Chapter 107
With eyes brimming with suppressed anger, the Emperor turned his gaze away from where the Empress had disappeared.
Ianheart calmly met his father’s gaze.
“Ianheart.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Did you know about your mother’s affair?”
Affair.
Strictly speaking, wasn’t that man, Yuteran, the Empress’s true lover from the very beginning?
But standing before his father’s piercing, frigid stare, Ianheart could not say that.
Nor did he have any desire to.
“I did not know.”
Ianheart lied.
In any case, until today, no one in the palace had known of the Empress’s secret meetings with her lover. Nobody knew that Ianheart had been aware of it either.
“Is that the truth?”
“I have no reason to lie to my father.”
After studying him in silence for a moment, the Emperor finally withdrew his gaze.
“…Very well. You’ve no reason to shield your mother.”
His muttered words reached Ianheart’s ears.
Shield her.
‘…Did I shield the Empress?’
Ianheart did not think so.
Of course, it was true that he had stayed silent despite knowing of their secret meetings—not two people, but three.
But that was merely turning a blind eye.
If he had truly wished to protect the Empress, wouldn’t he have warned her?
Told her to hide those she cherished more carefully?
Told her that no matter how she deceived his father’s eyes, it could never last forever?
About the child he had first seen three years ago, and only rarely in the late nights or early dawn since then…
…But what did it matter now?
Ianheart forcibly cut off his tangled thoughts.
Whether he had unwittingly shielded the Empress was irrelevant.
Half of her long-kept secret had already been exposed. The rest… was none of his concern.
“Ianheart.”
“Yes.”
“Visit your mother often. A child showing his face may ease her loneliness.”
The Emperor sighed as he spoke.
Surely, he knew the Empress did not see Ianheart as her son. That she would vent her bitterness on him instead.
Yet, once again, Ianheart had only one answer he could give.
“As you command.”
Only after hearing his son’s response did the Emperor, looking weary, leave the Empress’s palace.
From that day, Ianheart was finally allowed to use the Crown Prince’s palace, eight years after his birth.
As the Empress’s quarters lost their mistress, the Crown Prince’s residence gained its rightful owner.
He thought his father’s response was milder than expected.
It was not that the Emperor lacked rage.
He simply directed it outward.
The day before, the Emperor declared war on the Kingdom of Garon—three days after the secret meeting had been exposed.
Garon was Yuteran’s homeland.
“They say His Majesty departed for the front lines at dawn today.”
“…I see.”
For Garon, it was like a bolt from the blue.
In a rush, they dispatched envoys using teleportation mages, bowing low before the Empire—but the Emperor refused to so much as glance at them.
The official cause for the war was that Garon’s merchants had sold poor-quality silks, destabilizing the Imperial economy.
“Do you think that’s true?”
“…Not entirely impossible. Few merchants exist without some stain to their dealings.”
The one who answered Ianheart was Count Chadwick, who had become Deputy Minister of the Interior several years ago and also served as Ianheart’s tutor.
“No one could possibly think this war just.”
“Well… war can never truly be justified, no matter the reason.”
Even Chadwick’s face showed deep unease.
The true cause of this war was known only to the Emperor’s closest circle, to Ianheart, and to the two directly involved.
Not even Chadwick knew that the war had sprung from a matter of jealousy.
The war ended swiftly.
In less than two weeks, Garon’s royal family was captured and dragged to the Empire. The kingdom of Garon was erased from the map.
“Father, Mother! Ahhh… damn you, Emperor…!”
“Mind your tongue.”
The Emperor threw the severed heads of Yuteran’s family before him.
Seeing that his love had doomed his family and destroyed his nation, Yuteran sobbed until he fainted.
And a few days later.
On a night when the underground prison was strangely poorly guarded, Yuteran escaped.
Ianheart believed the Emperor had deliberately let him go.
So that he could tighten his hold on the Empress.
He was right.
“Carlin, I’m the only one you have left. Look, that man abandoned you and fled.”
The Emperor whispered lies to the Empress imprisoned in Huisek Palace.
That Yuteran had abandoned her. That he had fled because he feared mere imprisonment.
Before her dazed, disbelieving eyes, a vision crystal replayed the scene.
Yuteran breaking free from the underground prison. Yuteran climbing the palace walls, leaving without even seeking her.
“No… that can’t be… Yuteran, Yuteran would never abandon me…”
“No. He abandoned you. After only two weeks of captivity, he cast you aside—that is all his love was worth.”
“No! Aaaah! No, no, no, no!”
