Time passed by as quickly as an arrow. Winter had come to YeonSung. The summer rain had transformed into thick snow. The skies and the earth were covered in it.

Far away, a burgundy horse was racing towards the castle gates. A surprised guard quickly signaled the others.

The man on the horse didn’t slow down as he raced through the opened gate. The dozen men following behind him did the same. The hooves caused the snow and dirt to splatter in all directions.

The Red King, who had been in the western provinces by imperial decree, had finally returned.

The war had been mortifying and dreadful. Rivers of blood flowed through the western provinces. Corpses washed up on the shores of its beaches. Dead bodies were buried in the mud flats, and the crabs ate away at its flesh.

For the past half year, the Red King overcame countless crises. He had been stabbed multiple times and struck with many spears, but he ended up defeating his enemies

While he stopped the enemy’s invasion, this accomplishment wasn’t considered to be a great one, so he returned to YeonSung and received a lukewarm welcome.

In the end, while the imperial prince was wandering around the borders as he escaped many deadly situations, the Crown Prince stayed in the warmth of YeonSung as he drowned in liquor and pleasure.

“Your Highness.”

YulMok walked down the stairs and bowed his head. Garan didn’t answer as he jumped off his horse and tossed the reins to one of his subordinates.

YulMok’s narrow eyes looked over the Red King’s dark animal pelt draped over his shoulders before lowering back down to the stone floor.

“How is Father Emperor?”

Seven days ago, the emperor had fallen off his horse. He had hit his head and was currently in critical condition. Having received the news, Garan raced back to YeonSung without rest for three days.

“He is in stable condition now, but he still cannot move.”

“I’ll go and see him after I’ve washed.”

“I’ll make the necessary preparations.”

Garan took off his gloves and headed directly for the bathroom. His whole body reeked of sweat. The tub was already filled with hot water. The palace maids quickly walked over and began to take off his armor.

Garan walked into the tub. His sturdy muscles plunged into the hot water. His whole body was covered in new wounds and scars.

As soon as he entered the water, the palace maids approached him as they tried to wash his body.

“I’m fine.”

He pushed away their hands. For a while now, he came to hate the feeling of a woman’s touch on his body.

After losing the Heukra, his secret room had been burned to the ground. And as expected, all the evidence and clues he had gathered burned with it. Additionally, the eunuch in charge of the emperor’s storeroom was found poisoned to death.

The Heukra might have found out. That clever figure might have found out about the various evidence he had gleaned. But no matter what he told himself, the doubt never went away.

The only person he had told about the icy-fire stone and the only person he had brought to the secret room… It was only her.

That woman did all this.

It didn’t make any sense. Garan covered his forehead with his hand. She was also the one who had given him a golden opportunity to catch the Heukra, the one who had saved Princess Muyeo, and the one who had saved his life.

Why did the woman who shot an arrow at the Heukra also destroy the evidence that would help catch her?

The ones who held the clues regarding this case also disappeared off the face of the earth. But he was a tenacious man. He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to find the Heukra no matter what it took.

In order to forget the surge of anger and annoyance, Garan sunk down into the water. As the hot water washed over his head, it brushed through his hair.

For a moment, he didn’t feel like he was alone. From far away, she was swimming to him through the blue water. Her black hair was spread out like seaweed as she gently made her way to him.

As she rode the waves, her body swayed. He felt her white arm wrap around him. She looked into her eyes. A faint smile was on her lips.

He should have pushed her away, but he didn’t. Instead, he merely glared at her as if he wanted to kill her. The woman laughed. As if she were teasing him. Then the flame of desire began to burn from within him.

Garan burst out of the water as if he were trying to escape a phantom. A fierce fire was burning his chest. His whole body was tense with an unknown desire.

“Your Highness.”

At that moment, a palace maid poured some warm water over his back. Garan stretched out his hand and grabbed her wrist.

Everyone inside the bathing room froze when they heard the palace maid’s cry. The palace maid whose wrist was captured by Garan merely looked around in confusion with her shocked eyes. She began to tremble in fear.

“Y-Your Highness.”

Garan ripped her top open. He grasped her exposed chest. With a splash, he pulled her over the rim of the tub and brought her into the water.

Women were all the same. There was no difference between them. This woman’s skin felt soft just like hers. This woman also had two breasts like her. This woman also had a hidden warmth between her legs like her. It would grow wet if he touched it, and it would also thirst for him.

He pushed her skirt up. There was a slit between the legs of her white drawers. All palace maids had slits in their drawers because they would have to be ready to satisfy the desire of all the men in the imperial family at any time. All he had to do was reach down with his hand. All he had to do was insert his cock, and it would be over.

However, Garan didn’t move. He suppressed his panting breaths and looked at the palace maid’s face. The scared girl held back her tears as she kept her eyes shut.

She was different from her. She is different from her.

She wasn’t the woman who had looked at him with eyes so bright that it looked like they held the sun.

The confidence as she asked him to give her what she wanted. The hot fireworks in her eyes. None of it was there. She didn’t have the captivating eyes that seemed to draw him in.

The warmth that made the cold loneliness disappear wasn’t there. The laughter wasn’t there.

