Thud. Ilarid witnessed the strength draining from Cledius’s arms. His eyes were saying: No way, this must be a lie to tease me, just another joke like last time…

“Did you think it was a joke?”

Cledius shook his head with an expression of disbelief, then stepped forward and gripped Ilarid’s shoulders firmly with both hands. Ilarid frowned at the dull pain that washed over her.

“Empress, are you mocking me? Making that bastard your ‘shadow’… Such an absurd… How dare you, when I am your spouse…”

“…The Emperor must always bestow equal affection on all women of the imperial family, and minimize conflicts between the Empress and imperial consorts. Maintaining peace within the palace allows for stability outside the palace…”

The sentences that flowed effortlessly from Ilarid’s lips were not from the “Rules for Empresses”, but from the “Rules for Emperors”.

Cledius, who had been listening silently, widened his eyes more and more. Ilarid blinked slowly as she finished speaking. Between her closing and opening vision, she saw his expression distorted miserably.

“The sentences I transcribed were not just rules for empresses. What were the rules and laws that His Majesty the Emperor upheld?”

A person who did not care for his partner tenderly, and lacked even minimal courtesy and respect.

Even a cold-hearted human who forgot and did not visit on the anniversary of his own child’s death. Full of nothing but stubborn pride, unable to give up anything while putting on airs.

Clearly, he wasn’t this terrible before. What on earth had dragged him down to such depths? It was pathetic, even devastating.

“So, the Empress will become the same kind of person… Is that it?”

“There’s nothing I can’t do. I believe His Majesty has already guessed as much.”

Hadn’t previous empresses also secretly taken in ‘shadows’? Records of the empress’s lovers hidden discreetly throughout the imperial archives. What a truly splendid tradition of the nobles doing even more.

‘Though I couldn’t find any… Perhaps even Her Majesty the Empress Dowager had a shadow.’

As a member of the imperial family who could take even those of low birth as a ‘shadow’ if desired, Ilarid was still of empress status, and there was nothing she couldn’t do.

“Who was it that spent time with a lover in the next room, flaunting it in front of his wife? Thanks to that, I spent days wondering if I should have the soundproofing in the Empress’s Palace redone.”

With a calm smile, Ilarid used her arm strength to push him away. The blood that had been blocked flowed again, causing her arms to tingle.

She decided to drive the final nail into Cledius’s already shaken state.

As she reached back, she felt a firm hand. The moment she sensed the faint scars stretching between the thick, long fingers, she grasped Lebel’s hand without hesitation.

Though his hand was suddenly grabbed, Lebel did not refuse and quietly followed Ilarid’s actions. Rather, he seemed to gently pull back.

Thanks to the mercenary captain’s unexpectedly quick wit, Cledius’s expression crumpled quite satisfyingly.

“Your Majesty the Emperor. I heard it was an unwritten rule not to interfere with each other’s ‘shadows’. Even when the imperial consort was a ‘shadow’, I thought she was a being to fulfill Your Majesty’s pleasure and secretly cherished her. Did I harm the imperial consort or drive her away?”

Perhaps it would have been better if Selina had lived like a mouse. But she had trusted Ilarid’s dismissal and Cledius’s affection too much. Had she not realized that unquestioning faith breeds arrogance?

Cledius stared blankly at their joined hands. A deflated laugh escaped him before he muttered weakly.

“It’s true…?”

“I believe Your Majesty will not show a worse side than me.”

Even a person who had seen a ghost would look brighter than Cledius’s expression. He staggered backward and soon left the hospital room. It seemed he was quite shocked, more than expected.

‘Just from this much?’

How had Cledius treated Ilarid all this time? To have such a hurt look on his face from just this much. A faint sigh escaped Ilarid’s lips.

Though she had hoped Cledius would finally crumble before Ilarid, who had survived on hatred and anger, it was Cledius himself who was crumbling from something like this.

His retreating figure leaving the hospital room clearly showed the lingering attachment of someone denying reality. If he left like this, he would probably come to the Empress’s Palace in the afternoon to shout that it was nonsense.

As soon as the door closed, Ilarid let out the sigh she had been holding back. What to do now. She didn’t have the face to look at Lebel behind her.

‘How do I explain…’

Just as she was about to fall into a swamp of worry, Lebel’s hand gently squeezed hers. His fingers, which had only lingered near her fingertips, slowly dug into her palm.

Ilarid slowly turned around. She thought she had lowered the lighting in the hospital room, but why did it seem so bright? She felt like her reddened face would be exposed.

But right now, the blood on Lebel’s lips was more important than having her emotions exposed.

“Your Majesty the Empress. By ‘shadow’, you mean…”

“First, let me treat your wounds while we talk.”

It was still dawn, and there was quite some time before daybreak. If she was going to speak up, now was the chance.

She naturally pulled her hand away and moved from Lebel’s side. Pushing aside a bit of regret, she took out the ointment from the first aid kit Letitia had left behind. Then she sat on the empty bed and looked at Lebel.

“Come here.”

Lebel obediently approached and sat down quietly. The area around his lips was already swollen and red. His clothes underneath, probably trampled and stamped on by boots, must have been in tatters.

Ilarid’s fingers carefully touched near his lips where blood had pooled.

The sensation of the ointment passing over the wound was soft, but the dull pain that followed couldn’t be ignored. Lebel slightly furrowed his brow.

As her fingers passed between his lips, he tasted the bitterness of the ointment. Come to think of it, the scene was similar to when Lebel first entered the mansion.

The employees rushing over with first aid kits, Ilarid and Lynette stepping forward to treat him personally. And Limless, cursing the invisible slave trader while wrapping bandages around his wounds.

