Chapter 5: The Truth Revealed (6)

She didn’t believe she deserved to hear such words.

“Are you feeling discomfort anywhere at the moment?”

The royal physician showed no sign of being bothered by her silence.

If anything, he seemed… cautious, as if gauging her mood.

It puzzled Larie. There was no reason for a physician to tiptoe around her.

She dismissed the thought as her imagination and parted her lips—hesitantly, yet holding on to a thread of hope.

“I… regularly experience severe pain.”

“Regularly…?”

“Whenever the new moon rises…”

At the mention of the new moon, the physician’s face shifted—tinged with faint distress.

Larie gave a bitter smile.

She’d seen that look before—from the village doctor. She already knew what would come next.

Eventually, suspicion. Uncertainty. Doubt.

Even as a child, when she hadn’t understood what made her different, the reactions had been the same.

Back then, when her parents brought her to doctors about the mysterious pain, their eyes gradually turned cold.

Since then, she had learned to hide it.

“…Please describe the symptoms.”

“…On new moon days, the pain starts in the morning, gradually worsening until nightfall.

It feels like… like needles piercing my heart.

Or like being burned alive.

Then, once the sun rises—it vanishes, as if nothing happened.”

With every word, the physician’s expression hardened.

He didn’t even try to hide his uncertainty. Finally, he bowed deeply.

“…Forgive me, Your Highness. With my limited knowledge, I… cannot provide a proper diagnosis.”

“Still, he’s the Empire’s most esteemed physician. Maybe he knows something…”

That fleeting hope had already been swept away by the wind.

“Yes.”

Letting go of even that last thread of possibility, Larie reaffirmed her decision.

If it was something inexplicable—a condition with no name—she would just have to continue hiding it.

Pain that came only with the new moon—no matter how she thought about it, it was bizarre.

‘She’s faking it again, no doubt. She caused such a scene last year too, remember? No shame, that one.’

Surely, this time as well, she’d be labeled a liar.

Fragments of her past tormented her.

She bit her lip, wanting desperately to escape this moment.

Then the royal physician, who had been bowing in silence, lifted his head. His eyes had a sudden resolve.

“I will continue looking into it, Your Highness.”

“…Thank you.”

His sudden determination startled Larie, and she replied instinctively.

Even if it was just lip service, it meant something.

Whether out of obligation or genuine urgency, the physician swiftly left the empress’s quarters.

Charelle, who had been quietly observing the examination, approached.

“Your Highness, shall I bring your morning meal?”

“…I have no appetite. I’ll eat later.”

“But, Your Highness…”

“I’d rather wash up first.”

She avoided Charelle’s worried gaze.

The confidence and resolve she’d brought into this palace seemed to be fading with every passing hour.

Was it the lingering pain of the new moon?

“And when Rui wakes up… I want to take him to the lake.”

It was Rui who gave her strength.

Clinging to that resolve, Larie rose from the bed and headed toward the bath.

But then she noticed something strange.

Charelle—and even the other attendants nearby—looked visibly uneasy.

A surge of anxiety rose within her.

“Don’t tell me… Something happened to Rui?”

“It’s not that, Your Highness.”

Fidgeting with her skirt hem, Charelle quickly responded. Then, with sudden motion, she dropped to her knees on the floor.

“I beg your forgiveness, Your Highness.”

“We are truly sorry.”

All the maids followed her lead, collapsing to the floor one by one with solemn expressions.

Even though they had said Rui was fine, a cold, choking unease still gripped Larie tight.

“His Majesty has ordered… the Empress’s Palace be sealed.”

“…”

“You are… not permitted to leave the palace grounds, Your Highness.”

“Ah…”

The emotions that had been circling her like fog now fell all at once, swallowing her whole.

She couldn’t recall most of last night, but some scenes remained vivid.

‘I told you to stay by my side! Why—why won’t you!’

The way he had followed after her, yanked her back—his furious face.

Larie instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, as if shielding her body from something unseen.

Whether it was the bed or the bath, she wanted desperately to hide somewhere. The pressure clutched her throat like a vice.

“…”

Her face drained of color. She could feel it clearly now—her arms trembling around herself.

Why was he doing this?

Was it really… for the sake of a political marriage negotiation?

***

“Damn it, damn it all!”

An eerie tension hung over the Tromperie Baron’s grand mansion in the capital—once famed for its splendor.

The servants fled, one after another, almost daily. At first, the house guards were sent to retrieve and punish them—but now even the guards had started to vanish.

Tromperie, once the Empire’s richest family.

The money hadn’t completely dried up yet, but people were another matter.

Ever since the death of the late emperor and the shift in power, no one wanted to associate with the Tromperie name.

Branded traitors, their disgrace was barely masked with lavish wealth—but even that facade was beginning to crack.

“This slop—you call this food?!”

The newly hired chef’s cuisine was unbearable to a tongue spoiled by excess. The Baron flung the plate aside violently just as Gafel entered the dining room.

“You bastard—where the hell have you been sneaking off to now?!”

Perhaps he had spent another night gambling. Gafel looked absolutely disgraceful, with not even a speck of dignity left in his appearance. After being pushed out of high society due to the family’s decline, he had fully fallen into gambling dens.

