonetheless set in stone.

She returned her gaze to the same table of refreshments from before. Her eyes zoned in on the considerable array of bottles placed next to the still-mountainous pile of food. Heading back over to uncork one of them, she took in the heavy fragrance that wafted out of it.

She didn’t know much about wine, but this had to be expensive. The bottle was in a stylish wine bucket that looked to be made of silver, so it definitely had to be out of the ordinary. Taking a silver cup out from within the bucket and filling it up to the brim with wine, she took a sip.

“Ah!” she exclaimed. It was very strong. Her throat had begun to burn the moment she swallowed. “Wow, this stuff is no joke.” Blinking slowly, she felt the world start to spin around her. The heat of the alcohol was already spreading throughout her body before she had even placed her lips upon the cup a second time.

“Mm?” She rubbed her eyes. The room was starting to blur. What was this drink? Could alcohol get you instantly drunk like this? Was there a type out there that could do that? Wasn’t that usually what drugs did, not alcohol?

Hang on. Drugs?

She went over the changes occurring to her body again: her mind was growing hazy, her body kindling with heat. Her easy breaths had turned into labored pants. She vaguely recalled having heard about a drug that induced such symptoms. Where, though?

Oh, right. From the books she had been reading with her maidservants.

The titles flashed through her head: ‘A Hot Night’, ‘Forbidden Love is Always Sweet’, ‘The Lark Cries: Touch of Obscenity’, etc. Every single one of them were Books That Must Not Be Named. They were wrought with plot devices taken from a bible of clichés that set the lovers within them on an express track to the bedroom, free of any tedious narrative development…

Cecile flung the cup in her hand away, aghast. “Was this an aphrodisiac?” she gasped.

Aphrodisiacs. What kind of drug were they? Well, they were something that instantaneously burned reason away within the flames of desire—the sexual sort of desire, of course.

“Those sickos!” she cried. “Why the heck would they put something like this here?!” Her tongue doled out curses of its own volition. She tried to stick a finger down her throat to induce a gag response and vomit out what she drank, but it was already too late. Her strength quickly drained from her body.

No. Not like… this…

She swayed as she moved, dropping flat onto the bed. As her consciousness began to fade, she wondered why something like that misleading drink was even here at all.

Damn that emperor. Was he planning on using it tonight? She couldn’t think of any other explanation for it. However, for some reason, she felt a hint of pity for him amidst her anger. So what if the guy was handsome? He couldn’t even get it up without using drugs...

Her thoughts continued along that vein as her eyes gently floated shut. When she came to her senses once again, the world felt as if it were shaking.

What the—

Why was this happening? Hang on, where was she again? Why was she like this?

Fortunately, she eventually managed to recall what happened before she collapsed despite her dizzied state of mind. Curses escaped her in a burst before she could help it: “That bloody goddamned emperor!”

“I get that a lot, yes, but it’s been a while since someone’s said that to my face,” came a voice. “How novel.”

“Eh?”

Cecile’s eyes shot open. Suddenly, the emperor’s handsome face entered her field of vision. He was gazing down at her. His black hair embodied the night sky and his equally black eyes held an unfathomable darkness within them, promising a mystery hidden deep within their depths. She thought he was plenty attractive when it was bright out, but she hadn’t expected him to look even more stunning amidst the dim of an enclosed room.

That just wasn’t fair.

She continued to ogle him blankly, but then when her line of sight began to shift downwards, she startled. “What the—why are you completely naked?!” she blurted, bewildered.

“Not completely,” he said calmly. “I still have my pants on.”

Cecile finally realized why the world felt like it had been shaking moments ago: the emperor had climbed aboard the bed and had begun to take his clothes off. Turning her head, she could spot the clothes he had been wearing lying scattered to the side, proving her theory correct.

Meanwhile, Estian picked up an article of clothing that had fallen and tossed it off the bed. It should have fluttered down nearby, but instead she watched it zoom past and slam right into the wall. He swept his well-groomed hair back, somehow nonchalant despite displaying a feat that definitely wasn’t possible without a fair amount of strength.

She observed him with a hazy mind. He had good looks and a good body.

At some point, she decided to put off thinking for a while and just enjoy the superb sight in front of her. Lean muscles on a tanned body. She remembered how his muscles shifted, how the veins on his arms stood in stark relief as he threw that piece of clothing, and she gulped at the memory.

Hah… How did he know she liked this kind of figure? What she saw before her was the ideal, a physique that every male lead portrayed in the novels she read with her maids had. Back then, she and her maids had all sighed together, lamenting reality and the fact that handsome men tended to have lousy figures whereas brawny men tended to have lousy faces. Where in the world could one ever find a man possessing both qualities, they asked, yet here he was! This was where he had been hiding.

If only Cecile could take him with her to show her maids at the royal villa…

She stared thoughtlessly for a bit longer. Then, finally, a hint of reason struck her. “Wait a second. Why are you on top of me?” she asked. She was happy with him being half-naked and all, but why was he being half-naked on top of her?

He took a brief moment to think over the question before replying. “Why, would you prefer me on the bottom? Is that how you like it?”

“Uh, no? That isn’t the problem?”

“Then what is?”

Her mouth seemed to take his questions as an excuse to spew her thoughts liberally. “For starters, I think feeding a person an aphrodisiac has to count.”

The emperor’s expression stiffened at her claim. “An aphrodisiac?” he asked.

“Yes, an aphrodisiac. Just how cowardly do you have to be to put something like that in here? Only scum would resort to such a thing. Those who do should all be put down,” Cecile said. Judging by how impulsively she was talking, perhaps her heart was urging her to die tonight, seeing as how she had survived the day. Even as she continued to speak, however, she marveled at how daring she was being in the face of her grim reaper. “I’ve known that such drugs existed, but goodness gracious! I didn’t expect an emperor to resort to them.”

“Hold it. I think you’re misunderstanding something here,” Estian began, but she shook her head.

“You don’t have to make excuses; I’m the only one who knows, anyway—oh, wait, maybe the servants who prepared it might know, too. Oh dear. But, still!” she insisted, a torrent of thoughts gushing out of her. “Sex without consent is a crime, you know? So are aphrodisiacs!”

He lifted himself off of her as she spoke and walked over to the table. He glanced at the bottle Cecile had opened. “So, you’re saying that you drank this and you’re suspecting it’s an aphrodisiac?”

“I know that it’s not alcohol. What sort of drink makes your body all weak and knocks you out just like that?”

“Well, you’re right. It’s not alcohol.” Oh, she knew it! Right as she was about to let another wave of curses loose, however, he said one last thing. “It’s a truth serum.”

A pause.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a truth serum, I’m telling you,” he repeated. “A very clean one at that, too. Why were you drinking this? I was only going to use it if things got troublesome.”

Cecile was struck dumbfounded at this revelation. Why, oh why, would anyone put something like that here of all places?

“Truth serum…” she echoed. “Were you going to use that on…”

“No, that wasn’t my intention,” Estian began, but then he narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, he shot a glance at the wall of the room before striding over to the bed and positioning himself on top of Cecile once more, pinning her down.

“Wh-What are you doing?”

“What I must do,” he answered apathetically. Then, he flipped her over so she lay on her stomach, roughly grasping her shoulders.

“Ah!” Cecile yelped at the sudden pain she felt shooting through her shoulder muscles. Lately, things have been hectic for her—especially given the wedding preparations she had to undergo—so her body was rigid and riddled with tension. Also, because she slept with bad posture after getting knocked out by the truth serum, her neck had been aching ever since she opened her eyes. Therefore, when the emperor pressed his fingers against her knotted muscles, he managed to elicit some screams from her.

“Agh!” she cried, her voice escaping her in an involuntary moan. “Hah—s-stop!” Before she knew it, she had wriggled under the bed covers. Under cover of darkness, she twisted in place, struggling to avoid his persistent touch and whimpering all the while. “N-No! Not there! Stop—stop it! Ah!”

