Chapter 49
“!!”
“While I wasn’t looking, you’ve gotten wrinkles around your eyes and mouth. They’ll probably increase. You have the kind of face with thin skin that wrinkles easily.”
Madam Gix leaned her body toward Dian and whispered into her frozen ear.
“I know what you’re trying to use as a weapon to secure your place by His Majesty’s side. Yes, you really do resemble her. You remind people of that lady.”
“Stop wagging that snake-like tongue. Shut up.”
Dian recoiled in horror and tried to pull away from Madam Gix, but the old woman did not release her easily.
“Do you know when Lady Beatrice passed away?”
“…….”
“Twenty-nine.”
“…….”
“She looked so young that she didn’t have a single wrinkle. To His Majesty the Emperor, she remains forever twenty-nine, frozen at that beautiful age, someone who will never grow old. But your twenty-nine, your thirty, your forty—time will pass for you. Unlike Lady Beatrice.”
Only then did Madam Gix let go of Dian and step back. With a face as cold as a snowy plain, she scrutinized the corners of Dian’s eyes and added as if offering advice:
“With the money you send merchants, why not call a skin-care specialist instead, Your Majesty the Empress? Do you really want your wrinkles to increase? How many women are there who are younger than twenty-nine, with blonde hair and blue eyes?”
And how many others are there who, with the same heart as yours, try to take the Emperor’s side? I will freely mock your foolishness—struggling to claim paltry affection while wearing the skin of a dead woman.
After carving cruel words into the heart of Dian Poitiers, Madam Gix left the Ivory Palace at her leisure.
Even after she was gone, Dian stood blankly in the office. Only after a long while did she slowly turn her head and look around the room.
Sky-blue velvet wallpaper, gold moldings, a ceiling painted with masterpieces, a glittering giant chandelier, luxury objects displayed everywhere. It was a splendid and beautiful space.
“It’s mine.”
‘A place I obtained and built with my own hands.’
How dearly she had tended this palace. Was there any corner here untouched by Dian Poitiers’s hand?
“Dare you try to drive me out of this palace?”
The more she thought about it, the more resentful and furious she became.
Just because she bears the title of Empress, she dares to push me out of the Ivory Palace?! How dare she! What does that woman have besides that name? What does she possess other than the title? She can’t, with just that, reduce me—who has stood by His Majesty and managed the imperial palace all this time—to this in an instant… just with the name of Empress.
“What in the world is that name worth, anyway?”
‘Your Majesty. I want to be your only wife.’
It had been the sincere confession she barely managed to whisper after countless hesitations. But his answer had not seemed to involve hesitation at all. The moment he heard her plea, he replied:
‘No. You cannot.’
“Why was I not enough?”
She couldn’t bring herself to ask the reason. She had spoken as though she knew everything when talking to Lennox, but that was only Dian’s own speculation. The Emperor was not a man who liked being questioned or pressed for explanations.
“Why was it not me? That mere position of Empress—why was I not allowed to have it…?”
It hurt deeply. Deeper than when she wandered cold streets with Lennox. Colder than the winter she had endured with empty hands.
“That name mattered to me.”
Dian finally let the truth she had been suppressing spill out. The moment she said it aloud, tears surged. She collapsed and cried, repeating it again and again.
That name mattered to her. She wanted to be his lawful wife, to become the supreme woman of this country. So why had she been denied?
After endlessly hurling those self-tormenting questions and crying without end, Dian suddenly sprang to her feet and hurried somewhere. With trembling hands she opened her dressing table, took out a mirror, and quickly examined her face.
Just as Madam Gix had said, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth had definitely increased.
“If I cry, I’ll wrinkle even more.”
She murmured while gently wiping away her tears with a handkerchief. Then she stood abruptly and called for Lorraine.
“Call the skin-care specialist right now! Hurry!”
‘How many women are there younger than twenty-nine, with blonde hair and blue eyes?’
Madam Gix’s final words circled in her ears like a curse. No—it was undoubtedly a curse.
