The words were clearly directed at the Emperor, but it was his consort, Titie, who felt warned. She froze momentarily before clinging to Demios.
“Your Majesty, let’s go somewhere else.”
Titie, seemingly frightened by the argument, coaxed the Emperor.
Demios calmed his breath. Before turning away, he warned Sephia.
“Remember this, Empress. Those entangled with the Duke only meet with ruin.”
His scornful remark was directed at Roxan.
Roxan’s eyes were coldly frozen. The Emperor, seeming pleased by this reaction, smiled showing his teeth.
The Emperor and his consort left the balcony.
The surroundings quieted down. Roxan stared at the closed door for a long time.
The week-long Victory Festival had ended.
With its conclusion, winter came to the Empire.
The winter of the Empire began with snow.
What started as a few flakes soon covered the rooftops and whitened the Imperial Palace.
Sephia also had a break after successfully completing the large banquet.
During the break, her meal times with Demios continued.
Unexpectedly, he consistently attended meals with Sephia.
This was surprising.
However, conversations were rare, and sometimes they didn’t speak at all.
Things had changed.
The stifling silence made Sephia uncomfortable.
This week’s meal was in the Empress’s palace.
After Demios left the table first, Sephia also finished her meal.
‘I feel bloated.’
Despite not eating much, she felt uncomfortably full.
Outside the window, snow was falling. It started two days ago and began to accumulate significantly last night.
“Empress, the garden is full of snow. Let’s all go see!”
“Alright.”
Sephia, persuaded by her maids, headed to the garden.
The once autumn-colored garden was now completely white.
It was peaceful and beautiful.
A maid approached and draped a shawl over Sephia’s shoulders.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“No, I’m glad I came. The snow is beautifully piled up.”
Sephia had seen snow in the Huron Empire too. However, it never piled up as much as in the Beastmen Empire.
The two empires shared the same seasons but showed different aspects.
Sephia gazed at the white garden, lost in thought.
‘Why did Demios say that?’
It was more than a passing remark, considering Roxan’s reaction.
Asking Demios seemed fruitless; he wouldn’t likely reveal anything.
Roxan’s past.
Unrecorded in documents, it had to be learned through word of mouth.
As Sephia contemplated this, something scarlet caught her eye in the white world.
‘Did I see that wrong?’
In the brief moment Sephia closed and reopened her eyes, a maid pointed to one side of the garden.
“Empress, look over there!”
A red fox emerged from the bushes.
Its lush fur glistened as it flicked its tail and stared intently at Sephia.
‘What’s this?’
Normally, only birds appeared in the Empress’s palace.
The maids being bird beastmen attracted various birds.
The fox might be a beastman, but Sephia quickly dismissed the idea.
Beastmen hid their true forms from birth.
This creature was a fully grown fox.
It was unlikely to find a mature beastman wandering in true form in the Imperial Palace.
The red fox approached Sephia, leaving cute paw prints.
Keeing, king.
The fox pricked its ears, then unexpectedly nudged its head forward.
“Are you asking to be touched?”
Certainly, here’s the English translation of the Korean paragraph you provided, following your guidelines:
“Perhaps it wasn’t without reason, but the green eyes seemed incredibly gentle.
Sepia cautiously reached out her hand.
Gently stroking, the fox rubbed its head against her.
The fur of the red beast was surprisingly soft.
The astonished maids surrounded the fox, each throwing a word.
“Oh, I’ve never seen such a big fox follow so obediently!”
“How fascinating. Isn’t it, Your Majesty?”
The fox, seemingly delighted by Sepia’s touch, playfully rolled around on the snow.
The sight of the innocent creature made her smile involuntarily.
Sepia touched the fox’s belly and said, “Someone might have lost and raised you.”
“Shall we look for your owner? A fox as lovely as you might be missed dearly.”
“Please.”
After playing tricks for a while, the fox disappeared into the bushes.
Although she thought about catching it, she worried it might become wary and refrained from doing so.
To her surprise, the fox was in the garden the next day.
Since their first encounter, the fox visited the garden at the same time every day, enjoying the company of Sepia and the maids before vanishing at sunset.
It had been a week already.
However, no one claiming to be the fox’s owner had appeared.
One of the maids who had been stroking the fox’s belly suddenly asked, “Since you like Her Majesty so much, why not keep it in the palace?”
“Should we?” Sepia replied.
The fox was already mature.
Even if released into the wild, it seemed unlikely to survive.
“I’m worried about where it sleeps every night.”
While Sepia was contemplating, the fox shook the snow off its fur, causing it to fall onto her.
“Eek, don’t shake it off on me!”
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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