According to the Emperor’s criteria for classifying women, Kaela was a “typical girl” who was very docile and easy to handle.
Her face was decent enough, taking after her illegitimate father and mother from an unremarkable family who had nothing going for her except her looks, but everything else was entirely lacking.
Well, she was smart enough to be useful, but sometimes she was too smart for comfort.
The Emperor didn’t like women who made him uncomfortable. In that sense, Kaela, the daughter of his lowborn brother, was uncomfortable from birth and continued to make him uncomfortable as she grew up.
The Emperor knew another “smart woman.” Beautiful and intelligent Evelyn Ezel Dakiten, his Empress. She too was uncomfortable, daring to argue with the Emperor point by point, and even when trampled, she kept looking at some distant place he didn’t know.
The Emperor didn’t know where Evelyn was looking. He would never know. It was a place beyond his comprehension.
There was another thing he couldn’t understand. Why did he arrange the marriage between the Empress’s illegitimate child and a woman as smart as the Empress? He didn’t know why he had done it himself.
He made excuses that it seemed fitting to pair an illegitimate child with the daughter of another illegitimate child, but sometimes he thought maybe he wanted to watch Hyperion destroy a woman similar to his mother.
But Kaela was docile nonetheless. She would bow her head and tremble at the slightest glare. The fear that crossed her pale face was so ordinary. That’s why the Emperor considered Kaela de Chasser a very boring and insignificant being.
But today, Kaela’s uncomfortable nature stood out prominently. Her bright blue eyes were vivid in the Emperor’s clouded vision. Eyes as clear and determined as Evelyn’s. Her precise words pierced even his darkened ears.
“Wouldn’t it be right to go to the evil dragon’s domain to bring back Her Majesty the Empress? I don’t understand how we can move the evil dragon while staying in Craine, Your Majesty.”
Kaela pointed out the contradictions hidden in the Emperor’s words without hesitation, though in an extremely polite tone. While everyone else treated the Emperor as an invalid, insisting on rest and trying to keep conversations brief, Kaela did not.
“We are too foolish to understand. I apologize. Please teach this dim-witted one, Your Majesty.”
Yet while maintaining all formalities and constantly apologizing, saying she was sorry and asking to be taught, she was being just as clever as the Empress.
“Hyperion is the Empire’s most important military power. Don’t you know we can’t send him recklessly?”
“Yes. But staying in Craine, how……”
“Ah, to the evil dragon! Tell him to return Evelyn!”
The Emperor grew irritated, as if asking why they couldn’t understand what he’d already said.
“Are you saying to send a letter?”
Kaela blinked with innocent eyes and asked.
“Yes! Hyperion, you write and send it yourself. Contact the Light Dragon too.”
“It’s an evil dragon, Your Majesty. It won’t even blink at a single letter.”
“It will work!”
“Then wouldn’t it be more fitting with Crania’s dignity and legitimacy if Your Majesty, the Empress’s spouse, sent a personal letter?”
While the Grand Duke of Lusenford remained silent, the Grand Duchess was tactlessly speaking up with righteous words.
How could she talk so much when the Emperor had given an order! The Emperor was extremely irritated, his speech already slurred and movements sluggish from his collapse. He was overwhelmed with despair and nearly bloodless with urgency.
With Evelyn in the evil dragon’s hands, his life was practically over. Yet here she was, showing off her knowledge in front of the great Emperor who was trying desperately to get Evelyn back.
The Emperor, who had no patience left, couldn’t stand it.
“What legitimacy? A beast who can’t even understand human speech couldn’t possibly…..un-derstand”
The Emperor spoke quickly before breaking into a fit of coughing. Kaela stared at him with wide-open eyes. She just stared, without warmly attending to him or bringing him a glass of water.
The Emperor, while coughing, suddenly met those blue eyes.
Unwavering, penetrating eyes. Eyes that reproached his vulgarity. Those same arrogant eyes as the Empress! No matter how much contempt and abuse he poured out, those eyes always looked down on the Emperor, never looking up to him.
“Even if you can’t understand human speech.”
He needed to fill those damned eyes with fear. The Emperor’s mind was working even in this state.
Now that the Empress was gone, it was time to play his hand to tighten the noose around Peon’s neck. It would be right to involve Kaela too and keep control of Ostein. The Emperor wasn’t in a position to be picky now.
