A large hand seized her black hair once more. Anticipating the pain of it being pulled tight, Sehwa squeezed her eyes shut.

But she was wrong. Her master exerted the slightest pressure with his fingers, only to release it a moment later. His fingers then slid down her smooth hair until they reached her neck. Sehwa flinched at the warmth of his body against her skin. Hwon smirked at her reaction, bent over her, and blew warm breath against her ear as he spoke.

“You look dreadful.”

“……”

“And yet that only makes you lovelier. So lovely that merely looking at you feels like a waste.”

As Hwon straightened after speaking, he caught sight of a red wound beneath the open collar of Sehwa’s clothes, near her shoulder blade and extending below it. It was broad and irregularly shaped. She appeared to have applied medicine promptly, as the marks had faded, but it was unmistakably a burn.

“Who was it this time? Which of my noble ladies did you displease?”

Hwon’s wives and concubines despised Sehwa. It was only natural for them to resent their husband paying her attention. However, some of them took it too far. They tormented her by pouring scalding tea over her, finding fault with her for no reason and ordering her to be beaten.

To a certain extent, Hwon pretended not to notice how his wives and concubines treated her. In fact, at times he even appeared to encourage them. However, he had not overlooked the concubine who had once allowed her jealousy to overwhelm her and used deadly poison.

The concubine who used the poison was Hwon’s third wife, from the Yi family. Her grandfather had once held a fairly prestigious government post. The Yi family was reasonably influential too, and even after her grandfather retired, two of his four sons still held positions at court.

However, none of this mattered in the face of Hwon’s blade. After discarding Lady Yi, Hwon expelled her relatives from the royal court. Her fate was sealed when she was expelled from the prince’s residence and returned to her ruined family. Yet despite having witnessed everything that had happened, it seemed that someone still had not learned their lesson.

“I-I did this…… while…… while working.”

Sehwa lied because she did not wish to cause needless trouble. Naturally, Hwon saw through her immediately. He seized her chin tightly, forced her head up, and barked,

“Uttering lies before your master is a grave offense punishable by the loss of your tongue.”

Sehwa believed that Hwon was perfectly capable of cutting out her tongue. After all, he was a cruel and merciless man, like a yaksha, with no restraint when it came to brutality. She kept silent and lowered her gaze. She was afraid. She feared the man before her so deeply that she could not bring herself to look at his face. Whenever she saw her master, her head spun and her vision clouded over.

“You will not even tell me who did it…… How dull. But why are you trembling so badly? What have I done to frighten you?”

Hwon’s expression turned peculiar when he felt her trembling beneath his hand. He seemed both pleased and displeased by Sehwa’s reaction.

“Did you perhaps bring another man here while I was away? Are you trembling because you fear being discovered?”

His grip suddenly tightened. The pain made her feel as though her head might be wrenched from her neck. For a fleeting moment, Sehwa caught sight of Hwon’s eyes, twisted and shimmering with an eerie light, and hurriedly cried out.

“N-no!”

“Is that so? Good.”

Unlike the desperate Sehwa, Hwon responded with such indifference that it was almost deflating, then released her. Sehwa bowed her head, pressing a hand to her throbbing jaw.

“Hmm……”

Hwon caressed her. His large hand smoothed her disheveled hair before suggestively fondling the side of her neck. Knowing what awaited her, Sehwa squeezed her eyes shut and briefly gathered her thoughts.

“Y-Your Highness.”

Silence lingered between them before Sehwa spoke first this time. Hwon stroked the cheek of the woman gazing up at him imploringly, then corrected her firmly.

“Master.”

“……”

“You are nothing more than a lowly slave—my property. Yet you still have the insolence to behave as though you were free.”

“M-Master.”

“Speak.”

When Sehwa quickly corrected how she addressed him, Hwon graciously gestured for her to continue. Watching his expression carefully, Sehwa began shedding heavy tears as she pleaded.

“I-I want to see the baby.”

“……”

“Please let me see him. J-just once, please…… Please allow me to see my baby just once.”

This was why Sehwa had failed to pay attention to her master when Hwon arrived. She had only recently given birth to the child of the man standing before her. However, the moment the baby was born, her master took him away and gave him to Buyong, the principal wife of the household.

