There is evil living in Avenroe. The emperor shuddered as he recalled that city, where the insignificant villa of the Marquis of Alemichi was located, after a very long time. In that city, the empress had committed a filthy transgression.

“The evil dragon, is it him? How did he extend his reach to Avenroe? Is he trying to take the empress away?”

The emperor asked with reddened eyes, without even breathing.

“Your Majesty, please calm down. No, it’s not that. How could I dare commit such a terrifying act of treason as to contact the evil dragon?”

Beatrice shook her head, speaking loudly and clearly.

“If it’s to find out his intentions, you can contact him. What’s wrong with that? Just take more power from him.”

The world the emperor knew was a world made up only of power and power, domination and authority. Greater power dominates weaker power. To avoid being taken, one had to become strong.

And everything in the world belonged to the great emperor. Even if the empress, who was then the Countess of Alemichi, had little to do with the emperor, daring to play the role of a dragon’s whore in Avenroe was treason and betrayal.

“I am honored that you grant me such a privilege, Your Majesty.”

The empress was too ignorant and arrogantly smart.

Beatrice was quick-witted, immediately recognizing the honor for what it was and prostrating herself flat. Well, that’s why Beatrice could never surpass the empress. Something too easily grasped is not interesting.

“But I found another way. There is indeed something in Avenroe.”

Not speaking immediately and delaying like that was also uninteresting and only irritating. The emperor furrowed his brow.

“I met another dragon, Your Majesty.”

Another dragon? The emperor’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinized her, then gradually widened.

“Another dragon? What, another dragon? There are more drag-”

The emperor’s words were cut off as he rolled his eyes wide open.

Right. Looking back, the only dragon known to the Krania Empire is the evil dragon Gvasalante, but surely there are other unknown dragons as well. No, it is said that there are. The emperor pressed Beatrice.

“How? Can you prove it?”

“Your Majesty. I always carry out your orders at the risk of my life. Of course, I checked and double-checked.”

“Sit down and tell me everything.”

Beatrice sat down at the emperor’s gesture and began to speak.

“I must tell Your Majesty about my shameful weakness. I told you that the merchant guild that bought all my family’s debts is in Avenroe. No human can suddenly create 83 million requet.”

That was impossible even for the emperor. It was an astronomical amount that would shake the economy of the Krania Empire to its roots.

That was true, but the emperor couldn’t understand how she had gotten into that much debt in the first place, and he looked at Beatrice with a pathetic thought. Whether she knew that gaze or not, she explained concisely.

“According to my long research in the imperial library you provided, firstly, dragons as a species hoard lots of gold and treasures. It is said that dragons hold all the jewels in the world, and humans enjoy only a tiny fraction. So only a dragon with that kind of wealth could immediately release 83 million requet.”

It was quite a reasonable inference. The pleased emperor nodded.

“What else?”

“Secondly, the name of the merchant guild ‘Insenidraken’, which I interpreted, meant ‘mad dragon’. It’s an ancient language that only a dragon or a very old wizard, or someone like Your Majesty with much knowledge of the world, would be hard-pressed to know. In fact, the guild representative said that the dragon he serves is not the evil dragon Gvasalante.”

At the sound of that name, the emperor flinched slightly. He thought it wasn’t noticeable, but it was clearly visible to Beatrice’s eyes.

“He said it was the mad dragon.”

“The mad dragon, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm…”

The emperor sighed in wonder and leaned back against the backrest.

He couldn’t decide whether this news of the appearance of this new dragon was good news or ominous news. Beatrice quietly placed the box she had kept beside her on the table between them.

“The mad dragon’s subordinate said this would prove everything. As far as I’ve examined, it’s a functioning magical artifact.”

“A magical artifact. What’s its function?”

The emperor’s expression immediately brightened at the prospect of a functioning magical artifact, which he would welcome with open arms.

“He said this could safely protect Her Majesty the Empress.”

“…That’s strange.”

“It is strange.”

Beatrice nodded.

“Why is this mad dragon or whatever suddenly appearing now and interfering?”

It was too strange.

