The woman was proud. Even with black hair soaked in sweat from pain clinging stickily to her skin, even with lips swollen cherry-red from holding back humiliation, even with silver eyes blazing and boiling with hatred.

“Have you found the whereabouts of the criminal?”

The woman was an emperor.

The reigning emperor of the great Lagrien Empire, and a hero who had destroyed the axis of evil: the Grand Witch, the Empress Dowager, who had ensnared the previous emperor with a curse and appointed herself regent.

In the past, before she had awakened to her power, the girl who had been called the Snow Princess and driven out in helplessness returned, exposed the true identity of the empress who had in fact been the Grand Witch, and seized victory.

But just as not every fairy tale ends beautifully, neither did her life.

The future that had seemed paved with nothing but flowers was stained a sticky, suffocating black.

“Speak! The trail of that criminal. Have you found it.”

“I apologize, Your Majesty. The last lead we found was one month ago. Her whereabouts since then are still…”

“Ha. D*mn it all. I never knew my knights were this incompetent.”

The Grand Witch, who had been confined to the tower, had succeeded in fleeing with her child. And even in the midst of it all, she had vanished after casting a vicious curse upon the bloodline of Lagrien.

And so, one year passed.

“This feels like absolute sh*t.”

Endless pain, agony, the collapse of her powers crumbling apart, the wretched sleep that dragged on like death, uncontrollable madness. All of it.

“Just how much longer.”

Through wave after wave of relentless curses, the woman, Iberis, held on without falling. She endured so fiercely that no one outside knew the emperor of the empire was currently weathering a curse.

Only two people knew the truth.

“Your Majesty, allow me to wipe away your perspiration.”

One was a woman who had seized the position of head lady-in-waiting at the imperial palace through a bold appointment at a young age: Maria Rian Mures. The second daughter of Count Mures’s household, and a friend who had stayed by Iberis’s side from the time she was a girl until now.

“Only give the order, Your Majesty. With your permission, I will pursue the Grand Witch to the ends of the earth and bring back her head.”

The other, murmuring with a hardened expression, was the most loyal sword of the empire who had saved Iberis’s life more than once, the strongest of all, her hands and feet. The commander of the imperial knights: Sirak.

“Is that witch the sort of person who’d be caught so easily? Ha. If she wanted to die, she could have done it cleanly.”

Clang. The sound of ice shattering rang out.

True to the imperial bloodline, born as descendants of the Water Dragon across generations, Iberis’s power was to wield water and ice like her own breath.

Her body, too, was unlike that of an ordinary human. From her slender, smooth, graceful limbs surged a monstrous strength capable of splitting boulders and overturning the earth, and hidden within her beautiful form was a regenerative power like that of a beast.

It was because she was who she was that she had endured until now. The Grand Witch’s curse, forged from a hatred that staked its very life on it, was extraordinarily vicious.

“Tch.”

As though the headache was flaring up again, she pressed hard against her temple, and the two rushed toward her. Lady-in-waiting Maria, who had been watching with worried eyes, finally pressed a cloth to the emperor’s forehead and wiped away the cold sweat.

“I’m fine.”

But she was not fine at all. In the end, a rush of blood, more vivid and red than her crimson lips, spilled out between them.

“Ugh.”

“Your Majesty!”

Even at Sirak’s voice, which was nearly a scream, Iberis retched up another rush of blood. It felt as though her insides were being turned completely inside out. Even for her, who had endured every manner of filth and hardship, this was a moment of pain almost too great to bear.

Like that, after a long stretch of time that felt like hell for all of them, Iberis composed herself and tilted her head back.

So it won’t do after all.

The limit of her body had come.

Left as she was, the fearsome power contained within this body would run rampant. If the power of Iberis, said to be nothing less than the incarnation of a dragon, were to go out of control, what kind of calamity would befall the empire?

She had to fulfill her responsibility as emperor.

Not for the sake of keeping this body alive, but for the empire. For the position she now stood in, built upon blood and death beyond counting.

By whatever means necessary, she had to stop this curse.

“Magic, medicine, knowledge. All useless. I even brought in witches and had them examine it, yet every one of them said there was no solution.”

“…I am sorry to say it is so. There is nothing I can do.”

“Huu.”

Sirak gripped the emperor’s hand, drained white. It seemed like a manner hardly befitting the commander of the imperial knights, yet the closeness between them, forged through countless brushes with life and death, was peculiarly intimate.

“Sirak, why do you make that face? I am not blaming you.”