“Stay still, will you,” he ordered.

“No! Knock it off!”

Every time his hands moved upon her body, intense sounds would escape her lips. The odd sensations wrung a tear from her eye, but then she realized something: it… actually felt pretty good?

While it initially hurt because the emperor only seemed to be targeting muscles that were particularly badly knotted, what came after felt liberating. In what seemed like no time at all, her previously sore neck now felt perfectly fine. As soon as she understood that what he was doing wasn’t really all that bad, she ceased her struggles and entrusted herself to his touch.

“Ahn! Th-There…! Ah! A-A little—little more!” Cecile moaned, shivering and squirming beneath the combined pain and euphoria he brought her. At that moment, though, certain odd things about their arrangement struck her: a dark room on the first night of their marriage, their bodies curved together beneath the sheets, the sound of her keening voice echoing amidst the quiet…

Wait—hold on a second. Wasn’t this the perfect equation to give someone the wrong idea?

Suddenly, she caught the glint of a razor-sharp blade in the darkness. Estian had produced a dagger from somewhere.

What? Was he going to kill her now? For all her death-inviting antics, she still feared the approach of her demise. When the emperor moved, jerking like a bolt of lightning, Cecile tried to scream, but everything happened all too quickly. She hadn’t even been able to register anything. All she could tell was that she had been sent flying, tumbling away from him along with the bed sheets, and that the dagger that he once held had been viciously thrown.

A shriek resounded through the room, scaring Cecile into shrieking along with it. It wasn’t a voice belonging to the emperor, and sure enough, after she tumbled onto the carpet with a dull thump, she turned her head and spotted the source of the shout. The sight brought another scream tearing through her throat.

There, crumpling like a ragdoll, was a man with a dagger lodged right in the middle of his throat. Blood wept from his wound. “M-Must—complete—the mission—” he gurgled. He still wasn’t dead yet, but he was getting there. “Must kill… Princess Cecile…”

He lifted his hand into the air. Nestled in his trembling grip was a dagger as sharp as the one piercing his throat, and it was aimed directly at her. Frozen in place, she couldn’t even compel herself to dodge the coming blow. She merely stared at it, wide-eyed.

Her mind was a cluster of thoughts. She was going to die. Why her, though? Why not the emperor? Wouldn’t one usually think to aim for the emperor instead? Why was he going for her when she hadn’t even done anything wrong?

Despite the frightening storm of questions that flew through her mind, she couldn’t bring herself to voice any of them.

Thwack!

Before the dying man could throw his dagger, however, his body was sent flying. In that instant, his blade fell from his hand and rolled onto the floor. Cecile heard a low snarl erupt nearby, suffused with haunting fury. “You dare…” Estian growled, and she realized that he must’ve kicked the assassin away.

He saved her just then, didn’t he? Tossing her from the bed and punting the assassin away saved her life. He definitely had to have been trying to help her.

Suddenly, Estian lifted several more daggers from his belt and began to sling them toward the wall. Prone on the floor, quivering, Cecile was left to simply lay there as she beheld the horror that began to unfold before her eyes. Before, she had enjoyed reading thrilling scenes like this in novels, but experiencing it firsthand was another thing entirely. She never wanted to go through something like this ever again.

Thwock! Thwock! Thwock!

Loud, explosive sounds followed the daggers’ impact on the wall, broadcasting the force they were thrown with. Embedded in place, their handles began to oscillate, shaking from their sudden stop. Before they could grow still, however, dark stains began to seep from around the blades. Dark red stains. Blood.

Pigs and cows and such were impossible to hide within the walls, so the only conclusion Cecile could come to was that the blood was human.

There were people in there? What the hell was up with this palace? How could people be hiding in places like that?

Estian approached the wall and kicked it violently. It fell apart with a crash, and what had been hiding inside slowly began to fall forward. Corpse after corpse slammed into the floor, each with a dagger embedded securely in their foreheads.

“So, this is all of them,” Estian murmured. “They sent fewer than expected.”

Fewer? Huh? Four daggers were thrown, three of which were embedded into the wall. That meant a total of four assassins, but he was saying that was just a few?

Cecile held her breath as he resumed his seat on the bed. The cogs in her head were churning anew. What should she do now? Tell him he did a good job and take her leave? Or did she have to help clear the bodies out? She gawked at the corpses, still too scared to move.

Then, he stood back up and strode over to one of the bodies, hoisting it up by the scruff. The assassin had been larger than Estian himself, but he bore the weight as if he was simply lifting up a doll, easily tossing it out through the window.

So, it was true that he possessed herculean strength. She really hadn’t wanted to confirm the validity of one of the rumors surrounding him like this.

After the emperor disposed of the corpse like he would throwing a pebble, a splash could be heard a few seconds later as if something heavy had crashed into the water. He proceeded to do the same with the rest of the bodies, coaxing three more splashes. With that, he had effectively emptied the room of assassins.

“Clean, just the way I like it,” he hummed to himself, dusting off his hands.

Cecile looked at the wrecked wall and the pools of blood lying around and fought off the urge to ask, “Clean how?”

Next, he sat himself in a chair by the table and called for her. “Come here and sit,” he said.

She shot up like a puppy heeding its master’s command. “Yessir!” she shouted. Then, she knelt before him in submission, but that made him frown for some reason. After seeing the look on his face, she planted her forehead onto the floor with an audible thump. “I apologize. I was impudent for holding my head up. Please forgive my insolence.”

Gone was her conviction to death. Witnessing all those people die right before her very eyes shocked her right back to her senses. She didn’t want to leave the room like those corpses did, and she didn’t want to end up floating alongside them, either.

She should’ve just behaved obediently! Revenge? What revenge? She was aware it was far too late for regrets now, but she wasn’t exactly dead yet, so she felt the need to at least try to get out of this alive. Despite her rampant thoughts, Cecile was still, her head planted obediently on the floor.

Then, his voice broke the silence from above. “What an unpleasant sight,” he said.

“I beg your forgiveness. Shall I go a little lower?”

With that said, she flattened her limbs against the floor. The thin seams of the dress the attendants had put on her earlier fell apart then, and before she knew it, her bare chest was grazing the carpet, her thighs becoming equally uncovered. However, she didn’t have the mind to worry about it at the moment.

She heard him let out a vague sigh. The sound made her wonder how best she could flatten herself even further. Should she just stick her face into the carpet? As she was contemplating her best course of action, though, he let out another sigh, this time noticeably deeper. “What I mean is…”

He grasped her by the waist with his sturdy arms and lifted her up with ease. “Uwah?!” she exclaimed, immediately tensing up. Her brain began replaying the memory of how he had lifted the assassin’s corpses and disposed of them. Was he going to fling her out alive?

Contrary to what she had been imagining, however, Estian carefully rested her onto the chair opposite him. It actually felt like the time he had carried her before their wedding ceremony.

Before she could wonder at his actions, he picked the bed sheet off the floor and wrapped it around her. “Much better,” he muttered, satisfied after having swathed her like a caterpillar. Did she look that worse for wear? How come he left her face out in the open? He hadn’t done anything of this sort to the assassins, and it seemed like he disliked the sight of their faces, so…?

“You’re finally ready for some conversation,” he continued. “Your condition a moment ago… seemed a little unfit for that, you see.”

“When you say conversation…”

“Right. Something where I ask and you answer.”

Wouldn’t one usually define something like that as an interrogation instead, though? She wondered, but then she pushed the thought away. Knowing that she needed to obey him for the time being, she fervently nodded.

 

* * *

 

Estian inspected Cecile as she sat wrapped up in her pale cocoon, compulsively wondering if this terror-stricken person before him was the same woman who had made all those bold requests prior to their marriage. He first noted how her eyes kept flitting back and forth, driven by her nerves, but then he caught sight of the slight swelling on her forehead.