“They say the mad dragon is an incomprehensible being because it’s mad. But in addition to the wealth, if this magical artifact, said to contain the mad dragon’s power, works properly here of all places, Your Majesty.”

“It seems this mad dragon does exist.”

After all, the evil dragon Gvasalante’s magic could never be performed in the Krania Empire.

“But what if this is the evil dragon’s trick?”

“I pointed that out too, and he said just one thing. ‘At this point?’ he said.”

What to do. It’s suspicious to believe, yet too tempting not to believe.

“Catch a dragon with a dragon, huh.”

“Instead of asking you to believe, he says he’ll prove it with th-?”

Beatrice looked puzzled at the emperor who suddenly stood up while she was speaking.

“Em-Empress, Evelyn!”

The emperor, who had turned pale upon seeing the empress lying in bed, looked around and quickly grabbed the magical artifact Beatrice had presented and rushed to the bed.

While the emperor struggled to somehow activate the magical artifact he was holding, Beatrice, who had followed, was startled to see the empress becoming increasingly faint.

“H-How do you use this thing! Hurry up and use it!”

Beatrice received the magical artifact from the frantic emperor, opened the lid, and dropped blood from a wound on her hand.

She hadn’t just received the magical artifact from the merchant guild man. Because she had received other power as well, she handled it properly even with trembling hands, but even as she activated the magical artifact with a simple ritual, the emperor stomped his feet in a frenzy.

“Hurry! Do it quickly! Hurry!”

As she had to light a fire and even produce smoke for a moment, the emperor impatiently expressed his irritation.

“Ah, what are you doing not hurrying! Evelyn is disappearing!”

The empress flickered like a dying ember. The magical artifact, smeared with smoke and blood, finally emitted light. The empress, who had been fading to transparency, gradually became clearer. The emperor kept touching the empress to check and recheck if she was really tangible.

Beatrice sat down on the floor with a shocked expression, panting.

“Evelyn, Evelyn, you didn’t run away, did you? Right? You’ll stay with me, won’t you? Ah, thank goodness, thank goodness… That was close, it could have been disastrous.”

The emperor burst into tears like a child, holding the empress’s hand to his forehead. Beatrice looked at the emperor, breathing heavily.

She was shocked not by the fact that the empress had almost disappeared, but because the emperor had yelled at her. And now he’s so relieved? Her panting breath soon became laden with emotion and started to heave.

*

The night was deep. Peon, standing on the terrace of the bedroom that Princess Osteine had used before her marriage, was looking at the distant imperial palace.

How was it for the emperor today? Is he relieved now? Is Beatrice relieved to have proven her usefulness?

No, they know. No matter how ignorant, they instinctively know that today was just a temporary measure.

Have those who have always lived with solid absolute power, or parasitizing on that power, ever felt such anxiety and helplessness? Unresolved anxiety drives people mad, and helplessness eventually eats away at the mind.

Shouldn’t it be so?

For Peon, it had been nearly 30 years, and for Kaella, it was 4 years that made her give up her entire life. So the emperor had to suffer for a sufficiently long time, even on the throne. There was absolutely no intention of ending it in one breath.

When he finally falls completely into the abyss, the emperor must not think, ‘If only I had continued to reign!’

He had to be more overwhelmed and frustrated by the fact that even the absolute power he had so firmly believed in and wielded at will could not protect him. He had to despair while sitting in a high place.

For a long time. As long as the time it took for a proud woman to break, for a child to grow up suppressed and unable to fulfill their role, and for another woman to be ruined.

By then, he could no longer bear it and turned around.

“Aren’t you sleepy?”

Kaella, who had been bathed and even had her hair dried, kept peeking at the terrace. Have you been interested only in falling all day today? He felt that his sharply raised senses were gradually reaching their limit.

He was barely restraining himself because of Kaella, and at the same time, he was exploding because of Kaella. She became the source of madness just by quietly existing.

“Shall I put you to sleep?”

Kaella flinched and then shook her head. At times like this, she seemed to just stay at twenty-one years old. Still the same gentle appearance.

“Then?”

Peon moved his steps to slowly push Kaella, who was standing at the doorway, inward, away from the terrace.

“Then what shall I do for you, Rain?”

