Oriole was the first title granted by Wi-pyeong to Huinyeong after his ascension to the imperial throne.

As the pale silk scroll shimmered faintly, its thin layer of gold leaf forming delicate patterns like scattered grains of rice, his hand lifted the red imperial seal, which shone as if about to spill over.

After sharing the hap-hwan wine with him beside her father’s sickbed, Huinyeong yielded to his embrace, her body bare.

The child she later miscarried was probably not conceived that night.

She closed her eyes as she watched crimson blood stain the sheets in scattered drops, like small cherries beneath the pale light of dawn. A large hand lifted her translucent night robe, tracing the droplets before resting on her lower abdomen.

At that moment, Huinyeong thought of his other women.

She was not the only woman he had. Many had conceived and borne his children.

So there was nothing for him to regret.

The emperor was a young and vigorous man.

If the trembling woman lying there had been her, and if the man tracing the blood between her legs had been her father instead—

— then the story might have been different.

However, Wi-pyeong was nothing like the late emperor, who had been so frail as to be ill.

His palace was filled with fertile women, occupying the seven inner courts.

In the end, though, it did not matter.

Huinyeong slowly closed her eyes.

The bitter taste of the poison she had swallowed still clung to her tongue. If Noble Consort Yeon had truly entrusted the task to someone reliable, she would have already reached the late emperor with the child by now. And she would never have awakened again.

But Huinyeong’s hope shattered completely, leaving only a filthy ruin at her feet.

Just then, she slowly lifted her eyelids.

She could hear the court maids whispering beside her.

“Noble Consort Yeon…”

Ah.

She could not hear the rest.

Her heart dropped with a heavy thud as it plunged downward.

As her consciousness slowly sank into darkness, Huinyeong fled towards the other shore.

By the time her breathing and pulse had returned to normal and she opened her eyes again, it was a little past the Hour of the Dog.

Dusk had begun to gather over the imperial palace, Huigeum Fortress.

“Ah…”

“Your Highness, have you regained consciousness?”

The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a court maid whose face looked as though she had seen death itself.

Huinyeong blinked slowly, unable to comprehend the woman’s expression. Suddenly, the clear, ringing voice of a palace eunuch echoed through the chamber.

“The Emperor has arrived.”

The court maid fled as though for her life.

The Emperor entered the room slowly, sat beside Huinyeong and gently touched her forehead.

Huinyeong’s dry lips parted and moved weakly, like a fish gasping for air.

The warmth on her forehead felt gentle, but her gaze felt cold and desolate.

Her throat tightened.

Suddenly, she remembered the fear she had seen on the court maid’s face.

Had something happened within the palace?

“They say you were quite determined when you did this.”

His voice was low. Like a musician tuning an instrument, he controlled both his voice and his breathing.

Huinyeong looked at him with dry, lifeless eyes.

Suddenly, she wondered what had become of Noble Consort Yeon. Had she been sent to the Cold Palace? Or had she perhaps returned to her family estate?

Huinyeong remembered the way light had once slid along the woman’s straight nose. Her long, thick hair was always neatly arranged in a triple plait and adorned with agate and jade hairpins. She was famous for her unusually bright hair, which was said to be what first caught the emperor’s attention.

Favored by the emperor, she conceived his child and took up residence in his bedchamber.

Huinyeong had never liked her.

But it had never truly mattered to her—neither something to welcome nor something to resent. Whatever that woman thought of her meant very little.

And yet…

At some point, that woman had quietly offered her poison.

She was a woman whose contempt was plain to see: cold, unmistakable, and impossible to hide.

However, what was more unbearable than her mocking words or sharp glances was Huinyeong’s own situation: being treated as a rival by one of the emperor’s consorts.

When she was the emperor’s princess, no one had ever dared to see her as a rival.

Was there anyone who revealed the cruel change in her fate more clearly than Noble Consort Yeon?

Night after night, Huinyeong endured this treatment, bearing the child of her uncle in the very bed where her father had once died.

That alone was enough to drive her mad.

“What became of Noble Consort Yeon?”

“And yet you ask what became of that woman, but you do not ask about the child of mine that was inside your womb?”

The emperor muttered the words, grinding them between his teeth.

It was only then that Huinyeong remembered the night robe, red with blood and crushed like hibiscus petals.

She had swallowed poison. There was no way the child could have survived.

Her hand rose instinctively to her stomach.

“She was punished as a traitor.”

“What…?”

A dull ache spread beneath her chest.

Her eyelashes trembled with uncontrollable fear. Huinyeong staggered to her feet and stared at him, shaking off the hand that tried to grasp her shoulder.

“Noble Consort Yeon… Noble Consort Yeon…”

“She attempted to kill both the imperial grandson and the emperor’s woman.”

“But— but it was I— no, this concubine— who asked—”

“You dare speak such nonsense before me!”

Wi-pyeong shouted for the first time.

His eyes burned with anger that he could no longer contain.

Huinyeong panted as she backed towards the corner of the bed. Her body trembled violently, her eyes reddening as tears welled and spilled over. Wi-pyeong watched her with terrifying calmness.

Suddenly, he grabbed her wrist.

Startled by the force of his grip, Huinyeong stumbled helplessly towards him, tears streaming down her face.

Wipyeong lowered his head.

The lips that had once bitten her earlobe moved down to her neck. As she shrank her shoulders in fear, he murmured in a low voice beside her.

“Are you curious about what I did to Noble Consort Yeon?”