How utterly weak she was.

Judging from the tinge of red on the sore, it was apparent she was going to have a nasty bruise with a bit of a lump come the next morning. Oddly, and suddenly, inexplicably discomforted by the thought, he muttered to himself. “I should’ve cut their heads off before throwing them out, after all,” he said.

She gave a muffled gasp. He watched as she curled in on herself even further inside the bedsheets, apprehension clear in the cant of her shoulders.

It looked painful.

Just a short while ago, he had deliberately massaged her shoulders and neck to deceive the assassins. He could still recall the stiffness in her posture and the feel of the tension that riddled her muscles. At the time, he had purposefully targeted the areas suffering the greatest burden, coaxing forth the moans he had anticipated she’d make.

Cecile had failed to notice at the time, but upon her first cry, he had flinched slightly, taken aback by an unexpected, yet indescribable and ambiguous, feeling. Was it because of the softness of her skin as it slid beneath his rough hands? She had been dolled up by some servants since this was to be their first night together, so every time she squirmed beneath him, overcome by sensation, a subtle fragrance would waft from her silky hair.

He had never liked perfume before, yet…

Well, to be exact, he held an aversion toward perfume. They numbed the nose, after all, and as someone who needed to constantly be on guard against his surroundings, he couldn’t afford such a hindrance. Distractions had to be avoided at all costs, so at the time, Estian shook off the strange impulse that had struck him and continued to move his hands some more.

After experiencing so much cutting and killing in his life, he had acquired knowledge of human anatomy, of muscles and how they moved. Thus, he utilized his expertise to pressure locations that would entice the strongest responses from Cecile. She kept moaning, and soon enough, he managed to sense some movement hidden beyond the walls of the room.

He was certain that the sounds of her labored breathing and frantic stirring had led them to believe that he and Cecile were indulging in each other, distracted by their enjoyment of the night. While he had been waiting all this time for them to make their move, however, he didn’t find them welcome at all once they had arrived.

“If it weren’t for those fools,” he had thought, “then right about now, I…”

But then he stopped himself, surprised by his own suppositions. If there had been no assassins? Then what? He gazed down at Cecile as she gasped beneath him.

High, breathless whimpers slipped past her lips as she melted beneath his touch. Her clothing was disheveled and tears hung on the precipice of her moistened eyes. Her blonde hair was splayed across the bed, glimmering in the darkness of the room as her gaze shone like crystals beneath the lamplight. He was incapable of wresting his eyes away from her, and his thoughts began to circle through who she was.

She was the woman who had come from a distant country to marry him. According to the vow officiated by the newly appointed pontiff, she was someone who would forever serve as his companion in life.

She was his wife.

The moment his mind reached that point, he felt the blood rush to his face for the first time in a truly long while. Something, he had realized, was going wrong.

“Name: Cecile Franvier Navitan, correct?” he asked, severing himself from his ruminations.

“Yes,” she answered.

“You were born from a momentary union between the king of Navitan and a maidservant working at his royal palace. Due to your platinum blonde hair and green eyes, you were acknowledged as a princess of the nation, but you spent your entire life confined within a villa.”

“Yes.”

“While you did manage to receive some basic education there, the only company you had were your maids, and it had been a hobby of yours to join them as they read their romance novels, correct? Your favorite stories mainly involved poor beauties doomed to be sold off that were eventually rescued by a handsome knight, leading them into beginning a romantic relationship.”

She hesitated. “That’s right…”

“And most of them were adult novels, as well,” Estian continued. “The titles were—let’s see… ‘The Imprisoned Princess: Weeping at a Knight’s Love’? ‘Canary of the Eternal Cage’? ‘Secret Love Beneath the Attic’?”

Cecile blanched. “I was wrong,” she eventually managed. “Stop, please. Just kill me now.”

Forget about waiting for him to throw her out, she was ready to jump out of the window herself.

 

* * *

 

Cecile had been nervous as to what questions would come up when the emperor said he’d be interrogating her, but never in her wildest dreams did she think he would’ve gone so far as to mention the titles of some novels she liked. To top it off, they were all titles that she had always been too embarrassed to read out in the open. She used to hide under her covers when she wanted to read them!

Every time a title left his mouth, she wanted to bang her head against the wall. Alas, wrapped in a bedsheet as tight as she was, the best she could do was flinch on the spot.

So, this was what it meant to die from shame. She didn’t think it was possible to get this mentally exhausted without the use of actual torture.

“Alright,” Estian continued, “that’ll do for personal details. Now, on to what I’ve been curious about: why did you want me to come out and carry you under the pretext of nonexistent Navitan customs?”

She wanted to ponder over what excuse to give him, but then her lips began to flap against her wishes. “I wanted to drag the kingdom of Navitan down with me for selling me off—hup?!” She hurriedly slammed her mouth shut, startled, but it was already too late.

Why did it seem like her mouth had a mind of its own? Bewildered, her eyes flit about before landing upon a certain bottle discarded on the table.

No way…

Following Cecile’s gaze, Estian’s lips curved into a slight smile. “Yes, nothing to be surprised about,” he said. “The truth serum you took is rather potent. Try as you might to divert your words or refuse an answer, it won’t change the fact that you’ll speak nothing but the truth.”

She paled at his claim. He observed her closely before he spoke once more. “So, sold off, you say? You must’ve been very unhappy about having to come to the empire in place of one of the other princesses. Do you hate this marriage that much?” he asked.

“But of course!” she said. “Who would want to marry Your Majesty?”

His face hardened at her answer, tensing right up. The sight of his expression drove Cecile to tears inside, even as a sense of admiration suffused her. She had no idea where or how they made this serum, but it sure worked wonders. It plucked the truth right out of her.

Estian remained silent for a while. She took a peek at him and discovered his stiff expression seemed as if it were somewhat shocked. Of course, she knew that couldn’t be the case. It was impossible for the emperor to be surprised by something like that.

She still got the feeling that she had to comfort him a little, though. As soon as she thought so, however, words began flooding right out of her again. “I mean,” she began, “now that I think about it, not everyone might hate marrying Your Majesty. There might be some who will like it. I’m sure those people were miserable after they realized they wouldn’t be chosen by Your Majesty. They probably cursed at me out of jealousy for having entered the wedding hall.”

A beat of silence. Then, “What kind of person do you believe would want to marry me?”

“Uh… The sort of person who would want to enjoy all types of luxury and pleasure without caring for the coming day? Someone who’d wanna go out with a bang?” she proposed. “Besides, what with Your Majesty’s reputation being so rock-bottom and all, they probably won’t be criticized for most of their villainy—”

Honestly, at this point, what she had drunk may as well have been a magic spell to bring this sort of response out of her. Truth serum? She wholeheartedly wanted to smack her mouth senseless, but judging by how it refused to filter a single thing she said, she probably didn’t need to.

But she wasn’t wrong, though.

There had to be lots of people in the world like the ones she described. No, there were sure to be heaps of them. They were just hard to find because the candidates for empress were usually empresses who had already lived a life of comfort. If they were to search for empress hopefuls from among those who were just a little more desperate, they might’ve struck the motherlode. Who knew, maybe there were actually other princesses like her out there who were born out of wedlock?

There might’ve been some who thought that instead of living a life of perpetual anxiety, wondering who they might be sold off to and where they’d end up, it was better to be daring and seek out the man who held the greatest amount of power in the whole continent.

While Cecile was lost in thought, Estian’s expression had changed. He resumed his inquiries. “You don’t seem to hold such desires,” he prompted.

“Yes. I wanted to live a long and quiet life.”

“I see…” Her instantaneous response rendered him mute for a moment. Then, he asked, “What do you think of me?”

