The moment Peon saw Kaella slap her own cheek hard enough to turn it bright red, his train of thought screeched to a halt. She had always been radiant and composed; to see her expressionless face strike her own pale skin with such a resounding smack was jarring. The force was enough to make any observer wince, and indeed, Kaella felt the sting.
It hurt. The sharp, stinging sensation jolted her senses awake. She could not forgive herself for the emotions she had dared to feel—not after a single blow. She raised her hand to strike again.
“Kaella.”
Peon’s voice was low and commanding. He reached out, his large, gloved hand catching her wrist in a firm grip to stop her.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Dreams were cruel things. The burning heat on her cheek, the solid strength of the fingers wrapped around her wrist, and the urgency in his voice all felt too vivid. His gaze, laced with genuine surprise and concern, felt like an affront.
*You crazy girl.*
Kaella chided herself under her breath.
“Because I couldn’t wake up.”
She was still using honorifics. Peon felt a wave of dissonance; it wasn’t the content of her answer that unsettled him, but her tone. Even when their meetings had dwindled to a handful of times a year, Kaella had always addressed him as ‘Oppa,’ treating him with the same childhood familiarity.
Even when others grew distant, intimidated by the complexities of the imperial court, Kaella never had. Even after she lost everything and was forced into marriage, she had greeted him with a smile, acting in private as if nothing between them had changed.
While people change, it bothered Peon because he realized, with a sudden, sharp ache, how much he had missed that old version of Kaella. He had missed it far more than he cared to admit.
*Does the Marchioness not know the etiquette of noble titles? Call me properly. What kind of logic is it to act well-taught, only to ignore the laws when it is convenient?*
It was he who had stripped away that familiar, kind attitude. He was the one who had acted as if their happy childhood memories had never existed.
The young Marchioness, with nowhere left to turn, had tried to make things work with the man who was both her ‘Oppa’ and her husband, only to lose her laughter, lose her words, and eventually become desperate to mirror the cold, meticulous etiquette he demanded.
“It’s alright to rest.”
“No, I heard the Empress has collapsed; I cannot do that.”
There was a high probability that the tiresome Emperor, who picked fights over trivialities, would make a scene if he found her sleeping while the Empress lay incapacitated. Kaella’s intuition was finely tuned to such dangers; she had lived through enough to know the risks.
*Maintain dignity, be patient, and treat others with kindness—then a reward will return to you.* That was the virtue Kaella had been taught.
She had tried to live by it, believing it would work in Lyussenford, but the result had been a horrific death. Dignity? Patience? Kindness? They were a joke. What had those virtues left her? A miserable, gruesome end.
She could no longer afford the luxury of dignity. She had to rack her brains. Instead of patience, she had to act before she was acted upon. She had to discard her kindness and embrace a ruthless self-interest just to survive—if survival was even possible in this cutthroat palace.
“I will stay awake in your stead. You must be in pain; why would you do such a thing?”
The Grand Duke—her husband—was examining her cheek again.
*Oh, such concern.* It was the kind of attention one received as an acquaintance, not as his wife. Was this a trick of the gods? A hallucination? A nightmare?
*The man who helped kill my father—why is he acting like a savior now?*
It made no sense. Kaella, who had slapped herself to break the habit of expecting warmth from Peon, struggled to regain her composure. *Think coldly. Think coldly.*
“That’s right, it hurts, doesn’t it? Never do it again.”
Adeo, shocked by his daughter’s outburst, spoke with equal firmness.
“Yes.”
Kaella answered half-heartedly, lost in thought. She didn’t know how she had returned from the Northern Tower—whether by the mischievous hand of the dragon Gwasalante or the Emperor’s magical meddling—but she had to be cautious.
*Just because Father is alive, it doesn’t mean everything is resolved.*
As long as the Emperor remained, she was a target. He coveted the golden territory of Ostain, and that greed was the reason they were all currently walking on eggshells. The mere thought brought a wave of crushing exhaustion.
