The Emperor strode into the room. I backed away with a sense of foreboding as the Emperor approached me further, not erasing his sinister smile.

The moment the Emperor grabbed my wrist, the door quietly closed.

“Still alive? What remarkable vitality. Normal humans can’t survive ten days without water and food.”

“I, I don’t know why I’m like this either.”

“Yes, that’s not your fault.”

“I’m not tainted by darkness. No, I probably wouldn’t be. They never treated me like their child…”

I made excuses without being asked. Fearing he might not purify me and keep me imprisoned.

“What a mysterious body. Are you using up your life force meant for a year from now?”

The hair on my body stood on end. The wrist he held strangely tingled.

The Emperor kept tilting his head, seemingly sensing something through my captured hand.

“Hmm… impurities have spread throughout your body over many years.”

Something in the Emperor’s muttering struck me.

The silver liquid I had been drinking for ten years.

I was amazed by the Emperor’s ability to immediately identify the entity that had been consuming me. A mysterious power that made my previous anxiety and dissatisfaction with being abandoned seem insignificant.

It gave me hope.

“Can you remove the impurities from my body? I heard you possess such great power. Please purify me. Please don’t abandon me.”

Fresh air and bright sunlight. That’s what I needed. To find that, I absolutely had to erase the energy of the silver liquid remaining in my body. What could be shameful if it meant reclaiming my lost ten years?

I begged, clutching the Emperor’s legs. I bowed my head so deeply it might have seemed somewhat servile. I clung to him, sobbing. After desperately pleading for a while, a cold energy touched the top of my head.

“Yes, of course I can purify you. That’s why I exist in this empire.”

“Thank you. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Yes, so you don’t need to worry.”

The Emperor stroked my head like soothing a lost kitten. Strangely, his touch kept making my hair stand on end.

“But, Princess.”

“Yes, tell me.”

“Holy power comes with an appropriate price.”

I nodded quickly at the Emperor’s kind words. It was only natural.

“I’ll definitely repay your kindness. Whenever you need my help, just say the word.”

“Good. You’re a good child. Completely different from those creatures of darkness.”

I couldn’t even remember when I was last praised. So the words of praise should have made me feel warm inside… but why did my heart keep beating irregularly?

My eyes wavered slightly, regretting my hasty answer.

“Princess. Don’t be anxious. Trust me. I’m the only one who can remove all the evil things remaining in your body.”

“But if the bad energy in my body disappears, will my lifespan return to normal?”

The Emperor’s eyebrows rose slightly then fell at my question.

“I’m afraid I can’t promise that. Holy power isn’t omnipotent.”

“I guess it can’t be helped.”

“Do you know how much time you have left?”

“Yes… according to what the Duchess said, I have ten months left.”

“That’s unfortunate. But who else knows this fact?”

“Probably no one except the Duke’s family of the Duchy.”

“I see.”

The Emperor made a somewhat strange face. He paced back and forth for quite some time, then spoke to me.

“For now, I’d like you to keep it a secret until you find a way to restore your life force. If rebels from the Duchy learn about this, they might interfere.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“The same goes for Lucifer.”

“But he’s my master… is it okay for him not to know?”

I felt uneasy. A slave is essentially property, so could I hide this? If he found out later, he might get even angrier. I didn’t want him to be angry because of me again.

It was scary, but… if I lied or hid something, I felt I wouldn’t earn his approval. I didn’t want that. More than anyone else, I wanted Lucifer’s approval and praise.

Then after I died, Carden might say I lived well.

“If it’s one thing you can do to repay my kindness?”

When I hesitated, the Emperor spoke with a somewhat sharp tone. For a moment, his appearance overlapped with the Duchess’s.

My feet instinctively moved backward at the Emperor’s change.

“Oh, did I startle you? Don’t tremble.”

The Emperor’s face became kind again. It felt distinctly unsettling. Enough to make me instinctively wary.

“I’m saying this because Lucifer would be in a difficult position if he knew you were terminally ill. It’s pitiful enough that you were used and abandoned by the dark clan, but to have a terminally ill person as a slave…”

“Still, I promised to serve him as my master.”

He had kept his promise to take me to Solanie Village, so I had to keep my initial promise to become his slave.

“Yes, I promised to give you to him. So both Lucifer and I would be criticized for being cruel and heartless.”

I bit my lip slightly at the Emperor’s words. Who would go that far to criticize taking a prisoner of war as a slave…

“I understand. Since he’s my master, I shouldn’t tarnish his honor, so I’ll do that.”

“Good. Breaking an oath with someone who possesses holy power must be repaid with death. But since you’re going to die anyway, your master would have to take responsibility, right?”

