Chapter 04
“If you need anything, please call for me.”
The maid who had shown Ariella and Reina to the chamber bowed politely before leaving.
She still looked unsettled, clearly flustered by the sudden assignment, but at least she maintained a respectful demeanour.
And that alone felt like such a blessing.
Ariella’s mind flickered back to the maids in the tower who had all but thrown her food bowls at her.
She quickly shook the memory away.
The quarters given to her were in the most remote wing of the imperial palace so far from the heart of the main keep that one could live here unnoticed, as if she didn’t even exist.
Ariella lightly tapped Reina’s shoulder to comfort her, then slowly walked around the room.
It wasn’t the most luxurious chamber, but it had everything one might need.
Most of all it had a balcony.
She went there first.
The simple fact that she could push a door and step outside that alone made her chest tighten with overwhelming emotion.
She could walk out anytime to see the sky.
And if she ever needed to flee she could jump.
It was only the second floor; she might break a leg, but it was freedom nonetheless.
“Stop crying, Reina. Come here look outside.”
“……”
“Did you ever imagine the Trifina Imperial Palace would have such a beautiful garden?”
Back in the tower, she had thought that tiny, suffocating world was all there was.
But here, she could feel spring and summer.
She could stand beneath the rain and snow.
On a lucky day, the breeze might even carry the scent of flowers to her.
She drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs.
“How leisurely.”
The sudden voice sent a shiver down her spine.
“How leisurely.”
Those were the very words Dmitri had spoken the first time he visited her five years into her imprisonment at the tower.
He had climbed all the way to the top, drenched in blood, his black eyes filled with hell itself.
Her breath caught.
Slowly, she turned.
And there he stood.
Dmitri.
He carried himself with the arrogance of a man who believed this space belonged to him alone.
His face was still young, not long past boyhood, yet his gaze was detached, as if he had already seen the whole of the world.
“You’ve improved a little.”
Ariella curved her lips into a doll-like smile, empty and delicate.
She smiled at the man who had destroyed her kingdom and would one day slaughter her family.
“I greet the radiant little sun of the Empire.”
A faint smirk tugged at his lips.
Ariella forced herself not to flinch.
“To what do I owe your visit?”
“We are already wed, are we not?
Is there any place I am forbidden to go?”
“Of course not.
Please, sit here.
Reina, would you fetch us some tea?”
Reina, trembling in the corner, bowed hastily and slipped out of the room.
Silence pressed down on the chamber, thick and unbearable, as the two were left alone.
Up close, the changes in Dmitri were undeniable.
He was tall now, but five years from this moment he would stand a head higher still.
His shoulders would broaden by another span.
And five years after that, he would look like a reaper risen from hell itself.
“Do you like the room?”
His sharp voice cut through her drifting thoughts.
“Yes.
It’s wonderful.”
“Even for a princess from Forenze, it must feel lacking.”
“Not at all.”
The crown prince tilted his head with a strange expression.
“Do you not know shame?
Or are you only pretending not to?”
The insult, thrown so suddenly, might have wounded another.
But Ariella only smiled.
What was shame, compared to the things she truly loved?
Shame could never come first.
Dmitri’s eyes gleamed as if he had stumbled upon something amusing.
“Do you truly revere His Majesty that much?”
“Beyond what words could ever capture.”
The answer slipped out without a moment’s hesitation.
Again, he let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“There must be a thousand steps up to the top of the west tower the one you were meant to be locked away in.”
Though it was nothing new to her, chills prickled down her spine.
There had been nine hundred and forty-one steps exactly.
That was why the maids who brought her food once a day cursed her so bitterly.
That was why she had gone hungry so often.
“The truth is, your portrait meant nothing.
His Majesty had already seen you in the flesh.
Which means he could lock you away again anytime he wished.”
The words, spoken with casual ease, felt like hands tightening around her throat.
He said it in a coaxing, almost teasing tone, as though it were only a threat.
But Ariella knew better.
It wasn’t only a threat.
“You don’t even look surprised.”
“Perhaps His Majesty didn’t find what he saw today to his liking.”
“You saw the Empress, didn’t you?”
The sudden change of subject made Ariella’s brows knit faintly.
“She’s only four years older than I am.
Pitiful, don’t you think?
Or from your point of view, an honour?”
The thought was revolting.
A husband nearly three decades older such a thing was rare in Forenze.
But still, Ariella veiled her disgust with a smile.