At Hwon’s request, Buyong refused to let Sehwa see even the tips of the baby’s toes. Consequently, during the three months that Hwon was away at war, Sehwa could only hear her child crying.

Even though she knew she might be beaten for it, Sehwa secretly watched the wet nurse holding the baby from afar. These opportunities were exceedingly rare, however, meaning that Sehwa was unable to properly recognize her own child’s face.

The day Hwon returned home presented Sehwa with another opportunity to see her child. Standing at the back, she craned her neck as far as possible to steal glances at the wet nurse standing behind the ladies — or rather, at the bundle in her arms. Of course, all she could see was the silk swaddling cloth wrapped around the baby.

“How very strange. Why would the likes of you wish to see my child?”

“……”

“Surely you are not making the absurd claim that he belongs to you merely because you gave birth to him?”

Could Hwon really have been oblivious to Sehwa’s desperate longing? No — if anything, he understood it all too well. And yet he had cruelly separated her from the child immediately after his birth. Then, as he did today, he held the child close and toyed with her desperate yearning.

“Please… I will do anything you ask, so…”

Whenever Hwon used the child to control her, Sehwa felt as though she could not breathe. The agony was so unbearable that she wondered if biting her tongue off and dying would hurt less. Yet the thought of her baby stopped her from doing so. Hwon knew that, and that was precisely why he tormented her however he pleased.

“Th-the baby cries. I can hear him all the way from the outer quarters, and I cannot sleep at all.”

“……The outer quarters?”

Sehwa pressed herself close to him and pleaded. However, her words soured Hwon’s mood. Once again, he seized her by the hair and wrenched her head back.

“Ah……”

“Did you move to different quarters?”

“I-I wanted to…… A slave ought to live there, so I……”

“Insolent wench.”

Slap.

Without hesitating for a moment, he released her hair and lightly struck her. Sehwa did not even scream at the man’s touch. From the moment she saw her master’s expression, she knew he was going to hurt her. Although it happened far less frequently than before, Hwon’s violence towards Sehwa had become habitual — he regarded it as his natural right.

“As your master, I decide where you reside. It is not yours to choose.”

“I was wrong…… Forgive me.”

Knocked down by the force of his blow, Sehwa immediately pushed herself upright and shuffled forward on her knees until she was pressed close to Hwon. Her reddened cheek stood out vividly beside her black hair, yet she did not even rub the burning skin.

“You look displeased. Hmm?”

“No. How could I dare……?”

Sehwa immediately submitted to Hwon’s reproach. Lowering herself flat against the floor, she rubbed her aching cheek against his leg. It was behavior learned through experience—a practiced display of affection meant to soothe her master’s anger.

“What a pleasing sight.”

There was no soul in her pale face, her gaze vacant and unfocused. Yet Hwon’s eyes curved as he burst into laughter. His pleasant voice burrowed into Sehwa’s ears.

Sehwa squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered more than two years ago, when she had first been dragged into his residence and thrown onto the bed in his chambers. As she wept and begged, her former betrothed—no, her master—had mounted her while laughing just like this, as though utterly satisfied.

Without realizing it, Sehwa raised her head slightly and looked at Hwon. Mistaking her expression for confusion, Hwon spoke.

“I mean that it pleases me to see you understand your position as nothing more than my slave girl.”

“……”

“Until about a year ago, you behaved like an unruly savage. You remember that perfectly well, don’t you? You acted like someone important, as though you were special. Your spirit was so fierce that it became tiresome to have you beaten every day, but I am glad you have finally become a docile slave girl who responds well to my touch.”

“……”

“I even feel a sense of accomplishment. You may be nothing more than a slave girl, but I seem to have tamed you remarkably well. It pleases me greatly.”

“……”

“Since I, your master, am pleased, you must be pleased as well. Are you not?”

“Yes.”

Sehwa agreed without hesitation. Yet, for some reason, despite her docile response, her master fell silent.

Her dull eyes, reminiscent of a dead fish’s, seemed to meet Hwon’s gleaming gaze.

Or rather, it merely appeared that way.

In truth, Sehwa’s eyes held nothing at all.