Prologue

Click.

The surface of the heavy golden goblet struck the table and rippled blood-red.

The man, who had moved his Adam’s apple as he swallowed the liquor he had held in his mouth, turned his body slightly and looked back. At his movement, the candles lined densely along the wall all wavered at once.

“What is it that you wish to ask of me, then?”

Disbelief showed in the eyes of the man who raised his thick brows.

The upward tilt at the end of his words, as though he doubted his ears, could not fully settle because it was filled with layered suspicion. Considering the positions of the two of them, the words that had come from the woman could only be thought of as a bizarre joke.

But ironically, no one in this country would dare make a joke he had not permitted. Therefore, the man asked again as if to confirm it.

Adelaide lifted her head as though resisting the unsettling gaze pouring down on her. Looking straight into the man’s eyes, she repeated herself in a calm tone.

“I said that I wish for you to be the one to take my first night, Your Majesty.”

The floor, over which clear moonlight had been softly spread, was covered in dark shadow in an instant. Adele reflexively shrank back. Cobalt-blue eyes, with pupils sharply defined like those of a beast, were staring as if they would pierce through her own eyes.

The young Lord of the Erpe Empire, Karayan Magnus Skarda.

The Emperor, who was revered by everyone in Erpe from commoners to nobles, was the absolute ruler who had restored the name of Erpe when it had been laid waste by war and plague. At the same time, to his enemies he was also called [Bloody Karayan].

“Your Majesty, you said you would grant me one thing that I desire. I want you to keep that promise by sleeping with me.”

Adele did not speak in circles.

Because nothing could dress up this vulgar and blunt desire.

It did not matter how the other person thought of her.

Revenge, the release of pent-up resentment, to protect her final hope, or perhaps a fallen urge to rebel, wanting to break open the secret taboo that had made her turn her eyes away as if fleeing every time they met.

She was not even afraid that the Emperor might overturn her provocation.

To the Emperor Karayan, who did not even allow maids into his bedchamber, merely making such a proposal already amounted to inflicting humiliation and shame upon a vile man.

Karayan reached out and lifted the woman’s slender chin.

When his thick fingers touched her jawline, Adele reflexively lowered her gaze, but under his persistent stare, she had no choice but to meet his eyes.

“You want to lay with me?”

“…….”

“Are you saying I should s*ck your br*ast, probe your opening, and spill my seed inside you? Is that really what you mean to say to me?”

“…Yes, Your Majesty.”

Adele answered in a compliant voice.

It was a short answer, but there was not the slightest tremor in her delicate voice.

“Do you know what that means, to say such a thing? What it means in Erpe to spend the night with the Emperor.”

“It has been over five months since I came to Erpe. I have become somewhat familiar with the customary law.”

“Ha ha ha.”

The man, who had let his probing gaze linger, threw back his head and laughed. After laughing loudly enough to make the ceiling seem to shake, he soon curled the corner of his lips upward.

“You truly are beyond impudent. To dare ask the Emperor to share your bed. Ha ha ha.”

The eyes of the tall man, so tall that Adele had to tip her head far back just to meet them, slowly softened. Twisting up the corners of his mouth lightly, he asked as if testing her.

“Do you even know what lies beyond the wall facing my bed?”

Adele drew in a breath, as if to calm the heart pounding with tangled depravity and a coarse sense of triumph, and answered.

“I am on my way back from seeing His Highness the Prince enter his bedchamber with the Lady of Kensville.”

The man, who had been looking down at those calmly answering lips, stretched out an arm and caught her slender waist, pulling her into his embrace.

“Then, in place of that unsettling husband amusing himself with his mistress, I will gladly attend to you. If that is what you want.”

Karayan, who had swept the woman into his arms as if snatching up prey, cupped her peach-colored cheeks in his hand. When his touch landed, Adele stiffened faintly, and a strange gold glimmered in the eyes of Karayan as he met her gaze.

Adele’s pupils widened.

Her suspicious eyes chased the color that had brushed across her field of vision for a brief instant, but she could not find it again. Karayan’s eyes, already returned to blue, grew wet with greed.

“However, you should know that the beast you wish to lay with does not know how to stop.”

The man warned her while stroking the back of the prey that had rolled into his grasp with the tips of his fingers.

“And that my c*ck will not leave your hole until your slit opens like a pomegranate.”

The King of Sl*ughter, Bloody Karayan, whispered dangerously with a gaze damp with l*st.

Placing his lips on the nape where fine golden down trembled softly, he pulled the woman into his arms and took her rich milky skin into his mouth.

The Emperor, who sank sharp teeth like a viper’s into the nape that filled his mouth like sweet flesh, pressed his lips there and left his mark. Bright red blood congestion quickly rose on her pale skin. The man, who had wrapped one arm around the waist of the woman enduring the pain with her eyes squeezed shut, immediately headed for the bed.

The curtains fluttering down from the canopy frame above the bed were shoved harshly aside. Laying Adele down and climbing over her, Karayan stripped away the woman’s soft, flowing gown without hesitation.