*Should I have just stayed dead?*
To Kaella, the prospect of navigating this life again was a weight she was already too tired to carry. She had truly hoped this moment was just a dream.
“Bring a washbasin and a towel.”
As Peon issued orders, the Duke of Ostain grabbed his daughter’s hand, his expression bewildered. Her palm was already red and swollen.
“If you are sleepy, sleep. If you need to stay awake, walk. What is this? Don’t ever do this again.”
Yet, Kaella’s weary heart softened at his kind voice. Her father’s calloused hand was warm, his tone filled with genuine affection.
Her eyes burned. *So this is what it means to be alive.* The warmth she had been starved of for so long was pouring back into her life.
“Yes.”
Her voice thick with emotion, Kaella swallowed her tears. Her father was here, and he was safe; the joy of it momentarily eclipsed her desire for the void. Perhaps God had pitied her.
“Kaella.”
A blunt voice called her name. As she turned, a cold, wet towel touched her cheek. She flinched, and Peon lowered his voice.
“Hold it there. It’s quite swollen.”
“Give it to me, please.”
As Kaella reached for the towel, Peon ignored her, soaking another in the basin, wringing it out, and applying it to her reddened palm as well.
“I can do this myself. Thank you.”
“Open your palm.”
His tone was that of a man accustomed to being obeyed. It was impossible to refuse, especially after four years of conditioning. He placed the cold compress on her palm and adjusted the one on her face, which she had applied clumsily in her rush.
This man was not kind. She looked down, unable to meet his eyes, her mind drifting back to the cold of Lyussenford. She had been so sick there. She remembered a winter when she had slipped on a frozen staircase and broken a bone while the Grand Duke watched from above.
*I can do it.*
*Your Highness, it appears the Grand Duchess has suffered a fracture.*
She remembered the agonizing pain, the whispers of the onlookers, and the Grand Duke of Lyussenford looking down at her with nothing but detachment.
*Let her in.*
He had dismissed her with a wave, as if she were an inconvenient parcel. There was no doctor. He never once looked at her as she groaned in pain. In Lyussenford, being sick was a liability. She was worth less than a hunting dog.
“Give it to me.”
*If we hadn’t been forced into this marriage, we could have been a pair who cared for each other,* she thought bitterly. He was not the husband she knew, yet the old, unhealed sorrow of never being respected welled up within her.
“Kaella.”
Peon called her quietly.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Kaella’s blue eyes widened. She stared at him as if he were a strange creature. Why was he acting like this?
“Or perhaps it’s been too long since we last saw each other?”
He forced a smile. His eyes were chillingly lucid, not the deep, fathomless blue she remembered.
“Why are you suddenly using honorifics so awkwardly?”
“Exactly. You used to call me Oppa quite well.”
At twenty-one, before her father’s death, that had been the norm. They had grown up together. Since then, it had always been Peon Oppa.
“Are you trying to be distant now that you’re grown?”
At her father’s snickering comment, Kaella was bewildered.
*Ah.*
She had forgotten. There had been such a time. The moment she became the Grand Duchess, that innocent girl who followed her favorite Oppa had been erased by the crushing duty of Lyussenford etiquette. It was a memory so old, it felt meaningless.
“If I did something wrong, tell me. I won’t do it again.”
Peon took the towel from her trembling hands and reapplied it to her cheek.
“So, please treat me the way you used to.”
He hadn’t come back this far just to hear the stiff, formal tone of the Grand Duchess of Lyussenford from the mouth of a Kaella who had not yet lost everything.
*……It must be because we haven’t seen each other in a long time.*
Yes. That was it. Peon gripped the wet towel, his fingers trembling, unbeknownst to him.
･ ｡ﾟ✧: *. ꕥ .* :✧ﾟ. ･
Not just palace physicians, but renowned doctors from the academy were summoned, yet three days after the Empress collapsed, they remained terrified and baffled, unable to find a cause.
