Three days had passed when I awoke again.

The wound on my forehead had been treated, yet it still throbbed with a dull, persistent ache.

“Miss.”

My maid Mila knelt beside the bed, her eyes rimmed with red.

Eva pushed upright. “Mila—my father. Their bodies?”

Mila could not meet her gaze. “His Majesty has decreed… he says you may only collect your family’s remains… after you have carried out the public flogging of the corpses.”

Eva’s fingernails dug deep into her palms.

The taste of copper filled her mouth. “How dare he?”

A trickle of blood escaped the corner of her lip. Mila grasped her hand, weeping. “Miss, you must take care of yourself. Your family… you’re all that’s left.”

A tremor ran through Eva’s heart.

One hundred and two souls. Now, only she remained.

And all this ruin… because she had loved the wrong man.

Eva closed her eyes. When she opened them again, nothing remained but a bone-deep cold.

Since the mistake was hers to make…

Then she would be the one to end it.

In the darkness behind her eyelids, a pattern only she could perceive slowly formed—a diagram of deep, bloody crimson.

Until it was complete, she could not leave Dylan.

Ten days. That was all she had left.

She would use that time to settle some debts.

“Mila,” she said, forcing the tremor from her voice. “Go to Jacob, the rice merchant in the west market. Tell him to spread the word. Tell everyone how my family was slaughtered and left to rot.”

“My father spent our entire fortune to save those refugees. Dylan may have forgotten his debt, but the people haven’t.”

Dylan had just ascended the throne. He could not afford to ignore the people’s wrath.

Two days later, the capital’s main thoroughfare was packed with mourners in white hemp.

Merchants and farmers who owed their lives to Eva’s family knelt before the palace gates, holding petitions written in blood. Even the most urgent military dispatches from the border spoke of crumbling morale. The Imperial Censor delivered a death-defying remonstrance at court, declaring that only a tyrant would desecrate the dead.

Cornered, Dylan finally ordered the heads taken down from the city wall. The bodies were dumped without ceremony into a mass grave.

Soon after, he had Eva brought before the throne.

Her wound still raw, Eva’s face was as pale as parchment. Dylan looked right through her.

“Those rumors spreading through the city. Your doing?”

A faint, bitter smile touched Eva’s lips.

“Since Your Majesty already knows, why ask?”

“Audacious!” Dylan hurled an inkstone at her.

*Thud.* It struck her squarely in the chest.

A dull pain radiated from the impact, but Eva laughed.

“Your Majesty might as well kill me, too.”

Susan coiled around Dylan’s side like a water snake, her voice a sugary purr. “There goes Sister Eva, threatening His Majesty with death again. If you truly wished to die, why control the force of your headlong dash so… precisely?”

Eva almost laughed aloud.

She had seen the wound herself—a hole that deep was no mere performance.

But Dylan only believed Susan now.

He cast a cold glance at Eva. “Since you care nothing for the title of Empress, then kneel outside the door and listen well. Hear for yourself whether I am truly lost without you!”

Sweeping Susan into his arms, he strode toward the bedchamber.

“Guards! Throw her out! Let her kneel—she does not rise without my command!”

The storm that night came without warning.

Eva knelt on the white marble steps, listening to Susan’s breathy moans from within the chamber.

Icy rain drenched her in moments.

Thunder rumbled, mingling with Dylan’s low growls. A flash of lightning illuminated Eva’s face—waxen, fragile, devoid of life.

She knelt the entire night. She listened the entire night.

Memories surfaced: of her time with Dylan in Eva’s Village.

He had knelt outside her family’s ancestral hall for three days and three nights, begging her grandfather for permission to marry her.

He would silently drape his cloak over her shoulders while she studied the stars.

On her birthday, he had walked twenty miles of mountain trails just to bring her a single wildflower he’d picked himself.

He had once said, voice thick with feeling, “If my Eva frowns, my heart aches.”

And that same man now let her grow cold, inch by icy inch, in the pouring rain.

It was not until the first grey light of dawn that the bedchamber door finally opened.

The palace maids and eunuchs filed out, each casting a final, pitying glance at Eva—as though trying to force an answer from her.

Only when Eva saw the love bite on Dylan’s neck did the dread finally sink into her heart.

Darkness swam before her eyes—then she fell, fainting.

Dylan frowned slightly and took a step toward her.

Just then, Susan clutched her stomach with a pained groan. “Your Majesty, I feel so unwell.”

He turned to her at once, his concern immediate. “My love, what’s wrong?”

Sobbing, she confessed, “Last night, I didn’t wish to trouble you… but I… I’m with child.”

Dylan froze. Then joy lit his face. Scooping Susan into his arms, he barked over his shoulder:

“By imperial decree, court is canceled today.”

“Summon the imperial physician—now—to examine Lady Susan.”

Carrying her, he hurried toward the inner chambers without another glance at Eva, still lying on the ground.

She didn’t know how long she lay there.

Without the Emperor’s command, no one dared help her up.

And Dylan, lost in the joy of Susan’s pregnancy, had completely forgotten Eva lying in the pooled rainwater.

Her consciousness drifted in a haze, between wakefulness and oblivion, until the old physician’s voice finally cut through the rain.

“Your Majesty, while the pregnancy is most auspicious, it has been cursed by one of tainted blood. I fear the child may be difficult to preserve!”

Dylan erupted. “Tainted blood—that means Eva, doesn’t it? How dare she!”

“Drag her in here!”

By the time the drenched Eva was thrown to the floor, Dylan finally took in her wretched state.

His eyes held no pity, no remorse—only pure hatred.