“But you’ll listen to your son. So, Hyperion, ask your mother to come back.”
Such words, even in a voice weak as if about to die out, and between fits of coughing, started clearly and ended distinctly.
The Emperor, having suddenly dropped this most shocking revelation, had expectations. He anticipated how much fear his words would instill in these cocky youngsters who thought they were the only smart ones.
He expected these arrogant fellows who acted so noble to cry and deny everything with world-shattering expressions. Even bedridden, he was still an Emperor who taught fear, dominated, and reigned supreme.
“Honey.”
Kaela, who the Emperor knew to be much more timid and fearful than Evelyn, quietly called to her husband.
“Yes, honey,”
The illegitimate child, who always despised his dirty birth and was obsessed with becoming a more moral person than anyone else, answered naturally without batting an eye.
“It sounds like His Majesty just confessed to kidnapping someone else’s pregnant wife.”
Kaela’s blue eyes, kind and righteous, were filled with cold anger and contempt. For almost 30 years, the Emperor had never revealed who Peon’s real father was.
When he mentioned issues about the Empress’s son, he was simply unreasonable. He would rant about ‘dirty blood,’ shout, treat the Empress as a traitor, and that would be the end of it.
No one could make logical arguments to the Emperor. Moreover, no one could ask more detailed questions about the Empress’s illegitimate child. Thus, the Empress became a woman who had betrayed her marriage duties and chastity.
Though everyone was dying to know who Peon’s real father was, nobody knew. That’s because the Emperor had used a magic tool to forcibly seal the lips of the Empress, who was the only one who knew.
The Emperor had intended to remain silent about it forever. But this foolish and timid niece, this woman with dirty illegitimate blood mixed in, had managed to open the weakened Emperor’s mouth.
“It’s a story that most palace servants roughly know – how I was born six months after a marriage that happened just three weeks after a sudden engagement announcement,” Peon spoke calmly, almost nonchalantly.
“Evelyn was mine…!”
The Emperor, who used to speak with formal words and elaborate rhetoric to maintain his dignified eloquence, now turned red-faced and repeated childishly simple and immature words. While struggling to somehow raise his body, the Emperor spoke with spittle flying.
“Everything born in this land is mine…!”
Severe coughing blocked his throat. Kaela furrowed her brow, and Peon moved her further from the bed.
“As you can see, he’s that kind of person, but unfortunately being Emperor, he used magic tools to cover up his shameful crimes.”
Why aren’t you surprised? Why don’t you hate yourself? Even while coughing violently, the Emperor glanced at Peon with bulging eyes. Peon had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
He hated impurity, and though he loved his mother, sometimes he couldn’t help but despise her for committing impurity.
The Emperor had made Peon that way. He beat him with whips and taught only obedience, saying he had beast’s blood mixed in him. But why?
“Of course, to other people’s eyes…”
Cold purple eyes looked down at the Emperor.
“It will look like our Emperor has finally gone mad.”
When the black pupils in the center of the purple irises split vertically, the Emperor wanted to scream.
But not a sound, not even a cough, came from his dry throat. It felt as if someone was gripping and pressing down on his neck.
Kaela looked down at the Emperor with a cold face, as if looking at a hideous insect.
“To think His Majesty the Emperor is not in his right mind.”
She felt so sorry for her husband who had lived as a slave, subordinate to such an ugly and petty person.
“How regrettable. The Regency Council will have much work to do.”
The Emperor’s eyes widened as he understood what that meant, but Kaela disrespectfully looked down at him with eyes full of contempt before turning away. She never looked at the Emperor again.
“Shall we say the sun has fallen, My Lady?”
Peon asked, like a husband who faithfully follows his wife’s words.
“It has already fallen.”
When the heart of the Golden Castle burns, the dragon will descend upon Craine. When the dragon descends upon Craine, the sun will fall.
The couple who had openly recited the prophecy that the Emperor had repeatedly ignored left the sickroom with its harsh medicinal smell. The Emperor wanted to call someone. “Hey, arrest those insolent bastards immediately! This is treason!”
“Kkeuk, ugh……”
But not a single proper word could be formed. The door closed with a thud, and the bedroom fell back into silence.
Outside the Emperor’s bedroom, in the corridor lined with knights and servants, Kaela walked out with her back perfectly straight as if nothing had happened.
