“Consort.”

She opened her eyes, panting.

She felt a soft, burning touch brush against the rim of her ear before pulling away. Warm breath repeatedly grazed her earlobe, then it was gently bitten.

Huinyeong parted her damp lips and pushed against the man’s chest.

The chest, which had once been pierced by an arrowhead over a decade ago, hardened stubbornly beneath her touch. Huinyeong blinked slowly. Her mind was hazy and heavy with fatigue.

In the dim glow of the lantern, the chest that had once been boyish was now tightly packed with muscle.

Somewhere, a baby was crying.

Red. Tiny. Fingers as small as maple leaves.

A newborn wrapped in swaddling cloth.

Within the imperial palace, there was only one infant that young.

Suddenly, the chest she had pushed away trembled and drew close again.

Fear ran through her body in a shudder.

The crying of the newborn echoed in her ears.

Since opening her eyes at dawn, she had heard nothing but its cries.

At last, Huinyeong whispered tearfully.

“…I can hear it.”

Rustle.

The man’s white night robe crumpled softly.

Her chest, fuller than in her maiden days, rose and fell quickly.

Huinyeong could no longer hide her anguish, and she broke down in tears.

Through her blurred vision, she saw the man’s red lips.

With his long black hair cascading down, he stood there silently, looking down at her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Waaah!”

The baby started crying again.

Huinyeong frowned and covered her ear with her hand.

The man seated between her parted thighs slowly lowered his lips.

Huinyeong squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.

The man’s face came into focus.

“The baby… A newborn baby is crying.”

He began to move slowly.

A short, restrained cry escaped Huinyeong’s lips.

The man pulled down the translucent underskirt and grasped her pale br*ast.

“Your Majesty…”

With a trembling moan, Huinyeong’s lips called out to him.

He draped her limp arms around his neck as she lay sprawled across the bed and began to move his waist.

Huinyeong cried again.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty. I can hear a baby crying.”

“There is only you and me here.”

“But… but… I can hear it.”

Tears soaked her pale cheeks.

The man lifted a hand to wipe away the tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes, and then started moving again. Huinyeong trembled and cried out sharply. She was sobbing so loudly that she could hear the infant crying.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty! Ah—hng…!”

Huinyeong threw her head back and grabbed the man’s forearm. The light from the lantern hurt her eyes.

His lips brushed her chest.

Blinking, she let more tears fall. She wondered how long it had been since the child she had carried in her womb was born.

At some point, her belly had become flat again.

That was when she had suffered from puerperal fever.

It was the time when her br*ast milk had hardened and the nurse her child’s father had summoned had been dismissed.

Her memories drifted further back to when she had conceived a royal child and kept quiet about it. Back to the time when she had wept, trying to avoid conceiving such a child, and trying to resist the man before her.

“Consort.”

The Emperor called her name softly.

Her dry lips parted slightly before closing again.

He lifted her frail body and seated her on his thigh.

Huinyeong swayed for a moment before looking straight at him.

“Uncle.”

She called to him, her eyes glazed over.

The lustful look on the man’s face immediately turned fierce.

He grasped her swollen br*ast roughly and growled.

With his bared teeth, he resembled a wolf more than a dragon and bore no resemblance to his father.

Huinyeong was not the man’s daughter.

She was not the child of the man she had called Royal father. Instead, she had been told she was the daughter of a slave — a truth she had not known for over ten years.

It was the father of her child who had revealed this to her.

And the man standing before her now.

“That is why you are low-born. If you wish to become noble again, you must become my wife.”

At some point in the past, the Emperor laughed as he spoke those words.

Was it when she had been imprisoned?

Her memories were blurred.

Huinyeong did not want to become a noblewoman.

If she was no longer a princess, she would not have to remain in the imperial palace. She did not want to live there — or anywhere else.

Nor did she want to become one of the Emperor’s many wives and endure the scorn of the other consorts.

Instead of waiting for it to happen, she wanted to achieve it herself.

Death.

To leave the world of the living and enter the world of the dead.

That had always been what Huinyeong longed for.

Pain frightened her.

But not death.

She cried desperately, hoping the emperor would show her mercy.

The guilt she felt because of her mother’s adultery was not an easy burden to bear.

Nevertheless, she clung to the faint hope of receiving compassion. Perhaps, even then, what she believed to be compassion had never been compassion at all.

It had only been desire.

She had known that long ago.

She had seen it in his eyes.

Now, perhaps she could die without enduring any more suffering.

Maybe she could finally escape this life and find peace.

She should have died a long time ago.

A long time ago.

If she had died and vanished from this world, she would not have been humiliated like this.

Instead, illness had stripped her of her dignity.

If only she had died from the fever.

Then Huinyeong might have remained a princess.

Even if her mother’s crime had been exposed to the whole world, Huinyeong would no longer have belonged to it and could have rested in peace.

Even if they had torn her corpse apart and displayed it in the marketplace.

