“My sister became a cold corpse protecting your damned sovereign. Not a single apology, not a word of comfort. We couldn’t even find her body. And now what? Grace a seat at the social season? Has that woman truly lost her mind?”

“I warned you. I will not tolerate further insolence. Will you comply with the order?”

Lionel burst out laughing. His fury had reached its peak and laughter came out. His boiling hatred made him level the gun barrel once more. In his eyes, the imperial knight commander was the emperor herself.

“I wonder what expression the emperor would make if I killed you and sent you as a gift.”

“I told you I would not be taken down easily.”

“True, I might die and you might die along with me. That alone would be a severe blow to the emperor.”

“You hold a love for the land of the North that borders on obsession. You could never throw your life away so lightly.”

“……”

“And are you not curious? Why Her Majesty is summoning you in a manner like this? Go and see for yourself. Don’t make a foolish choice.”

At the opponent’s unshakeable reply, the volcanic heat of Lionel’s feelings began to settle and cool like ice. The reason he had been trying to shut out finally returned, and he turned things over in his mind, the state of his territory, the rumors circulating through the empire.

The empire is stable. There had been those who pointed fingers and called her a tyrant, but all who resisted Iberis’s harsh measures had been purged.

And yet.

‘It’s already well known that the Grand Witch escaped.’

That vicious woman, the Empress Dowager.

The woman who had seduced and brought down the emperor, then taken the empire into her own grasp. The false sovereign who had gone so far as to bear a child of the imperial bloodline, playing regent and dreaming of the future. That woman’s orders had reached Lionel once.

‘Grand Duke, I give you a command. The Snow Princess, that runaway girl. Bring her to me and offer me her heart. In return, the power of the North will shine without ever setting. What say you?’

It had been a tempting command.

Truly, a tempting command.

“If you ignore this order.”

At that moment, Sirak’s words shattered Lionel’s recollection. In the cold reality before him, the watchdog of the woman he hated fixed him with a cool stare.

D*mn it.

It was infuriating. Who was the one who had every right to be furious here. Was his hatred not justified. The sister he had cherished so dearly had died in the emperor’s place, as her shadow!

“If I don’t comply, what will you do? Are you going to threaten me?”

“Yes. You will not like what follows.”

“Excuse me?”

For a moment Lionel raised an eyebrow, wondering if he had heard wrong.

“These are additional words Her Majesty asked me to convey. It is indeed a threat. If you do not comply willingly, the merciless spears and swords of the imperial household will be directed toward the territory of the North.”

“……”

“She said to tell you: do not think that what was done once cannot be done twice.”

Curses surged up in a way unbefitting of him. What in the hell is this mad woman trying to do? That would be civil war. No, threatening to bring down the land of the North, which has been steadfastly holding back the monster invasions, with her own hand is an act of s*icide!

“D*mn it.”

“Watch yourself.”

But the maddening thing was that this damned woman did what she said she would do. Now that she had ascended the throne, there was no one left to stop her either.

He knew it. Iberis had been half out of her mind even back when she was called the Snow Princess, frail and delicate as she appeared. Snow Princess? Her outward appearance was beautiful, but there was a beast living inside.

So he could not afford to take that threat lightly.

His teeth ground together in the humiliation of submission.

Right then, if he could not stop it, he had better go and see. What this mad emperor was trying to do, that she would go to all this trouble to summon him?

What exactly did she want to gain?

“Fine.”

With his own two eyes.

“I’ll accept the damned invitation.”

He would see.

* * *

There was no one who didn’t know that the relationship between the emperor and the Grand Duke of the North was at its absolute worst.

In the days when the current emperor’s life was being threatened by the Empress Dowager, there were not many who followed Iberis after she escaped the imperial palace.

Sirak, now the emperor’s most loyal knight. Maria, the second daughter of Count Mures’s household, who occupied the position of head lady-in-waiting at the imperial palace at an age that was young, even too young. And Elizabeth of House Ires, who, contrary to her family’s stance of neutrality, had actively protected Iberis and traveled alongside her.

