The Imperial New Year banquet burned brightly well into the night. After all, the celebrations stretched from the last evening of the year until dawn.

Had the world been as it should be, Empress Ailie would have been inside, mingling with the revelers.

Instead, she used the brilliant light to guide her as she slipped down the steep outer wall.

Behind her, the echoes of empty laughter slowly faded.

After hours of being surrounded by people, she felt faint. She claimed that she needed some fresh air.

The foolish Emperor Benate, whose poor judgement had been clouded further by drink, believed her without hesitation. Once the emperor himself had agreed to let the empress step out, who would dare to stop her?

Ailie slipped out of the banquet hall and headed straight for the gardens, not looking back once. She evaded the guards with surprising ease and scaled the fortress wall.

It felt unreal.

She had never imagined that escaping the Imperial Palace could be so easy. Had she known, she would never have wasted her youth the way she had.

Ailie ran — again and again. Her lungs burned and her chest throbbed from the exertion, but the moment she slowed down, terror gripped her. Like a small creature being hunted through the night, she fled with all her might.

She nearly twisted her ankle more than once, and nearly tripped several times as her skirt tangled around her legs. The once beautiful golden gown became dirtier with each stumble. She didn’t care. She longed to tear off the heavy dress and run free, but even the few seconds it would take felt too costly. All she could do was keep running.

‘Instead of running like this, I should have simply divorced him… it would have been so much easier.’

Her mind was filled with that familiar resentment towards the emperor.

The Emperor had refused the divorce. He was afraid that even the slightest imperfection would spoil his vision of a perfect empire.

If he valued perfection so highly, he should not have committed adultery.

The Empress Dowager — Ailie’s mother-in-law — hounded her relentlessly, demanding to know why she wanted a divorce.

“I saw His Majesty in bed with his mistress.”

It was the truth, plain and simple. Yet the Empress Dowager refused to believe it. Instead, she exploded in fury, shouting that she wouldn’t be fooled by such a paltry lie, before throwing a glass vase against the wall. Shards flew, grazing Ailie’s cheek.

Despite a thin line of blood forming, she endured it without crying out; she was unable to voice the simple question of what she had done to deserve this treatment.

Everyone in the palace treated Ailie as a liar.

“At the last banquet, His Majesty was so attentive to Your Majesty—so devoted, truly.”

“Didn’t everyone say so? That Your Majesty’s eyes were full of affection whenever he looked at you.”

The emperor? Towards Ailie? Impossible!

It was as if Benate had silenced them all personally. Everyone repeated the same words like parrots. No matter how many times she insisted that the truth lay elsewhere, nothing changed.

There was nothing Ailie could do inside the imperial palace except let it all wash over her. No one sided with the empress. Instead, they summoned a physician and asked if she had experienced any hallucinations.

She felt like a criminal.

‘If I am guilty of anything, it must be that I loved the emperor—even for a single moment.’

But Ailie’s love for him belonged to a distant past, a previous life. A time before she found herself trapped inside this irrational novel.

The original novel, “I Fell for the Emperor Who Only Trusts Me,” was a sweet, healing fantasy about a tender emperor who cared for no one but his empress, and about Ailie building a happy life in the imperial palace alongside him.

No hardship had ever shaken the Emperor’s devotion. Ailie trusted in his steadfast presence and remained by his side until the very end.

It had been a beautiful story.

In the novel, Benate was the kind of gentle, loyal man who was impossible not to love. Although he wasn’t expressive, it was clear that he cherished the Empress above all else. He noticed even the faintest shadow of worry crossing her face.

While reading, Ailie had been captivated by that tenderness.

With a man like that, the heroine would never suffer alone. At the very least, she would never experience pain at his hands.

Ailie truly believed that she would be happy to meet Benate Seraulte Renovard.

However, once she inhabited the character, she realized it had all been an illusion.

The emperor was so cold towards her that she began to doubt whether he possessed any of the warmth described in the novel.

If only that had been the worst of it!

Barely two years had passed before Benate took a mistress.

A tender emperor who cared only for his empress?

He was nothing more than a madman who lusted after anyone beautiful, regardless of their identity, intentions, or origins.

Gentle? His pale blue eyes were icy whenever he looked at Ailie, as though she were an insect.

As though she were standing in the way of a great, fated romance.

Even after Benate changed, everyone in the palace spoke with one voice.

“Your Majesty must be so happy, receiving His Majesty’s abundant love.”
“The love between the two of you is the pride of the empire.”

At first, she dismissed it as meaningless gossip, idle chatter from people who simply didn’t know the truth.

But over time, those words began to weigh on her.

Even when she attended every major event at the imperial palace and she and Benate stood side by side with such palpable tension that it was clear to everyone, people’s reactions remained unchanged.

Why? What was happening?

Was this truly the emperor’s love?

