The One Who Won't Be Abandoned - Chapter 59

The Emperor’s bedroom contained two secret passages for emergencies. One led outside the castle walls, often used for clandestine excursions or escape. The other connected to a secluded garden hidden within the palace grounds. These passages were passed down orally, from one emperor to the next.

“Huff… huff…”

“Ahh… nngh…”

Princess Grecia stood quietly behind the large mirror on the wall in the Emperor’s room, hidden in the secret passage, listening to what was happening within.

Inside, her father, the Emperor, was having intercourse with Strake, a girl young enough to be his daughter. Listening to her father’s sex—every slap, every moan—her face showed no expression.

But inside, she was seething. The revulsion and contempt she felt were so powerful, it was strange they didn’t show on her face. The Emperor, forcing himself into a girl half his age—barely keeping it up with the help of drugs—and the girl, clearly pretending to enjoy it… it was disgusting.

“Pathetic.”

The words slipped from her lips like a sigh. There was no longer a trace of the fearsome, towering force the Emperor had once been. The man who used to terrify everyone around him was now just a weak, sweating old lecher.

When she was young, standing before him made her feel like a broken, discarded thing. She had cried countless times. She had known despair.

Now, that same Emperor was pushing Strake’s face into the bed, pinning her with his large hand as her pained expression twisted beneath him. Glaring down at her breasts, the Emperor pounded away with savage intensity. But suddenly, dizziness swept over him, and he shook his head to stay conscious.

“…What?”

His vision spun wildly, as if the room were rotating. Nausea rose.

“Wait… wait a moment…”

As the dizziness intensified, the Emperor pulled out and collapsed limply beside Strake.

“…Wait there. I’ll resume once the dizziness passes.”

Too proud to admit defeat, the Emperor ignored the fact that he was already going soft. Eyes closed from the spinning vision, he ordered the girl he’d just been violently using:

“Bring more wine. Fill it to the brim.”

He hoped the alcohol would steady him. If not, he might have to end tonight’s performance with this girl.

He felt her stir beside him, rising from the bed. Soon, he heard the sound of wine being poured into a glass. The girl’s approaching footsteps followed. Groaning, the Emperor forced himself upright and opened his eyes.

The dizziness returned the moment his eyes opened. His vision blurred as if a fog had descended.

Still, he barely made out the outline of the wine glass. Reaching out, he accepted it and drank the entire thing in one gulp. The sharp, burning alcohol seared down his throat and into his stomach—painfully real, but grounding. Just a little… he thought he might finally be able to pull himself together.

After blinking several times, the Emperor’s vision began to clear slightly. He handed the wine glass back to the girl. But even after a moment passed, the girl didn’t take it.

“What are you doing? Where is your mind—!”

Ready to scold her for her insolence, the Emperor lifted his head—only to freeze in shock.

Standing before him was not the girl with whom he had just shared an intense, prolonged act of intercourse, but Princess Grecia, the stain of the royal family and his personal disgrace.

Her sudden, unexpected appearance stunned him so thoroughly that he momentarily forgot his dizziness. He shouted:

“Y-You! What are you doing here?! Who gave you permission to enter this room?!”

But despite his angry roar, there wasn’t a trace of fear or submission on the princess’s face. That bruised the Emperor’s pride even more. And to make matters worse—he was practically naked. This was humiliating beyond measure.

As he turned to look for something to cover himself, the dizziness returned, swirling through his head like a storm. At the same time, the strength drained from his hand, and the glass slipped from his fingers, falling onto the bed.

The remaining wine spilled, soaking into the fine royal sheets—but no one in the room paid the slightest attention.

The Emperor clutched his chest, choking and wheezing as his airways began to close.

“Kh—kugh—!”

He felt as if his heart was being crushed, all the energy draining from his body. Alarmed by the sudden weakness, the Emperor began flailing, trying to force himself upright.

Surely, the princess would fetch a physician, he thought.

But when he looked up again through the haze of dizziness, she remained unmoved, staring down at him with the same cold, expressionless face.

“A h-help… Get… the doctor…”

“Your Majesty,” she said, her voice calm, almost serene. “You look quite fitting like this.”

The princess silently watched as the Emperor’s face went pale, then flushed red, then turned pale again—over and over. Her eyes slowly scanned downward: the veins bulging on his neck, the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

“Hh—! What are you just standing there—kuh!”

Even when her gaze landed on the Emperor’s groin—his shrunken, pitiful member, limp and dangling in disgrace—the princess’s expression didn’t change. Her stare remained calm, almost clinical, as if she were observing a specimen.

“The man who gave that drug to Andrei boasted so confidently… and I must say, it’s working remarkably well.”

“Y-You, you wretched girl!”

Only then did the Emperor realize he had been poisoned. More precisely, he had consumed a drug that caused paralysis when combined with the aphrodisiacs he’d been using. The substance could only be sourced from Siamos, and its effect was always impressive.

The princess’s gaze lingered on the Emperor’s humiliated, weakened figure as she slowly began to walk toward him.

“In truth, I wanted something a little more dramatic. Perhaps you and the Crown Prince could draw blades on each other and perish together. Or maybe you could contract a venereal disease like him—become the most disgraceful emperor in the history of the dynasty…”

As she spoke, blood vessels burst in the Emperor’s eyes, turning the whites a horrifying shade of red. He had reached the limits of the drug’s effect.

According to what Andrei had told her, the paralysis would last no longer than an hour. It would bring agony, certainly, but soon after, the symptoms would vanish without a trace. All that would remain would be some light dizziness and a mild headache—as long as no one intervened. But the princess had no intention of waiting for that.

“But my dear Titi didn’t want that. He wants your death to be quiet… and fast.”

“You… how dare… kuh, kuh!”