Striding forward, he seized her throat, his voice a snarl. “You venomous witch! Who gave you the right to curse my heir!”

The fragile column of her throat buckled under the pressure. Pain was an ocean, despair an abyss.

Eva managed a ghastly smile. She offered no defense.

What would be the point?

Her silence was confession enough.

“You deserve death a thousand times over!”

Dylan squeezed harder, his grip tightening until the bones in her neck gave a sickening crack. Only then did his expression falter; he released her abruptly.

Air rushed back into her lungs, sending her into choking coughs. Her already pale face turned a deathly gray.

Clenching his fists, Dylan spoke coldly. “One last chance. Tell me how to break the curse, and I will spare your life.”

“Hah… haha…” Eva laughed between coughs, her voice shattered. “Death… what is there to fear? You slaughtered my clan—my family—down to the last soul. Why let me linger in this world alone?”

A tremor passed through Dylan’s eyes as he looked at her, a flicker of hesitation.

Susan shot a glance at the physician, who immediately knelt.

“Your Majesty, this humble servant knows a method to break the curse. It will, however, require the young lady to endure… considerable suffering.”

“Speak.”

“The one who cast the curse must be imprisoned in a place of profound darkness and stagnant energy. Then, her heart’s blood must be drawn daily for medicine. Forty-nine days in total should suffice.”

Dylan considered this, brow furrowed—until a soft whimper from Susan cleared his expression.

“Forty-nine days. Barely over a month. A lenient sentence for her.”

“Guards. Confine Eva to the Water Dungeon. Begin the bloodletting today.”

Cold iron manacles snapped shut around Eva’s wrists, suspending her in the center of the flooded cell.

The old physician pressed a hand over her heart, then drove the blade in without mercy.

Eva bit down hard, swallowing the scream.

By the time a full bowl of blood had been drawn, pain blurred her vision; the taste of iron coated her tongue.

Withdrawing his silver knife, the physician sneered down. “Do try to last, my lady. This torment must continue the full forty-nine days.”

Eva’s pale lips twisted into the ghost of a smile.

She wouldn’t need forty-nine days.

In just nine more, the Retribution Ritual would activate.

Every ounce of suffering inflicted upon her today would be repaid to him a hundredfold.

From then on, their paths would diverge for good—their futures unfolding under separate skies.

Bound by nothing at all.

By the fourth day in the water dungeon, Eva had grown numb.

The wound over her heart, reopened daily for the ritual, had become a raw, jagged gash; with each passing day, her complexion grew paler. Every time the blade pierced her chest, another root of what had once been bone-deep love was torn out. Her obsession with Dylan faded alongside her vitality—now little more than a flickering, feeble ember.

At dusk, the cell door suddenly swung open.

Dylan had come. He barely recognized the woman before him as Eva. “What happened to her?”

A jailer hurried to explain. “The imperial physician insisted this is the only way to draw out the curse completely, so it doesn’t spread to Lady Susan.”

Dylan’s brow furrowed. After a moment of silence, he sighed. “My birthday is in two days. Take her out of here for now—confine her to the Cold Palace. She can be returned afterward.”

As the guards unlocked her chains, Eva collapsed face-first into the filthy water. She tried to push herself up but found she lacked even the strength to lift her hand.

Dylan bent down and seized her wrist. “Do you admit your guilt?”

Eva managed a strained smile. “Your Majesty, after all these years, you should know my nature.”

Pressing his lips together, Dylan suppressed his anger. “I knew you were arrogant and uncouth. But I never thought you would dare harm my child.”

Eva pushed her wet hair back, her gaze locking directly onto his. “Your Majesty must have forgotten. You once swore to heaven and earth that it would be just the two of us, forever. That you would only ever have children with *me*.”

A flicker of discomfort crossed Dylan’s face, quickly replaced by indignation. “That was before I knew what your family had done—their heinous crimes against the natural order! I’m cleansing their stain from this world, so their wretched souls might yet find peace!”

“Besides,” he continued, “I gave you a chance. Provide the forty-nine days of your heart’s blood, and I would have found a way to grant you a position.”

Even now, Dylan still believed Eva would want to stay by his side, to be used and humiliated by him. A frost of pure disdain settled over her features, her heart utterly drained, barren of all feeling.

Dylan seemed not to notice. “Spend the next few days in the Cold Palace preparing my birthday gift. Please me, and you can avoid returning to this hole.”

Eva’s cracked lips twisted. “Has Your Majesty not received enough gifts this year? The one hundred and one heads of my family… and my own—”

A violent cough cut her off, blood spraying from her mouth.

Dylan released her wrist abruptly, watching as she crashed back into the foul water. “Take her to the Cold Palace. Have a physician watch her. Don’t let her die.”

…

Eva slept through another day and night.

When she awoke, she found herself transferred from the water dungeon to the desolate, decaying Cold Palace. Mila was tending to her wound.

Eva gave a weak smile. “Save your strength. They’ll only reopen it tomorrow.”

Mila covered her mouth, tears streaming down her face. “Miss, you have to escape. I’ll create a diversion, draw the Imperial Guard away—”

*BANG!*

The door was kicked open with force. Susan strode in, a squad of guards at her back. “Sister, planning a trip?”

Mila’s hand jerked—the medicated cloth she was holding plopped into the bronze basin.

Pushing herself upright, Eva refused to show weakness before Susan. “To what do I owe the honor of Lady Susan’s visit?”

Susan lifted her chin haughtily. “Do you think I’d come to this wretched place if it weren’t important?”

Suddenly, she pulled something from her sleeve and hurled it to the floor. It landed with a dull thud—a small, hastily carved wooden figure, the kind placed in a coffin to accompany the dead.