“How is she today?”

The emperor, visiting the manor for the first time in a while, asked the first maid he saw the moment he stepped inside.

No one in this manor needed him to say a name to know who he meant.

“Your Majesty.”

“Save the greeting. Answer first.”

“She seems to be in better spirits than usual.”

“Has she eaten?”

“She has, without skipping a meal. And this morning she said she wanted to get some sun, so she went straight out to the rear garden after breakfast.”

A small breath of relief escaped the emperor’s lips.

She had spent so long shut inside a curtained room all day, unable to tell whether it was day or night outside, so this was welcome news.

That relief lasted only a moment before his expression darkened.

“So she’s out there alone right now?”

Anxiety swept over him, and his brow furrowed.

Before anything could go wrong, the butler standing nearby quickly stepped in.

“No, Your Majesty. She went out with her lady’s maid, and attendants are keeping watch nearby.”

“Did anyone check whether she had anything on her?”

“She said she wanted to knit, so she only took her materials with her. Her lady’s maid personally confirmed she wasn’t carrying anything else before they went out.”

“Knitting?”

The emperor narrowed his eyes and murmured.

Misreading his meaning, the butler hastily added, “We sourced knitting needles made of a wood that snaps easily and had the tips blunted.”

Jabbing with a thin wooden stick as hard as one could, it would break before it ever pierced the body.

Not suitable as a weapon.

Unless driven with precise force and speed, perhaps.

But the emperor knew well enough that kind of strength could never come from that frail body of hers.

The arms and legs that had already been thin when they first met had grown thinner still, and even the rosy fullness of her cheeks, which used to round out so prettily when she smiled, had wasted away.

She had been a woman who, whenever he called her name, would turn to him with those lovely cheeks and a smile as fresh as spring blossoms.

That same woman had lost all her vitality in an instant, her smile stolen from her.

Like a wooden puppet that had been dancing on strings and gone limp once the show was over.

The lips that used to chatter endlessly against his shoulder were now sealed shut, and the eyes that had always brimmed with curiosity and excitement were now hollow beyond measure.

Her bedroom was the largest room in this vast manor, yet inside there was nothing but a bed.

Not a single piece of ordinary furniture, no ornaments, no vases, no picture frames, not even a candlestick.

They had not always been absent. They had all been cleared out recently, on the emperor’s orders.

When she finished her meals, the servants collected every piece of tableware. Once they confirmed she had fallen asleep at night, they took the candles that had softly lit the room as well.

His wife, who had always lain still in that bare room no different from a prison cell, had started doing something.

He found that fact simply astonishing, and it made him glad.

“When did she start knitting?”

“Just under a week ago. The maids say her speed is quite fast for someone learning for the first time.”

“Did she say what she’s making?”

“Lady Viveke did not mention anything in particular. She simply asked for yarn and needles, so we brought them to her…”

The servants of the manor did not address her the way other nobles were addressed, with titles like “my lady” or “Your Grace” or “Your Majesty.” They called her by her name.

It was not the usual way to address a married woman.

Women were ordinarily called by their father’s surname from birth, and by their husband’s surname after marriage.

Being called by one’s given name was something permitted only to family or those very close, and for a married woman, her husband’s title became her form of address.

Viveke’s situation was a highly unusual one.

She could use neither her father’s surname nor her husband’s.

She belonged nowhere. A position as ambiguous as that.

The emperor took a deep breath and went out to the rear garden.

She was the only person in the world who could make him, called the sun of the empire, feel this anxious.

Just as the maid had said, his wife was sitting on a bench, knitting.

Her lady’s maid, who spotted him first, rose and paid her respects.

Viveke turned her head a moment later and gave him a clear, open smile.

The emperor was caught slightly off guard.

It had been so long since she had smiled at him like that, the memory of it felt distant now.

And yet here she was, smiling brightly at him again.

“You came?”

She said it as though she had been waiting.

Her lady’s maid read the moment and quietly slipped away.

He stroked her hair, and the small head that fit in one hand felt pleasantly warm from the sun.

The emperor bent down and pressed a light kiss to her round forehead.

He made a mental note to have a canopy installed over the bench, in case she started coming out here often.

“Why are you out here?”

“The weather is nice.”

“…Shall we walk?”

Viveke nodded, set her knitting aside, and stood. Then she took the arm he extended, holding it close, and rested her head against him as naturally as anything.

A strange feeling stirred in him, and the emperor stopped walking without thinking.

“What is it?”

His wife was looking up at him with eyes that seemed genuinely puzzled.

“It’s strange. You being this agreeable.”

The words had surfaced in his mind before he could round off their edges for the listener, and they slipped out just like that.

It was that startling a thing.

The woman who used to shudder at the mere brush of his fingertips was now leaning into his arms of her own accord.

“I’ve decided to accept it now.”

“How am I supposed to take that?”

“Wasn’t it what you wanted, Your Majesty?”

He opened his mouth as though to argue, then closed it again.

It might have been a provocation.

But he did not want to fight with her.

Coming all the way out here to her manor, so far from the imperial palace, was not something he could do often.

The time he spent with her was too precious to waste on that kind of needless friction.

He simply walked with her through the rear garden in silence.

After walking quietly for a while, Viveke spoke up with the casual air of someone who had just thought of something.

“The Empress’s investiture can’t be far off now.”

“Why do you ask?”

He took that as a clear provocation this time.

“Are you wondering whether I’ll let you go once a new Empress comes in?”

Viveke paid no mind to her husband’s expression cooling.

The eyes looking up at the emperor were as calm and still as a lake.

“Whether you discard me or come back for me, that is Your Majesty’s choice.”

“And what is it that you want?”

He had an answer in mind, and he asked because he wanted to hear it from her lips.