“You are the greatest tyrant of this era. You’ve formed rivers of blood and sculpted mountains of corpses.”

There was a slight lull before he gave his next response. “No… Not that sort of thing.”

“Then what, if I may ask?”

“I just want your first impression of me. What I mean is… Say you didn’t know me as the emperor. How would you think of me as a potential husband?”

For a second there, Cecile almost thought Estian had stuttered a little, but before she could examine the thought, her lips released their floodgates. “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “Your face may be striking on its own, but your body is the real killer. You’re not too pale, yet neither is your skin burnt by labor. It’s an ideal tone. On top of that, when I saw you throwing those daggers a while ago, I noticed you had better strength than any guy I’ve ever read about in books. You’re supposed to lack musculature if you’re handsome, or, if your muscles are well-developed, you’re supposed to look pretty mediocre, but who would’ve guessed you’d have both going for you!” she exclaimed. “A marvelous face and a marvelous body. Like, whoa. I give you 10,000 points out of ten. Then, I’ll add another thousand for having a nice voice. If you weren’t the emperor, I swear I would’ve snagged you up and given you a life of comfort even if it meant I had to work every hour of the day. Even at this very moment, if it wasn’t for our current situation, I would’ve laid you down beside me and stared at you for hours. Oh—with your shirt still off, of course.”

Silence.

This… This damned truth serum… This goddamned fucking mouth of hers… Was there any way for her to roll herself out the window? Maybe she’d find some peace of mind floating by those corpses out there.

As Cecile suffered from the aftermath of her tirade, a smile crept onto Estian’s face. “You don’t say…”

“Wh-Why did you ask me something like that?” she groaned.

His smile grew deeper. “I think… we need to keep talking for a little bit longer.” He opened up a bottle that had been next to the one she had originally drunk from and then poured its contents into a cup. “Drink up,” he said. “This is the antidote.”

“If you had it, then you should’ve given it to me from the start!” she complained, hastily drinking from the cup he brought to her lips. She simply could not permit herself to say anything crazier than she already had. She really needed to start keeping her mouth in check.

Before long, she began to feel like she had when she first started feeling the effects of the truth serum. The strength left her body and she swayed in her chair. Because she was sitting before the emperor, she tried desperately to raise her drooping body. She had to stay seated at the very least—wait—“Eh?”

Wide-eyed, Cecile suddenly found herself lifted into the air, just like she had been twice before. "You wanted to talk, though…?" she asked, baffled.

"Oh, but we will." His voice tickled her ears. “After I tend to some unfinished business."

Unfinished business? What business?

 

* * *

 

The servants of the imperial palace restlessly paced back and forth before the bridal room. Everyone was aware of the commotion last night. How could they not be? At first there were moans coming out of the room, but then there were screams followed by a smashing sound.

“He spared her during the wedding only to off her at night!” people were saying. As soon as the wedding had ended, rumors of the demands issued by Princess—now Empress—Cecile prior to the ceremony spread quickly throughout the palace. Everyone had assumed that Estian would set out to destroy Navitan when next he had the time to spare. And, of course, he’d kill his new empress before that.

The next morning, the emperor had left the bridal room in a good mood, which was extremely rare. Upon witnessing that, the attendants made the sign of the cross and fell into a discussion once he was completely gone.

“Who wants to go in and clean up Her Majesty's body?” one of them asked. Naturally, no one raised their hand. In the end, they decided on picking who’d go through rock-paper-scissors.

“Isn't the loser supposed to go in?" said the winning attendant, a maid.

“You say that like it's a punishment,” another attendant began. “It's an honor to have the opportunity of serving Her Majesty, so of course the winner should go."

Thus, hearts united, the attendants pushed the winner into the room. The winner sucked in a deep breath, pressing her hands against her thumping chest. She could never get used to the sight of the corpses the emperor left behind, no matter how many times she saw it.

Death came far too often within the imperial palace. There was a time when she had turned a corner in a corridor only to be greeted by the presence of a decapitated victim. Once, she had even found one of her colleagues—whom she had enjoyed working with until just the day before—floating face down in the pond.

There had been no need to look for the culprit behind the murders. When she had encountered the beheaded body, the emperor was there at the end of the corridor, wiping the blood off his sword. Concerning her dead colleague, a part of the emperor’s office staff—which anybody could recognize—was floating alongside the body.

At first, she had been so scared that she had begged the head chamberlain to let her leave imperial palace right away, but he responded as he always did when attendants came crying to him. He shoved her contract in her face and said, "Work your three years before going or you’ll be hanged." It was a means of summarizing the long-winded conditions stated in the employees’ contracts.

When she moved to tearily start unpacking her things, the head chamberlain told her that she’d be okay as long as she didn’t get any funny ideas.

Returning back to the present, the maid knocked on the door. “Your Majesty,” she announced, “I’ve come to assist.” Then, as an aside she mumbled, mournfully, “In clearing away your body, that is…”

No sound came from beyond the door. Well, of course. How could a dead person reply to her? She inhaled deeply, then opened the door.

“Eh?” Contrary to what she had been expecting, she didn’t smell anything particularly bloody. All she picked up was the scent of wine and fruit, the scent of the rose perfume that had been liberally applied onto the empress, and something oddly fishy. “Um…”

She began sniffing about, looking around the room for the empress’ body, when she heard a thin voice rise from the bed. Turning around to check, she jumped, yelping in shock. A slender, white arm had slipped out from underneath the bed covers, beckoning for her to come forward.

“Y-Your Majesty!” she cried, on the verge of tears. “You—You’re alive!” She was so relieved she didn’t have to clear away a corpse.

At the same time, though, she felt quite puzzled. The emperor had spared the empress? Why?

Dashing over to the bed, the maid soon discovered the reason why, her face flushing a bright crimson after catching sight of the empress’ state. Empress Cecile’s lips were swollen and she had red marks all over her neck, shoulders, and arms.

The newlyweds seemed to have had a very busy night.

 

* * *

 

Cecile lay in a large bathtub staring blankly at the ceiling. Through the mist, she could see a mosaic of small tiles, but its beauty could not capture her attention. She just remained there, dazed, for a good long while before her gaze slowly drifted to her arm. There, she spotted a red mark on it, making her squeal aloud. She immediately dunked her head into the bath water.

Alarmed by her outburst, the attendants waiting outside called out to her. “Your Majesty! Are you alright?” one asked. “We should be there serving you, after all!” another cried.

She hurriedly raised her head at their clamoring and shouted back, “No! Don’t come in!”

With that, their voices quieted. Cecile could hear them backing away again and she sighed in relief at their retreat. Then, she poked at a red mark on her arm, worrying at it with her finger.

“Ack—” she hissed, pulling back after it stung. The pain reaffirmed that what had happened last night was not a dream.

She did it. The words circled around her head. She fucking did it.

She blanked out again, simply watching the water drip from her hair. She had slept with him. With the emperor. It wasn’t anything to be surprised about since they had just gotten married, yet she still was. Why? Maybe because she couldn’t believe she was still alive? Or, rather, was it because…

“It was so grea—” She clamped a hand over her mouth. What? What was she about to say just now? She was certain that the truth serum stopped working after she took the antidote, so what the hell was that? Smacking her mouth for its sins, she settled back against the bathtub and recalled Estian’s last words before he had vacated the bridal room this morning.

“I wish to stay with you for longer,” he said, “but I have to deal with those goons I tossed out. I’ll finish as soon as possible, so just keep resting. After I’m back, we’ll pick up on where we left off last night. I should’ve done that first, actually, but I was too busy quenching my thirst. See you again soon.”

With that said, he pressed his lips against hers, leaving one last kiss. Having suffered throughout the entire night, she could only lie still and accept it. When she began to squirm out of breathlessness, however, he finally drew away from her. Despite having remained with her for so long, he took a brief moment to level her with a gaze that spoke of his reluctance to part with her before he finally turned and left.