But Peon immediately noticed that his wife’s breathing was not normal. Her small chest heaved up and down rapidly. He shielded his wife from people’s eyes and ears.
“Kaela.”
Trembling breaths were roughly exhaled. Her chest rose and fell with labored breathing. Kaela clutched her husband’s clothes, which she had been gripping tightly in front of the Emperor, until they were completely crumpled.
“It’s alright now.”
Those words didn’t mean she was safe. She had always been safe. They merely meant she no longer needed to worry about the gazes of people that she compulsively feared. Kaela was free.
Understanding exactly what that one sentence meant, Kaela immediately faced her husband. Though facing him, she could only see his chest as she stubbornly refused to raise her head. With both fists tightly clenched and breathing heavily, she said:
“Tell me Her Majesty the Empress, no, Mother is doing very well.”
“She’s healthy and doing well.”
“Tell me she’ll be happy.”
“She’ll become happier and happier.”
Only then did Kaela lift her head to look at Peon. Her blue eyes were full of resentment. The Emperor and Beatrice whom he had used were all so base and terribly ugly.
The noble Princess was trembling with rage at their cowardice. To think such people had sacrificed her to death! She felt so wronged she wanted to wail.
“Too……”
“Yes.”
He nodded and opened his arms. Kaela had too many words caught in her throat to handle, making her breathless, so she just fell into his embrace.
“I know.”
No. Peon doesn’t know. Kaela recalled the most important words among those that had risen to the tip of her tongue.
“Let’s live well.”
Let’s be happy too. Let’s live well until the end, forcing ourselves to smile defiantly with all our might. Together with Father who has only been pushed around by such a base brother just because of bloodline.
“Happily.”
“Yes. Let’s live happily, we must.”
Sometimes revenge is a good treatment method. Anger is a good driving force that ignites the will to live.
Peon silently smiled while looking at the Emperor’s firmly closed bedroom door where no one entered. Finally, Kaela had spoken of her ‘happiness’. This is why revenge is enjoyable.
“Yes.”
Peon bent down to kiss her. No one could hear what they were saying, nor see what they were doing.
“We’ll become even happier.”
He promised as he took his wife far away.
Someone was approaching. The Emperor’s only bloodline was coming, trembling but clearly determined about something, weak but with inherent violence.
Since the Emperor hates his own kind, there might be more entertaining events to come. Peon handed over the stage to the next person and left with his wife.
The servants and knights lined up in the corridor perceived that the Grand Duke and Duchess of Lusenford had emerged with grave faces and quietly departed. All the people from the Regency Council who had seen the Emperor did the same.
It seemed the Emperor would have difficulty recovering. The search for the vanished Empress also seemed impossible. What could they do when the evil dragon had taken her? It really seemed the sun would fall.
Once again, heavy and tedious silence covered the corridor. A few minutes later, the Crown Prince entered that corridor. The servant in charge of the door bowed his head, quietly went inside, and came out.
“You may enter.”
Though it was an unscheduled visit, the Emperor granted an audience to the Crown Prince. Although he had suffered humiliation from his young niece, the Emperor felt fear rather than anger.
He had clearly seen Peon’s eyes split vertically. Those were not human eyes. They were the eyes of a beast standing at a level he could never reach. The barbaric beast would tear humans apart with dark sorcery.
“Come, come here quickly.”
He barely managed to move his hand to hurry the Crown Prince before he even approached. The Emperor didn’t have many cards left to play now.
Before he, the sun, truly fell, he needed to move the Crown Prince, his legitimate heir though not to his liking. That one was indeed the only, yes, the Emperor’s only child after all. The only one he could trust was his child.
Urgent footsteps responded. The Emperor anxiously stared at the curtain while sweating cold sweat. Soon appeared the Crown Prince with his pale complexion, who always walked with hunched shoulders and a stooped posture.
The Emperor, who was about to tell the Crown Prince he would give him full authority now to drive out the Regency Council, grew irritated. Words weren’t coming out well, and the Crown Prince didn’t immediately bow but hesitated and dawdled.
‘Slow fool!’
Just as the Emperor was about to curse with his eyes. The Crown Prince picked up the pillows piled heavily around the Emperor’s head with a rigid attitude.
As the shadow of the large pillow covered the Emperor, he realized that the Crown Prince hadn’t delayed his greeting, but had completely omitted it.
💛💛💛💛💛💛💛