1

“Her Majesty the Empress is infertile.”

A murmuring noise swept over the conference room.

The sound of gasps of shock.

The sound of sighs.

The sound of whispers saying they knew it all along.

The man who had been watching all the commotion with his chin propped up lifted one corner of his mouth.

“The Empress is infertile?”

His low, leisurely voice even sounded amused for a moment.

The conference room fell silent as if cold water had been poured over it. Everyone who had been murmuring shut their mouths in unison and watched only the man.

The imperial physician who had announced the Empress’s infertility bowed his head with a somber face.

“Yes, Your Majesty. Though it is a most regrettable diagnosis—”

“But you look familiar. Weren’t you the one who conducted the Empress’s fertility examination at the wedding ceremony a year ago?”

“Pardon? Yes…… that’s correct, Your Majesty.”

The physician swallowed hard at the words that he was remembered and bowed his head even deeper.

“Then you must have gone senile in just a year.”

“……Pardon?”

“How unfortunate at such a young age. Guards!”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

“The physician seems to have gone quite senile, so arrange for him to leave the palace and spend his remaining years in comfort.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Two knights immediately grabbed the physician’s arms and tried to drag him out.

Marquis Zepher, the Empress’s guardian who had brought the physician, stepped forward with a flustered face.

“Your…… Your Majesty. Please hear what the physician has to say. An Empress who cannot produce an imperial heir no longer has meaning—”

“Shut up, Marquis.”

The man glared at the marquis with a chilling gaze.

You brought her before me saying you cherished the Empress like your own daughter, and now you treat her like discarded livestock.”

“Your, Your Majesty! How can you say such a thing, I’m only thinking of the nation’s future……!”

“Take the physician away!”

Cutting off the marquis’s words, the man roared.

Then the physician, his face drained of color, cried out.

“Your, Your Majesty. Your Majesty! The results from a year ago and now can naturally be different! Fertility is greatly affected by lifestyle habits! Don’t you know that Her Majesty the Empress’s lifestyle habits are poor?! It’s an open secret that she doesn’t eat properly and burns incense mixed with hallucinogenic components every day!”

The physician cried out desperately, but it seemed not to enter the man’s ears at all.

The physician, who had fallen overnight from a soaring imperial physician to a mere commoner, struggled, coughing up blood.

“There is no error in my diagnosis, Your Majesty! Your Majesty should take another woman befitting your station as consort, not a barren woman from a mere viscount family!”

An Empress who cannot produce an heir is deposed.

This was a custom that had long been passed down in the Empire.

If Empress Lucretia was truly infertile, she too would not escape the disgrace of becoming a deposed empress.

However.

“Shut his mouth.”

The man said, glaring at the physician.

“And make that tongue that only speaks lies unusable.”

“Yes!”

“Your, Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

Leaving the physician’s cries behind, the man fell into thought.

That woman is infertile?

That can’t be.

She was a woman who even secretly chewed poisonous herbs to avoid pregnancy. Recalling that scene, the man twisted his features in displeasure.

“Summon the Empress.”

“……Your Majesty.”

The chamberlain, who had just received something from an attendant, whispered in the man’s ear with a face blue with panic.

“For, forgive me, Your Majesty…… We, we cannot find Her Majesty the Empress’s whereabouts.”

The man’s head turned.

“What?”

“It was time for her lunch, so they knocked on the bedroom door, but there was no answer, so when they went inside, there was no one……”

“Right now, in my palace.”

The man said, grinding his teeth.

“Are you telling me my Empress has disappeared?”

“It is, truly, most regrettable, Your Majesty……”

The chamberlain trembled and only bowed his head.

The man, who had been glaring at the back of his head with boiling eyes, rose to his feet.

The Empress was naturally the Emperor’s, and the man had never once let anything in his grasp slip away. No, there had never even been an attempt to slip away.

Nevertheless, at this moment the man sensed an unpleasant premonition. A premonition that something that should be impossible might have actually happened. A premonition that the Empress might have truly fled on her own feet.

From the imperial palace. From his side.

“……D*mn it.”

The man clenched his fist.

“Mobilize all search parties and hounds!”

The man’s judgment was quick and his decision even quicker.

Fire flashed in his eyes as he tore through the conference room.

‘So. You finally did something like this.’

His thought that she was a delicate, weak woman who couldn’t go against norms in the slightest had been wrong.

What was the problem?

Interrogating her about having a lover?

Insulting her that she would never bear his child?

Letting her witness his terrible appearance?

No. Speculating was useless now.

He just needed to capture that woman back to his side and ask her directly.

The man ground his teeth as he looked at the quickly mobilized search parties and hounds.

※※※

Hah, hah, hah.

Her breath had run up to her chin.