Garan pulled his hand away. He got up and looked down at the palace maid.

“Leave.”

The palace maid got out of the tub as if she were running away.

Had he gone crazy? Garan smiled bitterly. There were many women out there. Now wasn’t the time to lose his mind over a girl who had abandoned him and disappeared.

Stop thinking ridiculous thoughts and forget her!

He had repeated this to himself thousands of times already.

I can forget her.

During the past six months, in the middle of the war, he thought he saw someone who looked just like her. In the end, he had been mistaken. He had gotten confused in all the chaos.

He was an imperial prince. The Red King. More powerful than anyone. Being shaken by something like this didn’t make any sense.

If he was told to raise his sword, he raised his sword. If he was told to cut someone down, he cut them down. He could hide anything behind his cold, indifferent face. It didn’t matter if no one told him anything!

He brought both hands into the hot water and splashed his face.

The emperor’s condition was a lot more serious than he thought.

“Greetings, Your Majesty.”

The fully-grown Red King seemed to look a lot sturdier and a lot more profound than he had in the past. Lying in the bed as the empress’s servants took care of him, the emperor looked at his second son with much difficulty.

“Did you crawl back from the western provinces?”

The emperor’s voice sounded rough and scratchy. The empress sat by his side and held out his medicine, but the emperor angrily pushed it away.

“Didn’t I tell you that I’ve had enough of that?”

The bowl rolled onto the floor with a loud crash. However, the empress’s expression showed no change as if this occurrence happened very often. The eunuchs walked over to the bowl with short, quick steps and picked up the bowl before cleaning the spilled medicine.

“I apologize.”

Garan cleanly acknowledged his fault. He didn’t excuse himself by saying that he had ridden his horse day and night for three days without rest.

“You rascals don’t care whether your father lives or dies. The days you have yet to live seem as numerous as grains of sand, so living your life must be full of anticipation and hope.”

His bad temper seemed to have grown worse. Garan merely kept his eyes politely lowered. The emperor continued to rebuke and scold him, but the Red King continued to keep his eyes where they were.

When the emperor was truly angry, he didn’t talk. Garan knew that the emperor’s silence was truly frightening, so he received all the emperor’s rebukes.

“All right, so what did you do about the pirates in the west? Did you merely shoot some cannons at those rat bastards to scare them away? Did you only eat and play in the western provinces all this time? You went to add more to your list of accomplishments, but in the end, I see that my son merely rotted away as he went around chasing rat tails.”

The Red King steadily reported on the situation in the west. While he did this, a eunuch brought a new bowl of medicine. Another commotion arose once again.

The emperor was always disgusted by his medicine, so they had to prepare multiple servings of the medicine throughout the day. In the end, the emperor threw a tantrum and yelled at the empress.

“Get out! Why do you keep pushing something at me when I already told you that I wouldn’t eat it?”

“Your Majesty, please think about your royal body……”

“Leave it. When a bone breaks, you just wait until it attaches back together. Stop bothering me and get out.”

Eventually, by the emperor’s orders, the empress left. The empress’s eyes grazed over the Red King like the cold eyes of a snake, but Garan pretended not to notice and kept his eyes lowered.

“Come closer.”

After the empress exited the room, the emperor called the Red King closer. He had broken his thigh bone in two places after the horse had fallen on top of him. Because the emperor weighed about twice as much as an average man, his movements were very limited.

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

Garan finally looked up at his father and asked in a soft voice.

“What do you think? I never knew breaking a bone could be this painful.”

“So why did you decide to go hunting in the wintertime?”

“Hunting is the most fun when you do it in the snow.”

The emperor chuckled. His face was swollen, and he didn’t look like he was in good condition.

“You should take your medicine.”

“The medicine given by the empress? Do you want me to die? I know she wants me to die one day sooner.”

“You’re thinking too much into it.”

“No, I’m not. She’s merely wearing an empress’s crown, but women are women. Isn’t that right? Once they bear a grudge, they’ll never forget it. Never embrace a woman who bears a grudge.”

He gazed at his tanned, rugged son.

“Why does your face look like that? Are you eating well?”

“I’m eating very well. There are a lot of fish in the west.”

Garan hated fish ever since he was young.

If someone served him fish, he didn’t even look at it.

The emperor’s face became gloomy. That was the past. A time when he felt as if he weren’t an emperor. As if he were just a normal head of a household, he had shared a good relationship with his wife. There was a time when they had shared meals with their young children as a family.

The guibin did her best to convince her picky son to eat one more spoonful, and the youngest daughter sat on her father’s lap as she ate her food……

Having lived as an ’emperor’ all his life, he never thought days like this would come for someone like him.

“The horse that threw me off had its neck slit and its belly opened.”

The emperor’s voice went bitterly cold.

“They found some scopolia* that hadn’t yet been fully digested in its system.”

Garan raised his eyes and looked at the emperor.

It wasn’t an accident? It was an assassination attempt instead? Could it be……?

“Didn’t I tell you it was time? Move quickly. Why are you still hesitating? The SangSuh official has prepared everything, and we are only awaiting your decision. Don’t you know that?”