The Baron was just about to unleash his fury on the pitiful sight when Gafel leaned in, eyes gleaming with excitement.

“Father, I’ve found out something important.”

“More worthless nonsense, I suppose…”

“That wench Larie—I’ve found out where she is.”

“…What?”

Gafel babbled that he’d heard it from some soldier or knight he’d met at the gambling hall.

“She’s in the Empress’s Palace.”

“Hah. I knew it!”

The Baron slammed his hand on the table in restrained rage.

So that bastard Avnir had been hiding her all this time.

He had already heard rumors about someone residing in the Empress’s Palace. But ever since being ousted from the center of high society, it had been difficult to get reliable information.

Still, when word spread that a delegation from the Rassium Empire was being received, the Baron had suspected Avnir was scheming something. That man had kept Larie under tight lock and key even back when she was in the grand duchy—just to stop the Baron from using her.

“But there’s something strange.”

“What is it?”

At Gafel’s next words, the viscount’s face twisted unpleasantly.

“They say Larie brought a child with her.”

“…A child?”

The mention made the Baron’s expression crumple. His mind turned swiftly, trying to make sense of the situation.

“We could use that, couldn’t we? For our plan.”

Gafel scooted closer, voice dropping as he spoke conspiratorially. The Baron furrowed his brow and gestured for all the servants in the dining room to leave.

Then, he gave a stern warning to his son, who was carelessly throwing around the word “plan.”

“You. You’d better not be running your mouth about our plan to anyone.”

“Of course not. You should worry more about keeping that concubine of yours quiet.”

The former emperor’s disgraceful death had been tied to one of his concubines—because he’d stubbornly pursued a successor until the bitter end.

Tromperie Baron saw his opportunity.

While the nation was in turmoil with Terian’s ascension to the throne, he had quietly approached the concubine. Then he concocted a scheme—pretending that she had conceived the former emperor’s final heir.

Somewhere now, that concubine was raising a child they planned to present as the future emperor.

“So that’s why. That b*tch kept it hidden because she was carrying his brat. Must’ve gotten lucky during the window when we switched the medicine…”

Larie hadn’t conceived once in the two years she spent at the grand duchy. She had been force-fed strong contraceptives the whole time.

Then, just weeks before they planned to move on to the next phase—poison—the medications had been swapped. Something must’ve gone wrong during that short window.

The Baron muttered curses toward the apothecaries who had sworn that dose would have left her nearly infertile by then.

“She wouldn’t have had it in her to seduce someone else. Come to think of it, something was odd just before she fled.”

As Gafel sneered with the exact same expression he’d inherited from his father, the Baron folded his arms.

The lingering bitterness of that subpar meal from earlier now began to dissipate.

“In any case, this is our chance.”

“If we can just get a blood sample from that brat, it’s perfect.”

The child prepared by the concubine was, of course, a fraud.

They had originally scouted a distant relative of the late emperor, but the man never made it to a divine blood test. The previous emperor, blinded by greed, had tried to extort even more coin for the scheme.

Still, once a supposed heir to the late emperor emerged, and if something unfortunate were to happen to Terian, things could get very interesting.

The palace’s sacred instruments could verify genetic relation—but not the exact identity of a parent. They only determined how closely two blood samples were related.

So if they got blood from Terian’s real child, the test would naturally confirm a close match to the sample taken from the deceased emperor’s body.

As if the former emperor had left behind a true heir.

“We must bring the child here…”

The plan was finally falling into place.

The Baron leaned back with a crooked smile.

❖ ❖ ❖

A few days had passed.

Inside the emperor’s office, Terian cast meaningless glances at the towering stacks of documents.

He had stopped his habit of visiting Larie three times a day. How could he face her now, when he had locked her away in that place? He couldn’t stomach the shame.

His mind was a storm of confusion, directionless and fraying at every edge. The more he saw her, the more tangled their relationship became—until even the idea of seeing her again began to terrify him.

And so, Terian found himself tormented by a strange thirst. She was right there—within reach—and yet he couldn’t allow himself to see her.

“Sigh…”

As expected, Larie made no effort to come to him unless he sought her out first.

He had even half-hoped she’d lash out at him—demand an explanation, scream about how wrong he’d been. Ever since they reunited, she had begun to look him squarely in the eyes, clearly stating her thoughts. Even now, some pathetic part of him had hoped she might at least glare at him again.

But no—she was surely disgusted with him now.

With all of this, the night they spent in the woods felt like a fading dream. Terian was beginning to genuinely wonder if it had all been a hallucination. Maybe it was just the rot of his own festering desires tricking his mind into imagining such a thing.

He had meant to explain the misunderstanding about the Rassium Empire’s envoy—but instead, all he had done was commit an even greater trespass. Seeing Larie dissolving into the darkness of the forest had stirred memories of his old nightmares.

And in this state, how could he dare go to her again and explain himself? He had imprisoned her here—kept her from the father of her child. No matter what, he was the invader in her life.

The warmth she had poured into him that night, through a kiss, had seeped into his chest and scorched his heart to ashes.