“Don’t you want to know why you became the crown princess of Trifina?”
For the first time, her expression cracked.
Yes, she wanted to know.
Desperately.
“The temple opposed it, you see.
His Majesty is marrying the current empress.
This is his fifth marriage, after all, and she is a foreigner.”
“And… because of that?”
“The temple agreed on the condition that I wed a daughter of Forenze.”
Florence, the land most beloved by God.
The land whose people, more faithfully than any other, had kept their worship pure and unwavering.
While other nations diluted their faith by embracing foreign gods, Forenze remained steadfast, devout, unyielding.
Trifina was the unchallenged power of the continent.
And if a foreigner, one who worshipped a different god altogether, were to become empress, it was inevitable that the already sensitive temple would see it as a grave threat.
“Four days ago, a letter came from the High Temple,” Dmitri said, his tone maddeningly light.
“It said your father petitioned them once again.
Claimed it was outrageous for the Emperor of Trifina to take a foreigner as his wife.
Naturally, His Majesty was furious.”
Ariella sat in silence.
Yes… Her father would have done that.
He had always prized principle above all else, wearing his unbending devotion like a badge of honour.
Ah, my beloved father.
Her chest ached at the memory of his teal-green eyes, bright with pure conviction.
He could never have imagined that the decisions he made, born of faith and duty, would one day destroy his cherished daughter and his homeland.
To the outside world, Trifina had never seemed so merciless.
And her father… her father truly believed that God loved Forenze above all.
“But did you know this?”
Dmitri’s voice cut back in.
“What do you mean?”
“My mother was a foreigner too.”
Ariella froze.
Dmitri’s mother had been Frederick’s first empress.
Even now, her family still wielded enormous power within the empire.
Yet… a foreigner?
When Frederick had first ascended the throne, he expanded his dominion through war and political marriages alike.
Trifina had grown into the mightiest empire on the continent, strong enough to challenge even the super-national power of the temple itself.
“You look as though you had no idea.”
“I was eight years old,” Dmitri went on, “when the king of Forenze urged the temple to have my mother cast aside.”
Ariella’s eyes widened in horror.
“What… what are you saying?”
“Exactly what you heard.
Your father pressured the temple to depose my mother because she was impure.”
When Ariella had first heard the news of her kingdom’s downfall, the grief had been unbearable.
She had hated herself, convinced Dmitri’s malice toward her was nothing but blind cruelty.
But now… she understood that his hatred had roots far deeper than she had ever imagined.
“Of course, not everything was the king of Forenze’s fault.
Trifina wasn’t as strong as she is now, but if His Majesty had truly wished to protect her, he could have.
After all, the temple urged him to set her aside, not to kill her.”
“……”
“And yet… my mother was burned until nothing remained, not even a body to recognise.
Tell me how they could then shove you into my bridal chamber?
The temple, my father how could they?”
Dmitri let out a hollow laugh, incredulous, bitter.
It was the question that had tormented him until the very edge of death.
Even as his heart felt as though it were dissolving in molten anguish, he had never found an answer.
I spent my entire life hating you…
“Ariella.”
Her name, spoken softly, startled her.
She lifted her head and found herself caught in the abyss of his black eyes.
Only then did she realise hot tears were spilling down her cheeks.
“You bear no guilt,” he said.
“That much, even I know.”
Ariella quickly brushed at her tears, desperate to stop them.
But they would not cease.
“But you also know, don’t you?
For royalty, sometimes the sins of the parents weigh heavier than their own.”
It was unjust.
Cruel.
And yet Ariella had punished herself all the same.
She had long believed it was her fault her face, her ugliness that had shamed Forenze, that had brought ruin.
Even in the moment of her death, she had thought: If only I had been less wretched, perhaps I could have saved them all.
She had spent countless nights despising herself, collapsing into black unconsciousness, waking again only to drown in shame at still being alive.
Day after day, it had never ended.
“This marriage,” Dmitri said at last, his tone like a curse, “will be annulled.
It will only take time.”
The words were the brand of fate the curse that would make him the greatest tyrant of his age.
After killing his father and sei
zing the throne, Dmitri had marched east without pause straight to Forenze.
Now she finally understood.
Why had he driven his bloodstained banner into a peaceful land that had never known the sword?
He had claimed Forenze as easily as flipping his palm and then, drenched in the blood of all she loved, he had come straight for her.