“Your Majesty.”

“It has already been decided long ago that the Crown Prince will be deposed. He inherited his mother’s poison, so he is filled with twisted hatred inside. That child is……”

The emperor stopped speaking and shut his mouth. When this suffocating crown was taken away, he was just a father.

How valuable was this position that a husband would kill his wife, and his other wife hated him with such a passion that she tried to kill him while their son went insane?

As soon as the emperor was reminded of the Crown Prince, pain and anger began to spread in his heart like poison. He had planted the seed himself, and he’d have to be the one to harvest the fruit.

He bore the greatest fault when it came to how the Crown Prince had been raised. The Crown Prince was incompetent but greedy as he fed his twisted desires. In a way, he was the emperor’s shadow.

He already knew. He knew that his oldest son wasn’t normal. He wasn’t sure where things had begun to go wrong, but his crooked son never returned to his rightful place.

At one point in time, that child used to smile goodheartedly. He would proudly read the things he had learned in front of his Father Emperor. Why did that child change? Where did things go wrong?

He couldn’t acknowledge his mistakes. The emperor always believed that he would come back. However, his son had now drawn his sword against his own father. Since when had this cruel hatred come between the two of them?

The only one he could trust now was the Red King. The only child who managed to remain human in this palace of monsters. The child who kept his true intentions hidden as he outwardly acted indifferent. The child who held immense power but never wielded it recklessly. The child who nurtured a deep love but also a merciless hatred.

Now he had no one else but Garan.

“Father Emperor.”

“This is the path you must take. And I will be the one to clear that road.”

“It’s still too soon.”

“Too soon? It’s too late. Do you think I’ll last in my current condition?”

The emperor’s mouth twisted as he looked down at his body.

The body that he had always believed would remain youthful had become decrepit. Death approached him every night and sat at his bedside.

He knew. There wasn’t any time. It continued to slip through his fingers. Additionally, the empress’s power was gradually growing. If they didn’t nip this in the bud now, they wouldn’t be able to pull it out by the root later.

“Once I return to the royal court, the SangSuh official will propose the deposition of the Crown Prince.”

The Red King got up from his seat. He knew that they had been building up to this for a long time.

However, preparing for it and actually doing it were two completely different things. And even if they had prepared for it, it was obvious that the battle was going to be fierce and bitter.

However, this was the path that had been set for him, and this was the path he needed to take.

“Meet the SangSuh official before you leave. He will be your support in all of this.”

Garan looked up at his father with a grave expression.

“And you should get married already. You’re already an adult. It’s time you found someone who will be on your side.”

The emperor raised his heavy eyes and looked at his son.

He was being given a queen.

This wasn’t anything bad. Members of the imperial family married according to power. But…… a faint frown emerged on Garan’s brow. He looked up at the snowy sky as he murmured.

“The snow keeps falling.”

When he got on his horse at the front of the palace, YulMok approached him. If he acted according to his father’s orders, he would have to head to the SangSuh official right now.

The SangSuh official probably received word of his arrival and was waiting for him. He was also probably preparing to introduce his daughter as a candidate for his queen.

“Your Highness.”

YulMok called out to him by his side. Garan didn’t answer him. Instead of leading his horse towards the SangSuh official’s house, he guided his horse towards the east.

“Where are you going?”

YulMok, who was going to follow Garan as his guard, asked and received a curt answer.

“I’m going to see Muyeo.”

Jukmu ran like the wind. Muyeo had been ill since autumn. She had been bedridden and had lost all her energy. At first, the doctors had come and gone from her residence, but now they stayed there to take care of her. Garan worriedly sent her letters and medicine while he was away, but there was still no sign of improvement.

Was going to see Muyeo his way of delaying the inevitable?

Garan laughed at himself as his horse raced through the path. He didn’t want to meet the SangSuh official. He didn’t want to take some unknown woman as his wife.

If he had to take a woman as his queen…

Suddenly, that woman popped into his head. She was lying down on the floor, deep within the cave, as the golden sunlight peeked through the entrance.

The golden light refracting in her sparkling eyes. The frown on her face every time he entered her. Her black hair falling down her shoulders like a waterfall. Her legs as they wrapped around his hips. It was all so vivid in his mind.

He could feel her hands as they pulled him in.

He could feel her soft arms as they wrapped around him.

In that moment, the ice inside him shattered. A strange fire swallowed his heart. The heat dug into his very bones and expelled the cold.

The warmth in her breaths.

The smile on her lips.

She dragged him down from the black void and surrounded him in a scorching fire. He could still clearly feel the feverish heat.

“Damn it.”

“Your Highness?”

YulMok turned his head in surprise.

“What’s the matter?”

Garan would act like this once in a while, and it made YulMok worry.

“It’s nothing.”

Then Garan turned his head and spit out his next words.

“We’re going to the SangSuh official.”

“What?”

The Red King silently turned his horse’s head. This was the path he wanted to take. This was the path he would have to take. He couldn’t escape his destiny because of some unknown woman.

He scoffed at himself. With a cold expression on his face, he began to head for the SangSuh official’s house.