Han Sangheon’s daughter had pretended in front of Ikseon to harbor no grudge at all, to accept her fate without resistance, but it seemed she had not forgotten the past.

From beyond the door, it sounded as though Baek Seungjo was pressing the “courtesan” who refused to serve him. Then his voice cut off abruptly, and the woman’s desperate plea burst out.

“My lord, please, do not do this.”

“Stay still. I do not want to hurt you.”

It seemed Baek Seungjo was forcibly undressing her. The rustling of fabric tangled with the woman’s moans and cries in a disordered jumble.

“My lord, ah, not there, hm, you must not!”

“Ah, here it is.”

The men holding their breath outside let out sighs of longing a moment later when the courtesan’s voice reached them.

“Ugh, my lord, please…”

Well now, he has torn into her. The woman’s pitiful crying voice trembled and shook, surely from the pain of having her flower broken.

The woman who had refused and said not there seemed to have surrendered at last, and only sobbed. Soon, the soft swish and slide of silk layered over the courtesan’s weeping as she received her first man. It was unmistakably the sound of a woman laid out on the silk bedding with a man moving his hips hard above her.

As the vivid scene of heated passion took shape in their minds, the men exchanged sly smiles with flushed faces.

Park Wonchul’s face burned red as he crushed his wine cup in his grip, plainly because his insides were twisting with rage.

Through it all, only the Minister of War Kwon Ikseon listened to the sounds of the man and woman tangled together with a face that had gone cold and still.

Five years ago, on the eighth day of the fourth month. I was to become Baek Seungjo’s bride and pledge my life to him.

And five years later, on that same eighth day of the fourth month. I had become a courtesan, reduced to the station of a single night’s outlet for his l*st.

There was a time I had longed for nothing more than to be held in those arms, and now it was nothing but humiliation. I had to find a way out.

I would say I needed to prepare a bath, or go and fetch a fresh table of drinks. I turned over excuses to escape the immediate crisis and opened my mouth.

“My lord.”

“Hand it over.”

But his voice cut my words off mid-sentence. A strange chill prickled across my skin. The air around him had shifted entirely. The easy, carefree manner was gone without a trace, replaced only by a calm, settled coldness.

I flinched and looked up, but he had extinguished all the candles, so I could not make out his expression. Even so, I felt his sharp, piercing gaze on me, and I asked with a trembling voice.

“What do you… mean?”

“What you put in the wine.”

Every hair on my body stood on end, the way it would with a razor-sharp blade pressed against my throat.

…How did he know?

But arsenic has no color and no smell, and when I had added it, there had been no one in the corridor but me and Meoru. Could he have grown suspicious because spilling the wine looked strange? Then I simply needed to deny it with confidence.

“Pardon? I do not know what you mean by saying I put something in the wine.”

“Nothing will happen to you, so hand it over quietly.”

He spoke in a coaxing tone, but how could I possibly trust the word of a traitor?

“I did nothing of the sort. I am wrongly accused, my lord.”

Baek Seungjo went quiet. He did not seem to have been swayed by my appeal. He was clearly turning something over carefully in his mind.

I was on the verge of suffocating under the gaze that bore into me through the pitch-black darkness. Then he raised his voice loud enough to carry beyond the door, and I startled and shook at the shoulders.

“Take it off.”

“…Pardon?”

He issued a cold warning to me as I asked back in confusion.

“Shall I take it off for you?”

Was what this man wanted right now the service of my body, or a search of it? I bowed my head first.

“My lord, if you wish me to serve you, I will do so willingly.”

The moment those words left my mouth, though my heart held none of it, a sound came from the darkness, somewhere between a groan and a gasp. It could have been a moan of pain, or a sigh of disbelief.

A realization flashed through my mind. Baek Seungjo had not dragged me here out of l*st. He had pulled the would-be assassin who intended to poison his companions out of the room.

I had been found out by means I could not understand, but I did not confess willingly.

“But since I put nothing in the wine, you will find nothing on my person.”

He lowered his voice again and asked, “Why do you think that?”

“Because there is nothing there.”

