Cardinal Behil’s soft lips parted. Soon, a mysterious tone that was neither quite human nor quite that of a fairy flowed out. Yet, mysteriously, in the ears of those who heard it, it transformed into human language and etched itself into their minds.

‘Ah.’

Great emperor, bloodline of the Dragon. Madness has seeped into that blood, and there is only one way to rid it.

When every last sentence had ended, an icy silence spread through the bedchamber.

Unable to contain his passion, Sirak’s sword dared to nick the cardinal’s neck. Maria dropped the silver tray she had been holding, and it rang out with a clang. And Iberis.

“Ha.”

Iberis, having heard all of it, laughed with a brightness and beauty that was somehow striking. It was a sign that her fury had reached its peak.

“What you are telling me, Teacher, is.”

Silver eyes full of irritation turned toward her teacher and guide, whose eyes shone with a light similar to her own, and who was a hand of god in whose veins, perhaps, the blood of the imperial line might flow.

“That I should go and f*ck someone?”

* * *

The day after the hand of god had withdrawn, the emperor, who had been pretending to go about her day as usual in the office, suddenly burst out laughing.

“Pfuhaha!”

Maria, who had been watching her with uneasy eyes, drew closer to check whether her sovereign had lost her mind.

Iberis, who had been laughing loudly, quietly opened her mouth.

“Life never gives you a moment to be bored.”

“Your Majesty.”

The words of the cardinal, her teacher and the one who had come to deliver the voice of god, drifted up in Iberis’s mind like fog.

‘You must find four men who meet the conditions. The Oracle will descend once a week, so you must find without fail the men whose conditions will save you.’

It was not a difficult thing.

Iberis was a powerful emperor. In some respects, she had seized power strong enough to be called a tyrant, and stained her hands with a great deal of blood.

So that no one who dared to harbor thoughts of rebellion in the presence of the emperor could ever appear again. So that no one who sought to exploit the imperial bloodline could ever appear again.

She had become an even more tenacious and fierce force, suppressing those around her, and climbed to this position. She had unshakeable power to match, and if she so wished, her agents would scour every last rat hole to find those men who met the conditions.

Though she had not managed to find the Grand Witch.

Well, that was because the opponent was a monstrous being of inhuman strength.

D*mn it. Iberis muttered the curse quietly and swept her hair back in a tangled mess, as she always did out of habit.

Maria watched sadly as the long black hair that had been neatly arranged fell into disarray, but seeing the silver eyes flickering with murderous intent toward the Grand Witch, she could not bring herself to say a word of protest.

Iberis, who had been told not to do it with one man but four, had her eyes half rolled back. That savage smile belonged less to a human than to a wild beast.

“Maria. So then, the information on these four magnificent saviors of mine?”

“As you know, the Oracle is said to descend at weekly intervals, so information on the first individual should be arriving around now.”

“The one who moved on it.”

“Sirak.”

For the Oracle to be received in full, the cardinal must return to the Grand Temple. Since his coming in person all the way to the imperial palace where she resided had been a special occasion, from here on Sirak would handle it exclusively and receive the information in secret.

So then, to find the four men who would do that wretched thing with her. Even thinking about it again made her so furious she kept bursting into laughter.

Setting aside the fact that she had never been with anyone, she had not the slightest interest in that sort of physical relationship to begin with. She had virtually no s*xual desire whatsoever. And you’re telling me to do what?

“It’s unpleasant enough that I have to expose my weakness to strangers whose faces I don’t even know, and now you’re telling me to do that on top of it. I simply cannot contain my rage.”

“Please calm yourself.”

“But what infuriates me even more is that I know what my choice will be in the end.”

Left as she was, her body would crack and crumble. If all her power ran rampant and dyed the empire in ice, that Grand Witch would finally show herself and burst out laughing.

She would witness the completion of the curse and rejoice in ecstasy. That was a sight she could not bear to see, even in death.

“This is my empire.”

What had been taken from her. The rightful place.

“It was mine from the very beginning.”

And yet what grievance did that witch have, that she had poured what seemed like her entire being into completing such a vicious curse?

Iberis had done nothing wrong to begin with. They had simply been choices made in order to survive.

One day, her lovely and beautiful mother collapsed. After the death of the mother who had been praised as a wise and sagacious empress, everything fell apart.

