There is a saying that there should be no secrets between spouses.

It’s a matter of trust.

Esika thought of Resban as someone she could fully turn her back to.

However, Esika knew that her relationship with him was slightly different from an ordinary married couple.

The primary reason for Esika’s marriage to Resban was revenge against the Empress, a long-standing nemesis.

Knowing this, Resban told her to marry him and willingly use him.

“……”

It wasn’t solely for revenge that Esika married Resban.

Esika thought she had shown her trust and goodwill to him several times.

Resban embraced Esika multiple times each night during their passionate honeymoon period.

Her married life with him was more brilliant than her previous two marriages.

These days were a first for her. Though Resban probably didn’t realize how she felt.

As she had told him when accepting his proposal, Esika was afraid.

Afraid of ‘repeating past mistakes.’

Obsessing over and agonizing for a husband who had turned his eyes elsewhere… suffering until her heart turned pitch black.

And thus, losing her brilliant and beautiful self.

“…Your Highness, the Crown Prince.”

Esika opened her mouth while looking into Resban’s eyes.

His calm golden eyes reflected Esika’s image. So calmly that it almost made her feel resentful.

“Today……”

Though Esika was undoubtedly stronger than anyone else in the world, the stimulation of trauma tends to drag emotions to the bottom.

She looked at Resban with cold blue eyes and said,

“I’m a bit tired.”

Esika was someone who didn’t avoid any awkward or unreasonable situations.

But the reason for this overwhelming fatigue was probably because the scars in her heart were baring themselves.

The words she had said to Lady Merhin suddenly seemed meaningless.

“Esika.”

Esika raised her hand and firmly removed Resban’s hand.

Then she stared at him intently.

After looking at Esika, he let out a small sigh and opened his mouth.

“Yes, you seem tired today, so it can’t be helped.”

“Are you……”

Esika continued her words.

“Going back to your room?”

Resban responded to her words with a stiff face.

“Since you’re tired, it might be better if I leave.”

Consideration and lies are so subtle that they’re difficult to distinguish.

Just hours ago, she had believed in him completely, but now Esika habitually tried to find flaws in his face.

And these uncontrollable emotions exhausted her.

Like snakes escaping from a glass jar whose lid she had tried hard to keep closed, they gnawed at her heart and injected poison.

“Do that.”

Esika finished speaking and turned around.

Not long after, she heard the sound of the door closing.

Only after his presence disappeared did Esika sit in the chair, slightly furrowing her brow.

And she raised her hand to her forehead.

**

“……”

“I’ve come to pay my respects, Your Majesty the Empress.”

The next morning, Esika was summoned to the Empress’s room.

In the luxurious room, the Empress was drinking tea.

Esika sat across from her, and a maid poured tea.

“……”

Esika picked up the teacup. And swallowed the tea.

She could immediately tell that it wasn’t poisoned.

The Empress silently stared at Esika with cold eyes for a while.

“Does the Crown Princess know?”

Her red lips moved as she spat out the words.

Esika looked at the Empress with a calm expression.

There must be a reason for calling her for this private audience today.

“What do you mean?”

“That there is nowhere in this palace to escape my eyes.”

The Empress seemed to have something in mind.

However, Esika couldn’t understand the Empress’s intention.

Despite her sharp and sensitive intuition, today the Empress’s words felt like grasping at clouds.

“I know. The palace is… Your Majesty’s domain.”

So Esika spoke while staring into the Empress’s eyes.

The tip of the Empress’s eyebrow twitched visibly.

The Empress took another sip of tea and spoke in a chilly informal tone.

“I don’t know what you’re plotting, but nothing will go as you wish.”

The corner of her lips twisted.

“By now, she should be a corpse. Just like your maid who collapsed vomiting blood.”

“……”

Esika, who had been listening to the Empress’s words, opened her mouth.

“It seems you’ve killed someone again.”

“Pretending not to know anything, even though I clearly know what you’ve hidden.”

“Do you really think so, Your Majesty?”

Esika asked the Empress with a slight smile.

“Don’t you think I’m listing out Your Majesty’s weaknesses that I don’t need to know?”

At those words, the Empress’s eyebrows hardened.

She seemed to be trying to figure out if Esika’s words were sincere or not.

Esika was smiling with unwavering eyes.

Because, truly, Esika didn’t know what the Empress was talking about today.

