She exhaled. Harchen grabbed her arm, adjusted her dress, and seated her in the rattan chair.

He looked around the corridor to call a servant. The long corridor was filled only with music pouring out from the banquet hall.

He held both shoulders of the unconscious woman to keep her from falling. His gaze naturally fell on her face. It was a familiar face.

As if he had met her somewhere before. He tilted his head, trying to remember which family’s daughter she was.

“Wa-water.”

Harchen picked up a bottle with one hand and placed it against the woman’s lips. However, when the bottle touched her lips, she instead tightly closed her mouth.

“Hnggh.”

“My lady, come to your senses and drink this instead of water.”

She should have parted her lips to breathe out, but she was holding her breath instead.

Harchen put the bottle neck to his mouth and took a sip of atrazhan. He grabbed her chin and gently parted her lips.

He placed his mouth against hers and slowly let the atrazhan flow in. After swallowing the liquor, she opened her lips and exhaled her held breath.

Where had he seen her before?

He took the green bottle and drank heartily, then held a mouthful and parted her lips to pour it in.

Just as he was thinking that he had definitely seen this lady somewhere before, she slowly opened her eyes. Her deep blue eyes shimmered.

Harchen froze, not moving.

The one who first slightly parted her moist lips and moved was clearly her. And simultaneously, they stole each other’s lips.

When Harchen’s hand grabbed the nape of her neck, she forcefully pushed his chest.

She abruptly stood up from the chair. The knot on her back had come undone, causing her dress front to open. Flustered, she covered herself with her hands and glared at him.

“My lady. Let me explain.”

Slap! She struck Harchen’s cheek.

“You… scoundrel!”

She gathered up the flowing skirts of her dress and lifted them. Before Harchen could stop her, she climbed onto the railing and leapt down.

Harchen, who had been watching her back as she ran into the darkness while gripping the stone surface of the railing, slumped down into the rattan chair.

Dumbfounded, he touched his cheek and then rubbed his lips. Through the scent of atrazhan, he could faintly detect an indescribable, alluring fragrance.

“Ah. Well, this is…”

He lit a cigar and picked up the white cat mask that had fallen to the floor, examining it.

It was too tangible evidence to be an illusion. Above all, the sensation of her lips touching his pricked at his heart.

.

.

.

Patricia grabbed the skirts of her dress and ran towards the back of the academy banquet hall.

She mounted the horse Eden had tied up at the promised location. As if entranced, she rode the horse through the forest to the western tower of the annex palace. After changing out of her dress into comfortable clothes, she picked up a sword.

In the darkness of the western tower’s aerial garden, she swung her sword.

She struck down the memory of her stern mother who had put armor on a 13-year-old girl instead of a dress, and her mother’s sorrow that had made it necessary.

The sword blade deftly sliced through the darkness.

The emperor glaring at her as she fell from her horse on the blood-soaked battlefield.

With her sword wet with night mist, she struck down the cold gaze of her ruthless father who had ridden his massive warhorse over her body rolling on the blood-drenched ground.

She cut down her cruel fate.

When her whole body was drenched in dawn dew, Patricia’s sword became docile.

The passionate night had ended. As the darkness dissipated, a blue sky spread out and Tane’s pure sun rose.

Patricia stood with her sword lowered diagonally.

As her mind cleared, she was wracked with intense guilt. The scent of atrazhan that had passed through his lips still lingered on her own. She bit her lower lip until it bled.

She had stolen his lips. Why had she done that? She had been swept up in emotions that surged forth uncontrollably.

Patricia raised her sword toward the blazing sun.

With her sword that the sunlight slid off of, she struck down the memory of that man’s smile on the terrace – his appearance that inspired admiration, his large well-balanced physique, those deep green eyes like a swamp, that self-assured attitude of someone who owned the world. Because of that arrogant man’s smile.

She erased that name.

Since no ladies-in-waiting had come from the capital Liswan, the castle was full of only male servants. With no other choice, they called two maids who did laundry to attend to the princess.

The maids, inexperienced in personal service, found there were no clothes for her to change into after bathing, so they took a white shirt from the emperor’s dressing room and put it on her. They hastily made undergarments out of cotton fabric.

A maid roughly estimated Patricia’s measurements.

“Your Highness. Please wear this just for tonight. We’ll try to make a dress overnight.”

Patricia, lost in thought, said:

“If you’re going to make something, make a knight’s pants and shirt, something easy to move in.”

“That’s easy. Yes, we’ll do that.”

The maids were surprised that the imperial princess was so quiet and modest, when they had expected her to angrily demand a dress be prepared immediately. The laundry room at Pana Castle had no fabric for ladies’ dresses, but plenty for knights’ pants and shirts.

.

.

.

The emperor sat on the sofa in the reception room and had another glass of Panian liquor.

Twins with Patrick! They were together in the same womb!

He told Calip, Lean and Bern to go rest.

“Your Majesty, we tied both the princess’s wrists, but her swordsmanship skills were enough to easily defeat two knights.”

Calip held out iron chain handcuffs.

“Perhaps we should bind her hands to the bed post?”

