She should have pushed him away coldly. Yet why, of all moments, did his face overlap with that child’s now?

Was it because he had the same habit of squinting one eye whenever he spoke of something sorrowful?

For a moment, she nearly reached out—just as she used to with him—and brushed his forehead.

She barely managed to stop herself.

Larinne hid her clenched fist behind her back and spoke calmly.

“I have heard the rumors about your delegation.”

“Then you must also know this.”

“Is there something else I should know about your companions?”

Libehi bent slightly at the waist, narrowing the distance between them.

“You must know it.”

The voice that slipped slowly from his parted lips carried a breath that felt strangely intimate.

For an instant, Larinne had the absurd and unsettling illusion that he was trying to seduce her.

“It may prove helpful to your plans.”

“!”

Her heart began to pound with unease.

He clearly knew something.

While Larinne’s mind raced to determine whether the man before her was an enemy or an ally, he remained perfectly composed.

After a moment’s thought, Larinne chose to feign ignorance, never imagining that he had already anticipated her reaction.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“There is a traitor.”

“!”

A traitor.

Larinne’s expression tightened instantly.

“The royal family of Lirmen, which inherited the fallen Kingdom of Gurmen, dreams of rescuing all the Lemen people scattered across the continent.”

“……”

“That includes you as well, Lady Larinne.”

The whisper slid into her ear, clinging to her senses.

Like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web, Larinne could not move.

She could only endure every breath of another person brushing against her ear.

She must have been losing her mind.

Because the words of this man—like a venomous serpent stalking its prey—overlapped with something he had once said.

“If nothing else, you know I always keep my promises. I’ll come back and take you out of this h*ll. Don’t cry. There, there.”

Perhaps it was because those words came from a face that resembled the one she longed for.

His voice sounded almost like the whisper of salvation she had wished to hear for so long.

“I need you.”

“……”

“So please… do not reject me.”

A faint smile lingered at the corners of his lips.

Yet it did not look like the smile of someone who was happy.

‘Get a hold of yourself, Larinne.’

‘This man is not Libehi.’

‘He… is dead. You know that.’

To escape the confusion, Larinne repeated the truth to herself again and again.

Leaving those lingering words behind, the man eventually departed.

“I will come for treatment every night at midnight. To your bedchamber.”

***

Her mind unsettled after the conversation with the Lirmen envoy, Larinne wandered through the garden bathed in the colors of sunset, sinking into old memories.

A memory from five years ago surfaced—the year Larinne had turned fifteen.

Back then, the Eastern Empire had not yet been h*ll to her.

At the very least, she had not been alone in that unfamiliar land.

“Libehi. Do you really have to take this mission?”

“If I complete this mission, His Majesty said the Zhakan army will receive a great reward.”

“It looks dangerous. Subjugating the dragon of the Northern Perpetual Snow Mountains—that’s far too dangerous.”

“…We might be able to live as commoners.”

“But…”

“It’s because I don’t want to see you suffer any longer. Once I buy the slave certificate, we’ll find a way to return to our homeland. All right?”

If she had tried a little harder to stop him back then, would she still have lost Libehi?

If only she could turn back time, she would never have allowed him to participate in the mission to the Northern Perpetual Snow Mountains—a place infamous even among veteran subjugation guilds.

What did that miserable slave certificate even matter?

“They say time moves incredibly slowly in the Perpetual Snow Mountains. What if you get trapped in that place and never come back?”

“Larinne, that’s just something people made up to scare others. I promise I’ll come back safely.”

“I don’t want to lose you too, Libehi.”

“If nothing else, you know I always keep my promises. I’ll definitely come back and take you out of this h*ll. Don’t cry. There, there.”

People said that those selected for Zhakan were practically receiving a death sentence. And yet Libehi, at the time, had been nothing more than a nineteen-year-old boy.

What had driven him to walk into the jaws of death like that?

“Once I finish this Zhakan mission and return, I’ll come for you. Larinne—let’s run away together.”

Even on the day he left for the subjugation mission, he had said goodbye with a smile.

Simply because he did not want the girl he loved to spend her days waiting for him in sorrow.

‘Heavens truly are cruel.’

‘Why did you have to take someone like him away from me?’

From the day the notice of Libehi’s death arrived, life in the Eastern Empire had become nothing but a h*ll woven with loneliness and hardship.

‘…I need to stop thinking about it.’

Yet it was as though a dam that had been holding back her emotions for years had suddenly burst.