Of those, Elizabeth had become a cold corpse. It later came to be known that she had died taking in the curse and poison of the Empress Dowager, who had been the Grand Witch.

Perhaps because of that. The current Grand Duke, Lionel, who had cherished his younger sister dearly, hated the emperor.

That said, House Ires, loyal subjects of the empire, had not gone so far as to commit treason, but he was the only one who had directly resisted the rule of Iberis, who had become the emperor of blood.

After endlessly standing in opposition, he had at last returned fully to his territory and guarded only the snowfields of the North. It had been nearly a year since he had set foot in the imperial capital.

And then, suddenly, a rumor spread that he had accepted the emperor’s invitation and was expected to make an appearance at the upcoming social season.

People were hopeful. Had the empire’s pillar finally had a change of heart, and was he now prepared to pledge his full loyalty to Her Majesty the current emperor?

Of course. It was a misunderstanding only those who did not know the full story could make.

* * *

“You’re looking at me like I’m prey. You are still as lawless and insolent as ever.”

Sitting in a magnificent golden chair, flicking her nails with an air of boredom as she spoke, Iberis watched as the master of the North, who had not even deigned to kneel before her, looked up at her and let out a scoff.

“What was that invitation about?”

It was a face he had not seen in nearly a year.

Looking at the woman’s face, which shone just as brightly as ever without having changed in the slightest, Lionel wore an expression that said he was on the verge of going mad with hatred.

“It would have been so much better if you had come willingly.”

“Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Ho, am I even your emperor?”

“……”

The moment those deep, sunken blue eyes opened again, the man who had openly mocked her uttered words one could not dare imagine.

“Iberis, why should I accept your invitation?”

“Haha!”

Speaking informally, and daring to address her without a title on top of it. If Sirak had been present, a sword would have been flying at his neck on the spot.

Under her quietly watching gaze, Lionel’s expression twisted grotesquely.

“What. Are you thinking of killing the Grand Duke of the North for the crime of insolence? If that is what you want, then do it. The empire will soon be overrun by monsters and reduced to rubble.”

Iberis’s eyes narrowed.

“Your tongue is as vicious and foul as ever.”

“Did you expect me to suddenly grovel? That’s not even funny. I would sooner die.”

In the emperor’s audience chamber, there was only the emperor and her guest, Lionel.

Lionel, who hated her but knew her quite well, also knew that this woman was not the sort to be angered by something like this.

Whatever he did, she would laugh it off. As though it were all simply the price for his sister’s death. Lionel could not stand any of it.

“Stop toying with me and speak. If you don’t explain yourself properly, social season be damned, I’m going back to the North and never setting foot here again!”

“What is it you want me to say?”

“Why you sent that pathetic little invitation to summon me here! You must already know full well that we are not on terms to be meeting face to face.”

He glared at the emperor, who gave a small laugh, and then she stopped laughing abruptly and looked straight at Lionel. He furrowed his brow at the somehow ominous and chilling air about her, and the woman opened her mouth.

“Very well. Then let me ask. Grand Duke, do you still want to kill me?”

It was an outrageous question.

“You’re asking that, knowing full well the answer?”

Crack. A chilling sound came from the fist clenching back its murderous intent.

“Of course.”

Unable to contain his fury, his nails tore into the flesh of his hardened, trained palm and drew blood.

“I want to kill you.”

It was then. The woman who was strikingly black-haired and white-skinned, her eyes half lowered, looked at him and descended from that towering chair.

“Is that so? So I can take it to mean that you want to bring me down, in the end.”

“What?”

Her monstrous physical ability was not that of a human, and with an irritating swiftness, in the blink of an eye she was right before his face.

“What…!”

“Shh.”

He flinched and tried to step back, but her cold, white hand reached him first. Damned as it was, in that moment he was so startled he froze solid as ice. He could not even push her away.