The memory of the past left a sweet taste on the tip of his tongue. That taste made him forget even the bitter and astringent sensation of the ointment. The corners of Lebel’s mouth turned up slightly as he recalled the memory.

“Does it hurt so much that you’re smiling?”

Ilarid immediately followed with a short reproach. For someone who said she would talk, she had been hesitating the entire time while applying the medicine. Lebel guessed this fact to some extent.

Though she had vowed not to use him, the words she had just shouted in front of Cledius were no different from saying she would use Lebel. She was probably constantly reminding herself of her contradictory attitude.

After waiting for a long time, Ilarid finally spoke heavily.

“Do you remember what I said before? That you should listen even if I make a strange request…”

“I remember, Your Majesty the Empress.”

“I just made Captain Lebel my ‘shadow’. From now on, Lebel, you are… the unofficial consort of the Empress’s Palace.”

The fingers that had lingered at the corners of his lips fell away. Though she had intended to let him go without hesitation if he refused after she proposed, somehow things had become tangled. She awkwardly lowered her head and fiddled with the ointment container.

“I was originally going to propose… but because I suddenly declared it like this, I couldn’t even ask for your opinion…”

“…It is an honor, Your Majesty the Empress.”

An honor? Ilarid’s hand, which had been hovering near the ointment container, stopped abruptly. Had she misheard? Did Lebel just say it was an honor?

Surprisingly, his face was trembling slightly like someone overcome with emotion.

Faced with this unexpected reaction, Ilarid was momentarily at a loss for words. Though she had received a positive answer from him, she even wondered if it was really okay to be purely happy about it.

She hurriedly erased her dazed expression and changed the subject.

“…Are there no other painful areas?”

No sooner had Ilarid finished speaking than Lebel naturally took off his top. Before there was time to feel embarrassed, the wounds and bruises from being trampled by boots immediately caught her eye.

The movement of fingers on his body was awkward but thorough. Lebel neither stopped nor avoided the hand applying the ointment. He just sat quietly, accepting Ilarid’s touch.

Her fingers paused near Lebel’s arm. A scar visible below the fresh wound. It was a trace of skin that had shriveled from contact with something hot.

“It’s proof that I survived.”

“Proof…”

“It happened while escaping when I was trapped in the warehouse with the soldiers.”

His voice was calm. As if simply reciting a past time, as if peeling off the callus that had formed over the scar.

“Very rarely… I dream of that day.”

“Me too.”

Ilarid unwound the thin scarf around her neck. A diagonal scar. The reason Lebel had not yet asked carefully flickered.

Lebel unknowingly placed his hand over Ilarid’s scar. A gentle touch, as if applying ointment. Memories that had become deep, indelible scars clamored beneath his fingers.

“There was a moment when I risked my life. I threw myself to save two people’s lives, but…”

It was only two people. Though he had bled and gained scars, he had barely managed to save just two people.

The guilt of not being able to save all those who worked at the mansion, those who were unjustly killed for being entangled with Melpiram, constantly grew in that corner.

Still, is it a glorious scar since he saved people? But if scars are glorious, who comforts the pain that remains after that shining moment?

The time of overcoming and enduring was entirely one’s own. Those around deliberately ignored the person crushed by their wounds, only telling them to endure and live on.

Lebel remembered the end of the sorrow Ilarid had poured out. The small shoulders that constantly suffered, turning all arrows towards herself while wailing that it was all her fault.

As if trying to lighten her burden, he wrapped one arm around Ilarid’s shoulders. The faint sound of breathing near his ear. Lebel matched his breathing to the breath he heard.

“It won’t happen again.”

The wish to stay in the closest place to Ilarid. Now that he had become her ‘shadow’, one of his wishes had come true.

“From this moment on… I will protect Your Majesty the Empress with all my strength.”

Listening to his low voice, Ilarid closed her heavy eyelids. His warm voice melted her frozen body and made her heart, which she thought had stopped, flow again.

Ilarid embraced him without further hesitation. We are salvation to each other.

“Lebel. Help me. And… fight with me.”

After Ilarid finished speaking, Lebel slowly separated from her and met her eyes. The flames that had been burning in his gray-blue eyes had now changed to a cold temperature.

One always had to be cool-headed at the moment of decision. Wielding a sword that could strike down the oncoming thoughts in one fell swoop, resolutely and calmly.

And when it came to Ilarid, Lebel always had only one answer.

He stood up, knelt before Ilarid, and formally paid his respects. Though there was no scribe to record the promise, nor a sword to conduct the oath, unchanging promises are said to come from between the lips.

Kneeling in the oath-taking posture before the Empress, Lebel soon kissed the back of Ilarid’s hand.

“Command me, Your Majesty the Empress.”

Strength naturally entered her hand. The weight of the connection that had not yet been severed was heavy but infinitely reassuring.

Ilarid looked at him and continued in a low voice.

“I… will bring down the imperial family. The Emperor and all the nobles who cooperate with him. Those who caused the tragedy of Melpiram.”

The most precious things to Cledius were power and the empire.

Ilarid intended to take away all the power and country he cherished so much.

The back of her hand that she had been gently holding soon touched Lebel’s forehead. Feeling a pleasant coolness, Lebel smiled faintly.

Where the back of her hand touched was the scar he had received in the slave market.

A scar engraved in the moment when he first threw his body to protect Ilarid in the past. The body heat of those with the same goal flowed through each other’s skin to their hearts.

His heart beat ceaselessly inside his body that had seemed completely empty. Feeling that pulsation, Lebel raised his head.

His lady no longer cried.

“I will obey the command of Your Majesty the Empress.”

Lady Ilarid. Please use me to your heart’s content, as much as your strength allows.

“I am my lord’s sword and shield, a tool to fulfill your desires, and I will live for my lord until the moment my life ends.”