While Hiroki continued to rise in court, the domestic life in the Shimizu household churned with quieter, more insidious conflicts. Envy had taken root in Second Concubine Yuzu's heart and grown there, twisting slowly like a vine strangling a garden wall.

  Before Misbah's arrival, Yuzu had been the undisputed favorite. His family background was impeccable—a noble Dyssian cn with connections stretching back generations. More than that, he had given Hiroki something none of the others could cim: the household's only daughter, a precious heir who would one day carry on the Shimizu name. Even Zichen, the first concubine, could not compete with the favor Hiroki had vished upon him.

  And yet, after the Cornaulian boy had appeared, it was as if Hiroki had become a stranger. Yuzu could barely remember the st time she had spoken to him for longer than a polite inquiry after his health, let alone the st night she had spent in his chambers. Yet in the same breath that she dismissed him with a distracted nod, she would be at Misbah's side as though drawn there by invisible threads.

  Bitterness pooled in Yuzu's chest like stagnant water. To think that he, a proud son of Dyss, should be surpassed by a foreign boy from a barbaric nd… the humiliation was a poison he drank anew each morning.

  One evening, as Hiroki sat sharing tea with Misbah in her private chambers, an urgent message arrived. Yuzu's personal attendant knelt at the threshold, his face pale with worry. His master had fallen suddenly ill.

  Hiroki was on her feet before the attendant finished speaking. She found Yuzu in his chambers, his face waxy and pale, lying motionless in his bed as though life had already abandoned him. That night, she did not move from his bedside. When her own attendant urged her to rest—the morning court would not wait, after all—she merely shook her head and remained, watching over him until dawn painted the eastern sky in shades of pearl and rose.

  That night, for the first time in longer than he could remember, Misbah slept alone.

  He should have felt relieved. That detestable woman was not here to use his body like a vessel of flesh for her pleasure, to wring those shameful sounds from him that he could never quite suppress. And yet, as his hand drifted unconsciously to the empty space beside him, fingers brushing against the pillow where her head would have rested, he found himself... disappointed.

  The realization startled him so thoroughly that he sat up in bed, his heart pounding.

  It is merely habit, he told himself firmly. After so many nights together, one becomes accustomed to another's presence. Nothing more. She is, at the end of everything, a cold-blooded murderer who destroyed my family.

  He repeated that in his head over and over, hammering each word into his mind until he almost believed them. But some small, stubborn part of him refused to recite along. He spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of restless sleep, each time turning instinctively toward the empty space beside him, each time finding nothing.

  Just like that, a week passed. Yuzu had finally recovered enough to leave his bed, his color returning, his strength gradually rebuilding. But what should have been cause for celebration curdled swiftly into anything but.

  The second concubine, still pale but sitting upright now, pointed a trembling finger at the new incense he had received shortly before his illness—a gift, he cimed, from Misbah. When the household physician examined it, his face grew grave. The incense was ced with poison. A rare herbal toxin found only in the mountains of Cornaul.

  Misbah stood before the assembly in Hiroki's reception hall, his expression carefully bnk. He knew why he had been accused—no, he knew who had accused him. From his first days in the Shimizu residence, he had sensed Yuzu's hidden hostility beneath that saccharine smile. He had never missed the way that smile failed to reach the other man's eyes, the way Yuzu's body went rigid whenever he discovered Hiroki and Misbah together.

  What he didn’t know—what he could not understand—was why his chest constricted with such pain when Hiroki looked at him with cold, accusing eyes and demanded an expnation.

  Defiance rose in him like bile. If this was what she thought of him after everything, after all those nights when she had whispered his name like a sweet prayer, then let her think it. He would give her nothing.

  Why should he care anyway?

  "If Your Ladyship believes me guilty," he said, his voice ft and distant, "then who am I to argue?"

  Hiroki studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she simply nodded.

  “Very well.”

  And that was all she said before she turned to the servants and ordered Misbah confined to his own chambers for one month.

  .

  .

  .

  That month was the coldest Misbah had ever endured.