The longing she had tried so desperately to ignore flooded into her heart like a tidal wave.

Who exactly was the envoy from the Kingdom of Lirmen—this man called Libehi Winterd?

Why had he appeared before her now, at this very moment?

And yet—

was it truly such a foolish desire to wish that this man might somehow be him?

No matter how long she thought about it, there was no answer she could find right now.

But even so, her thoughts of him refused to fade.

***

When Larinne finally came back to herself after drifting through old memories for so long, the sky had already grown dark.

It was time to return to her chambers.

‘Chardi must be worried.’

Thinking of the maid who was probably waiting anxiously with warm bathwater prepared, Larinne turned her steps toward the Southern Palace.

‘I’ll have to send word to Pellet tomorrow.’

The envoy from Lirmen was supposed to come at midnight. There were still many things she had been too flustered to ask earlier.

She intended to question him then.

Passing a firefly perched on the yellow stone wall, she finally arrived at the Southern Palace.

From the moment she stepped inside, Larinne could feel the sideways glances of the palace servants.

It was nothing new, so she walked past them without paying any attention. But when she reached her private bedchamber a short while later, an absurd sight awaited her.

Through the slightly open door came an unpleasant voice.

“More… more, Your Majesty!”

It was the excited cry of an unfamiliar woman.

The sound of skin striking skin echoed, accompanied by increasingly heated moans.

“You’ll come to see me again, won’t you? Not in another woman’s chamber… I want to be held in Your Majesty’s own space.”

The man gave no clear reply, but their heavy breathing mixed together in the air.

Larinne clenched her fists.

Even without seeing it with her own eyes, it was painfully obvious what was happening inside the room.

‘He did it on purpose… again.’

This was not the first time Seidon had brazenly invaded Larinne’s bedchamber like this.

At least when it came to her, he was completely willful. On days when something irritated him, he would drag another woman into Larinne’s bedroom.

Needless to say, he had never once asked for permission.

“Next time, please don’t call any other women. You must come to me only—without Lady Dius knowing.”

Inside the room, the vulgar sounds continued as if the situation outside meant nothing at all.

The wet, shameless noises spilling out so openly made the servants standing beside the door flush deep red at the nape of their necks.

The sturdy men stood with their hands awkwardly clasped in front of them, unsure where to direct their gaze.

“Ah—Your Majesty!”

With the woman’s thin, high-pitched cry—something never heard before—reaching its peak, the seemingly endless moment finally cl*maxed.

Not long after, the bedchamber door opened.

A disheveled woman stepped out and immediately noticed Larinne standing in front of the door.

“Oh my.”

“……”

Deliberately straightening her rumpled clothes, the woman wiped the smeared lipstick from her lips, basking in a strange sense of superiority.

Her mocking gaze dropped onto Larinne’s trembling fists.

“For your birthday banquet, perhaps I should give you a fine wool blanket. The bed was really quite unusable. Well, then… have a comfortable night.”

Leaving behind the cloying scent of her perfume, the woman walked away.

Larinne slowly released the breath she had been holding and glared at the door.

Even after waiting several more minutes, Seidon did not come out.

It was almost as if he were waiting for Larinne to enter.

It was always like this.

Her fiancé, Seidon Varbel, had never once yielded first in any confrontation with her.

Whenever Larinne refused to obey him and continued to resist, he would force her submission through harsher means.

Killing innocent members of her people without reason.

Punishing the maids she cared for.

Methods like those…

‘Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Chardi.’

Normally, the young maid would have been pacing anxiously outside the door, waiting for Larinne.

But she was nowhere in sight.

She must have been taken by Seidon.

The moment that thought crossed her mind, Larinne grabbed the door handle without hesitation and turned it.

Lowering her pride would only last for a moment.

She had already learned, through painful experience, that she was the only one who could protect Chardi now.

The moment she opened the door, a sour smell rushed out.

She wanted to wait until the stench faded, but the fiancé waiting inside was not a man known for patience.

Suppressing the nausea rising in her stomach, Larinne stepped into the room.

‘Disgusting.’

It looked exactly as she had imagined.

The bed sheets were in complete disarray, and several pieces of a woman’s undergarments lay scattered across the floor.

Her fiancé, Seidon, was casually sitting on someone else’s bed, leisurely fastening the buttons of his shirt.

“You’re late.”

His shameless calm, spoken without so much as a blink, caused the emotions Larinne had been suppressing to surge within her violently.