“You will be the woman who sits in the highest seat.”

Amelline’s life was perfect.

As the beloved only daughter of the prestigious and powerful Marquis Sez, she had had everything she desired from the moment she was born.

She was more beautiful and intelligent than most of her peers, and she carried herself with a confidence that, in others, might have been perceived as arrogance.

However, for a girl destined to become empress, chosen by the goddess herself, that was seen as a virtue, not a flaw.

“Can you believe she’s working as a clerk, not even a maid, just to survive? What a disgrace. That Inès girl is truly pitiful, Mother.”

But the first crack in Amelline’s seemingly perfect life appeared when she was seventeen.

It began with Inès, a distant cousin who had lived off the family’s charity and who, thanks to the Marquis’ intervention, had secured a lowly position among the lesser nobility.

Amelline had once felt a certain fondness for Inès.

Admittedly, she was pitiable and insignificant, but Amelline had found her sharp, intelligent eyes amusing.

Watching her struggle to climb the social ladder evoked sympathy in Amelline.

In fact, Amelline had even asked her father to take the girl on over dinner.

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t you understand? That wretched girl, Inès, has taken your place! His Majesty has announced that he will marry her!”

Who could have known?

The girl who had pretended not to care for him, a creature without gratitude would turn out to be this.

In an instant, Amelline lost her fiancé.

Even her father’s power was useless.

She was discarded overnight.

“What have I done wrong? In what way am I lesser than her?”

Having her entire life stolen by someone she’d always considered inferior was beyond humiliating.

For the first time, Amelline lowered her head under the weight of whispers.

Misery and unspeakable disgrace consumed her.

But what she could not bear, what truly shattered her was seeing another woman in her place:  At his side.

“You will be the woman who sits in the highest seat.”

Since she stopped speaking as a child, Amelline had heard those words again and again.

She believed them to be true. It was her destiny. If only the man meant to be hers had been dull and unremarkable, it wouldn’t have hurt so much.

But she had loved Charles ever since she first met him at the age of ten. Of course she had. After all, he was the one the goddess had chosen to walk beside her.

When Inès finally bore Charles a son, Cedric, Amelline, who had prayed to the goddess with all her heart, threw herself from her chamber window.

She survived. However, both her legs were shattered. The injuries left lasting scars.

Although she could still walk, she would never be able to dance again.

Once she had recovered, the Marquis who had once told her to forget the Emperor was the first to ask.

“Did you truly still want the Empress’s seat?”

Amelline answered. She wanted to stand beside Charles. She wanted to reclaim the life that had once been hers.

What followed was a series of coincidences.  Whenever the Emperor quarreled with the Empress, Amelline was always close by.

That day was no different.

Soaked to the bone in the rain, she was rescuing a fallen fledgling. It was there, in the darkened garden, that she crossed paths with the Emperor.

He was heavily drunk. He had long carried the guilt of ending their engagement so abruptly. This guilt had caused him to avoid her all these years. But not that night.

“I never imagined this side of you. I thought beasts only cared for what they claimed as theirs.”

It was pitiful… Abandoned and alone in the rain. It had fallen from its place and was unable to return.

“I couldn’t just walk past. My both legs were broken. I would have died like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“…..”

“Your legs… and everything else. I’ve said it before, but I’ve always felt bad about it. I’m truly sorry.”

The Emperor bowed his head repeatedly before leading the shivering, soaked woman into a nearby palace.

There, with a drink in hand, he began to lament once more.

“Inès doesn’t love me. She never has and she never will. She chose me for a reason. A very specific reason.”

Ines remained unchanged.

Amelline collapsed drunkenly into the arms of the pitiful Emperor, looking down on him once again. As might have been expected given her birth, she had never loved the Emperor purely.

Having rejected the goddess’s teachings, she sought not grace, but greed, seizing the Emperor’s side for her own selfish desires. Now, having achieved her goal, she only brings him pain.

“I love you.”

“…”

“I have always loved you, Your Majesty. I have always been ready to love you, and my heart has never changed. I love you, Charles.”

Amelline whispered words of love. Did the Emperor reciprocate? She could not remember, but she believed he must have.

Of course, her happiness was short-lived, just a fleeting illusion. Although the goddess had granted her wish, she was still testing her faith. Being reduced to nothing more than a woman, not even a mistress for one night, was an insult she could hardly bear. How could she live with such disgrace?

At dawn, the Emperor left alone and later sent her gifts as payment for his ‘mistake’. Amelline shattered and burned them all. There could be no greater humiliation.

Had it ended there, she might have thrown herself from the fortress ramparts or the palace’s tallest tower, where the emperor could see her fall.