“But.”

“More than that, it is rather amusing.”

“What do you mean, Your Majesty?”

Iberis twisted her lips.

“Is it not? In an ordinary fairy tale, this would be the point where a happy ending arrives. Looking at my life, it seems like it ought to resemble the protagonist of one, does it not? Was it not filthy and grueling and utterly exhausting? And yet the reward I receive is something like this! Ahaha!”

“Life is not a fairy tale, Your Majesty…”

At the joke-like words, the knight, whose tension had loosened, muttered as though he couldn’t believe it. Iberis laughed along with a small smirk and swept her sweat-soaked black hair back.

Thanks to her exceptionally fair and smooth skin, her black hair shone all the more strikingly.

Perhaps that was why, in her days as a princess, her nickname had been Snow, said to resemble white, dazzling snow.

“You never let up, do you. Right then, Maria. The request? Has the temple sent a reply?”

Iberis’s gaze turned this time to the lady-in-waiting. Maria, who had been smiling with her eyes cast gracefully downward, straightened herself and whispered quietly.

“A guest will be coming, Your Majesty.”

In the end.

“And the answer?”

“I was only told it cannot be carried and must be delivered in person.”

She had been careful to keep it from leaking outside as much as possible, but had been unable to resolve it.

With only the last resort remaining, borrowing the hand of another to find a solution, Iberis had in the end appealed for the voice of a god. The final means of standing against the Grand Witch’s curse: the power of a god. Prayer. The Oracle.

“Sirak.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Send your agents and make certain you find that woman and the witch’s daughter. No need to bring them back alive. Have them cut off their heads.”

A murderous gleam flickered in the one remaining gray eye of the knight commander, then vanished. If only the emperor would permit it, he would have set off himself that very instant and ridden across the continent in pursuit, but she had not allowed it, so he could not.

“Yes. I will see to it without fail.”

Iberis nodded and rose from her seat. Her graceful arms and legs resembled those of a swan, yet there was not the slightest impression of fragility. It was more the feeling of something terrifying, maintaining a beautiful outer shell, walking before one’s eyes.

Indeed, even the two closest to her felt a chill pass over the backs of their necks before it faded.

“My.”

Iberis smiled, bewitchingly.

“Maria, you have been toying with me.”

At the sudden words, Maria’s eyes flew wide open, unable to grasp the situation.

“Pardon? How could I dare.”

Iberis’s low laughter spread through the room.

“Why did you not announce that a guest was standing outside the door?”

At the same moment Maria’s breath caught sharply, the door to the emperor’s bedchamber opened without permission. Even setting aside the fact that no guards were posted during the moments when the madness came upon her, this was not a place one could reach so easily.

“…!”

Sirak’s reaction was the fastest.

In the blink of an eye, he leveled his drawn sword as though to take the head of the uninvited guest who had appeared at the door. It was a movement befitting the only person permitted to carry a sword even within the emperor’s bedchamber.

But the other party was no easy match.

“Is this how you treat a guest who has brought a solution, Your Majesty?”

That quiet voice. Yet the unyielding strength hidden within the soft, supple willow branch was the true power of the one who stood there.

“Why.”

Irritation crept into the corners of Iberis’s eyes.

“Why have you come in person?”

He was a man whose true age could not be known: a cardinal of the Central Temple. His name was Behil, his age impossible to estimate. Yet the man, whose face bore not a single wrinkle and was only beautiful, possessed long silver hair that trailed to the floor and mysterious silver eyes.

And furthermore.

“My, my. How can you glare so at a teacher you haven’t seen in so long? It seems your temperament has grown even rougher since ascending the throne.”

He was Iberis’s teacher.

That the girl who had been weak and ordinary before awakening to her bloodline of ice and water had been able to survive was not without the grace of her teacher Behil, who had broken his vow not to involve himself in worldly affairs and taught Iberis directly.

No. She owed him a very great debt.

That was true, and yet.

“Is it not because you are someone who teases your student at every turn?”

“When that student has come to look this wretched, how could I stay still? You broke your long stubbornness and asked for help, so of course I had to come.”

“You are truly unchanged.”

The one who impishly teased the emperor, who ought to stand above all others, was still someone difficult to handle. Even with positions reversed, that gaze is the same as ever. Iberis clicked her tongue and walked forward with composure.

“Now then, Iberis.”

“Yes.”

Her chemise, soaked through with sweat, was shockingly indecent, but there was no one here who paid it any mind.

“I will convey the voice of a god.”