The woman tilted her head back.

Through a cascade of thick blond hair, her face was revealed, streaked with dried tears. Her clear blue eyes lifted toward the man who had forcibly tipped up her chin. His thumb brushed the scab of dried blood on her lip.

The woman, who had once hurt herself, now cradled her stomach and quietly endured his touch.

The man’s brow slowly furrowed.

Only then did he realize it.
Her vacant gaze was not truly focused on him.

Otherwise, there was no way a woman of such pride would have tolerated this kind of arrogant treatment.

“Diana.”

In a voice weighed down and restrained, he called his wife’s name.

Diana did not respond.

To a man who had already exhausted what little patience he possessed, her silence was an infuriating sight.

“Answer me.”

As he demanded a response, he pressed down hard on her red lips, still too raw for new skin to form. Her warm breath brushed against the tip of his thumb. Unlike her dry lips, the inside of her mouth was damp.

He wanted to hear something from those lips.

Instead, he let words spill out, careless, grating, cruel.

“If you’d just carried the child to term, you could have proven your innocence. Couldn’t you even manage that one thing, was it so hard not to complicate things?”

Just as expected, the empty blue eyes snapped up, glaring at him with a fierce glare.

At Diana’s long-awaited reaction, the man lunged in closer.

“And now how do you plan to prove it? Do you have any idea what people are whispering? They’re saying the Empress, afraid her adultery would be exposed as her due date approached, killed her own child.”

“…Is that the sort of talk an emperor can’t even silence?”

That was her first reply, sharp as a blade. Her voice was as broken as she was.

“What?”

The emperor of the empire, Licht, twisted his expression savagely as his grip tightened. Empress Diana stiffened her neck and lifted her chin in defiance.

Their hostile gazes collided at close range.

As if she had been waiting for this, Diana widened her eyes.

“My child died inside my body, and you expect me to listen to that filth? Ah—of course, the emperor’s ears are wide open. That must be why you accept every knife-like word hurled at your wife without discrimination.”

“Don’t be sarcastic! I was the only one who believed your claim that the child who died inside you was mine!”

“…Believed? Liar!”

Diana screamed, as if possessed.

“You’re no different! Do you think I don’t know you suspected the child might be Enoch’s, not yours?”

Her delicate shoulders trembled with rage, her lips quivering uncontrollably. When she finally jerked her head away, her face slipped free of his grasp.

Diana clenched her fists.

She was so angry her head spun, but in truth, she was angrier at herself than at the husband standing before her.

It all felt like her fault.

Losing the child just before birth.

Being dragged away by Enoch.

Everything…her sin.

Diana Schuettmann.

The legitimate daughter of Duke Schuettmann, Diana had been engaged to Crown Prince Licht for four years before formally marrying him roughly half a year ago.

It had been a political marriage.

Yet during their long engagement, they had treated each other with sincerity, trust, and affection. With Licht by her side, she had even resolved to endure the crushing weight of becoming Empress.

Her life, which had once flowed so naturally, twisted irreparably.

Two months after she became Empress.

***

“Diana. I like you.”

That fateful day was Licht’s birthday.

At the emperor’s birthday banquet, Diana’s heart dropped heavily at his confession.

“I’ve liked you for a long time.”

The one who confessed to her with such desperate sincerity was not her husband.

But her husband’s younger brother.

She heard a confession she had never once received from her husband, spoken instead by his brother.

Diana found it hard to breathe, drawing in short, rapid breaths. She had no idea what expression to make, what words to say. Her mind felt as though it had been bleached completely white.

“Are you drunk, Enoch?”

She forced an awkward smile and took a step back from the man who resembled Licht so closely.

When Diana was eight years old, her father had taken her to the imperial palace to learn the piano. There, she had pressed the keys alongside Enoch, who was the same age.

From that point on, Diana and Enoch had spent more than half their lives as close companions, close enough to call each other by name when alone.

She learned later that the Schuettmann ducal house, her natal family, and the imperial family had long agreed upon a marriage alliance. Both sides had naturally assumed the younger duke would be the political match, but no imperial princess was ever born. And so, Diana became the chosen bride.

That was why she had been granted the special—if unofficial—privilege of studying piano at the palace.