Cecile thought of her maids back at the villa. “You girls told me novels were only novels,” Cecile wanted to tell them. What was it they used to say when they would lend her their books?

“Princess, this is all fantasy. Fantasy,” they insisted. “Men like this only exist in novels. Don’t you ever expect any real men to be this perfectly handsome, well-built, caring, and virile. No such man exists in this world! They all went extinct a long time ago! If you ever find even one of them out there, I’ll give you a gold coin!”

“I did,” Cecile murmured to herself. “I did find one.” And he happened to be her husband, at that.

Her face reddened at the thought.

Her husband…

Thinking of the emperor so possessively? Clearly, she had utterly abandoned her senses yesterday. How dare she claim the high and mighty emperor as hers? The emperor did all the possessing around here. He was bound to no one.

She was going to have to be really careful with her mouth.

She thought back to the officials at the wedding hall. They had seemed ready to rip her apart on the spot. If she were to ever voice such possessive thoughts, it wouldn’t be strange if they flew into a rage, bellowing, “You must punish that mouth of hers, Your Majesty! If punishing it alone is too bothersome, then by all means include the rest of her!” before subsequently boiling her alive. Cecile rubbed her arms at the chilling thought before looking beside her at the wall of the steamy bathroom. She then began to trace letters into the condensation with her finger.

‘My husband’.

After writing the words, she lay there giggling, enamored by the thought. Out of nowhere, however, she heard a low voice emerge behind her. “What are you doing?”

She shrieked. In her surprise, she ended up splashing water everywhere, which erased the words on the wall. Cecile peeked behind her and cried out, “Your—Your Majesty! H-How did you get here…?!”

“Where in the imperial palace am I not welcome?”

“Ah,” she deflated. “I see." Realizing she had asked a foolish question, Cecile discreetly reached to the side for a towel. She had taken a look at herself before entering the bathroom, and pushing aside the marks he left on her body, her forehead, which she had slammed to the floor last night, had bruised black and blue. And it had a slight lump, to boot.

How embarrassing… And for some reason, she felt twice that embarrassment at the sight of Estian standing proudly before her. She needed something to cover herself up with, hence her reach for the towel, but as soon as her hand rested upon it, Estian shot forward before she could take it and tossed it far away. She heard it strike a flower pot in the corner of the bathroom, tipping it over.

“I-I’m sorry?” She didn’t know what wrong she might’ve committed to have him suddenly throw her towel away like that, but seeing the broken flower pot gave her the impression that she needed to beg for forgiveness anyway.

However, Estian shook his head at her apology. “It’s fine,” he said. “Next time, don’t cover yourself when you’re with me.”

“I understand, but I swear I don’t have anything dangerous on me. The attendants checked me over before I got in,” she said, remembering the conversation she had with the attendants before entering the bridal room the day before.

“Why are you putting me in nothing but these revealing clothes?” she had asked. “Don’t you guys have anything that covers me up a little more?”

Elegantly, the attendants replied, “We never know what you could be hiding,” before telling her firmly that they had no such clothes available for her.

This exchange was why she had assumed the emperor was likely concerned with security at the moment, so she jumped up from the bathtub and held her arms high in an appeal for her innocence. Her breasts were out on full display, and she had sprayed water everywhere, but she had already stopped caring about such things. She had shown him every nook and cranny of her last night, anyhow, so what was the point in hiding now?

Estian bit his lip at the sight of her and began to search for something. Spotting another large towel, he picked it up and tossed it over to her. “I changed my mind,” he said quickly. “You can just cover up.”

Cecile didn’t know what to say in response. He’d say one thing one moment, then something else entirely the next. Apparently, he had judged that her claims were genuine and she had nothing on her. Uncertain as to when his mind would change again, she quickly took the towel he offered her and wrapped it around her body.

Suddenly, he extended a hand. When she stepped back on impulse, startled by his abrupt movement, his hand froze.

“I was only trying to see where you were hurt. I saw the court physician waiting outside, but I thought it’d be best to have a good look myself first,” he explained. Then, he extended his hand once more, carefully resting it upon her forehead. She allowed the touch, and his cool skin felt at odds with the heat she had bathed in. It struck her that if he ever chose to squeeze her head in with that monstrous strength of his, she’d be saying goodbye to the world at that instant, and the thought was worrying. Although she was wrought with tension beside him, his touch remained unexpectedly cautious. Gentle.

"It's become more swollen than it had been this morning,” he observed. “The bruise has worsened, too."

She couldn’t figure out why the emperor was interested in her injury even as she listened to him mutter.

Oh, maybe…

Before she had entered the bathroom, she heard the attendants all gasp after seeing her. They probably thought the injury on her forehead had been caused by the emperor. Well, that explained it, she supposed. He must’ve wanted to take a look, affronted by the false allegations stacked up against him. He had been labeled an abuser out of the blue, after all.

"I'll be going, then," Estian said next.

She grew wide-eyed. “What?”

“Is something the matter?”

“No, I was just wondering if you had visited because you had something to do...”

"I've done what I came to do." His finger pressed ever so softly against Cecile's forehead, his movements tender. "All that's really left is to do some dicing."

 

* * *

 

Kane felt like something was going wrong. He had arrived at the emperor's office that morning only to discover that Estian was nowhere to be found. Never—not once—had the emperor arrived later than Kane to his own office before, so Kane just stood there, bewildered at this unprecedented occurrence.

That was when Estian entered the room at last. Somehow, though, he seemed different than his usual self. He was supposed to be in a gruff mood after having to face all of those intruders last night, yet no such signs of displeasure could be found on his face.

Kane questioned him cautiously. “How was your evening, Your Majesty?”

There were four assassins. There had been no intrusions within the imperial palace for a while, yet they attacked on the wedding night as if they had simply been waiting.

“A bit... Strange,” Estian replied.

Kane nodded with an understanding expression. Upon further investigation, it had been revealed that all four of the assassins were completely unrelated to each other. Four people sent by different entities each? Something like this had never happened before. “I understand. It must have been your first time experiencing such a thing,” he said.

“Was smaller than I thought, for starters.”

"Is that so?" Had one of the assassins been small? The bodies floating in the pond didn't seem all that small, though?

“And softer than I imagined, too.”

Kane’s face contorted oddly. “Pardon?” he asked. What in the world? Softness in regards to an assassin? He had no idea what Estian was talking about. Had it been easy to stab one through the belly or something?

Estian abhorred coming into contact with others, but that was an inevitable thing considering how he had been raised. His aversion extended so far as to prevent Kane—a long-time faithful subject—from standing beside him except when absolutely necessary. Yet, knowing this, he had touched an assassin? And the touch felt soft? The assassins were, without a doubt, middle-aged men, so where could the softness be found?

A dangerous picture gradually began to form in Kane's mind as Estian continued to speak.

“And even prettier in the night as well,” Estian added.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty but who might you be talking about?” Kane asked cautiously.

“The empress, of course. What? Who did you think I was talking about?”

“An assassin.”

Estian scoffed. “Are you mad?”

No wonder he felt like something was off. Just as Kane was about to sigh in relief, he paused at the precipice of an important realization.

Hang on. Was the emperor calling the empress small and pretty?

The shock came late. While Kane was gaping mutely like a fish, Estian sat down at his desk and signed several documents. Then, he suddenly stopped writing, rising back up from his seat. He walked towards the door.

“Your Majesty?” Kane asked. “Where might you be heading?”

"Going to see someone."

Kane didn’t ask who. Estian left and a long time passed before he came back. The moment he entered the office, Kane caught the subtle scent of roses and blood wafting from him. “Where have you been, Your Majesty?” he asked.

“I met with the empress. Then, I remembered an assassin from yesterday, so I diced him up a bit.”