The Emperor’s face, twisted in shock, fury, and pain, pleased the princess. Her blank expression melted into a radiant, serene smile.

“Still, I do think you deserve a vulgar ending. One so disgraceful that the entire world knows about it, and the historians can’t help but record it in the books.”

Throughout her speech, the Emperor desperately struggled to move, to fight back—but all he could manage were the faintest of twitches. For the first time in his life, he felt true helplessness—a chilling weakness he had only ever forced onto others.

The princess leisurely circled the bed and came to a halt where the Emperor’s head was turned. Gracefully, she reached for one of the large pillows, disheveled from their earlier act. Stuffed with the softest bird feathers, it was thick and plush—fit for an emperor.

The Emperor couldn’t move his head, but with great effort, his eyes tracked her hand—and then he realized what she was about to do.

“You… bitch…”

“Let me tell you a little secret.”

She bent down, bringing her lips close to his ear, and whispered.

“I had a child. Your only grandchild. You’ve never met him, have you? He looks so much like his father. If only you’d met him—you would’ve recognized instantly who his father was.”

“Ugh! D-Don’t do this… I… I’m… your… father…”

“Tim Ferrier.”

“Guh—!”

“My uncle. Your half-brother. He is my son’s father… and my husband.”

“Divine punishment…! T-this is blasphemy—!”

“Oh? You think I deserve punishment for sleeping with my uncle?”

The princess mocked the Emperor viciously.

“You stupid old bastard. Titi isn’t the son of the late Emperor. His mother slept with her knight and had him. Honestly… How could you or your father both be so stupid? Isn’t it obvious? Titi doesn’t have a drop of royal blood, does he?”

Having said all she needed to say, the princess straightened her back and placed the thick pillow she’d been holding directly over the Emperor’s face. Then, slowly—**deliberately—**she began to press down.

“Kh—! Hrrk—!”

The sound of the Emperor choking filled the quiet bedroom.

Strake, who was curled up beside the open mirror like a door, flinched and shrank at the sound. Her eyes were tightly shut, but her lashes trembled violently. Though she’d hardened her heart to help commit this murder, she couldn’t bring herself to watch. She didn’t have the courage to face death unfolding before her.

“Mmf…”

Strake clamped both hands over her mouth to stifle a sob. Just being involved in the Emperor’s murder was terrifying enough. But now, she had also heard a secret she should never have known—the princess had killed her own father with her own hands. There was no way such a woman would let a witness live. Strake was so overwhelmed by fear, she wet herself.

The Emperor’s dying breaths grew more frantic. Through her hands, the princess could feel his desperation—his body shaking beneath the pillow. That fear, that despair… it thrilled her.

The stench of sex hanging in the air. The gasping sounds of a man suffocating. The muffled weeping of a terrified girl in the background. All of it fed the princess’s senses. Every piece of it was euphoric.

She wondered what his twisted, ugly face must look like now—and pressed down harder. She wanted to see him dead. To stare at the drooling, tear-stained wreckage of a man who had ruled her life. To look into those purple eyes, now hollow and empty.

She smiled. Her lips curled so wide they nearly tore—a grotesque, eerie grin.

“Ghk…!”

The Emperor’s spasms intensified. The princess knew—the end was near.

There was just one last thing she needed to say.

“Thank you for making me a princess… Father.”

A title she had never been allowed to speak. And now she said it with mocking clarity, the ultimate insult. Pure joy bloomed across her face. The pleasure was dizzying.

The satisfaction of vengeance burned hot up her spine, flooding her nerves with ecstasy. Her mind and body filled with the intense sensation of release.

And the moment the Emperor’s flailing suddenly stopped—the peak of her euphoria detonated like an explosion. The princess threw her head back and let out a trembling, half-choked moan.

It sounded almost like the cry of climax.

At last, the pitiful, humiliating death she had longed for had come true. The fact that she had delivered it with her own hands was almost too good to be real.

“Mmm…”

Still humming with satisfaction, she looked down at the dead Emperor and tossed the pillow aside. His face was contorted and pale, just as she had imagined—wet with saliva and mucus, just as she had imagined.

Curious to see more of his lifeless eyes, she leaned in slightly.

“A fitting death for you.”

A man who had ruled over all with unchecked power—this was a dog’s death, and it suited him perfectly.

“Surely you didn’t think—after all the enemies you made—that you would die peacefully in bed?”

She spoke to the hollow shell, as though it still heard her. The emotional storm that had surged through her body now ebbed away, leaving a strange, aching sense of emptiness.

“If the drug had lasted just a little longer, we could’ve talked more… What a shame… truly.”

The princess straightened her posture, casually letting her gaze drift over the Emperor’s naked corpse.

“Oh my. How indecent!”

She exclaimed in surprise, as if she’d just discovered something amusing.

The Emperor’s penis was stiffly erect, with thick white semen still dripping from the tip. Fixating on that grotesque sight, the princess burst into laughter.

“Hahaha! This is too much! Truly impressive to the very end!”

That the Emperor had managed to ejaculate even as he died—still clinging to his obsession with producing an heir—somehow moved the princess deeply.

“Hahahaha!”

She laughed uncontrollably, loud enough that her laughter would certainly leak beyond the chamber doors. But she didn’t seem to notice—or care. The one who did worry, crouched and trembling beside the secret mirror-door, was Strake.

Face soaked in tears, Strake looked nervously from the princess to the bedroom door. When the princess seemed to sense her gaze, she abruptly stopped laughing, her expression freezing unnaturally.

Then she suddenly turned her head, fixing Strake with a voice that was eerily soft and sweet.

“Come here, darling. Come take a look at this. It’s such a shame to enjoy this sight alone.”

“Y-Your Highness… Is he… is he dead?”