The emperor, who had been a benevolent ruler who ushered in an era of peace, took a new empress consort less than a month after her mother’s funeral.

A woman with a strikingly seductive figure, and something strange about her. The moment Iberis laid eyes on her, she disliked the woman who had become her stepmother. It was because she had an inexplicably ominous feeling about her.

But the Snow Princess, who was only beautiful and had not yet properly awakened to the power of the Dragon, had no strength to resist.

Her father seemed to be going mad by degrees. He permitted things that made no sense and gave power to the empress consort. And around the empress consort, an unsettling number of people began to die.

But power flows from the emperor’s favor. There was no one who could point a finger at the one cherished by the master of the empire and drag her down.

And at last, the woman became pregnant.

Iberis was the only one who suspected that the empress consort’s belly was swelling far too quickly.

That woman is not an ordinary human. She began to dig into her past, but the empress consort struck first and began to frame her.

What followed was a stretch of days that was agonizing beyond description. Then she discovered that the woman was the Grand Witch hiding her true identity, but her father collapsed first.

‘That wench has dared to harbor treasonous ambitions and has struck down her own father!’

It was still vivid. The knights, as though being puppeted, driven to fury and trying to execute the princess.

The wicked empress consort laughing with glee. And the black flag that announced her father’s death.

Pitifully, she was driven out of the palace. Hunted down like an animal.

In the midst of her wretched flight, she received salvation from unexpected strangers. Sirak’s sacrifice followed as well.

At the very brink of death, she finally awakened to the power of the Dragon, and much was overturned, and at last she brought about the Grand Witch’s defeat. And yet.

“After struggling so hard, and this is where I end up.”

“……Iberis.”

Maria, who was a friend before she was a subject, swept back Iberis’s disheveled hair with a sorrowful expression. Iberis drew that hand toward her and pressed her lips to it, then let out a sigh and smiled.

“Who could have known I’d end up taking four lovers?”

Maria was silent for a moment before she spoke with care.

“Don’t despair. I am by your side. Sirak will always have your back too. We won’t let anyone know this secret. Whoever your men may be……”

The pale green eyes of Maria, who always appeared so composed, filled with a cold gleam.

She was playing the part of a docile head lady-in-waiting now, but true to someone who had remained until the very end among those who had shared the road of flight together, Maria’s abilities were exceptional as well.

She was a born swordswoman.

“We’ll bring them before you by whatever means necessary. So they don’t dare get any strange ideas, we’ll cut out their tongues, cut off their hands, cut off their legs if we have to, and make them cooperate.”

At those gruesome words, Iberis finally burst out laughing. There was nothing that face of hers, so demure in appearance, couldn’t say.

“You want me to grind my hips on top of a body with all its limbs cut off, with nothing left but a c*ck standing at attention?”

With a smile, Maria returned to her usual self, covering the corner of her mouth coyly as she laughed.

“That’s not so bad either, is it, Your Majesty?”

Well, it’s not bad, is it?

If she truly found them unbearable.

Or if the worst came to pass.

She could only hope the four men would obediently bow their heads before the emperor. That way, wouldn’t they all arrive at a favorable outcome for one another?

And that evening.

“Your Majesty.”

Sirak held out a single sheet of paper imbued with divine power. Written in her teacher’s familiar hand was information about a certain someone.

Reading it, Iberis’s eyes twisted in a peculiar way. Of all people, truly of all people, this man.

“Given who the other party is, we can’t very well cut off his limbs and bring him in, can we, Maria? What a pity.”

“Ah.”

A look of profound regret surfaced on the face of the lady-in-waiting, who had been reading the information alongside her.

The one who had to quell the emperor’s curse. The first man. The person she needed to be with immediately was someone even an emperor could not easily abduct.

“Of all people, this one.”

None other than…

The one who ruled the harsh land of snowfields, the frozen earth of the North.

“This is truly damned.”

He was the only noble who dared to defy the reigning emperor, refusing to come up to the central imperial capital: Grand Duke Lionel Belfer Ires.

Iberis exhaled a deep sigh and let her eyes gleam coldly. But no matter who the other party was, she had to make him cooperate without fail.

“Listen. We need to lay a trap to catch a beast.”

To drag in the one who would sooner die than come up to the imperial capital.

By whatever means necessary.