“How in the heavens did you end up thinking of cutting up an assassin after meeting with Her Majesty?"

In answer, Estian threw something that he had been holding at Kane. Kane instinctively caught it and his eyes grew wide upon realizing what it was: a small metal engraving coated with bits of blood and flesh. “This is…”

“I opened up the body and found it inside,” Estian explained. “You know what the mark on it is, don't you?"

“This is the mark of the Holy Kingdom's zealots, is it not?”

“That’s right.”

Estian's eyes radiated cold murder. The first assassin that had begun the attack last night had targeted the empress, not him. Why?

“I'll have to find out why the hell the Holy Kingdom sent an assassin, and why they sent one after the empress instead of me,” he declared.

 

* * *

 

After Estian appeared and disappeared like the wind, Cecile left the bathroom. The servants that had been waiting immediately hauled her off to start dressing her up. After that was over, they led her to another room.

“This is?” she asked.

“Your residence, Your Majesty,” an attendant answered. “It’ll be where you’ll stay from now on. Worry not for any intruders. Seeing that His Majesty has done some cleaning recently, things will be comfortable for the time being.”

What on earth did the emperor clean? And why only for the time being? Did that mean it would once again become dangerous after a while? Cecile chewed over her questions as she walked with the attendants. Something was strange, though. One door was opened, then another door after, and then another door after that. She walked, walked, and walked some more. Cecile, tired of walking, ended up breaking first. “Uh, when exactly are we getting to my room?” she finally asked.

An attendant met her with a look of confusion. “All the rooms since the first door we opened belong to you, Your Majesty. Is there a problem?”

Cecile paused. “No… It's—It’s nothing. Carry on.”

Even after that, the attendants continued walking for a long while, informing Cecile about the rooms as she reached them. “This here is the Room of Glory,” they said, “and over here is the Room of Blessing. Right there is the Room of Prayer,” and this here and that there, and that this and this that… There was seemingly no end to the explanations, so Cecile's nodding grew increasingly half-hearted by the minute. They traveled like that for two hours until, at last, the attendants came to a stop.

“Is it over?” Cecile asked.

“No. This was only the beginning.”

She grew faint at the reply. What kind of indoor tour takes over two hours to complete?! Her legs were beginning to feel sore. Besides, she felt all languid after bathing, but her biggest problem was that her body demanded rest after suffering through everything that had happened last night. “I'll see to them on my own,” she said. “You may all return.”

“Understood, Your Majesty.”

After the attendants left, Cecile looked back at her place. “Isn't this a palace?” she mused aloud.

She had barely managed to reach the first living room after having to go through five doors. Beyond that, though, was a beautifully decorated garden that stretched out endlessly. In the garden was a pond where swans swam leisurely, and by the pond were rabbits hopping over for a drink. To the side of that grazed some deer, even. It was truly a picturesque sight.

“Being the empress really is great after all,” she mumbled. After gazing upon that peaceful scenery for a while, Cecile headed over to find a bed. She felt sleepy.

She had lain with the emperor until morning. Their coupling had been so intense that, somewhere around the crack of dawn, her voice had gotten too hoarse to cry out any more. It had gotten a little better, but the scratchy itch in her throat was still there. She massaged it for a bit before looking at the plate of fruits by her bedside. She reached out to take a well-ripened bundle of grapes and popped one in her mouth. The cool grape burst on her tongue and she closed her eyes to savor the refreshing sweetness that suffused her mouth.

Fruits were always good to have indeed, she thought. She was happy that she could now eat them every day. Eyes still closed, she fed herself another grape. So good.

These luxuries only extended as far as her life did, though. She thought back to the assassins last night. Even if the emperor had no intention of killing her, she was still in a dangerous position.

She was angry and resentful every day on the way here from Navitan, grinding her teeth, and yet... now she couldn’t care less about Navitan. All sorts of things had occurred in the space of a day, yet she had found calm after going through it all.

Why, though? What changed?

She mused over this for some time, but then drifted off into sleep before she knew it.

 

* * *

 

What later roused Cecile from her slumber was somebody's gentle touch. Their fingers hovered by her forehead before sliding down her face, but she unconsciously frowned at the ticklish sensation and shook her head. In response, their touch traveled down her jaw and over to her shoulders, slowly massaging the nape of her neck. She hummed in satisfaction. She didn’t know who this was, but they were helping to ease the stiffness from her form.

Still half-asleep, she let slip a heartfelt admittance. “Wish I could live like this every day,” she breathed.

The strange phantom responded to her wishful request, muttering, “Like this?”

She hummed in assent. “Eating lots of fruit... Having someone massage me where it hurts…”

“Is that all?”

Somehow, it felt as if the questioning voice had grown a little sharper. Its hands drifted a little lower, brushing by her shoulder blades and hanging there as if considering whether to continue the massage any further. This left Cecile pining for more. She hesitated slightly before continuing. “And… If I had someone to sleep by my side at night... Life would be perfect.”

She was never one to fear solitude, but she had always felt a sense of emptiness in her lonesome. When she woke up this morning to find someone there beside her, relief, rather than surprise, had visited her.

Perhaps she had given the correct answer. The hands ceased their judgement and proceeded to press exactly just where she wanted as if to praise her for her honesty.

“Nng!” she groaned. The mix of pain and liberation awakened Cecile's mind. Wasn’t she in her room right now? And this voice—these hands… Didn’t they belong to…

She awoke, startled. “Your Majest-heek?!” She jerked up after her phantom’s identity dawned on her, but Estian was quicker. As if he had foreseen her reaction, he pressed a finger to her forehead, stilling her.

“You’ve awoken?” he asked. Then, he laid her down again before lowering himself over her, his voice falling into a whisper by her ear. “From the sound of things, it seems like you have everything you wished for.”

“Y-Y-Ye—Yes,” Cecile stammered, nodding frantically. “I think so, too.”

“So, what are you worrying for?”

“I feel like the remainder of time I have left in life will be a bit short.”

Estian nodded. “You’re not wrong. It isn’t well-known, but before you became empress, other women were pushed into the imperial palace by ministers serving under me as well as royal families from other nations. They wanted me to take those women as my own even if I didn’t choose to crown them alongside me.”

Cecile ears pricked up. This was the first time she had ever heard of this.

“The first woman who came died the next day and the second woman who came died a week later,” he said. “The third woman who came lasted a month, but she died by the end of it. I killed the first woman, but the second and third I had left alone. I didn't care whether or not they died, and someone eventually killed them.” Estian paused for a moment, and Cecile immediately took the chance to ask about what had been bothering her.

“Did you sleep with all three of them?”

He cocked a brow. “That concerns you more than their deaths?”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t the only one who thought her priorities were a little odd just then. She did too, but perhaps staying at the imperial palace was gradually affecting her, making her a little weird. Estian chuckled at the immediacy of her answer. “You're a bit of an odd one,” he said.

“It’s because I lack a proper upbringing.”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you're to my liking.”

“I'm honored, but...” she trailed off.

"But?"

Her voice lowered into a slight mumble, barely audible. “You still haven't answered my question…” she pouted.

Estian laughed a little louder. “I didn't.”

“Excellent,” she beamed. “How perfect!” She clenched her fists in victory. Right before her eyes existed a man right out of one of her romance novels: a total stallion who was sweet at night, possessed both wealth and power, and—while he did have a few screws loose in the head—they were even each other’s firsts.

“Don't know what you mean by perfect, but I'll take that as an honor,” he said, bemused. “In any case, I've taken a liking to you. I don't welcome the thought of having to do away with your corpse for some reason, so I'm going to teach you how to survive in a place like this.”

He caressed her face with his hand for a moment before he spotted the bundle of grapes she had dropped by her side. He picked a grape and drew it to her mouth, slowly pushing it between her lips. The grape burst beneath her teeth and gushed, releasing its flavorful juices.