But Lucretia never stopped.

Her hair that had sparkled like thread woven from light had long since turned ash-gray with dust, and the skin she had applied milk and honey to daily was full of scratches.

Lucretia suddenly found herself laughing at her situation.

A daughter of a humble viscount family had become Empress by heavenly fortune. Everyone had whispered so.

Who among them could have predicted? That the Empress would now be fleeing in rags.

‘Has the physician arrived at the state council meeting by now?’

Has he arrived and declared that she is infertile?

The sequence after that was obvious.

An Empress who cannot produce an imperial heir is abandoned. She would be deposed and driven from the imperial throne. She couldn’t live in the Empire as a former Empress, so she would be expelled to another country. If it were the normal sequence.

However, that man… The Emperor could not possibly let her go freely. Not after she had witnessed his secret with her own eyes.

‘He’ll come to k*ll me.’

The man who had been her husband, if only briefly, would come to k*ll her.

Lucretia let out a hollow laugh at herself for thinking such thoughts so casually.

There was a time when she was happy just seeing that person’s collar.

There was a time when she longed for those blood-red eyes to hold her even once.

But in the end, this is the conclusion.

By now, the marquis she had called Father must be presenting the infertility diagnosis he personally fabricated to the Emperor.

For the first time, Lucretia intended to flee before being abandoned.

One year.

That was the time Lucretia had lived as Kyrion Winchester’s wife.

It had been excessively long for a monster’s daughter to dare occupy the seat beside the Emperor.

‘The blue birdcage.’

It was exactly as ‘that man’ had told her.

It meant the destination was near.

Lucretia gritted her teeth. Her stamina had already reached its limit, but she couldn’t collapse here.

If she collapsed, she might be dragged back there again. To that place.

To that palace that had made Lucretia taste the sweetest honey and the most vicious bitterness at the same time.

—Bark! Bark!

She faintly heard the sound of beasts barking in the distance.

Her spine prickled. Could he have already released search parties?

“Ah.”

Finally, she saw a clearing in the distance. Lucretia ran toward her destination with all her strength.

In the center of the clearing was a flat stone. The ash-colored sword rolling around it was exactly as ‘that man’ had described.

Picking it up, Lucretia squeezed her eyes shut and raised her right hand holding the sword. Her hand trembled violently, but there was no hesitation in the motion of bringing down the blade.

“Hngh!”

With sharp pain, the fishy smell of blood brushed her nose.

Lucretia felt her consciousness grow hazy in an instant.

“Ah……”

Her vision blurred. The place pierced by the sword stung painfully.

As Lucretia’s blood dripped, a red magic circle glowed on the flat rock.

‘Success.’

Lucretia trembled with pain and relief.

This ancient magic would soon take her to the opposite side of the continent, far from the Empire.

To a distant place where neither the name of the marquis who had been her father nor the name of the Emperor who had been her husband could reach.

Lucretia’s eyes blinked slowly, and just as they were about to close completely—

“Lucretia!”

A rough, urgent voice.

It must be a hallucination.

Her fading consciousness thought so. Because that man couldn’t call her name in such a voice.

Through her blurred vision, she saw a figure running toward her.

Someone who had been riding frantically threw himself off his horse and immediately rushed toward her.

The moment she met those vivid red eyes even from a distance, her body reflexively froze.

‘Kyrion.’

The person she had loved endlessly, the person she had given her heart to completely for the first time.

Looking at her husband’s face, Lucretia’s fingertips trembled.

It was a face that once filled her just by looking at it, but now her heart sank just meeting it.

Not wanting to see it anymore, Lucretia tried to squeeze her eyes shut. The magic had already started anyway, and even the Emperor of a great empire couldn’t stop it.

Please let the magic activate quickly. Lucretia prayed earnestly with her eyes closed. But the Earth Mother Goddess did not grant her wish this time either.

“Lucretia! D*mn it!”

The Emperor, who had approached in an instant, grasped Lucretia’s bleeding hand as if to stop the bleeding.

As Lucretia flinched at the stinging pain, the Emperor looked straight at her and growled.

“How dare you flee from my side and injure yourself without permission. How exactly do you plan to atone for these crimes?”

He interrogated her in a voice full of anger.

Lucretia couldn’t say anything.

Because she never imagined she would see this face she thought she’d never see again, and this close, one more time.

The Emperor, who had been glaring at the frozen Lucretia, suddenly pressed his lips to hers.

“Mmph……!”

The Emperor’s hand pulled deeply at the nape of Lucretia’s neck.

The tongue that mixed in instantly ravaged her mouth until she couldn’t think straight. Hot, wet body heat persistently penetrated.

Lucretia moaned helplessly. It felt like returning to those days when she had been confined in his bedroom for days on end.