“Don’t worry! That will never happen!”

I would never cause trouble for Lucifer again. Let that end with what happened ten years ago.

“Then make a secret oath as a token of your pledge.”

Why require a secret oath for something like this? I was suspicious, but it didn’t seem like hiding a slave’s lifespan from Lucifer would lead to anything bad.

After all, I was just a fake princess from a fallen duchy.

So without hesitation, I used my index finger, which was always used for drawing blood, to make a blood oath as the Emperor instructed.

“Good. Now, shall we begin the purification ritual?”

The Emperor seated me in the center of the room. Then he went behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. A tingling power gathered from his hands and entered me. It swept through my entire body.

Then I felt the same sensation as when I drank the silver liquid. Pain like my entire body was being stabbed.

“Ugh.”

“You must endure. The dark energy that has infiltrated your body is no ordinary thing.”

The Emperor’s voice grew more distant.

And like the small girl who first tasted the pain of the silver liquid ten years ago, I couldn’t overcome the pain and collapsed to the floor. Before my fading vision, I saw the Emperor’s eerie face.

“My, how persistent.”

* * *

When I regained consciousness, what greeted me was an unfamiliar place. At least it wasn’t the white room. I was on a soft bed in a spacious room with red curtains.

“Where am I?”

The room was similar in size to where I lived in the Duchy. Back then, my room had nothing fragile or solid to prevent self-harm.

But this room had beautiful porcelain. There was also a large dressing table with a mirror.

After looking around a bit, I tried to get up to go to the window. But I ended up sitting back on the floor.

“What’s wrong with my body?”

I finally made it to the window with my trembling legs and pulled back the curtains, letting sunlight flood into the room. I blinked slowly, having reflexively closed my eyes from the brightness.

“Wow, it’s spring.”

A vast garden below the window bathed in warm sunlight. Tiny green leaves were sprouting one by one on the bare branches, having survived the winter. It was pleasant to see the small, tender leaves shimmering in the sunlight.

But where was I?

I tried to recall. This wasn’t the palace in the Duchy. Nor was it the Count’s castle we had visited earlier. I didn’t think there was such a building in the Imperial Palace, my last remembered location.

“Could this be Lord Croisen’s mansion…?”

My face grew cold as I considered the remaining possibility.

A slave like me oversleeping again in such a nice room. I checked my clothes in bewilderment. A flowing nightgown. Why was I wearing something like this? Without shackles.

Looking around again, I noticed several doors in the room. With no separate wardrobe, one of those doors must lead to a dressing room.

…Does a dressing room suit a slave?

I stood there somewhat dazed, not knowing what to do. Suddenly, the door opened.

“Who… are you?”

It was an unfamiliar woman. Neat attire with a white apron. The brown-haired woman entering with a rag widened her eyes in apparent shock upon seeing me.

“You’re awake…?”

The woman, who appeared to be a maid, placed the rag on top of a cabinet with a thud, looking displeased. Then she cleaned the room for quite some time with rough movements.

She seemed unwilling to talk to me, not even making eye contact. No response either. I had no choice but to stand there waiting awkwardly.

“I’ll bring your breakfast.”

A curt tone. The woman who finished cleaning left without giving me any explanation.

“Wait a moment.”

She closed the door despite my call.

Shortly after, the maid returned and placed a tray on the table in one corner of the room with a clatter. Did she have some complaint about me?

“Eat, and I’ll come back later to clean up.”

“Later?”

“Why? Are you going to pull a bell rope to have it cleared immediately? Do I look like a personal maid who serves slaves?”

I almost lost my words at her sharp retort.

“No. I was just going to ask if it wouldn’t be better for me to clean up right away.”

“It’s fine. We’ll clean it.”

“O-okay. But… I think the room has been wrongly assigned. Now that I’m awake, shouldn’t I move?”

The maid’s eyes narrowed.

“This is the right room, and your change of clothes is in the dressing room over there.”

“What?”

This is really my room? If a slave’s room is this large, then the maids’ rooms must be quite substantial too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t speak to a slave so matter-of-factly.

“Then what should I do now?”

The maid snorted at my question, seemingly dumbfounded.

“The Duke said to just do nothing and stay put.”

“What?”

The maid, no longer wanting to deal with me, turned and headed for the door. Then she muttered loud enough for me to hear.

“What’s this? I have to attend to a woman branded with a slave’s mark?”

The door closed with a ‘bang’.

A slave’s mark? At this strange phrase, I examined my body in the mirror. I noticed an odd trace inside my wide sleeve. With a foreboding thought, I raised my arm.

As the sleeve slid down, a terrible mark remained. A burn-like scar, seemingly made with fire, had formed where the shackle had been.