The crimson gaze slowly tore into the revealed face. Lucretia stiffened completely.

The Emperor’s attitude differed from their first meeting.

Unlike that time when he’d at least worn a sneer, now his face held not a trace of amusement.

Only contempt for Marquis Zepher’s lackey filled it.

The Emperor, who’d swept over Lucretia with a chilling look, whispered.

“I’m thinking of kissing you now.”

Lucretia’s heart plummeted once more.

“Do you prefer it with your eyes open?”

Lucretia hastily shut her eyes like a deer startled by lights. A short breath resembling a sneer came from the Emperor before her.

A moment later, Lucretia felt a soft touch reach her lips. It was a warmth so gentle it seemed impossible to belong to a man with such a cold face.

It felt as if thousands of birds fluttered their wings inside her heart.

“Waaah!”

“Long live His Majesty the Emperor!”

“Long live Her Majesty the Empress!”

The people who’d been wondering what conversation the two were having all clapped in unison at that kissing scene.

Applause thundered like a roar.

※※※

After the wedding ceremony ended, Lucretia was immediately moved somewhere by the maids.

“May we take full charge of Her Majesty the Empress’s bath? She’s quite shy, you see.”

Clara, a maid brought from the Zepher marquisate, spoke.

The Marquis had inserted five maids from the marquisate into the palace, claiming it was to help the shy new Empress adapt well to the imperial palace. Understanding this situation well, Head Maid Zeina nodded, saying she’d entrust it to them, then moved away.

“There’s no day more important than today, Miss Lucretia.”

Clara whispered to Lucretia sitting in the bathtub. Whispering her maiden title despite her becoming Empress.

“Of course, an innocent Miss like you wouldn’t have skills like bedroom arts, but still, men are helplessly enchanted by pretty faces. You must have confidence, Miss.”

Clara and the other maids kept murmuring.

The first night was most important, so she had to firmly captivate the Emperor tonight, had to impress him in some way.

Lucretia’s heart had long since hardened with tension. Though everyone pressured her saying she must do well, she simply couldn’t imagine it. Her and the Emperor sharing the same bed, pressing their bodies against each other within it.

Reeking of flowers and perfumed oils, Lucretia sat on the bed. The pure white bed was endlessly vast. Curled up in its center, she blankly watched only the clock’s second hand flowing by.

An hour passed, and the sun set.

Two hours passed.

Even after three hours passed, no one came.

Only after the morning star rose did Lucretia fully realize.

‘He’s not coming.’

That she was a bride stood up on her wedding night.

With that realization came a sense of exhaustion throughout her body.

Lucretia pressed her hand against her chest. Was it because of her hollow feelings? That area felt cool, as if filled with wind.

As tension released, sleep rushed in like a lie. Lucretia lowered her heavy eyelids. Thinking the perfumed oil poured over her was still terrible.

That dawn, she dreamed of her distant childhood.

It was an era turbulent with war. Outside, barbarians ravaged the borders, and inside, the imperial family died from internal strife. Lucretia’s household wasn’t peaceful either.

Upon learning that she was his bastard child born from a maid, Marquis Zepher pushed her off to Viscount Larenne, his vassal.

Due to the Marquis’s thorough silencing, the Viscount couldn’t even tell his wife that she wasn’t his bastard child.

『Filthy man! Bringing home some girl of unknown origins!』

Greatly enraged at her husband for bringing home a bastard, the Viscountess packed her bags and left, soon sending divorce papers.

Afterward, Viscount Larenne wasted the money the Marquis gave him, living drowned in alcohol daily, and whenever Lucretia came into view, he cursed and shouted at her as the cause of losing his wife. Moreover, as Marquis Zepher never showed even his shadow after pushing her off, the *buse gradually became full-fledged.

That night, Lucretia fled outside the mansion for the first time, escaping the Viscount who’d picked up a whip. She ran desperately through back alleys whose paths she didn’t know, ran and ran again.

It was there.

Beside a back alley trash can, she discovered a boy.

The boy covered entirely in bloodstains and dust couldn’t even breathe properly. She instinctively realized. This child will soon die.

Lucretia impulsively touched the child. It was a habitual action. The Viscount wouldn’t call doctors or priests even when Lucretia was sick, but rubbing the painful areas herself seemed to considerably ease the pain.

However, no matter how much she rubbed and embraced him, the boy’s body remained cold as a corpse.

What to do. This child will really die.

Making matters worse, rain fell from the sky. She picked rags from the trash can to cover the boy and herself, but it was insufficient to block the pouring rain.

Gasping in the cold, Lucretia embraced the boy deeply.

『Pl-please help! There’s someone here……!』

No matter how much she cried out, the winter back alley remained only cold. All she could do was share her body heat. Lucretia forgot even the pain from the Viscount’s beating and desperately embraced the boy while sobbing.

How much time passed like that?

The boy who’d been lying slack like a corpse the whole time suddenly coughed up blood. As she recoiled at the thick scent of blood, the boy opened his eyes.

What lay within were pupils redder than the fresh blood the boy had just vomited.

※※※

The next morning, chirping birds woke her.

“Mmm……”

Where is this? Embracing the soft blanket, Lucretia had that thought.

The marquisate’s closet room didn’t have such high-quality blankets.

Where on earth is this……?