The emperor recalled her trying to jump off the cliff at Tamiel Valley. He put down his pewter cup on the table and stood up. Wrapping the chains Calip gave him around his own wrist, he ordered:

“Calip, go to the military camp and come back tomorrow morning. You two wait here.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

When the emperor opened the bedroom door and entered, the princess with both wrists bound was at the window, opening it and looking outside. He swiftly ran over and scooped her up sideways.

“Princess, thinking of escaping like a cat?”

“What are you doing? Let go.”

“I can’t do that. You’re my prisoner, princess.”

“Who are you?”

Patricia was so focused on examining the window to find a way to escape that she hadn’t even looked at who was holding her.

“…Ha! This is unbelievable.”

The emperor loosened his hold so the princess wearing his oversized shirt could see his face.

As her body started to slip, the princess looked down at the floor and grabbed the emperor’s arm. He pulled her in tightly.

Then he brought his face close enough that their noses almost touched. The scent of Panian liquor emanated from him.

“Harchen Eint Carl Berk, Emperor of Karsik.”

At the emperor’s words, the maids who had been dozing with their heads together on the bedroom floor startled awake and pressed their foreheads to the ground.

“The undying sun of the empire.”

“The blazing golden sun of the empire, Your Imperial Majesty.”

These maids were from the nomadic Heun tribe.

After Harchen ascended the throne and ushered in a new golden age, he enacted laws recognizing the Heun people as equal to commoners.

The Heun were allowed to engage in economic activities and own private property, just like commoners.

This faced strong opposition from regional nobles, but the nobles of the capital knew Harchen’s temperament and did not oppose it. Or rather, they could not.

Since his days as crown prince, he had been the one to exterminate corrupt noble families. Though a young emperor, he could not be taken lightly. He had the drive to push through his firm convictions to the point it could be seen as tyranny.

The capital nobles’ greatest interest was in how much gold and diamonds would be revealed as the icebergs began melting in early summer.

They were keenly watching to see how the emperor would mine the gold and diamonds.

The Heun maids had been hired in the laundry room of Pana Castle and were in the process of learning to handle the knights’ uniforms.

It was their first time seeing the emperor up close like this. Unable to even coordinate their greetings, they simply pressed their foreheads to the floor.

“You may leave now.”

At the dismissal, the maids left, and the emperor looked down at Patricia in his arms.

‘Right. Yes, it was you. Harchen Berk.’

The person she didn’t want to meet and shouldn’t have met.

He was even wearing full body armor. If it weren’t for the sudden, intense chest pain, she wouldn’t have faltered in the duel. Even if she had faltered, she should have quickly responded to prevent the ahgme from being removed.

But even the armor had been stripped off.

The man who became Emperor of the Karsik Empire two months ago. Empress Pamila, desperate for the gold and diamonds buried in the empire’s icebergs.

‘Ah, Patrick.’

Patricia had not shown Patrick the emperor’s urgent deployment orders that Eden had brought.

Patrick was unable to move due to high fever and severe chest pain. The medicine given by the imperial physician had no effect, and his face had turned a greenish color.

Poisoning…!

Patricia recalled her mother’s final appearance. The poison had spread throughout her body, turning it a greenish hue.

On the eve of deployment, she and Eden moved Patrick to the western tower. She told Eva to tell the tower knights that Patricia was the one who was ill.

The knights who had lost their tongues due to an oath of silence bowed their heads, pressing their elbows to their foreheads at Eva’s words.

Patricia gave Eva her mother’s jewelry box, asking her to find someone connected to the Heun tribe and try to obtain an antidote.

On the morning of deployment day, the emperor was nowhere to be seen. Eva, in a blue dress with an apron, was crying at the outer walls of the palace, pressing a handkerchief to her face.

‘Patrick, please hold on until I return.’

*

Patricia came to her senses, worried about Patrick. She realized the situation – the emperor was carrying her towards the bed.

“Your Majesty. Please put me down.”

“I will put you down. But let me remind you again, Princess. You are my prisoner now.”

“If I’m a prisoner, then treat me as befits a prisoner.”

“Ah, Princess. You see…”

The emperor set Patricia down on his bed.

“This is my first time taking a princess posing as a crown prince prisoner, so I’m a bit clumsy at it.”

‘This emperor doesn’t remember what happened that day. Is that fortunate? Right, I was wearing a mask. But was I wearing it the whole time? Together on the terrace… Ah, Patricia, why did you do that?’

Patricia was relieved for now that the emperor didn’t mention what happened that day. She had seen Empress Pamila at the banquet. Her body trembled with boiling anger.

She remembered going out to the terrace.

When she came to her senses, she saw deep green eyes before her. She thought they looked like a rain-soaked forest. And then…

As if bewitched by something, she impulsively made the biggest mistake of her life. The emperor, who was the crown prince at the time, had been drunk. So fortunately, it seemed he didn’t remember.

It had to be that way.

When the emperor’s gaze met Patricia’s deep blue eyes as she lay looking up at him on his bed, he raised himself up.

“Though it may be uncomfortable, you’ll have to follow my way of doing things.”

Patricia, laid in the middle of the huge bed, raised her upper body and moved towards the headboard. Though her wrists were bound and she couldn’t move freely, she sat up as straight as possible.

“Please show proper etiquette.”

“Why should I? You invaded, and I simply captured the leader of an enemy country as a prisoner.”

Translation complete. 100% of original text translated.