The emperor always came to me at night.
His face, when he looked at me, was filled with nothing but desire. The brilliance he showed in the daylight was nowhere to be found—he was more beast than man, moved by raw, untamed instinct.

Heat swept through my body. Even as the sensation pierced me from head to toe, I endured it.
Because I had a reason to endure.
Because there was a promise I absolutely had to keep.

I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to the edge of the sheet. The once-white fabric, now stained, was crumpled in my grip. My body instinctively recoiled, but the emperor did not stop. He let out a ragged breath, then pressed his hardened body even closer.

I bit the inside of my lip. I tried to withstand it, but the half-numbed ache that burrowed into me only grew sharper.

Desperate to hold on, I clung to the rhythm that had been forced upon me, silently counting in my head. Then, suddenly, the storm stopped.

The emperor’s hand cupped my cheek.

My face, which had been turned away, was lifted toward him. His hand was hot. Even when I tried to turn away, I couldn’t escape. In the end, I opened my eyes, and his movements stilled.

“Look at me properly.”

He tightened his grip on my chin. I didn’t want to see the muscles in his arms, the veins standing out on his thick neck, the hair clinging in damp tangles to his sweat-soaked brow.

Even on the day I was first seized by this man, during the forced marriage and humiliating consummation that followed, I tried not to look at him. But no matter which way I turned, I could not escape him. Not then. Not now.

“Isabel.”

It had been so long since I’d heard my name. The emperor did not miss the way I flinched at the sound.

“Stop looking away. Look at me.”

I met his eyes, burning into mine as if to consume me. For a moment, our gazes tangled in silence.

Eyes, dark as midnight, the eyes of the conqueror who trampled everything I had.

The emperor looked down at me, his lips set in a hard line. The gaze he fixed on me was deep, unyielding, and endless.

How long had it been since I truly met this man’s eyes?
His gaze looked desolate and cold, yet the heat radiating between us was still enough to burn. The steady pounding beneath us—thump, thump—felt almost contradictory to everything else.

As I struggled to catch my short, ragged breath, he moved again, releasing my chin. But immediately, the emperor seized my hand, interlacing his fingers with mine—just that, and he had pinned me completely. I swallowed a silent gasp.

“Sometimes, I wonder.”

His lips curled into a derisive smile as he leaned in, so close I could feel his breath, and I lowered my eyes again. At that moment, his open thumb brushed against my most sensitive spot.

“What are you thinking, at times like this?”

Ah, what am I supposed to be thinking…?

“Your sister?”

“……”

“Your father? Or maybe the others who died because of you?”

Trying to untangle my feelings was complicated. No, perhaps it was very simple. Every time the emperor did this, I felt suffocated.

Even when I was in so much pain that I could barely endure it, he whispered in his low voice on our wedding night that it was my duty to bear it. I was certain that’s what he said. Yet each time he came to me, he left more than just pain behind.

“Ah, I see.”

At that, the emperor’s fingers pressing into me twitched—like a hunter examining his trapped prey.

“You know the war started because of you, don’t you?”

His questions came, one after another, leaving me breathless.

I wanted to ask him why he kept asking me things like this. Isn’t all this time just spent thoroughly crushing and violating me? Isn’t it all just one-sided plunder? So why would what I think or feel matter to you at all?

My lips parted, but in the end, I made no sound. The emperor didn’t care. When my head fell against his shoulder, I choked back the cry that rose to my throat.

Inside, I was a mess—burning and throbbing with pain, but I forced it down. I would never let myself break in front of this man. The very thought was almost too much to bear.

Ah, Kailhardt. They call you the one and only savior.

It seems like everyone in the world loves you! They shout your name, pray for your long life and do anything to catch your gaze at New Year festivals.

But I remember the day your army set fire to my kingdom’s capital and burned it to the ground in an instant. That place wasn’t even the cradle where I was born and raised.

Yet I remember everything about that day—the castle shrouded in crimson embers, the broken bridge, the soldiers’ screams in the flames, and the hands of the maids clinging to my skirt as they died. I remember them all so vividly because they were things my sister loved.

The searing heat clouded my vision, and all I could do was grit my teeth once more. The window in the bedchamber rattled in the wind, the sharp sound merging with the hallucinated voices ringing in my ears.