“I am deeply disappointed.”
Though the Emperor’s tone was polite, his irritation was a palpable threat, keeping the palace in a state of suffocating anxiety. The atmosphere, already stifled by the Emperor’s suspicion, had become as thin as ice.
“To not even know why she collapsed! There must be a reason—did she eat something wrong?!”
Maids were dragged away in the dead of night, yet no one knew how the Empress had fallen unconscious in the private depths of the Soleil Palace, an area accessible only to the Emperor. That she had escaped his thorough surveillance was enough to drive him to madness.
The Emperor, having rampaged for three days without rest, suddenly spotted a figure in the doorway.
“Is that Hyperion?”
“I greet the eternal sun of the empire. May you live a thousand years.”
The Emperor was fifty, and the fatigue of his three-day frenzy was etched into his face, though he remained remarkably robust.
“You must have been worried about your mother, too.”
Peon, the Grand Duke of Lyussenford, glanced at the four-poster bed before approaching.
“Your Majesty, three days have passed. You must eat and rest.”
His gaze was filled with a flicker of pity—the only emotion he dared show. Any more, and the Emperor would use it as a trigger for another outburst.
“You heartless thing, how can you tell me to eat when your mother has collapsed like that?!”
“Your Majesty is the sun who rules the Krania Empire. The whole empire knows of your devotion, but even to protect her, you require strength. Many are worried.”
Peon looked his detestable father in the eye, showering him with hollow concerns.
“You must eat.”
The Emperor rose reluctantly, stumbling, and Peon caught him.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. ……You were at the Altain Palace.”
The Emperor’s reach was absolute; nothing happened in the empire without his knowledge. He enjoyed the terror that realization instilled in others.
“Yes. I was with the Duke of Ostain and his daughter.”
“Ah, yes. That child, Kaella, brought the news. ……What was the reason for entering the palace?”
“She said the Duke of Ostain had forgotten his medication.”
Peon had anticipated the inquiry.
“What is he doing, forgetting such things? He has gotten old.”
The Emperor glanced once more at the bed. His gaze was a suffocating, one-sided obsession. Peon hid his repulsion behind a mask of indifference.
“Are you the only one who came?”
“Yes.”
“Useless things.”
The Emperor’s words were toxic. Peon was the illegitimate son of the Empress; he shared no drop of blood with the imperial line, a fact that clearly infuriated the Emperor every time he looked at him.
Being near the Emperor was a waking nightmare, exacerbated by Peon’s new, heightened senses. Yet, he had learned to endure.
*Shameless and thick-skinned.*
*You are lowly by birth, so strive to be upright,* he had been told. He was indeed a shameless human. To find relief in the fact that the woman he had effectively starved to death was alive—it was a pathetic, vulgar comfort.
If only he had acknowledged this desire back then. If he had looked into her blue eyes, listened to her voice, perhaps the brainwashing would have shattered.
“And you kicked someone out of the Altain Palace, I heard.”
“If it was Beatrice Lavalle, she is a childhood friend of mine, and the Empress was fond of her.”
The Emperor liked to use Peon’s few attachments as leashes. If he threatened those Peon cared for, he could maintain control. He was testing Peon now, sensing a shift.
“……The Altain Palace is for the imperial family.”
“Haven’t you been the one to care least about etiquette?”
*Care least?* Peon had followed every rule like a man possessed, his life a rigid, orderly cage.
*No, if I wanted to follow the rules, I should have kept my vows to my wife.*
He had foolishly believed that insisting on his love for Beatrice was an act of rebellion against the Emperor, but now he saw it for the pathetic facade it was.
“If I have learned the rules, I must strive to follow them.”
“Ah.”
The Emperor, desperate now that the Empress was in a coma, nodded with trembling hands. Peon tended to him until he slept, then stepped back.
In this cesspool, his mother was finally free, the Duke of Ostain had survived, and Beatrice was irrelevant.
Peon’s leash had been cut.