Lucretia, who’d opened her eyes thinly, startled greatly upon facing the beautifully embossed ceiling.

‘Ah. That’s right.’

She was no longer the girl who’d been chased by the Viscount fleeing from beatings.

As of yesterday, she was……

“Awake, Empress?”

Gasp.

Lucretia bolted upright with a start.

The Emperor—the Emperor wearing only a white shirt—was fastening his sleeve cufflinks with an expressionless face.

“Your…… Your Majesty?”

Her heart pounded. Pressing down her heart that seemed ready to burst out, Lucretia barely opened her mouth.

“I greet Your Majesty the Emperor.”

“Enough with the courtesy.”

The Emperor spat out irritably toward Lucretia who was hastily trying to show proper etiquette.

She could clearly feel it from that attitude. The Emperor didn’t care about someone like her at all.

Lucretia squeezed her eyes shut. She was afraid of his presence that filled the bedroom despite being alone. If she followed her heart, she wanted to curl up like a mouse in the corner of the bed, as if dead, until he left.

It was natural. The Emperor, infamous as a murderer, wouldn’t even welcome her whom he’d been forced to marry.

But if she let the wedding night pass without any connection with her husband like this, the Marquis would be furious.

So she barely opened her trembling lips.

“Your Majesty. I apologize, but last night……”

“I didn’t come.”

The Emperor said indifferently.

“Did you rest comfortably?”

As if. Lucretia bit her lip hard.

“……I waited. Thinking, you would come.”

She wanted to be plain, but her words somehow grew sticky at the end.

Noticing that, the Emperor turned to look at the Empress. Tilting his head slightly, he asked.

“Why did you?”

“Pardon?”

“I asked why you expected me to come.”

Lucretia lost her words and stared blankly at the Emperor. It was natural for a bride to enter the bedroom for the wedding night on the first night.

As if mocking her confused mind, the Emperor spat out.

“Did you think we’d consummate the marriage, you and I?”

Lucretia’s eyes widened. It was a more blatant affirmation than any verbal answer.

The Emperor’s lips curved up smoothly.

“Seems you did. But I’m sorry, Empress. I have no intention of watching Marquis Zepher’s shoulders rise as your belly swells.”

Lucretia swallowed her breath.

She wasn’t ignorant about the Empire’s political structure either.

The Zepher marquisate was a family with power high enough to rank right after the imperial family. Thinking from the Emperor’s position, he wouldn’t welcome that power growing stronger either. His sharp reaction wasn’t incomprehensible.

Nevertheless, she’d been foolish to attach even a little meaning to the sweet word ‘wedding night.’

Swallowing self-mockery at her foolish self, Lucretia opened her mouth.

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I…… never dared expect you to favor me.”

Saying so, Lucretia lowered her eyes.

She too understood her position fairly well.

This marriage wasn’t what the Emperor wanted in the first place. It was merely a promise the late Emperor made staking his honor as imperial family that passed down to the current Emperor.

In other words, her future was at best a puppet Empress.

Though they married because of the promise, she didn’t expect the Emperor would truly give power to Marquis Zepher’s ward.

Nevertheless, the reason she’d hoped the Emperor might at least share the wedding night……

「The lady might have the qualities of a warrior.」

Was it because she remembered the crooked smile he’d shown her on the one day they met before the wedding?

It was a foolish thing.

To the Emperor, briefly speaking to one of countless noble ladies was likely just a momentary whim.

The moment she thought that, Lucretia’s chin was grabbed.

“Uh……?”

Flustered, Lucretia involuntarily looked up.

The Emperor’s gaze bore down from right in front. His blood-red eyes, said to have been dyed by drinking enemies’ blood on battlefields, were mesmerizing like jewels. Lucretia didn’t dare even breathe.

The Emperor silently swept over her features.

Transparent skin without a single flaw, silver hair that seemed to flow with light, and a frail figure that would stimulate men’s protective instincts.

Soon he wore a sneer.

“As expected. Worthy of a wh*re personally raised by the Marquis.”

Lucretia swallowed her breath.

She was accustomed to insults like mouse, leech, and thieving b*tch. But the word wh*re was a first. Her heart burned hot with shame.

The Emperor’s fingers slowly stroked her stiff cheek.

“Beautiful.”

Lucretia heard the thump of her heart dropping.

The Emperor clicked his tongue low.

“Excessively so.”

“……”

“Mistress material, not Empress material.”

Excessive beauty was an advantage for wh*res or actresses, not for imperial family. Rather, it was only a disadvantage that stirred up gossip.

Lucretia stammered with a pale face.

“I’m not a wh*re……”

“Is that what you wanted to say?”

The Emperor sharply cut off her words. His hand swept over Lucretia’s lower belly.

“You must have entered here thoroughly prepared. To carry my seed in this belly.”

The Emperor’s words matched exactly the orders the Marquis had given. Lucretia lost words and moved her lips.

Watching that, the Emperor twisted his lips.

“Best to wake from futile dreams early. You carrying my child in that womb will never happen.”

The Emperor, who’d brought his face slightly closer, sneered.

“I’m not desperate enough to be aroused by a vulgar hyena’s offspring.”

Lucretia’s lips trembled.

She could clearly feel the Emperor was deliberately hurting her.

So don’t be hurt, Lucretia. His Majesty would have said that no matter who sat here.