The Hydra Imperial Family, which held absolute power, had one legend.

The content of that legend was this: a child conceived from the emperor’s seed was always born a son. For the past several hundred years, only boys were born into the imperial family, so the legend was close to being an undeniable “fact.”

According to the legend, a child born a daughter in the imperial household must be a fake mixed with filthy outside blood.

People often said this jokingly, laughing as they spoke. It was a crude joke that wasn’t particularly funny.

But Rowen thought it would have been nice if she, too, could laugh at that kind of crude joke without a second thought. A fatal reason kept her from laughing at this joke.

That reason was simple: she was a girl born into the imperial family, in other words, a fake mixed with filthy outside blood.

Rowen’s mother, Erin, was born in Atleta, a vast land where endless grasslands stretched out. She was a dancer who lived freely, wandering from place to place without ever settling down.

At twenty, she left Atleta and traveled the world wherever her feet took her, and it’s said she met a lover she truly loved there.

A woman who wandered aimlessly and found true love. And a man who cherished her with all his heart.

Up to this point, their story was nothing more than an ordinary, clichéd love story one could hear anywhere. But the trouble in their story began after that.

While traveling with her lover, Erin came across the emperor of the Hydra Empire, who was there to conquer the land where they were staying. Actually, let me restructure that. While traveling with her lover, Erin encountered the emperor of the Hydra Empire. He had come to conquer the land where they were staying. The emperor crippled Erin’s husband, leaving both his legs useless, and exiled him to Atleta, a land with nothing but endless grasslands. Then he made the beautiful Erin one of his many wives.

After that, the emperor took Erin to bed many times, and eventually she conceived Rowen. It’s said that Erin cried every day, horrified that a child conceived from the emperor’s seed was growing inside her.

So she planned to kill the child the moment it was born and die alongside it, but when she actually gave birth, the baby turned out to be a girl.

For some reason, only boys were born into the Hydra Imperial Family. For the past several hundred years, this had remained an unchanging fact. But what came out of Erin’s womb was a girl.

The reason Rowen was born a girl wasn’t hard to figure out. There was no explanation other than that she wasn’t a child conceived from the emperor’s seed. In other words, Rowen was the child of the man who was crippled and driven out to Atleta.

An illegitimate child without a single drop of imperial blood, born into the Hydra Imperial Family, which held absolute power!

The moment this was discovered, both mother and child would surely lose their heads. Erin had originally planned to die with the child right after giving birth, but she immediately changed her mind and hid Rowen’s true identity. After all, Rowen was not the emperor’s child, but the child of the lover she loved.

The damnably fickle emperor forcibly took a woman who already had a lover, only to grow tired of Erin soon after. By the time she gave birth, he didn’t even visit her palace.

It was customary for the emperor himself to visit and personally name a child whenever a prince was born. But when Rowen was born, it wasn’t the emperor but his attendant who came instead.

Mocking Erin’s background as a dancer, he named the newborn baby Rowen. Rowen, as a prince’s name? No matter how one looked at it, it was a pretty name that didn’t sound like a boy’s name at all.

Both the emperor and his attendant surely believed Rowen was a boy carrying imperial blood. The emperor visited Erin so often, day and night, so how could he possibly suspect the child might be a girl?

But giving such a name to a child believed to be a boy was practically telling Erin that her standing was worth no more than that.

Still, Erin, the child’s mother, didn’t care what name the baby received. All that mattered to her was that Rowen was the child of the person she loved.

The person who delivered Rowen was an elderly maid named Noma. Noma was a maid, but she said that back in her younger days, in her hometown, she stood in for a midwife and helped deliver babies a few times.

She couldn’t speak and, being of low birth, couldn’t write either, but she took pity on the powerless mother and daughter and kept silent about Rowen’s true identity. Though it was less that she chose to stay silent than that she had no other option.

Ever since she was little, Rowen heard this story so many times she could have recited it herself. And every time the story ended, Erin would repeatedly caution her as follows:

The emperor of the Hydra Empire was, by nature, an extremely cruel man, so she must never let her true identity be discovered.

Growing up hearing her mother’s warnings from a young age, Rowen developed an intense wariness about being found out. She firmly believed that if anyone discovered she was a girl, she would be cruelly killed, her body torn in half by the emperor’s sword.

Mother and daughter promised each other that if the chance ever came, they would definitely escape this place. Every night, they lay in bed together and imagined a peaceful future.

Imagining going to Atleta and meeting her father. Imagining living on the wide grasslands, riding horses and herding sheep. They imagined countless other beautiful things besides.

“So Mother, you know how to ride a horse too?”

“Of course I do. I was the best rider among kids my age. When we go to Atleta someday, I’ll teach our Rowen too.”

“Wow! Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Riding horses sounds like so much fun…”

Rowen imagined herself riding a big horse across the wide grasslands and giggled with delight. Because of Erin’s teaching that she must live without drawing anyone’s attention, she never once left the palace. So even just imagining herself on horseback was enough to make her feel wonderful.

“Before Rowen turns fifteen, let’s definitely get out of here.”

The emperor kept many wives in order to secure the best possible heir. But unlike the emperor’s other wives, Erin, once a dancer, stood without any powerful backing.

A cold, poor palace that received no support. There, Erin and Rowen linked their little fingers and made a promise: to leave this place before Rowen turned fifteen.

So then, why did Rowen have to leave the imperial palace before she turned fifteen?

It was because of one method the Hydra Imperial Family used to secure powerful authority.

Generation after generation, the Hydra Imperial Family produced emperors with extremely strong military might.

They used their powerful military strength to expand their territory and strengthen imperial authority. This was possible because the imperial family used an extremely crude method for selecting their heirs.

To the east of the imperial palace stood a very large palace called the Crystal Palace. On the surface, it was supposedly a place like a school that taught the princes competition through communal living… But in reality, it wasn’t quite like that.

Every year, the imperial family herded all the princes who turned fifteen into that place, and they didn’t much care what happened inside. There was clearly an intention behind this: to make the princes fight among themselves by any means necessary to prove their ability to become emperor.

Rowen witnessed multiple times princes who entered the Crystal Palace alive coming back out as corpses.

Moreover, once someone entered the Crystal Palace, they couldn’t leave until an heir was confirmed, barring extraordinary circumstances. Not only that, having to live communally for a long time with countless princes whose eyes were clouded by hunger for power would only make it easier for her identity to be discovered.

So she could never go to a place like that. Rowen’s current age was twelve. She set a goal to escape together with her mother within the remaining three years.

* * *

The winter she turned fourteen, Rowen and Erin were caught by the guard while trying to escape the imperial palace.

Erin tried to explain that they weren’t trying to run away, but the guards showed no mercy. They dragged the two pitiful mother and daughter before the emperor, and it was then that Rowen met the emperor for the first time.