Inside the Empress’s palace. A child’s crying echoed throughout. It was an earlier birth than expected. Bertisha, in an exhausted state, listened to her delighted maids’ words.

“Your Majesty the Empress, it’s a son!”

It was a son. A son who could become the next emperor… Bertisha closed her eyes in relief and spent several days recovering and resting to regain her strength.

But during her recovery, Camileo never once showed his face. At this fact, Bertisha threw the vase beside her bed straight at the wall.

The sound of shattering filled the bedroom. The maids who came in upon hearing the noise hurriedly cleaned up. They didn’t ask what had happened. The cold atmosphere between the Emperor and Empress was already famous within the imperial palace.

“Haa, haa…”

Bertisha, breathing heavily, frowned irritably. Throughout her pregnancy, there had been a cold war with him. Camileo’s changed attitude, unlike before, seemed to draw a line.

She had pleaded asking why he was acting this way, gotten angry, then shut herself inside the Empress’s palace. But the more she did so, far from comforting her, he turned away. As if he had never sworn eternal love to her.

As if trying to calm the sharp-edged Bertisha, the maids placed the sleeping baby with a full belly beside her.

Looking at the wriggling newborn, Bertisha sprang up from her seat. She had wanted to have a child quickly because of anxiety.

To shake off that anxiety of her world crumbling, which she never wanted to acknowledge. But in reality, even after having the child, things with Camileo had gone wrong.

She couldn’t bear it anymore. She wanted to resolve this displeasure that had risen to her throat. Bertisha headed to the Emperor’s palace.

She felt that only by hearing him say he loved her could she resolve this feeling of seemingly falling. While heading to where he was, Bertisha stopped in front of a painting.

It was a painting by artist Cortina, depicting a sunset sea and a ship entering the harbor.

‘Ah. That painting…’

Content she had heard in her final month of pregnancy, when stress had peaked and she had pressed her maids to find out about the Duchess of Ferhaem, came to mind.

‘Previously, when the Duchess of Ferhaem visited the imperial palace, I happened to overhear Her Majesty the Emperor and her sharing impressions about artist Cortina’s work hanging in the Emperor’s palace corridor. His Majesty the Emperor seemed pleased and laughed joyfully.’

‘What kind of painting was it?’

‘It was a painting with a sunset sea as background and a ship drawn in it.’

Suddenly, an unbearable impulse arose. Camileo, who hadn’t told her about meeting the Orbetian young lady. Camileo, who no longer whispered words of love and coldly turned his back. And Camileo, joyfully talking with the Orbetian young lady while looking at that painting. Of all things, a painting by artist Cortina, whom he hadn’t even told her about…!

When that happened didn’t matter to Bertisha. She was sick of looking at that painting. She wanted to remove it from her sight somehow.

The impulse was soon put into action as she took down the painting hanging on the wall and threw it to the floor. She wished everything would disappear. If everything that was destroying her world disappeared, perhaps Camileo’s heart would too…

“Empress! What kind of outrageous behavior is this.”

But what appeared at that moment was Camileo with a disappointed expression. The affection that had always filled his eyes when he looked at her was gone. His painfully distorted face turned away from her and coldly reprimanded her.

“The Empress’s health still seems poor. Take the Empress back to her palace.”

At that response, the anger Bertisha had been holding back surged.

“You’re going to leave like this again…? You haven’t come to see my face even once since the birth. How can you treat me like this…! Camileo!”

At her wailing cry, Camileo stopped his departing steps.

“Yes. I was thinking of coming to see you soon. Even now wouldn’t be bad. Let’s go to the Empress’s palace together.”

***

Upon arriving at the Empress’s palace, Camileo dismissed the surrounding maids. He was careful to ensure their conversation inside wouldn’t leak out. Bertisha sensed something strange in this.

“What on earth is going on? Why did you suddenly change, Camileo…?”

Her intuition sounded an eerie warning. Strangely, what the Orbetian young lady had said came to mind.

‘…The protagonist of this world is no longer Your Majesty the Empress. Accept it now. Before you become more unsightly.’

At that moment, Camileo asked her with a pained expression on his face.

“Then Bertisha, why did you deceive me?”

“What? Deceive?”

At Bertisha’s innocent expression, Camileo spoke as if chewing his words.

“You knew that Yezar loved you.”

She wondered if that woman had told Camileo everything. Bertisha slowly made excuses.

“…I thought speaking of it would crack our friendship.”

At that response, Camileo sneered.

“Haha, then why did you hover around and approach Yezar who was drawing lines? Even after swearing love with me, why did you work so hard because you hated that his heart was growing distant…! Bertisha…”

Camileo’s voice was trembling with anger. Bertisha was startled with fear. Her most precious thing was about to completely disappear.

“You deceived my love, Bertisha. Regardless of your background, I thought you were the only one who would be by my side.”

“Camileo, I did nothing improper. I never kissed Yezar or mingled bodies with him!”

At her response, a bitterly cold anger took over the room.

“That’s not the problem! You ruined even our joyful memories of the past, mine and Yezar’s. Bertisha, did you want to have everything…?”

Her body trembled with a start. Camileo’s words hit the mark. She had always thought Yezar would only look at her. But that wasn’t the case. Yezar was already turning his heart away from her.

She hated that. She begrudged giving him to someone else. So… so she became greedy. But she didn’t want to reveal such ugly feelings before her noble sun. Rather, she wanted to blame someone else.

If Yezar’s heart hadn’t left, she wouldn’t have done such unreasonable things. And if that woman, Julietta Orbetian, hadn’t been by Yezar’s side… everything would have been the same as before. Bertisha’s perfect world wouldn’t have crumbled.

“Why? Did the Duchess of Ferhaem say so…? That I was desperate to win another man’s heart! Did she say that!”

Shifting all responsibility to Julietta, Bertisha turned away from her own faults. Camileo knew this fact well.

Camileo had hoped that Bertisha would say she was wrong even now. If she had honestly confessed and begged for forgiveness saying she wouldn’t do it again in the future, he would have… he would have once closed his eyes tightly and tried to accept her.

Like when he had dismissed his friend’s affection as a thing of the past. His eyes, which had held onto his last hope, grew dim.

“I will do my best to raise the child. But you can no longer have my heart, Empress.”

Leaving cold words behind, Camileo turned his back on her. After Camileo left, Bertisha let out a hollow laugh.

“The protagonist of this world is no longer me…”

Bertisha’s world, which had been shaking little by little, completely collapsed. Everything she had once possessed flowed away like grains of sand.

Bertisha had someone retrieve documents that had luckily fallen into her hands. Inside those documents was a contract with the seal of the Ducal House of Ferhaem.

It was ridiculous. She laughed bitterly.

“…A contract marriage. As I expected, they weren’t that close after all. Did she dare raise her voice at me, the Empress, so fearlessly because a contract marriage had become love?”

She wanted to immediately call that woman and vent her anger, but she couldn’t. Yezar would be in front of her. He would completely protect and shield her.

All she had now was only the child, the fruit of a past love. But even though everything had collapsed, she could still kindle a small flame. The divorce commotion that woman had caused to attract Yezar’s attention flashed through Bertisha’s mind.

“If she wants a divorce so badly, I should help her. She should be grateful to me for helping her become the Orbetian young lady again. That woman…”

The woman who smiled maliciously was desperately hoping for Julietta to end up in the same state as herself.

***

The day they returned after resting well at the inn. There