“Why, can’t you do it?”

Ulrich asked coldly as she stood there with tears streaming down her face.

“Don’t be too disappointed. Even if not today, there will be plenty of chances.”

“…….”

“Live with the desire to kill me. As filthy as that is, if you hold on like that, maybe someday you’ll be the one to kill me.”

“……It hurts.”

Viveke answered with quiet desolation instead of a reply.

Hearing that, he came back to his senses and let go of his wife’s hand.

A red handprint marked her slender, pale wrist.

Her skin was so delicate it might bruise.

The thought made him disgusted with himself.

He had stopped her because he feared she might do something terrible again, but he had ended up hurting her without meaning to.

“I was just…….”

Viveke whispered in a wounded voice.

“I was just trying to let my hair down.”

Watching her set the hairpin forlornly on the edge of the bathtub, Ulrich realized too late that he had overreacted.

“I’m sorry.”

So he was the kind of man who could say sorry after all.

Viveke quietly watched her husband suffer in self-reproach, wondering what on earth he had done to her.

He was her only protector.

After her dethronement, the marriage had been rendered void and she held no legal protection, yet Ulrich still thought of her as his wife.

Viveke had been born the youngest princess, a late child, and had grown up showered in the love of her father and brothers, who were much older than her.

In her foolish younger days, there were times she had found their overprotectiveness tiresome.

Foolishly, there are things one only misses once they are gone.

Now there was no one left by her side.

No matter how desperately she longed for them, she could never see them again.

The one who had made it so stood right before her.

Her husband.

The price of loving a ruthless slaughterer had been far too heavy.

Of course, at first she had not known why he had approached her.

But that did nothing to lessen her guilt.

It was she, and no one else, who had chosen him as her princess consort.

It was no different from handing a traitor the keys to the imperial palace.

Viveke pressed her face to his chest and let herself be held in his arms.

“Ulrich, you are the only family I have left now.”

She said, her voice trembling with tears.

“You are the only one I can lean on, so if even you were to die, I would have no reason left to live.”

“…….”

“I still don’t know. Whether what remains inside me is lingering attachment or hatred…….”

No. In truth, she knew.

What this feeling she harbored toward him was.

“Blaming you and living in resentment won’t bring back those who have already left this world. It’s time I accepted that. Father and my eldest brother received the punishment their sins deserved. The living must live.”

“I…….”

“You’re right. Whether I live in hatred or in love, you must live. You have to live so that I can live too.”

“Viveke…….”

“So let’s endure the days given to us together, until this feeling becomes clear. The two of us.”

Watching his wife look up at him with tears streaming down her face, Ulrich felt an impulse he could not suppress.

He wanted to hold her, the most fragile and pitiable person in the world.

He wanted to kiss her and share the same breath and make her feel the aching emotion inside him.

So that he could quiet the anxiety within her.

But if he held her now, his wife would misunderstand.

She would think she was nothing more than an outlet for an emperor’s l*st.

He was afraid she would think that.

Barely keeping hold of his reason, Ulrich moved to lift himself out of the water.

“I’ll go first. Take your time getting out.”

“Stay with me.”

“……What?”

“The truth is, I always wait for the days you come.”

“…….”

“Even when we clash and fight terribly, it’s only when I’m talking with you that I finally feel like I’m alive.”

Ulrich understood what those words meant.

On that dreadful day of the blood wedding, the day she lost the family she loved, Viveke had died too.

That day, Ulrich had murdered her heart along with everything else.

Since then, Viveke had been living each day like the dead, carrying the guilt of being the only one left alive.

Through days that were no different from death, on the days her husband came, whether she liked it or not, she felt alive.

“So I want you to stay with me.”

Viveke lifted her arms from the water and untied the knot of her robe.

Ulrich, watching, hastily grabbed her hands.

“Stop. Are you trying to turn me into an animal?”

“That’s all right.”

“…….”

“Because I want you right now.”

Viveke let the robe fall away.

The fabric slid down the curves of her pale, bare body and soon drifted across the surface of the water like a shipwrecked sail.

His last shred of reason finally spent, Ulrich wrapped his arms around her waist and brought his lips to hers.

The fierce act that followed sent the water surging in waves.

***

Ulrich sat with his wife settled on his lap, gently stroking her wet hair.

Viveke rested her head against his shoulder and reached for his other hand, which had been draped over the edge of the bathtub.

She began tracing something on his large palm with her index finger.

Ulrich laughed and said it tickled.

“Guess what I wrote.”

“I don’t know. Write it again.”

