Lutist hesitated, his lips trembling, then spoke in a low voice.

“Please treat me with respect.”

“Your name?”

“I discarded my name long ago. Just call me old woman.”

“Alright, old woman. Tonight…”

As light faded and darkness settled in, night began. Today was coming to an end.

“Are you from the Hun tribe? Tonight will soon be over.”

The emperor drained the remaining green Panian in his pewter cup in one gulp.

“If your words prove true, I will grant you gold. If nothing happens, leave the castle before dawn. If I see you again, I’ll cut out your tongue for speaking falsehoods.”

“I’ll decline the gold and leave the castle right after finishing the song.”

“Well thought. Play one more song before you go.”

The blind old woman raised her closed eyes to the empty air and plucked the lute strings with her bony fingers.

The emperor immersed himself in the pleasantly warm water and closed his eyes.

Had he returned to the castle just to listen to lute music? Was bringing Patrick to the castle instead of leaving him in the prison camp simply a courtesy to an enemy prince? Or was it friendship toward an academy junior?

Thinking of Patrick made him feel stifled.

“In the end, excessive greed brings calamity and ruin.”

You spoke so firmly and decisively, Patrick.

“History only records great power and authority. Small kingdoms, minority groups, for example the Hun people of our continent, are also worth protecting and leaving in history.”

It was a wonderful idea, and I respected him for it.

Above all, I was pleased with the expression “our continent.”

I was certain we could make the Arkan continent a peaceful land, a land where the sun shines evenly, not as hostile entities but in a friendly relationship.

I couldn’t believe that he was the one who first pushed and led the invasion in this war. Of course, it must have been on the orders of Emperor Tane, the warmonger who had swallowed up most of the kingdoms on the Arkan continent over the past thirty years.

It must have been the emperor’s order, Patrick.

If this war was your own will, I won’t forgive your hypocrisy.

The emperor recalled last year’s graduation celebration at Tane Academy.

The dim terrace. Thinking of Patrick, who had expressed his intention not to attend, saying he had no interest in the party, he went to the terrace where they used to smoke together. There he met a woman. A lady of indescribable beauty who resembled Patrick. Like a fantasy, like an illusion.

He felt dizzy and lightheaded.

With a wistful expression, he roughly grabbed the pewter cup on the bath tray. As he drank the strong liquor, a fierce heat spread through his body.

At that moment, Calip entered the bathroom with hurried steps.

“Your Majesty.”

It was before the lute performance had even ended.

“What is it?”

Calip knelt on one knee, lowering his posture as he looked up at the emperor.

“It seems the prisoner may not be the crown prince of Tane.”

*

“Haa.”

Calip looked at the emperor after removing all the silver armor. The prisoner was wearing a white shirt over black pants.

The emperor pressed the tip of his sword against the slender white neck.

“I ask for the last time, who are you?”

Through the open front of the shirt, bandages tightly wrapping the chest were visible. It was clear to anyone that the prisoner was a woman. The prisoner kept her mouth tightly shut and didn’t answer.

As if she had poison in her mouth.

Poison…!

The emperor approached the prisoner closely and grabbed her chin. He forcibly opened her mouth.

He inserted his index finger and swept the moist inside of her mouth. The soft tongue curled inward, blocking her throat.

He bent down to look inside her mouth and pulled out her tongue with his index finger. Clear liquid slipped between his finger pressing down on the pink tongue. As the emperor caught her breath and body scent, he momentarily froze.

It wasn’t an illusion. It was her.

For a moment, he shivered at the strange sensation and pushed the prisoner towards Calip. No, he had distanced himself because he felt like she might hear his heart pounding in his chest.

“There’s no poison in her mouth.”

The emperor raised his slightly trembling hand and aimed his sword at the prisoner’s neck.

Were you the lady I met on the terrace wearing a purple dress? Then why are you wearing armor instead of Patrick now?

“Reveal your identity, who are you?”

“Kill me.”

“She might be hiding poison, search her body.”

At the emperor’s order, Calip and the knights exhaled softly.

The prisoner, who had been hanging her head, raised it proudly. Her blue eyes rippled like fierce waves.

‘Patrick.’

“Patricia Calian Evas, I am the imperial princess of the Tane Empire.”

“Ah!”

Calip, who had been holding the front of the prisoner’s shirt, stopped his hand and stepped back.

“The imperial princess of Tane? I thought Tane Empire only had two princes? Suddenly an imperial princess?”

‘Patrick, are you alright?’

Patricia tried to clutch her chest, but her arms were held by the knights on either side, preventing her from moving.

‘Patrick, suddenly. My heart, it hurts so much, as if my heart has been carved out with a knife. It stings as if salt has been sprinkled on an open wound.’

“Indeed, you resemble Patrick. No, you’re identical. Are you his younger sister?”

“Patrick and I are twins.”

“Twins?”

“Patrick and I shared our mother’s womb and were born on the same day.”

“Is that possible?”

In the Karsic Empire, no, in the entire Arkan continent, there were no living twins to be found.

It’s not that there were no mothers who conceived twins, but few survived until full term. Even if they made it to full term, the mother was in danger due to difficult labor, and most were stillborn.

On the rare occasion that two babies were born from one womb, it was considered sacrilegious and one was eliminated.