Already broken, the Empress wept until she fainted, over and over again.
Yet in all that time, not once did she call out the name of her son a year younger than Ianheart.
Perhaps, instinctively, she knew Yuteran had taken the boy.
If the Emperor discovered the existence of a child between them, he would unleash the Imperial army to slaughter them both.
Even as she convulsed in pain from betrayal, she clung to protecting her son.
Ianheart found it almost strange.
The abandoned Empress became half-mad.
Even years later, sobs often drifted from Huisek Palace, and sometimes within those cries, she would call Ianheart’s name.
Whenever that happened, Ianheart would visit her expressionlessly.
The main reason he responded was his father’s pressure.
The Emperor, too absorbed in war to remain by her side, wanted Ianheart to tend to her.
Ianheart had no authority to defy his father’s command.
Another reason was responsibility: she had given him birth. He could not leave her entirely to ruin.
And perhaps some pity—for a woman whose life had been destroyed by others.
If he did not go, the Empress would scratch at her own neck until it bled.
Even if she did not see him as her son, Ianheart had still been born from her womb.
It was not pleasant to watch the one who bore him destroy herself.
“How is she today?”
“Since hearing the Crown Prince would visit, she has been quiet.”
“…I see.”
Nodding faintly, Ianheart slowly opened the door and entered the darkened room.
The air was thick with the musty smell of furniture never touched by sunlight, mingled with the stench of despair.
A porcelain vase that had sat on the shelf for days now lay shattered across the floor.
“Kairan, come here… show your face to your mother, won’t you?”
From the ornate canopy bed in the corner came a rasping voice.
Ianheart swallowed a sigh and faint irritation, stepping forward.
The Empress’s mind was broken.
Some days she cursed him and spat venom, wishing him dead. Other days she mistook him for Kairan, her other son.
‘So today I’m not Ianheart, but Kairan.’
No matter how gently she spoke the name, being seen as someone else was never pleasant.
Especially when that someone was his half-brother.
“Kairan does not exist here.”
“Oh, Kairan… still sulking? It’s only because I was busy, dearest.”
Despite his cold words, the Empress gave a dry laugh, searching for the phantom child.
With a sigh, Ianheart sat upright in the chair beside her bed.
From his robes, he drew a bound sheaf of documents and began to read.
“Kairan, how is your father these days? How is Yuteran? Hmm?”
“…”
“Kairan, son. Your mother is asking you.”
“…Mother, you should guard your tongue. If Father learns you have another son, do you think he will stand idly by?”
For a while, the Empress said nothing.
Ianheart turned back to his documents.
Only the rustle of pages filled the silence, until heavy breathing stirred behind the canopy.
With another sigh, Ianheart set the papers aside.
A few seconds later—
Shaa—
The canopy was thrown aside, and the Empress glared at him with wild eyes, her hair disheveled.
It was the gaze of someone not in their right mind.
“…Khff.”
Back at the Crown Prince’s palace, Ianheart suddenly coughed up blackened blood.
He calmly disposed of the stained cloth and washed his hands.
Then, from a desk drawer, he retrieved a vial and swallowed its thick green liquid with a blank expression.
The sharp bitterness burned down his throat.
The poison had changed sooner than usual, leaving him unprepared, but fortunately, the antidote was close enough to ease the raging pain inside him.
“…I’ll have to go again soon.”
With a sigh, he tossed the vial into the waste bin and pulled his papers toward him once more.
Whenever Ianheart visited, the Empress always offered him tea.
Tea laced with poison.
It had become so ingrained in her that whether she saw him as Ianheart or as Kairan, she never failed to serve it.
If he refused to drink, she would threaten to drink it herself and die.
In any case, it was not a poison that would kill him instantly.
He had no wish to provoke his father’s increasingly volatile temper since Yuteran’s exposure, nor to watch the Empress harm herself.
That was why Ianheart calmly drank the poisoned tea.
Lately, the Emperor had entrusted nearly all state affairs to Ianheart while he devoted himself wholly to wars of conquest.
Already a man who delighted in bloodshed, since learning of the Empress’s betrayal he had thrown himself into conquest with obsession.
Ianheart felt no curiosity about the reason for this change.
And so the days spun on, like a wheel: day after day, month after month, seasons turning.
Until at last, wounds from the battlefield worsened, and the Emperor died, leaving behind only his will.
By that will, the Empress became the Dowager Empress and was confined in a hidden tower within the palace.
Three days later, Ianheart ascended the throne.
At last, one side of that wretched bond was severed completely.