‘Noble Consort Yeon…’

Huinyeong blinked slowly. Tears soaked her lashes, reddening the raw skin around her eyes.

A cold smile settled on her collarbone, accompanied by the heat of his breath.

“I know how that woman scorned you, Consort. And I know that you—so weak and gentle—remained silent because you feared disturbing my mood.”

Wi-pyeong lifted his head.

If Noble Consort Yeon had been convicted and executed, the same should have happened to Huinyeong. Yet here was Wipyeong, arguing for her innocence.

The wrist he was holding throbbed painfully.

She struggled to push him away, sobbing as she writhed. It felt as though the bones in her wrist might shatter.

“Did she not bring that insignificant brat and threaten you with it? And yet you still take her side?”

“That— that is……”

Her breath caught.

She was afraid of how much he might know.

And how deeply he knew it.

“She brought that wriggling little worm before me, claiming it was my child, and begged day after day for me to raise him as Crown Prince. Do you think I would not know?”

“No— no, that is not true. Hic… sob…”

She shook her head desperately.

Through the blur of her tears, Wi-pyeong’s face wavered and distorted as if it were underwater.

A hand reached towards her frightened eyes, which were fixed on him.

The touch was gentle.

Huinyeong shook her head repeatedly, insisting to herself that it couldn’t be true.

How much did he know?

Her thoughts drifted back to the woman who had once come to see her.

Every time the Noble Consort Yeon entered Yangmyeong Hall, her face was set in a mask of barely restrained anger.

“In the Inner Palace Bureau, the eunuchs spill blood every day filling the storerooms of their superiors. Meanwhile, Lady Oriole sits comfortably in Yangmyeong Hall, warming His Majesty’s bed. How fortunate you must be.”

Her expression was twisted and cold.

Huinyeong stared at the lopsided smile stretched across the woman’s face. Only then did she notice the child in her arms.

The child had merely been registered as the Second Prince and had not yet been granted an official title.

Cradling the child as though he were her greatest pillar of support, Noble Consort Yeon glanced at Huinyeong, revealing the baby’s face slightly.

The infant’s pale flesh was plump and soft. He slept quietly, his gentle breaths rising and falling.

Huinyeong looked at him with dull, distant eyes before lifting her gaze to meet his mother’s.

The emperor did not like children.

In fact, he seemed to regard them as unclean. Every time he saw one, he would mutter that they were filthy or disgusting; he seemed to have an almost excessive distaste for them.

Yet Noble Consort Yeon insisted the child was his son. Not a day went by without her urging him to hold the baby or play with him.

He ignored her every time.

Instead, he would look at her coldly and ask what he was supposed to do with a nursing infant.

When she became too persistent, he threatened that he might never grant the child an official title.

Huinyeong found this attitude astonishing. She had never encountered a father who despised his own child so profoundly.

But Wi-pyeong truly loathed the children born to his concubines. He treated the imperial princess born to Lady Sun in the same way as the princes.

Typically, a father who disliked his sons might still cherish his daughters. But Wi-pyeong was impossible to understand.

Huinyeong could only watch in silence. Perhaps there had never been any need to understand him in the first place.

Once again, her gaze fell on the child in Noble Consort Yeon’s arms.

When she was still an imperial princess, the sight of his children sometimes made her feel sick. Even now, whenever the women who had borne his children appeared before her with swaddled infants in their arms and bright smiles on their faces, a surge of fury would rise within her.

Sorrow. Betrayal. Despair.

These were emotions she could neither accept nor allow herself to feel, and they seeped into her like poison, slowly turning to pain.

Perhaps that was why she felt herself gradually losing her mind.

“When this child grows up, he will become like Emperor Neng of Chokgeum. Even now he is extraordinarily filial and clever. Surely he will surpass Emperor Neng.”

Noble Consort Yeon smiled brightly at the baby and whispered something softly.

A faint bluish pallor spread across Huinyeong’s face as she looked at her in silence.

Emperor Neng of Chokgeum was a ruler from an ancient kingdom. It was said that he had transformed all the concubines who had despised and humiliated his low-born mother into renzhi, or ‘human pigs’.

After ascending the throne, he took his father’s favorite concubine — the woman who had insulted his mother most cruelly — and transformed her into one of these creatures. He then summoned his half-brother to the privy and showed him the transformed concubine, calling her a rare beast.

Huinyeong stared at Noble Consort Yeon, breathing heavily and unevenly.

The woman’s gentle smile was beautiful.

The baby in her arms let out a soft, babbling sound.

One day, when that child grew up—

—he would cut off Huinyeong’s limbs one by one, gouge out her eyes, burn her ears, and throw her into the privy. He would laugh as he called her a human pig.

Huinyeong trembled violently and clutched her lower abdomen.

Noble Consort Yeon seemed entirely capable of such cruelty. She would kill Huinyeong in this manner and then poison her son.

Her thoughts drifted again to Emperor Neng.

He had inherited the throne from his father thanks to his extraordinary intelligence and ability, and elevated his mother — once nothing more than a palace maid — to the position of Empress Dowager the moment he became emperor.

Then, with brutal resolve, he exterminated all of his father’s concubines, who had humiliated her.

His half-brothers met equally merciless deaths.

“He…”

“Would that not be only natural? For now, His Majesty favors Lady Oriole, but the heart of the Son of Heaven never stays in one place for long. Did you know that he favored someone else before you occupied His Majesty’s bedchamber?”

Before Huinyeong could say anything, the woman added the words quietly.