Chapter 3 - Wedding Night

While he was being dragged away, Amber was curled up in the corner of her cell, holding her mouth tight to not scream out loud.

Several hours passed and the emperor’s knights returned. Amber was bound and brought to the emperor once more.

“Though the duke fomented a revolt because of his greed for power, it’s still true that he achieved many great things for me.” The emperor looked down on Amber and beamed.

To her, his smile looked positively sinister.

“Therefore, I decided to hear out his last quest,” the emperor said.

‘Does that mean he’ll let me live?’

“But before that, I have one thing I need to check,” he told her, “Is the child inside your stomach a daughter or a son?”

Amber’s expression scrunched in confusion at his question, and the emperor explained, “I cannot simply allow a traitor’s bloodline to continue. If it’s a daughter, I will let you live, and if it’s a son then I’ll have to kill you.”

Amber couldn’t answer him right away.

She didn’t know the child’s gender. Though the doctor had offered to find out the gender with magic, Amber had declined. It hadn’t mattered to her. At that time, she didn’t want to do or know anything.

But right now, it was different.

‘I want to live. I want to… protect this child.’

A teardrop ran down Amber’s cheek. “S-she’s a daughter.”

Hearing Amber’s answer, the emperor smiled. It was an even more sadistic and horrifying smile than before.

“Is that so? Thank goodness. But I’ve changed my mind. Just die.” The emperor waved his hand, and the knight standing next to her lifted his sword.

No one was surprised. Everyone there except Amber knew that the emperor was playing around.

Amber watched, dazed, as the sword rushed towards her with frightening speed. At the last moment, she thought she wrapped her hand around her stomach on reflex.

Then she fell, mortally wounded, as pain flooded her body.

In her last moments, she simply couldn’t make sense of it all. ‘To think that I was born to live such a pathetic and trivial life as this…’

She had been born in the South to the richest family in the land, showered with love by her entire family. If she were to have stayed unmarried in her father’s territory, she could have been a mage, a knight, or even a scholar. She would have had infinite possibilities spread out before her.

Instead, she had been caught in the emperor’s scheme and forced to marry, and now, absurdly, she had been killed in the end just because of his whim.

‘If I could…’ she thought weakly, ‘live once more.’

If she had a second chance, then she would do everything she wanted to without hesitation and live her life to the fullest. She wouldn’t care what others thought of her. She would live a happy life saying whatever she wanted and avoiding anything she disliked.

Like wildfire, a painful regret engulfed her.

‘But it’s all too late now,’ she thought as she was being swept up in the wildfire, and at that moment she heard it. 

“Mother, you have to come see me again.”

It felt like her unborn child was speaking to her.

* * *

“Wha!” Amber awoke suddenly in bed.

She was wearing a bright white dress and a long veil. Her heart beat wildly.

‘Just what happened?’ It felt like she’d had a very long dream. But the things she experienced were definitely real.

Her veil made it hard to see, so Amber took it off and looked around. There was an elkhorn decoration that she’d seen for the last ten years and was completely sick of looking at.

The moment Amber saw that decoration, she knew that this place was the Duke of Thales’s castle and that she was inside the lord’s bedroom.