Meanwhile, around that time, at the Baldur Ducal House.
The Empress’s visit was kept strictly secret. She had even firmly stated that she did not need a maid.
The sudden arrival of a female guest in a house without a lady of the house made the lack of clothing a serious issue—but that, too, was soon resolved. Madam Gix was truly capable. She secretly delivered Adel’s luggage, which had been left behind in the room, to the ducal house. Even though Adel hadn’t had the chance to inform her that she was going there.
“Is there anything else you need?”
“This is enough for now.”
With necessary books on one side and coffee on the other, she smiled in complete satisfaction—she truly looked as though she needed nothing more. It even seemed that if meals were simply brought to the archive on time, she could stay there quietly for three or four days and then leave on her own without anyone noticing.
After guiding the Empress to the archive, Lionel headed to the duke’s office. When he reported, “Her Majesty says she has everything she needs,” the duke nodded.
“Then it would be good to have light meals in the archive while asking her a few questions.”
“She said she would answer sincerely about anything you’re curious about.”
“I never imagined that Her Majesty was the founder and supreme head of the Anti-Tower Headquarters.”
The brothers exchanged glances and nodded.
In Ehmond, they had been unable to discover any way to oppose the Tower, so they tried to obtain information from other countries—but all failed, losing countless amounts of money and people in the process. And yet the Empress, whom they thought would be valuable even as merely a skilled individual, turned out to be a core figure of the Gortrop Anti-Tower Headquarters!
Though they did not voice it aloud, the same question arose in both their minds.
Why on earth had such a person come here?
Thinking of the Empress, Theseus remembered something he wanted to ask his younger brother.
“Lionel.”
“Yes, brother.”
“Why does Her Majesty insist on speaking down to you?”
At the question, Lionel wrinkled the bridge of his nose awkwardly.
“She said it’s because we need to look different.”
It was a sufficient answer. Considering how natural the two of them appeared together, it was a great result for relatively little effort. Theseus slowly nodded.
“You’re performing the role of aide very well.”
“You used to say that if Mother were alive, my back wouldn’t survive—but I guess you changed your mind after hearing that Her Majesty founded the Anti-Tower Headquarters.”
Lionel muttered with a small grin, and Theseus exaggeratedly raised an eyebrow.
“If you’re going to do it, it’s better to do it well. That’s all.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
At his brother’s nonchalant demeanor, Lionel laughed aloud with his hands in his pockets, and Theseus laughed with him.
Dian was staring obsessively at her face with the skin-care specialist summoned when—
“Lady of the Palace, His Majesty has arrived!”
At Lorraine’s urgent words, Dian sprang up and hurriedly rubbed off her lip makeup. She quickly removed her earrings and jewelry, shoved them into a drawer, and hastily unclasped and threw aside the jeweled brooch on her dress.
Her mind, which had been wandering through a pitch-black hell, flew to the gates of heaven at the single sentence that the Emperor had come.
She opened the door and stepped out, looking gaunt. At the end of the corridor, the Emperor was walking toward her.
“Your Majesty.”
Dian bowed her head as she called to him in a frail voice. She looked as though she might break at any moment. Karl’s brisk steps slowed. The furrow between the Emperor’s brows, already stiff, deepened further.
“Your Majesty.”
Her face was gaunt. She had grown even thinner. Her slender waist looked as though it could be encircled with one hand, her lips pale without a trace of color. One even wondered whether that thin nape could support the weight of her hair. She looked as if she were dying.
The black sea within his chest surged again. Afraid he might drown in its waves, Karl squeezed his eyes shut tightly and held his breath. He could not take another step toward Dian and stopped instead.
When he stopped, Dian approached him herself. Seeing the Emperor’s face with his eyes shut in visible anguish, it felt as though the wounds on her feet—earned from walking through black hell—were being healed. She even felt a kind of exhilaration.
Yes. He’s angry. He feels sympathy for how I’ve been treated. How pitiful I must look. He finds the Empress hateful.
Yes. He loves me.