“I wish I were drunk. Unfortunately, I’m perfectly sober.”

On the terrace of the imperial palace, where the banquet was in full swing, Enoch pulled her into his arms. A sharp, acrid smell rushed over her.

Just as a horrified Diana tried to push him away, Enoch wrapped an arm around the back of her head and whispered lowly,

“The palace is about to become dangerous.”

What…?

Diana struggled desperately to steady her racing thoughts. She tried to push him away to see his face, but he did not budge.

Enoch clasped her tense hands and continued, his voice dropping to an ominous murmur.

“So, Diana. Until the rebellion is over, you need to stay somewhere safe. I’ll protect you.”

Rebellion.

A word that should never have existed in Diana’s life.

Though it had been only two months, Diana was now the Empress of the Harzen Empire. A rebellion aimed at the throne was no different from one aimed at her, and it implicated Enoch as well, a member of the imperial family.

“Enoch, don’t tell me you—”

Before her face could fully crumple, Enoch struck the back of her neck.

“Just sleep for a bit.”

At the very start of the night, while her husband’s birthday banquet was still in full swing, Diana’s memory cut off.

When she regained consciousness, she was lying neatly in a rebel encampment.

While she had been unconscious, Enoch’s forces, who had been planning the rebellion for some time, had surrounded the imperial army.

But the greater problem was this:

There was already a child in her womb. Licht’s child.

The pregnancy was so early that her morning sickness only began after she had been abducted.

When Enoch learned of her pregnancy, he was deeply shaken, but extravagantly summoned physicians to examine her regularly. Absurdly enough, even the rebel soldiers, mindful of Enoch’s gaze, tried to refrain from crude talk in front of her.

Diana was cornered mentally, but she endured. There was no other choice.

That absurd life came to an end after roughly three months.

When Licht came to the rebel camp to retrieve her, his hands were soaked in blood.

Enoch’s blood.

The rebel leader, Enoch, had died by his brother Licht’s hand. Diana was gathered into Licht’s arms and returned to the imperial palace.

The husband she saw again after three months had changed in many ways.

“…The child?”

Diana remembered clearly the moment he tilted his head slightly as he looked down at her belly, upon learning of the child’s existence for the first time.

Maria, the imperial physician attending Diana, nodded.

Diana knew it herself. The timing was one in which misunderstanding was inevitable.

She wanted to shout that it was his child—that it was his blood—but fearing it would only deepen his suspicion, she focused on not avoiding his gaze.

Maria spoke carefully.

“Yes. Congratulations, Your Majesty. However… the situation isn’t ideal. It would be best if Her Majesty closes her ears to outside matters. She should eat well and remain lying down as much as possible.”

Diana instinctively curled in on herself, as though shielding her body.

Licht stared down at her for a long moment, then left the bedchamber.

News of Diana’s pregnancy spread quickly.

Instead of congratulations, suspicion about the child’s father poured in.

Perhaps inevitably so.

By imperial order, the attendants of the Empress’s palace tried to prevent Diana from hearing the rumors, but it was impossible not to know.

After all, during the three months of her abduction, scandals between the traitor Enoch and Diana had swept through the empire several times. She was now fodder for the social world.

The rebellion became a civil war. Postwar proceedings followed.

In that process, her elder brother, Wilhelm, died quietly, without a sound.

The truth, that Wilhelm Schuettmann had supplied troops to Enoch and conspired in the rebellion, was buried as a secret known only to Licht and his closest aides.

“The young duke will be declared missing, then ruled dead by accidental fall. There will be no funeral. Consider this the last courtesy I can extend to the duke.”

“…I have no excuse.”

“Of course you don’t. And you shouldn’t. If it weren’t for the child, the Schuettmann ducal house would have vanished from the Harzen Empire. The duke and his household still stand only because of the pregnant Empress. So what must be done? For the child’s sake, the duke will keep his mouth shut if he wishes to live.”

Diana’s father, Henry Schuettmann, bowed deeply before Licht.

Then he left the audience chamber and went straight to see the Empress.

Without a thought spared for guilt, consumed by rage over the death of his son, he pressed his remaining child, Diana, to give birth to a son.