The rich smell of bread baking in the oven near the entrance mingled with the savory smell of pork browning to a golden crisp.

Aella looked slowly around her.

Pans of sauce bubbled and hissed on the row of hearths lining one wall. On the central table, a mountain of smoothly peeled potatoes and trimmed carrots was piled high.

Along the wall with windows, a line of maids were busy plating golden-baked round pies and spooning freshly ground spice sauce over cooked fish.

“Your Majesty, it is an honor to have you visit.”

The head cook came rushing over and bowed. Everyone stopped what they were doing and bent at the waist in unison.

“Everyone carry on.”

At the empress’s gentle command, the noisy bustle filled the kitchen again.

Through the cheerful thud of knives on chopping boards, the sizzle of vegetables in an oiled pan, and the rolling boil of stew in a great pot, the cook asked.

“Is there something specific you wish to instruct?”

“I’d like a clear chicken broth prepared and plenty of bread baked. You would have seen the farmers who gathered here today — I’d like to offer them a meal.”

“That many people?”

“Would it be difficult with your current staff?”

The cook’s face was flushed red from the heat of the hearths. He pulled out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his brow, and shook his head.

“Not at all. We brought on ample staff accounting for both Your Majesties, the attendants, and the escort forces. As you can see, the kitchen equipment and facilities are more than sufficient to prepare meals for hundreds. Only, does it all need to be ready by tomorrow?”

“No. Can it be done within three days?”

“Three days… I believe so.”

“Thank you for understanding when this must have caught you off guard.”

The cook waved his hands and laughed, as though he had never heard such words in his life.

“Please don’t say that, Your Majesty. You need only give the order, yet you came in person and spoke so kindly. I am humbled.”

Aella added a few words of praise, then left the kitchen. With all preparations made, she finally felt the full weight of her exhaustion.

She made her way unsteadily back to her room, washed her face with care, and changed into a crisp, unwrinkled nightgown.

While Aella applied toner and cream with a faint freesia scent, Tilda combed through her hair.

Only after the vanity had been set in perfect order did she finally lie down in bed.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Three days passed. The sky, which had been holding on by a thread until now, began showing unmistakable signs of disaster.

A low rumble rolled through the heavy clouds pressing down from above. A fierce wind swept over the castle walls and lashed the broad leaves of the garden trees without mercy.

Sensing the moment had come, Aella sent word to gather the farmers.

Hours passed in an instant.

Aella ushered the murmuring crowd into the servants’ hall. Fortunately, having gathered once before, they formed their lines with relative calm.

She stood at the second-floor railing and watched them receive their thick blankets.

“Your Majesty, the numbers don’t quite add up.”

Nicby Bormien leaned against the railing and tilted his head in puzzlement. Aella narrowed her eyes. She had been feeling a vague sense that something was missing.

“You’re right. Come to think of it……”

Bruno’s wife was nowhere to be seen either.

“I’ll go check right away.”

Nicby Bormien darted off and asked one of the servants distributing supplies something, noting it down carefully. Then he called over the familiar face of Bruno and had a word with him.

Nicby Bormien had a remarkable ease with servants and commoners alike.

Tilda was a capable lady’s maid, but her sharp tongue and highborn manner made the servants wary of her. Tilda knew this well, and she genuinely valued Nicby Bormien’s warmth.

“It seems we’ve accidentally hired a rather capable secretary, Your Majesty?”

“It does seem that way.”

Aella was exchanging a smile with Tilda when Nicby Bormien came sprinting back, panting as he flipped through his notebook. He swallowed hard and reported what he had learned, word by word.

“Um…… so, Bruno’s wife couldn’t come because she started having contractions. And forty-eight men didn’t show up either. When I asked why, apparently His Majesty the Emperor ordered them to stay and guard the farms.”

“…What?”

There was one thing Aella had overlooked. Francis’s selfishness.

She had expected nothing but indifference from him. She hadn’t anticipated this. Her husband was a worse person than she had thought.

“So, um, he told them to repair the drainage channels and fix the fences in case Tugal raiders tried to take advantage of the heavy rain.”

A blinding flash of lightning struck outside the window at that moment. Nicby flinched at the sudden bolt and rushed through his words.

“But it was only the workers from the farms His Majesty the Emperor and Lady Coumont invested in—”

Boom! A thunderclap like a cannon blast swallowed Nicby Bormien’s thin voice completely.

Then a torrent of rain began hammering the windows hard enough to shatter them.

Aella rushed to the window on the opposite side of the corridor, the one facing the farmland.

Far in the distance, near the edge of the blue vineyard, a hazy funnel of mist was rising like smoke. At the top of that column reaching to the sky, black clouds churned violently.

Lightning cracked yellow in every direction, a sight overwhelming enough to make her knees go weak.

“…Francis Lebier.”

Stepping back from the window, Aella muttered the emperor’s name in a voice tight with fury.

“Your Majesty……?”

Even for an empress, calling the emperor by name was an act of disrespect. Tilda was looking around nervously when Aella spoke.

“I need to go to the emperor right now.”

Gripping her skirts, Aella forgot all decorum and broke into a run.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

“Natalia, are you feeling unwell?”

Adelaide’s worried voice pulled Natalia out of her daze. Only then did Natalia realize she had been tapping her heel against the floor.

“No, Mom. I’m fine.”

“If you’re not feeling well, call Nathaniel right away. That’s why we brought him in as the imperial physician.”

“Yes.”

Natalia answered absently, crossed her arms, and sank deep into the sofa.

Adelaide scooted closer, watching her daughter carefully. She was desperate to touch her daughter’s belly but only moved her lips.

“What is it? Do you have something to say?”

“Once His Majesty returns from the southern inspection, he’ll be making the official announcement that an imperial heir is on the way. How do you feel about that, my dear?”

“Wonderful, obviously.”

“Now that you’ve entered the stable period, this mother can finally breathe again.”

“Yes.”

Adelaide seemed to catch the faint irritation buried in the curt reply, and she quietly lifted her wine glass without another word.

Natalia felt a small pang of guilt, but a heavier feeling quickly swept it aside. It was anxiety.

Natalia was anxious. Things were moving exactly as she wanted them to.

When the Empress Dowager learned that Francis had spent the night with the empress, she had summoned him immediately. She had spent the entire day weeping and wringing every last drop of energy out of him.

In the end, she heard that Francis had promised not to visit the empress outside of the designated conjugal nights.

All of this had come through Countess Joubert.

Her husband, Count Joubert, had fallen out of the emperor’s favor now, but until just a few months ago he had been a man of considerable influence in the palace.

His connections spread in all directions, which made Countess Joubert an unreliable but quite useful lady-in-waiting.

‘So I blocked him from getting close to the empress……’

Pull one away and another latches on. That impossibly young girl from Selot.

‘How dare she drug Francis.’

Natalia bit anxiously at her nails. The clicking sound made Adelaide draw her brows together in concern. Even that expression grated on Natalia’s nerves right now.

She stood up abruptly, turning away from her mother, and walked with heavy steps to the window.

“The Empress Dowager is a broken-beaked eagle, I’ll give her that.”

She was muttering aloud without realizing it, lost in thought.

“But that Selot girl and her family are something else entirely.”

They had wealth, bloodline, and reputation, everything Natalia could never have.

If she became empress, had the child, and then failed to conceive again right away…… and was deposed according to the contract……