“Survive, Sister.”
“And bear the child who will save us.”

It was my sister’s dying wish.

In place of our homeland, now burnt to nothing, her last words took root inside me, consuming me from within. Her final prophecy echoed ceaselessly at my ear.

“You’re always so pitiful when you’re like this. You know that, don’t you?”

Kailhart mocked me as he held me in his arms. His warmth felt unbearably cruel. Even after slaughtering everything I ever loved, you still want more from me.

“Still, you’ll have to accept me, Isabel.”

He spoke my name again. My eyelids trembled and my consciousness flickered into darkness—but it wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning.

It doesn’t matter if you only do this for your own pleasure. I’ll accept it all.

Because right now, I need you:

You’re the man who will father my child.

The man who will run alongside me forever — my unending misfortune.

🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁

There were endless rumors about the fallen princess, now reduced to the emperor’s spoil.

“They say the crown princess died without an heir, and so that princess became the last hope. Life is strange, isn’t it?”

“Haha, it seems even the famed eyes of Sainte-Au weren’t enough to protect the people she loved.”

Isabel had grown so accustomed to such words that they no longer hurt. Life here wasn’t so different from her homeland of Sainte-Au.

From the very beginning, there had always been a difference: the crown princess, who inherited the family’s powers perfectly, and the unwanted princess, whose origins were a mystery.

Isaya, the former crown princess of Sainte-Au and Isabel’s younger sister, could see the future as clearly as the palm of her hand.

It was the foundation and very heart of their nation that served the gods.

As heir to the throne and the family, Isaya’s eyes could foresee not just the fate of Sainte-Au, but the rise and fall of neighboring kingdoms as well, carrying the wisdom of countless generations.

“Still, for all her gifted eyes, she couldn’t see her own future, could she?”

She never saw it coming—her own death, at the hands of Kailhart, who is now the emperor.

It was all in the past.

They all said there was no use for a princess whose so-called “gifted” eyes couldn’t even see her own future.

The officials and treasurers who once pointed fingers at her, claiming she was better suited to working the fields than hidden away in the palace, were all gone now.

Not a single one of them escaped the flames that consumed the capital.

Such was the fate of a defeated nation.

All that remained was the last princess of a fallen kingdom.

The empire needed something—a focal point—to fully subjugate the surviving citizens and refugees of Sainte-Au. That role fell to Isabel.

A hostage, a spoil of war.

Ironically, it was only after being taken as a pawn by the empire that Isabel truly felt the weight of her title as princess—more so than she ever had in her own homeland.

“Still, she’s the only one left with royal blood,” people said.

Though she had always lived far from the world of power, Isabel became the last hope of the royal line.

The last hope.

And for Isabel herself, that was all she had left as well. Bearing a child—giving life to something new—was her sole reason for holding on. It was the only thing tethering her to this world.

“You never had a choice to begin with.”

Just before the wedding night, in the chapel, the emperor lifted the veil from Isabel’s faded, ash-gray hair and pressed a brief kiss to her lips—a verdict as cold as it was absolute.

It was merciless, but it was all she had.

When Isabel saw the hall filled with flowers in full bloom, she felt a sense of wrongness for the first time. No matter how splendid, those blossoms would never be seen by anyone but the two of them.

The wedding was just a symbol. It wasn’t the union of two powers, as in a typical political marriage—it was simply proof that the conquered had been trampled by the victor. There was no need for grandeur.

In fact, there was no need for a ceremony at all. So there were no witnesses, no guests, but even so, the emperor’s manner had been strangely courteous.

“So look at me.”

Not only that—the current emperor, the one who had crushed everything Isabel held dear—her loved ones, everything she had tried to protect—he declared,

“This is all that’s left for you now—for the rest of your life, you’ll have no choice but to cling to me.”

At that moment, he had looked genuinely pleased.

Even Isabel, insensitive as she was to most things, could see it.

A storm of emotion raged in his violet eyes as he looked down at her: pure possessiveness, black as night. She could see the thrill he felt at finally claiming what he had caught in his grasp.

“How are you feeling?”

A low voice suddenly came from behind.

Isabel’s body tensed.

She turned to find the emperor leaning against the door of her room, meeting her gaze. As he tilted his head and watched her closely, Isabel’s lips pressed into a thin line.