“I’ll get up and leave now. I’m very curious about what Your Majesty has said. About what you suspect I’ve hidden.”

As Esika stood up, the Empress seemed a bit flustered.

She certainly should be.

Although it’s unclear what made her hasty, she had essentially confessed her urgency to the person she should least tell it to.

“Wait.”

“What is it, Your Majesty?”

“Are you really saying it wasn’t the Crown Princess?”

Instead of answering that, Esika shrugged her shoulders and then left the Empress’s chambers.

And she suddenly recalled the Empress Dowager from her previous life.

She was cruel and treated people’s lives like flies.

But she never misjudged anything.

If the Empress had at least half guessed correctly…

“……”

Esika’s footsteps quickened.

**

The palace was vast, but if she could sense his presence, it wasn’t difficult to find Resban.

Though she was tired from not being able to sleep, and couldn’t even do her morning meditation due to lack of concentration, at this moment her energy was remarkably focused.

Esika walked and walked until she reached the eastern ruins of the palace.

This place, which was said to have burned down in a war 20 years ago and still hadn’t been restored, was the palace where traitors who had sided with the enemy among the royal family members had resided.

Esika slowly walked through the collapsed pillars.

And she saw Resban standing in front of a grave.

Her heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it.

Esika walked step by step towards him.

Resban, sensing Esika’s presence, slowly turned around.

“……”

A cool breeze blew between them.

Esika’s silver hair fluttered, and the hem of her dress also swayed gently.

Resban signaled with his hand for his shadows in the vicinity to withdraw.

They had just buried a woman in this grave.

“…Esika.”

Resban took two steps forward towards Esika who was approaching him.

They were facing each other.

His appearance amidst the ruined landscape looked a bit lonely, but his golden eyes were shining brightly.

“Is the courtesan I met yesterday in this grave?”

At Esika’s words, Resban’s eyebrows twitched, then he slightly wrinkled his nose bridge and nodded.

“So you knew.”

She was probably the woman the Empress was looking for.

Likely one of Breyten’s lovers whom the Empress strongly suspected Esika had spirited away.

“I knew as soon as I saw her that she would die soon. That’s the only way out for the low-class women Breyten brings in. The Empress doesn’t like gossip.”

It’s not something a follower of Tameron, the source of life, should do.

“Then……”

“I took her to my room and questioned her about what happened. Panix personally investigated her, and we learned that the woman carrying Breyten’s child was in the same situation as this woman.”

“……”

“For the first time in a long while, a small fish escaped from the Empress’s net.”

His gaze at the earthen grave was perhaps chillingly indifferent.

“In a manner of speaking, I obtained a spoil of war. The location of this grave can be considered quality information.”

“……”

The wind blew. It still seemed to smell of perfume.

Resban raised his gaze to look at Esika.

His eyes, which had looked at the woman’s grave as if it were a worthless stone or piece of wood, changed the moment they met Esika’s eyes.

Like a mirage rising from a hot iron plate even in the cool weather.

“A certain villainess who entered the palace for revenge.”

Resban reached out his hand and caressed Esika’s cheek.

“Atones even for the killings I didn’t commit, as she has done many times before.”

At his words, Esika’s eyes wavered.

This was the reason Resban hadn’t told Esika the truth yesterday.

The maid who died spitting blood by the Empress’s hand, and the maid who died by hanging…

Esika had taken follow-up measures for them.

“I thought I only needed to talk about the results. But these eyes……”

“……”

“They look like they’re going to question me, so I must have done something wrong, right?”

Resban asked Esika, slightly narrowing his brow.

Esika stared at Resban for a long time without opening her mouth.

And she thought that perhaps she hadn’t been honest with herself all this time.

Using past wounds as an excuse, she had wrapped herself in layers of armor, but such things were ultimately as useless as melting metal in the face of love.

The idea that she wouldn’t love passionately might also just be a manifestation of fear.

So now, it would be good to admit it.

That she had fallen in love with him. After all, anxiety was also evidence of love.

Perhaps I’m becoming weak again.

“You’ve done something very wrong.”

Esika said to Resban.

Just as Resban, furrowing his brow slightly, was about to reply, she stood on her tiptoes.

And brought her soft lips to the lips of the man she loved.

After a few seconds of kissing, when she pulled her lips away, Resban cradled her nape with his hand.

And he kissed her, crushing their lips together.

His deep breath came in, warmly filling her scarred chest.