Cecile grew languid again, mollified by the sweetness. Estian took in the look on her face with satisfaction as he licked the nectar off his fingers.

He hated grapes. The first poison he had ever been fed had been contained within green grapes like the very same kind he had just fed Cecile, yet, for some unspoken, unknown reason existing within the moment, the taste failed to disgust him this time. It was almost delicious.

He bent closer, whispering into her ear once more. “Your means of survival within the imperial palace is…”

“Is?" Cecile echoed him pitifully. What in the world did she need to do?

The answer, however, was wholly unexpected. “To gain enough notoriety that you’d overshadow my own reputation.”

Her eyes grew wide in surprise. “What?”

What did he just say?

 

* * *

 

At the same time, in another corner of the continent…

The Holy Kingdom, unlike other nations of the continent, was a city-state surrounded by white walls whose people served God, aloof and set apart from the laws of the secular world. There, located in the deepest part of the kingdom, was a sanctuary where the saintess, the messenger of God, resided. Deeper still, reaching the very heart of the sanctuary, stood the saintess in question, offering her daily prayers.

Or, that was what she should’ve been doing, at least. Today, however, the saintess was standing on the kingdom’s white castle walls. A cold voice drifted from her lips. “So, you failed,” she intoned.

A man knelt before her, bowing. “Forgive me, Saintess.”

She shook her head at his apology. “This wasn’t the only chance we had. We still have an infinitude of opportunities.” Her glinted with an unreadable emotion. “Opportunities for this world to follow its ‘intended path’.”

“Everything will happen in accordance with the future you have foretold, Saintess.”

She nodded. “Go back. I will call you again once you recover.”

“Understood.”

The man withdrew, and, now alone, the saintess began to hiss under her breath. “Fuck. Why can’t any of these fools do their job properly?”

If someone were present to listen in, they might very well have fainted. Who would’ve imagined that the most virtuous person in existence would be using some of the secular world’s crudest terms so naturally? She continued grumbling. “Why did I end up possessing the saintess instead of the villainess?! This girl’s a supporting character riddled with penalties! She can’t even make any careless moves!” she huffed in anger, flinging her fists into the air.

As she did so, blue cracks appeared where there should have been nothing, sprawling as if on impact from the force of her blows. They indicated the presence of the barrier surrounding the Holy Kingdom. Its purpose was to protect the saintess, but while it kept her safe, it also prevented her from leaving, effectively confining her within the kingdom.

She muttered to herself as she gazed at the barrier. “He’s my male lead,” she swore, gnashing her teeth. “Mine, I say!”

She had been a writer, the author of the novel ‘A Villainess for the Tyrant’ in another universe. She had crammed all her greatest preferences into the book’s male lead, the tyrannical Estian. He was handsome, well-built, ill-humored, the emperor, in possession of a painful past, raven-haired and black-eyed, etc., etc.

As a random added bonus, she even vaguely recalled making it so that he hated grapes.

Anyway, the plotline of the novel was simple: the female lead would possess the body of Cecile, the empress. Meanwhile, Estian, who had no interest in his wife until that point, would suddenly develop an interest in her due to her unexpected change. They would eventually fall in love and, ultimately, live happily ever after.

Thus, when she, the author, woke up to find herself in the world she created, she had first cried with joy. When she realized she had become the saintess, however, her cries had turned anguished. “My novel, my male lead. Why has it all become someone else’s?” she had sobbed.

Unbelievable. Possession was something that had to happen to a villainess. How else would those around her feel the charm of her change?! There wasn’t a single good thing about taking over the saintess. Hers was a life of daily prayers and sustaining herself on one meal a day—essentially partaking in something no better than a continuous fast—all while living on some remote territory isolated from the rest of society.

Goddamn. She just had to make the setting like this, didn’t she? She couldn’t meet anyone unless she escaped this barrier!

She couldn’t meet Emperor Estian or Imperial Knight Commander Kane, and she couldn’t meet Mage Lord Richard, who was supposed to appear later on in the story, or Imperial Prince Ruin, who lived in the far south of the continent, either. The thought of remaining imprisoned in the holy kingdom, unable to meet her creations, the men of her dreams, pained her immeasurably.

“No,” the saintess lamented. She was supposed to possess the villainess’ body, change the tyrant’s ways, and enjoy some deep platonic love with the supporting male characters, yet everything was flying far from her grasp. Flying far, far away.

“I won’t stand for this,” the saintess hissed, uttering the same words a certain somebody else had used sometime elsewhere as she glared in the direction of the empire. “He was mine...”

Out of all the features she had given Estian, her favorite was that he was a virgin, but apparently, he had already married Cecile? Moreover, according to her informants, the emperor had already slept with her? The saintess’ breathing grew harsh and ragged. She exhaled forcefully. “Fine,” she ground out. “I can give up one of my favorite tags. I’m rather generous, after all.” Within the rankings of her heart, she demoted the keyword ‘virgin’ and promoted ‘virile’ in its place. She could just favor a different tag more instead.

The saintess recalled a character trait belonging to Cecile. She was a woman from a petty kingdom who had nothing going for her but a pretty face, and eventually she became intoxicated by the power given to her, freely indulging in luxuries and wicked acts.

Fortunately for the saintess, however, she was the original author of this ‘story’, so she knew how to change whomever she would end up possessing. Cecile had to die first. In order to take over her body, it would need to be an empty husk, first.

Recalling this fact, the saintess resumed clenching her fists. “Wait for me, Estian, my male lead!” she cried. “I’ll possess the villainess’ body and make you mine no matter what! I swear to return this world to how it should be!” she vowed. In her fervor, she launched her fist at the invisible barrier once more, making the blue crack in the air even larger than it used to be.

“Eh?”

The crack began to spread—the barrier was breaking. Now that she thought about it a bit more, all the previous saintesses only safeguarded it. There hadn’t been any previous precedent regarding trying to break it. She feasted her eyes on the sight of the collapsing barrier, ironically destroyed by the one it was meant to protect.

“This is the power of love!” she shouted, excited.

If the barrier had a mouth, it surely would’ve called her out on her bullshit, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. Once it was gone, she immediately leaped down the castle wall, landing with ease upon the ground due to the holy power she wielded. Spreading across her field of vision, a white forest greeted her newfound freedom. She would have to pass through it and several other countries to reach the Empire, but she remained undaunted.

Determined, she broke out into a run. To the Empire. To her man.

“Love will save the world!”

A bird disturbed by the saintess’ cry flapped its wings irritably at the noise and took off into the air.

 

* * *

 

“To gain enough notoriety that you’d overshadow my own reputation,” Estian said, and Cecile almost couldn’t comprehend it.

A moment later, however, she replied, face solemn. “Not just anyone is capable of such a tremendous feat, Your Majesty."

Estian paused, a beat of silence descending between them. He couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult. “Would it really be that difficult?” he eventually asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m that infamous?”

"I believe your fame extends beyond the heavens, Your Majesty," Cecile explained, eloquently replacing ‘infamy’ with its softer alternative, ‘fame’, in her reply.

Somehow, her matter-of-fact attitude made him feel a little indignant. "It can’t be as bad as you say."

"Your Majesty need not be so modest. Children born on this continent learn your name before they do their mother's. What's more, if you were to ask any passersby whether they knew more about the sea or about His Majesty, ten out of ten they would answer the latter."

He became quiet once more, feeling somewhat odd even though her words could technically be interpreted as praise. “But, if you try hard enough, you, too, can somehow…” He trailed off. Alas, he couldn’t come up with a reply to her silver tongue. For some strange reason, no argument in his favor came to mind. Oh, how he felt it. Her words pricked at him as if they held a physical form.

On the other hand, Cecile’s anxiety began to grow as she watched him at a loss for words. Was he unaware of how outrageous his past deeds were?