Pain belongs to the living.

The dead are forever at peace.

“Why would I be consort’s uncle?”

“Your Majesty…”

She sniffled softly and called out to him.

Too afraid to look at him, she lowered her gaze. Her lips trembled.

Huinyeong often cried.

She even cried when he held her in his arms. After he had comforted her and left, she started crying again.

At first, she wept because she was shocked to learn that she was not a real princess.

Then she cried because she could not escape the imperial palace.

And now, she cried because…

“Why am I your uncle? That is what I asked.”

His voice, heavy with anger, lashed at Huinyeong.

Her jaw trembled and her shoulders shrank inward. Her bare chest quivered.

A faint moan escaped her lips.

“I… I…”

“Are you saying that what I am doing now is incest?”

Her sobs broke free.

Her breathing became ragged.

The heat surging through her body was so intense that she wished she would simply stop breathing.

Her body had already been ravaged by illness. They said she wouldn’t live long. They said she would never be able to bear a child.

And yet Huinyeong had conceived a royal child.

Not only that, but she had given birth safely, and even after more than ten days had passed, she was still alive.

The consorts of the Seven Palaces called this a blessing.

With the princes that the emperor had personally executed now gone, Huinyeong’s child had become the sole remaining descendant of the imperial family.

However, it was a blessing she had never wished for.

The consorts from the Seven Palaces looked at her with hostility.

Whenever she passed by carrying the swaddled infant, she could feel their stares. Women who had lost their own children to the emperor ground their teeth and glared at her.

Her legs felt as though they might give way.

She felt as though she could no longer breathe.

Every day, she prayed for death.

When the royal child kicked inside her, she prayed for a fever to take her life.

If his Royal Father was truly watching from the heavens and still looking after her, she begged him to take them both to his side.

During that time, she often visited Buddha statues.

She wept before them and bowed repeatedly.

Even when palace attendants ran after her, trying to stop her, she prayed desperately to be allowed to die.

“Your Majesty… I… ah…!”

“You are a consort.”

“Hu—huh… sob…”

Each time something was thrust deep inside her, her body trembled.

Her swollen br*asts, filled with the emperor’s seed, quivered faintly.

The emperor laughed as he touched a sensitive spot.

“You say dangerous things, Consort. If you were truly my niece, then what would our child be?”

Huinyeong slowly opened her tightly shut eyes and looked at the emperor.

They said he was her husband. But she did not understand what that truly meant.

The Emperor had seven wives. They had all accepted him as their husband and groom, and some had even borne his children.

Yet, for reasons no one could fathom, he had taken the lives of those children with his own hands.

To her, the word ‘husband’ held no meaning.

In truth, she had never thought of him in that way.

Huinyeong had never married him.

When her father died, her fiancé, the eldest son of the Duke of Gyeongdeok, also lost his life.

Huinyeong stared at the man who had destroyed everyone who might have stood by her.

Those her father had left behind for her.

Those who would have protected her.

Those who had once pitied her.

They were either dead or clinging to life by a thread.

Huinyeong looked at the man before her, his face twisted with desire.

The emperor was indulging himself; his face was flushed with heat.

He was beautiful.

Yet aside from his beauty, there was nothing about him that resembled her late father — nothing that could convince anyone they were brothers.

“Move.”

Perhaps he was in a bad mood. He was unusually rough today.

She always had a slight fever. Nevertheless, every night, the man took Huinyeong into his arms. The royal physician had warned her that if she were to receive him, she would have to be extremely careful.

Yet she paid no attention to the warning.

Sniffling softly, her lips trembled.

Once again, she heard the baby crying.

The newborn wailed pitifully, but the emperor seemed unable to hear it. As his hands roamed across her chest, his expression hardened and he pushed her down.

Reluctantly, she moved her waist.

Her skin brushed against the firmness of his thigh, making her shiver.

She didn’t want to cling to him, but she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his neck.

“Hng… ah… ah—hng… sob…”

Her broken cries mingled with soft moans.

Every night when the Emperor took her into his arms and forced her into his bed, even after she had conceived and given birth to a royal child, she was reminded of her father:

The former emperor — the man she was no longer permitted to call ‘Father’.

Yangmyeong Hall had once been his domain. His bedchamber.

Back when she had been a princess, the hall had been filled with his presence. There was the bed where he rested his head, and the faint fragrance of freshly ground ink that drifted through the room from time to time.

The scent of his favorite tea mingled with the medicinal decoctions that moistened his dry lips.

That place had always remained in Huinyeong’s memory as the very embodiment of her father.

But now…

“Consort.”

Her name was called out sharply.

Anger flashed in his piercing eyes.

Her legs trembled.

When Huinyeong was delirious with fever, the Emperor usually stopped making love to her. Sometimes, he would simply touch himself a few times or press roughly against her chest and leave it at that.

This time, she wished he would do that again.

“Aren’t you paying attention?”

“Your Majesty.”