But Viveke could not give him the answer he was looking for.

“Whatever Your Majesty wishes. I will follow.”

What did her own opinion matter at this point?

Had I ever had the right to decide anything to begin with?

Not once, in everything that had brought them to this moment, had Viveke’s feelings been taken into account.

‘I’ll keep your place empty.’

The emperor wanted to say it, but the words would not come.

He spent most of the year at the imperial palace, yet this place, where she was, was home to him.

He had never once considered letting someone else take her place.

His Empress had always been, and would always be, one person alone: Viveke.

She was a woman he had already wounded and betrayed again and again.

To give her any more uncertain hope would be a cruelty.

He intended to tell her once everything was settled.

The reinstatement of the wife who had been stripped of her title.

“What I want is…”

To go back to the palace with you.

A droplet rolled down the deposed empress’s cheek.

It was not a tear.

Viveke no longer cried.

Tears held no power.

Just as her love and her longing had always been powerless.

It was raining.

The emperor immediately pulled off his cloak, draped it over his wife’s head and shoulders, and hurried her inside.

A cold would be serious.

***

Only after the doctor who examined Viveke told him there was nothing to worry about did the emperor finally let go of his concern.

His wife, who had always been frail by nature, had once nearly died from pneumonia.

He sent the maids up to the second floor with her to help her bathe, and only then did he take off his own damp outer clothes.

The doctor had tried to examine the emperor as well, but he declined, saying he would be seen at the palace.

The village doctor who lived nearby had been called to the manor like this to treat Viveke on occasion, but this was his first time seeing the emperor.

It was also the first time today that the doctor had learned the woman living alone in this manor, whom he had been treating all this while, was the deposed empress.

He had only known her as a wealthy commoner, a divorced woman.

Her identity had been kept hidden from the villagers, and her presence here had been kept strictly confidential not only from the imperial court but from the nobility as well.

Having now seen the emperor’s face, the doctor had barely managed to finish the examination while trembling all over. If he simply sent the emperor off and something went wrong with his health, it could cost him his head.

On the other hand, if he gave a diagnosis that turned out to be wrong, that would be a problem too.

The emperor had said he would only be examined by the imperial physician as a consideration for the doctor, who was caught in an impossible dilemma.

“I hear she’s taken up knitting.”

The emperor murmured abruptly, almost to himself.

The doctor, who had been gathering his bag to leave, set it back down.

He seemed to need someone to talk to.

The doctor’s mind went completely blank. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and rambled on with whatever came to him.

“Might that not be a good sign?”

“A good… sign?”

“Well, it means she has something to focus on, and a goal of finishing something.”

The doctor was aware that the woman had been suffering from a long bout of depression.

He also knew there had been a self-harm incident at the manor not long ago.

It was a small enough village that word traveled fast, the kind of place where you knew how many dishes your neighbor had.

The emperor turned the doctor’s words over slowly.

They had been thrown out carelessly, but to him they were a great comfort.

Perhaps she had found the will to live again.

He wanted to believe that.

***

After seeing the doctor out, the emperor went up to the second-floor bedroom.

The rain outside the window showed no sign of letting up.

He headed toward the bathroom to wash the unpleasantly damp feeling from his body, and when he opened the door, a wave of heat and steam rushed out to meet him. The servants had already drawn the bath.

He undressed, wrapped a towel around his lower half, and rounded the corner into the inner area where the tub was. He stopped in his tracks.

Someone was already in the bath.

Viveke, her hair pinned up, wearing a bathrobe.

He turned to leave, thinking he had walked into the wrong room, and she spoke.

“This is Your Majesty’s room. I asked them to draw the bath in here.”

“What?”

“There’s no reason to make the maids do the work twice.”

“What are you thinking?”

“If it bothers you, shall I leave?”

“That’s not what I said.”

The emperor murmured it too quietly to be heard and slowly stepped into the tub.

In the humid bathroom, his lips felt strangely parched.

The thin fabric of the robe had soaked through and gone transparent, rendering it entirely useless as any kind of covering.

Unable to find anywhere to rest his eyes, he turned his back to his wife and worked a bar of soap unnecessarily into the water.

His body grew hot.

The emperor knew well enough that this unbearable, rising heat was not only from the bathwater.

The tendons in his neck stood out as he clenched his jaw.

Viveke, close enough to touch, had been watching that intently, and now she raised her hands behind her head.

What held her coiled hair in place was a hairpin from the Eastern Continent, a gift he had given her when they were courting.

She drew it out silently, like a blade from a sheath.

Her neat hair came loose and fell in soft waves over her nape, her shoulders, her back.

She raised the hairpin, its tip sharpened to a fine point.

The water rippled and the emperor turned around.

His hand closed around her wrist in an instant.

“Trying to die in front of me again?”

“Let go.”

“Be honest. It’s not yourself you want to k*ll…”

“……”

“It’s me.”

“……”

“If this is a bond that can only end when one of us is dead, then fine. K*ll me right here instead. Don’t lay a hand on your own life.”

The eyes that had been as still as a lake began to stir like a rough tide.

Through the tears pooling in them, her eyes showed faintly, bloodshot, looking at him.

He had expected to wrench the weapon away and throw it aside, but instead he took the hand gripping the hairpin and pressed it to his own throat.

“Here is an instant k*ll. Don’t miss. Drive it in once, cleanly. Finish it properly this time.”

“……”

“If I’m lucky enough to survive, you’ll have to keep looking at this face you can’t stand, won’t you?”

“Ulrich…!”

“I’m the enemy who killed your father and brothers. What are you hesitating for?”

That was what the man once loved beyond all else said.

His name was Ulrich von Adelstein.

The man who had slaughtered his wife’s family on their wedding day, destroyed her homeland, and become emperor.