Cecile recalled some of the most exceptionally infamous accounts from his chronicles of madness. “What power could I possibly have at my disposal that would be enough to overshadow Your Majesty's achievements, such as when you reduced the entire Forest of Igillith to ashes, scattering salt over its land for ten months and essentially rendering it nothing more than a swath of barren waste?” she began. “Or, like that time you led a vast army to raze the wheat fields of Jaden's Plains, annihilating every last seed of wheat for that year? What of the Port Catanza and how you destroyed each and every ship sailing there, reshaping eleven duchies’ western maritime trade routes and rendering them bankrupt? You hadn’t lost a single drop of blood, either. You mustn't tell me that I can't surpass you simply because I’m just not trying hard enough, Your Majesty.”

After having said all that, Cecile understood anew that the emperor had committed many horrific deeds. Aside from what she had already mentioned, there were also accounts of Estian demolishing several countries, wrecking the imperial palace, and killing all his relatives, too. It would’ve been a bit peculiar to include these cases in her report of Estian’s fame, however, so she shut her mouth and spoke no further.

Her reply to the emperor’s suggestion to simply try harder had Cecile glaring at the grapes next to her. Strange. It didn’t seem like there was truth serum in the grapes, so why did her mouth shoot off on its own again?

She took a moment to mull it over. Was it because she just woke up? That was likely one of the reasons. Was it because it felt good getting fed fruit? That was also another likely reason. Still, that didn’t change the fact that she had been attacked by assassins at night and nor did it change the perilous future awaiting her.

So, why was her tongue wagging so freely?

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sight of Estian's face, firm and silent.

How handsome. It reminded her of what she secretly wrote on the bathroom wall earlier in the day. 'My husband’, she had coyly claimed.

The moment that memory floated to the forefront of her mind, Cecile realized why she was being so open with him. This man was her husband. Although she couldn’t go around telling people that in public, he was her spouse on paper: signed, sealed, and delivered.

She finally had some family.

Her mother had passed away early and the king of Navitan, her so-called father, had left her neglected in a forgotten villa. No one among the Navitan royals had ever visited her even once. It was like they didn’t know she even existed. The only ones by her side were her maids, but even they kept their distance, giving her a firm word of advice.

“This may sound cruel to you right now, Princess,” they told her, “but we are not your friends. You mustn't think of us that way. Someday, you will have a family, but that will not be us.”

At the time, she had nodded in response, her eyes full of tears. She knew that they had only said what they did because they meant well for her, so she took it to heart.

Cecile picked up the bundle of grapes and chose one of the ripest among them for Estian to taste. She wanted to share what she liked best with this man, too. It was the first thing she wanted to do upon gaining a family.

Estian, however, froze at her sudden gesture. Who in the world could dare to put food in his mouth? And, furthermore, a grape of all things? He loathed grapes for they were tainted by the memory of his first poisoning.

The juice he had briefly tasted from what trickled from her mouth moments ago was so very sweet, though.

Perhaps this, too, will feel different, then…

He tentatively accepted the grape at Cecile’s fingertips, hesitating only fleetingly before crushing it between his teeth and releasing the flavor within it.

Oddly enough, it tasted pretty good. Never had he imagined he’d be able to eat a fruit he had not—no, could not—eat for the past twenty years. And to change in just an instant, at that! As he swallowed the grape, a smile blossomed across Cecile's face. The sight of it prompted Estian to call his schedule to mind. He had to inspect the knights, hold a meeting with his ministers, and so on and so forth.

All of no consequence.

Well, these matters of ‘no consequence’ were affairs which he had never once skipped since the day he had been enthroned as emperor. So, why did he feel like they’d be worthless today?

It wasn’t like it’d be a big deal to skip out on them just this once.

Kane would’ve begged to differ had he heard Estian’s thoughts. He would’ve jumped up and down, crying, “But it is a big deal!”

Regardless, Estian gently bit down on the fingers Cecile still kept lingering by his lips. She flinched briefly and seemed ready to draw back, but in the end, she didn’t pull away. Rather, she began to caress his face with her free hand as if to challenge him to do more.

Estian’s eyes fluttered shut at the sensation. It didn’t feel bad. In fact, he actually wanted to continue to enjoy the feeling.

This made Estian certain of one thing: Cecile just might be able to do it.

“You don’t have to achieve the same feats as I have or do anything harder than what I did. You'll be able to climb above me rather simply,” he said.

"How?"

Estian laughed. "Like so."

With that said, he lifted Cecile by the waist, gripping her with both hands. All of a sudden, the world spun in a circle for her and she realized that she and Estian had switched places.

“Y-Your Majesty!” she exclaimed. Finding herself on top of him in the blink of an eye, she flushed. By ‘climb above’ him, he meant it in a literal sense?

“How about it? Simple, right?”

She didn’t respond. “Are you kidding me?” she had almost exclaimed, but fortunately she had guarded herself well enough not to.

She was contemplating how she should reply when Estian drew her into his embrace. “Do you think anyone else in the world has ever climbed on top of me like this?” he whispered. “You’re the first.” He raised a hand to brush back her hair. “You only need to do one thing: become the master of this infamous emperor and have him at your beck and call. That’s all you need to do to raise your name above mine. Become a villainess who holds power over the worst tyrant of all time, and everything that is mine will become yours.”

Their eyes met in an intense exchange. Moments later, she voiced, at last, something that had been on her mind for quite a while. “That’s a very attractive thought,” she said, “but I’m having trouble understanding how it’s going to save me.” Like, do bad things in order to survive? Shouldn’t it actually be the opposite? “Wouldn’t I end up being hated by people for my villainy?”

“That’s a given, but there are some people who hope for that to happen, and some of those people happen to be my enemies.”

As the conversation began nearing more complicated territory, Cecile tried to dislodge herself from her position atop Estian. She couldn’t shake off the feeling of needing to assume a proper stance with a paper and pen in hand, jotting down notes as she listened, so she tried to do so, but his hands caught her by the waist as she was about to climb down.

Thanks to that, Cecile had to remain in a terribly irreverent pose while she continued to listen to him.

“You can wreak vicious havoc and my people won't be able to do a single thing to you. Those who hate me, meanwhile, will no doubt cheer you on. They don't want a wise, virtuous empress by my side. A kind and caring empress won’t be good for their plans, you see, because they’re always sniffing around for an excuse to hound me."

Now she was beginning to understand why he was urging her into committing such misdeeds. He wouldn’t complain the slightest over whatever mess she would cause because, in fact, he’d just praise her for doing well, and anyone looking on from the outside-in would assume he was hopelessly enamored by her. They’d spread the word. Even tales of wrongdoings she had no part in would likely begin to spread as well, inflating into greater exaggeration with every ear the rumors would reach.

The emperor’s adversaries craved a weakness within him. An empress who committed evil acts would undoubtedly appear to be a fine weakness for them to latch onto, indeed. Therefore, they’d leave her be until the moment they were ready to strike. In any case, she’d be safe until then.

“I understand,” she said. “I’ll do my best to raise hell.” What other choice did she have if that was the only way she could survive?

He nodded at her. “That's the spirit.”

“Do you think I can do well, though?” she asked worriedly.

“You can. You have the talent,” he answered firmly.

She paused. “The talent… To become a villainess?”

“Yes. One could even say you’re overflowing with talent merely by witnessing how well you can talk before me. The three other women who came before you couldn’t meet my gaze even once, much less speak to me properly.”

“But, saying I have the talent for wickedness with just that alone is a bit..."

Hearing Cecile's somewhat disbelieving tone, Estian pulled at her arms. Her body swayed above him before falling to his chest. He liked the soft feel of her against him. “You’re not perfect, of course. You’ll need some practice.”

“Practice...?”

His lips curved into a dangerous smile. “We’ll start practicing with the time I have left.”