  Not the weather—autumn had not yet surrendered to winter—but the silence. The emptiness. He would sit for hours at his window, staring out at the garden without seeing it. Meals arrived and departed with barely a single bite taken. Even painting, which had always been his refuge, his one small pleasure, became a monotone exercise. He would stare at bnk paper until his eyes burned, then set his brush aside untouched.

  It must be because he hated being confined, he told himself. He missed the outside world. The gardens, the fresh air… the freedom, however little there was after marrying into this pce. But deep down, that small part of him knew it was not the truth.

  He could no longer deny this treacherous part when, one afternoon, the door slid open without warning and Hiroki stepped inside.

  She happened upon him half-decent in his bed, his face flushed and slick with sweat, his hand frozen guiltily on his exposed length. For one deafeningly silent, suspended moment, they simply stared at each other.

  Mortification crashed over him like a tsunami. He snatched the silk coverlet and yanked it over himself, burrowing beneath it entirely. His voice emerged muffled and shrill. "What are you doing here?!"

  Hiroki cleared her throat and averted her gaze for once. “I had come to see how my concubine was faring,” she muttered. “But I see there was… little need for concern.”

  Misbah made a small, distressed sound from beneath the covers. "And I thought you would be with your beloved second concubine. Did he finally tire of you and kick you out?"

  Hiroki hummed. “Are you perhaps jealous, little flower?”

  That barb drew him out as nothing else could. He threw the covers back, his face burning. "Jealous? Of you? Do not ftter yourself. You beast. You fiend. You good-for-nothing—"

  But Hiroki had already approached the bed during his tirade. He looked up at her, his disheveled bck hair pstered all over his crimson face, his eyes wet with tears of humiliation. She gently pushed away a strand of hair from his damp forehead.

  “Indeed,” she murmured softly. “You would never be jealous of me.”

  He swallowed. “That’s right. I would never. Not for a bastard like you.”

  Even as the words left his mouth, he did not resist when she crawled into his bed. He did not resist when her hand found its way beneath the covers and wrapped around his length to finish what he started.

  “Indeed.” She stroked him slowly, gently, just the way she knew he liked it, and he moaned breathlessly. “You feel nothing for me.”

  “T-that’s right,” he panted, squirming helplessly against her touch, his hands clutching the front of her robe as he stared up at her through gssy eyes. "Nothing... nothing at all."

  With her free hand, Hiroki parted the top of his sleeping robe, exposing his chest. She lowered her head and took one sensitive peak into her mouth, and he gasped sharply, throwing his head back against the pillow.

  He writhed beneath the dual assault of her mouth and her hand. It was too much, after so long alone, after a month of emptiness and confusion. “Not for… someone like you…”

  And yet, even then, he showed no signs of rejection when she shed the rest of his robes and her own, when she positioned herself above him and took him inside her. He cried out sharply and gripped her muscled arms hard enough to leave marks.

  Perhaps because it had been such a long time, or perhaps because he had already been in an aroused state from earlier, he found himself more sensitive than usual, the heated pleasure amplifying when he felt her squeeze him. His hands rushed to grip her thighs, struggling to hold still as she picked up her pace.

  “I—I didn’t do anything wrong,” he whimpered between gasps. “I… I never hurt him. I never have.”

  She rolled her hips against him, drawing forth more of those beautiful, needy sounds. “I know,” she said. “I know you haven’t.”

  Misbah’s breath caught. Then, resentment flooded his voice. “Then… then why did you punish me?”

  Hiroki brushed the tangled hair from his damp face, the gesture so unexpectedly tender that it sent a painful ache through his chest. "I had been neglecting the others for too long," she said quietly. "I was an undutiful wife. And yet... the only way I could force myself away from you was to stop seeing you entirely."

  Misbah bit his trembling bottom lip, fighting tears that threatened to spill. “You damn bastard. How could you do this to me?”

  “Forgive me.” She kissed the tears that escaped despite his efforts. “I owe you thousands of apologies for wronging you.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know.” She leaned closer, her forehead nearly touching his.

  “I hate you.” He lifted his head, closing the remaining distance.

  “I know.” She pressed her lips against his, and he looped his arms around her neck, pulling her closer, deepening the kiss until it descended into a hot, fervent, and desperate mess.

  pangmida