This contradiction gnawed at Ailie night after night. No matter how hard she tried to make sense of it, nothing added up. How could her experiences be so different from those of others?

Eventually, she began to doubt her own memories.

She must have misinterpreted what happened that day. She must have imagined it because she hadn’t been feeling well. Benate hadn’t changed — he couldn’t have. That scene couldn’t have been real. It was something that had never happened at all.

Believing that was easier.

Ultimately, foolishly, Ailie chose not to trust her own eyes.

The woman who had smiled inside the Empress’s bedchamber while wearing her nightgown and with her hair in disarray was the same woman that Benate had bitten on the earlobe. Ailie had never seen such an expression directed at her.

The scene she had witnessed began to blur.

It must have been a fleeting dream. The emperor would never do something so disgraceful. Benate, of all people, would never commit adultery.

This was the stuff of novels.

The emperor was destined to open his heart only to Empress Ailie.

Ailie was destined to be the wise and beloved empress, adored by all.

Surely, when she opened her eyes, she would wake from this nightmare.

Ailie clung to that fragile hope, so delicate that it could break at the slightest touch.

But no matter how many nights passed, no matter how many mornings arrived, and even when the seasons changed, she did not wake up.

Because she saw it again.

She saw that weak, vulgar smile on his lips as he sat in his nightclothes on the emperor’s bed, staring directly at her.

Only then did Ailie understand.

Benate had deceived her.

The Empress Dowager had deceived her.

Everyone in the palace had deceived her.

And she had deceived herself most of all.

There had been a time when she had wondered.

Was all this happening because she wasn’t as clever or as composed as the real Ailie?

‘Did I fail to handle things properly, causing the beautiful story of the original to change?’

No matter how long she waited, consumed by guilt and regret, the emperor never returned to his former self.

He drifted further and further away, as though he had journeyed to a place that could never be reached. Benate never sought Ailie out again.

After a year of neglect, Ailie finally made up her mind: she would escape.

Once that resolve had taken root, she acted swiftly.

The New Year’s banquet was to be held in three days’ time, a perfect opportunity not to be wasted.

She gathered a few essential valuables and slipped out of the banquet hall.

Holding her aching chest, which felt as though it might burst, Ailie ran towards the forest. She intended to use the thick, towering trees for shelter. Once she reached them, she knew she could go anywhere.

Her only regret was leaving without telling Breni, her closest maid.

Aside from that, she felt unbelievably light and free.

She had waited so long for this moment.

Freedom was finally within reach.

Ailie took one long stride towards the forest.

But at that very moment—

“…Huh?”

A strange sensation lifted her body as though weightless. A prickling dread stabbed through her mind— She had a feeling that something had gone irreversibly wrong.

Only then did Ailie realize that she was falling off the edge of the cliff.

In that brief instant, countless regrets rushed through her.

Then, she was struck by a violent impact, a blow that no body nurtured within the palace could possibly withstand.

“Kh… kuhuk…”

Ailie did not die straight away. Her leg was shattered, leaving her unable to stand. Her body no longer obeyed her. Something deep within her had broken.

Yet still, consciousness clung to her.

Collapsed helplessly in a widening pool of her own blood, she could do nothing but drown in regret.

Should she have endured it a little longer?

Should she have been more shameless and ignored the Emperor’s affair just to survive?

Or should she have exposed everything and removed the other woman instead?

Should she have dragged her out into the open and publicly accused her of adultery in the empress’s own chambers?

Should she have sent her to the execution platform?

‘Why do I have to die before those people?’

She was so furious that she just wanted to live to see that woman brought down.

But she loathed Benate more than she loathed the woman.

If she could hold him accountable, she would.

If she could take his life with her own hands, she absolutely would.

Even if it meant being branded a traitor and burned at the stake in the public square, she felt that would be a far lesser regret than what had happened.

At the very least, she didn’t want to die before they did.

She wanted to endure the filthy imperial palace for long enough to witness their deaths with her own eyes.

Only then would she allow herself to die.

A fierce will to live surged through her.

If someone found her now, she might survive.

If she summoned all her strength to call out, perhaps someone would come.

Clinging desperately to that fading thread of hope, Ailie parted her lips.

For a long moment, only faint, uneven breaths escaped her.

“…Bena… te…”

A small, barely audible voice escaped, but it was enough for her to hear.

Even as she lay dying, why had she called out that name?

The night air was cold.

Warm droplets hit her chilled cheek — her tears.

Gradually, every sensation in her body dulled.

Drowsiness tugged at her fading consciousness.

Ailie slowly closed her eyes.

“I have never—not even once—failed to love you.”

A voice brushed her ear as if in a dream.

“Please… please open your eyes, Ailie.”

As Ailie tried to remember whose voice it was, she lost consciousness and everything went black—

“Ailie!”

—and at last, the thread snapped.