In the Tane Empire, Empress Aldisha barely made it to full term relying on imperial doctors and Hun tribe herbs. After three days of labor, she gave birth to twins.

Emperor Kazan killed the midwife who assisted the empress’s delivery, the Hun Amir, and eighteen maids immediately after the birth.

The Hun Amir, who had delivered the oracle that the sun would guide the moon until they came of age, was driven out after losing her eyes and tongue.

Even without the oracle, the male child was pitifully small. The emperor ordered the female child, whom he would have eliminated had the genders been reversed, to be confined in the west tower until she came of age.

Empress Aldisha’s twin birth was thus concealed.

‘Patrick. Are you okay? You’re not dead, are you? Empress Pamila, that evil and vicious woman who plotted all this.’

Patricia raised her head and looked directly at the Karsic emperor.

“Kill me.”

Water pooled in her blue eyes. Her wet eyelashes trembled. Like waves, the water overflowed. Seeing the tears flowing down her pale white cheeks, the emperor was taken aback.

“When did I say I would kill you?”

Watching her cry silently, the emperor felt a sharp pain as if his deep chest had been gouged out with a knife. It’s definitely her. Back then, on the terrace, she was crying silently like this too.

“Don’t touch my body, just kill me.”

“Imperial Princess. Why do you keep asking to be killed?”

The emperor was startled to find himself speaking formally when he met the eyes of the imperial princess, who had raised her head proudly while shedding tears.

Looking at her golden hair curling as if holding the sun, he recalled the words of the blind lutist.

He had thought it was a false claim.

The emperor unconsciously blurted out unintended words.

“Put her to sleep in my bedroom.”

And his face turned bright red. The scent of the strong Panian liquor rose up his throat. He nervously brushed back the wet black hair that had fallen over his forehead.

Patricia, the shadow imperial princess of the Tane Empire, was the twin of Crown Prince Patrick.

As per the Hun Amir’s oracle, male-female twins symbolizing the sun and moon were born.

Usually, the sun symbolized the male child and the moon the female child, but for these twins it was reversed. Especially, the body of the male child symbolizing the moon was about half the size of the female child.

The existence of the female child was concealed as soon as she was born. She was confined in the west tower of the detached palace with her wet nurse Eva. The warmongering Emperor Kazan ordered the crown prince to observe war from the age of nine.

Aldisha begged to wait until the frail crown prince could build more body mass and strength. The emperor was displeased with the weak crown prince.

Patrick lagged behind in anything physical. When Aldisha saw Empress Pamila’s son Chris wielding a sword, she made a bitter decision.

Empress Aldisha, originally a princess from the Torun Kingdom, stood Patricia in front of a mirror and said:

“Risha, my child. Listen carefully and remember my words. In the main palace, there is a boy who looks exactly like you.”

‘Mother. Why am I not allowed to leave the west tower?’

Patricia didn’t ask that. She couldn’t ask.

“That boy is Crown Prince Patrick.”

The empress cut Patricia’s golden hair that flowed in curls down to her waist.

“From the womb, you absorbed even that child’s nutrients. When he was born, everything about that child was about half of yours. His body, his internal organs.”

“…”

“His lungs are weak, so he can’t breathe when riding a horse. So Risha, wear this instead of Patrick.”

The empress dressed Patricia in armor. She controlled her weight through an even stricter diet management than before and tightly bound her body with cloth to hide its volume.

Patricia grasped a sword of unbearable size and weight. Blisters formed, festered, and burst on her hands, cheeks, limbs, and shoulders.

By the time scars were densely etched over dried blood clots and tangled blade marks, she could wield the sword nimbly enough to cut through the wind.

Patricia was innately strong-willed. She was bright and full of smiles, but when sadness welled up along with blood from wounds during sword training, she would throw down the sword and stand firmly before Eva.

“Eva, tell me. Why do I have to do this for someone I’ve never even seen?”

“Imperial Princess, Risha Imperial Princess.”

Eva embraced Patricia tightly, her body swaying like a willow branch in the wind. Eva’s embrace always smelled of butter. It always made her hungry.

“Imperial Princess. It takes courage to reveal the truth. If you miss that time, it takes even greater courage to turn back.”

“Patricia is a brave imperial princess.”

“Of course, I know. If the Imperial Princess’s existence were to be revealed to the outside world now, it would be difficult for Her Majesty the Empress. The timing was missed. Let’s wait just a little longer, until His Highness the Crown Prince comes of age.”

Eva was a window to the world. As Patricia grew from a child to a girl to a lady, Eva explained her questions easily, and sometimes, instead of answering, she showed her how to be silent through her own silence.

Instead of her mother who was sensitive due to nervous exhaustion, Eva provided the education a young lady should know, and was the only one who hugged and caressed Patricia.

Eva, a noble lady from the prestigious Tenessi count family of Tane, had been by Aldisha’s side as a maid since Aldisha was the crown prince’s consort.

She was an outstanding talent with learning, character, and artistic abilities. If one had to thoroughly dig out a flaw, it was that she gave frank advice that other maids would never dare to give.

On Aldisha’s instructions after hearing Amir’s prophecy, Eva prepared a nursery in the west tower. Eva advised Aldisha that the existence of twins, though rare, should be naturally revealed as it deserved respect.

“You’re wagging your tongue carelessly about matters that aren’t your concern.”