“I’m curious about something…”

He nodded with a smile at the unexpected words. What could our Rain be so curious about?

“When executing a high-ranking noblewoman, is it beheading or hanging?”

Sometimes Peon wished his intelligence would drop to just the emperor’s level. He wished he couldn’t read between the lines of what Kaella was saying, that he could take it at face value, that he didn’t know at all.

“Why do you ask that?”

A voice that had instantly dropped in temperature asked. In fact, he asked while knowing.

“Who do you want to kill?”

Again, she shakes her head. That’s right. The overly kind Princess Osteine cannot harm others. She only harms herself. Without fear or hesitation, she ruthlessly destroys herself.

“Then why?”

Why would a woman whose wish is to be killed painlessly ask about the horrible beheading or hanging? The cold man with little emotional change looked at her with a terribly shaken gaze.

Today was good, wasn’t it? You ate the food made by your family’s chef deliciously. You digested well, and you laughed. What was the problem? Ah, he was the problem. He was incompetent and made Kaella anxious again.

He, who was born as the son of a dragon but was raised as a human with a leash from childhood, he who was bound by a taboo that would barely break upon death and couldn’t move an inch, was the problem.

At times like this, Peon dared to want to die. He wanted to die by pouring oil on himself and setting fire.

But because he was punished with the punishment of life for the sin of stealing Kaella’s death, he just endured. He opened his eyes, opened his ears, and waited for the fragile words that would finally shatter him.

“In the current situation, if His Highness the Crown Prince ascends to the throne, I would be a target for purging.”

Kaella said very quietly, but without hesitation, in one breath.

Peon endured the pain of his soul being shattered with his eyes tightly closed. This is a good thing. It’s a very good thing that Kaella spoke honestly without hesitating or keeping her mouth shut.

“So, were you already preparing? Which do you think is better?”

The blue eyes that had long lost their light blinked and then slowly answered again.

“I think hanging would be better.”

“Why? Because you think it will end quickly? What if they order execution by piano wire? It would be painful for hours.”

“I’m considering that too.”

Peon felt drained in the midst of his pain.

“…I don’t know where to start. Usually, at this stage, people don’t think that far.”

“The empress faction and the crown prince faction have split. I… as the daughter of Duke Osteine and the wife of Grand Duke Lysenford, I’m classified as part of the empress faction whether I want it or not.”

Political factional fights are inevitably drawn along blood relations, regardless of will.

Just as Kaella could not escape her status as the emperor’s niece no matter how much she wanted to, Peon is also the son of the empress whom the emperor loves terribly.

So Peon becoming the center of the empress faction was just something decided regardless of his will.

“History has always been like that, hasn’t it? Anyone stronger than imperial power, or in conflict with the crown prince, is always…”

“Purged.”

Kaella hesitantly nodded. That’s right. Looking through all of history, there was nothing good about being at odds with the future ruler. Moreover, a powerful person strong enough to threaten imperial power should rightfully be purged.

The crown prince had to cut off Peon unconditionally upon ascending to the throne. That’s the natural thing to do for imperial power.

The emperor deliberately kept mentioning Peon to continue stimulating the crown prince’s sense of inferiority. Peon was just a tool to stimulate and raise the crown prince, to be broken and discarded when used up.

“You always think of death first.”

Peon smiled bitterly. While being indifferent and not reacting to other things, she noticed death faster than anyone else and prepared for it right away.

“Don’t you think I’ll prevent that?”

The blue eyes that had been looking elsewhere finally looked at him at the trembling voice.

“Still?”

You still don’t think he will prevent the approaching death?

Ah, yes. For a wife so ruined because of an incompetent husband who couldn’t even awaken as a dragon due to suppression, this would be natural. Peon fully understood and comprehended. This is all his fault.

It’s because of his stupidity, stupidly falling for a long-standing taboo and not even knowing what the problem was.

Peon was engulfed in familiar self-hatred and anger. If Kaella still didn’t know, he just had to do his best until she understood. That’s what he should have done.

The moment he decided, the empress in the bedroom of Soleil Palace began to fade again. The palace was filled with the sound of the emperor’s screams beyond shouting.