From the start, I had poured every last bit of the arsenic in with the resolve to make certain I stopped their breathing for good, so there was nothing left.

“Then may I ask, with respect, how you came to suspect me in such a way?”

I turned the question back on him instead, shifting the burden of answering onto him. My aim was to avoid the humiliation of having to undress by keeping him talking.

Rustle.

But before he answered, he seized my skirt roughly in his hand.

“You spilled what was a clear, clean wine, so why did white powder remain on the dry spot?”

My breath caught. It had never occurred to me that the arsenic, which had dissolved when the wine soaked into the silk, might reappear as the fabric dried.

“Explain yourself.”

“I know nothing of it.”

“Ah, then there is only one answer. The servant who brought the wine must be the culprit.”

My heart lurched when Meoru stood to take the blame in my place. But Meoru must have already fled with her mother. Yet what if, by some chance, that girl was still waiting for me?

“What would a servant of this provincial office gain by harming those above her?”

I redirected the arrow Baek Seungjo was pointing at my person toward the enemies who deserved to die.

“I clearly saw the interpreter in that room take the wine jug and handle it before I poured from it.”

Fearing he might counter that it made no sense for one of their own to have added the poison, I rushed to add more.

“Is there not a saying that disaster rises from within one’s own walls?”

“Poison does not hide in the br*ast of a stranger outside the walls, but in the br*ast of the one laughing beside you in the same room.”

In truth, it was a saying I had ground between my teeth like raw rice every day for the past five years. It was the lament I had harbored for the man before me now, the one my father had taken in and raised like a son, only to betray our family. Today I spat it out to his face.

“……”

Baek Seungjo sealed his lips and said nothing, still as a dead man. That not even the sound of his breathing reached me was strange.

Surely he did not think those words were aimed at him?

If his own conscience pricked him, that was his fault. But the sparks might fly back onto me. I held my breath and swallowed dryly, perhaps three times. Then he let out a long sigh and broke the silence in a voice cracked and fractured, as though something in him had given way.

“I cannot help it either.”

“Ugh…”

Then without warning he changed entirely and came at me. Before I could resist, both my wrists were caught uselessly in one of his hands and hauled up above my head. I was completely helpless, in every sense of the word.

“My lord, please, do not do this.”

“Stay still. I do not want to hurt you.”

His words were imposing, but his grip held no real force, and it trembled strangely besides. Even as Baek Seungjo seemed to hesitate, his hands moved urgently over my body, searching here and there.

Then, near my chest, he pulled at my clothing ties, as though he had caught onto something. Good heavens, was this truly the same man who had refused to so much as brush sleeves with a woman?

“My lord!”

He pushed me down onto the silk bedding as I thrashed in alarm. Then he pried apart the layers of my jeogori as though tearing them open and rummaged through them, and at last laid his hands even on my chest binding.

I felt the man’s hands moving over the band wrapped tight around my chest. I lay frozen beneath those lawless hands, breathing in short, ragged gasps.

“Ah!”

His hand forced its way inside my chest binding at last.

“My lord, ah, not there, hm, you must not!”

“Ah, here it is.”

“Ugh, my lord, please…”

To anyone listening from outside, it would sound exactly like the sounds of coupling. But what his hand, which had pushed into my chest, closed around was not soft flesh but the hard case of the perfume box.

Only then did his hand withdraw from me and the man pulled back. I gasped for breath and hastily straightened my disheveled collar. Just as I moved to sit up, a click rang out, the sound of the perfume box opening.

“There is powder left inside.”

…That cannot be. He must be lying to test me.

Rustle.

…But what if it was true?

In this pitch-black darkness, I had no way to tell. The rustling sound of him drawing out the paper inside the perfume box reached me like a thunderclap, and every hair on my body stood on end.

“What is this?”

“It is a fragrance I carry on my person.”

“Is that so? Then I suppose nothing will happen if I swallow it.”

My heart seemed to stop. I hesitated, not knowing what to do, and then came the sound of him folding the paper to gather the powder. At this rate, Baek Seungjo might truly bring the poison to his mouth.