“This is the only chance you get. No more after this.”

Her fidgeting seemed to delight him, and he smiled, showing his even teeth.

“Focus, focus!”

“All right.”

Scolded, he stopped the corners of his mouth from twitching.

Doing this, it felt like they had gone back to the days when they were courting.

Like those days when they had known nothing and only loved each other.

Can we start over?

Watching her smile, warm as sunlight, a vague hope welled up in him again.

“I really can’t figure it out.”

“Summer. Summer.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Were you actually trying to guess?”

He had not tried at all.

He had only been watching you, carefully tracing each letter.

“Since I didn’t get it right, I should be punished. Is there anything you want?”

“What does that have to do with a punishment?”

“I have a debt to pay, so I’m thinking I’ll settle it with a gift instead of an apology.”

“Hmm…….”

“I’ll say this upfront: asking me to let you go, that sort of thing is off the table.”

Viveke let out a small laugh at the words he tossed out like a joke.

It was because the face of the husband saying them was so serious.

“Then a bracelet.”

“What kind of bracelet? Sapphire or ruby? Or pearl?”

“Not those. One of those stone bracelets carved from Eastern Continent stone that they sell at the market.”

“Stone? That’s worthless.”

“From the bedroom window I can see the villagers passing by. People wear agate gemstone bracelets during the festival and I’ve been envying that.”

Viveke could not set a single foot outside the manor.

Everyone believed the deposed Empress had been confined to a fortress on a remote island.

That place had been used since ancient times as an exile ground where the empire sent its criminals.

Ulrich could not send Viveke somewhere so harsh.

So he had secretly purchased a manor a little distance from the capital and had her stay there without anyone knowing.

“What is there to envy? I’ll buy you hundreds.”

She shook her head.

“One is enough. And it’s a bracelet you put a wish into, so it only has meaning if you buy it during the festival.”

“Is that so?”

The empire’s largest festival was held in autumn.

Summer had only just begun, so it would be a few months’ wait.

He often slipped away to this manor under the pretense of traveling incognito, so visiting frequently was not easy.

His next visit would likely not be until autumn anyway.

“I’ll bring one when I come next time. Anything else?”

“The bracelet is enough.”

“I don’t like that. Tell me more.”

“I really don’t have anything.”

“Think harder.”

“Hmm……. A scented candle.”

After tilting her head in thought, Viveke finally arrived at an answer.

“A scented candle? Not perfume?”

“Yes.”

“Candles are dangerous. One wrong move and there could be a fire.”

“I’d only use it during my bath before bed. Is that still not all right?”

“You can get scent from bath salts or soap too.”

“Then never mind. It’s fine, I don’t need it.”

Viveke gave up without a fight.

But seeing her mouth droop in a deflated pout, Ulrich felt thoroughly unsettled.

“Didn’t you mention it because you needed it?”

“I heard it helps with sleep.”

“Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“When you’re not in the room, sleep doesn’t come easily.”

Her words about suffering from insomnia softened him, and he finally decided to grant his wife’s request.

***

After a day that felt like a second honeymoon, the next morning Ulrich departed for the imperial palace again.

He had insisted she not come out to see him off, so Viveke stood on the balcony, smiling and waving as he left.

He looked up at his wife with a smile and waved his arm in farewell, then climbed into the carriage.

The moment the emperor’s carriage passed through the manor gates, the smile vanished from her lips as though it had never been there.

She stood with a cold, sunken expression, staring at the place he had left, when her maid spoke from behind her.

“When do you intend to tell His Majesty?”

Viveke turned around.

“Soon. I want to surprise him.”

“His Majesty will be truly overjoyed when he finds out.”

“Yes. When the time comes, I’ll tell him myself, so keep it a secret for now, just as you have been.”

There was a time she had thought that man was a knight come to rescue her from her castle, like in a heroic poem.

But in the end, she had been imprisoned by him.

A bird locked forever in a cage, never to fly again for the rest of its life.

That was what she was now.

Viveke thought of Ulrich, who had just been looking up at her with a happy face.

‘I am always praying. That your day, your today, will be happier than yesterday.’

Because the further he fell, the greater the pain he would feel when he plunged into the abyss.

Ulrich.

My lover, whom I loved with burning, desperate devotion.

My emperor.

My husband.

And my sworn enemy.

You cannot win against me in this.

What I must take from you to drive you to the very edge and give you the most extreme suffering,

how to deliver hell to you.

I have finally come to know.

There is not much time left now.

For the time to repay the debt I owe him.