But the goddess sent her a sign. From that night onwards, life took root within her.

Amelline gave birth to a healthy son at her rural estate. Unlike the wretched creature born of Ines’s tainted blood, he was beautiful and noble.

After the birth, she was plagued by nervous exhaustion. Bearing a child out of wedlock was torment beyond words. Although she told herself it was the will of the goddess, she could feel the eyes of the world upon her. No one said a word aloud, yet she could still hear their whispers.

‘What must they be saying in the capital?’

What would become of the child who had been adopted as her younger brother, but who was actually the Emperor’s own child? Her days were steeped in shame and humiliation.

Just before she lost her mind completely, she was finally granted a moment of sweetness, like the wine a priest sips after years of penance.

Ines was dead. Slain by one of the goddess’s own devotees. Miserably. Perfectly so. Only then did Amelline feel that she had reclaimed everything.

‘The goddess has not forsaken me. My suffering was only the path to growth.’

At last, she was by her beloved’s side, and with that came the exalted title of empress.

Her son, once born in disgrace, had now been legitimized by imperial decree. His age had been reduced by several years in the records, but what did that matter? The glory awaiting him would far outlast any falsified past.

Yet the storm that had once shattered Amelline’s life had left deep scars.

The Emperor remained proper towards her, respectful, thoughtful and considerate. But his eyes would never blaze for her again. The bedchamber they once shared remained empty.

And Ines would not rest.

Year after year, her name returned, clinging like a curse. Memorials were held every season, as if death itself could not silence her.

If it had ended there, Amelline might have endured it. She might have convinced herself that seclusion within the palace was mercy shown to the dead.

‘If only it had ended there.’

The serpent that sought to steal all of Cedric’s blessings, which Ines had left behind, was just like her; she had stolen and devoured his life, too.

Cedric. That thing.

Whenever people addressed Inès’s son as the crown prince and Charles looked upon him with affection, Amelline trembled with humiliation. The disgrace was revived, sharp and vivid. Fury boiled up so violently that she could hardly breathe.

“Crown Prince. Is it ignorance that makes you so rude? Has no one ever taught you manners?”

Amelline and Cedric did not get along. She had no intention of changing that. Cedric felt the same way.

She did everything in her power to erase the mark of Ines, to destroy the thing that had stolen her son’s rightful place. When her father, her strongest ally, passed away, it was Amelline who gathered his scattered followers and rebuilt their strength, refusing to let his legacy die.

Only when Cedric was gone could she finally claim what was meant for her alone. Then, and only then, would her life become as perfect as it had been destined to be since childhood.

This conviction had driven her like fire all these years.

“Get rid of them! Even if you must send soldiers, tear down every impure thing that creature has built!”

And yet, why was it that, now she was finally standing against him in a bitter, exhausting struggle, he was the one in danger?

Barred from entering the Central Palace because of Cedric, the Empress had spent hours screaming in her chambers.

“I give you my word, Empress. If that boy, Cedric, turns from mercy and harmony toward discord and division, if you ever see that there is no longer hope in him then I shall grant Gerard his chance.”

She had to show him. She had to prove that Ines’s actions were evil and should be rejected. She had to make Charles see that he had been deceived by the monster posing as his family. She was certain she could do it.

“No, I’ll go myself. Prepare the carriage. I’m going to the Central Palace!”

Driven to desperation, the Empress wrecked her room in a frenzy before catching her breath and preparing herself again. This time, she was determined to force her way in, even if it meant spilling blood.

But before she could leave the room, someone burst in without permission.

“Your Majesty, the Empress!”

“The Marquis?”

Her elder brother, the Marquis of Sez, had inherited their father’s title years ago. His sudden arrival at the Empress’s residence caused her to frown angrily, as he would have to confront Cedric in order to gain entry to the Central Palace.

“You must leave the palace at once! If you stay here, the Crown Prince will have you killed!”

“Who will kill whom? That lowborn wretch? K*ll me?”

“The Emperor is dying! And the things he’s done—”

Smack!

Before he could finish speaking, the Empress slapped him across the face. The blow was so powerful that he staggered backwards.

“Who is dying?”

“…”

“How dare you speak such nonsense! Who is dying? Who!”

The Empress refused to believe that the Emperor might die.

Charles, the Emperor, still had so much left to see. He had to make sure that all traces of Inés had been eradicated, and that she and her son had truly been chosen.

Only then could he stop dwelling on the past and turn to her, looking at her the way he had that night and whispering words of love once more.

“You fool!”

Blood trickled from the cut on his cheek where her ring had grazed it. The Marquis shouted furiously, seizing her by the shoulders and holding her fast, his face bearing a grim expression.