เมียบำเรอสุดรักของพ่อเลี้ยงเย็นชา

Seven days after the coronation, Lucien Arden finally came to Silverleaf Palace.

He wore the gold-and-ivory robes of the emperor, tall and immaculate, and he stood in the middle of the hall like a pine on a snowfield—magnificent and entirely removed from everything around him.

“Evelyn.” His voice was low. “Do you object to my decision?”

Evelyn Hartwell rose at once and bowed.

“I wouldn't dare, Your Majesty. Naming my sister empress was a wise decision. I have no objection.”

Lucien studied her calm face and frowned.

He had assumed her silence over the past week was a tactic. He had expected that the moment he asked, she would cry. That she would tell him how unfair it was. That she would make a scene, and he would let her, and then he would give her something expensive and say, sternly, what he had said to her on the night they married: I told you when I took you to wife that my heart belongs to Rosalind. I can give you wealth and status. I cannot give you love. The place beside me belongs only to the woman I love.

A little kindness, a little warning, and the matter would have been finished.

But she genuinely didn't care.

That should have pleased him. Her attitude was ideal—no trouble, no scenes, proof that she had taken his words to heart and never let herself hope for more.

Instead, looking at her, at how little any of it seemed to touch her, something in his chest turned over unpleasantly.

“Your Majesty. I've brought the gifts.”

Chief Steward Lionel Ashgrove entered with a line of servants behind him, each carrying a lacquered box. The lids came off. Inside lay winter-fox pelts of the highest grade, white as fresh snow, without a single off-colored hair.

Lucien had hunted them himself, days ago, with his own hands. He had meant them as compensation.

Now, looking at her face, he had no idea what to say.

Never mind. Give them to her and go.

He had just drawn breath when Evelyn spoke first.

“These are beautiful.” She was looking at the pelts with real appreciation and no surprise at all. “These must be the foxes Your Majesty took last week. Have you brought them so I can make my sister a winter cloak?”

The unpleasant feeling in his chest sharpened.

“Why wouldn't you assume,” he said, “that they were meant for you?”

Evelyn dropped to her knees so quickly it looked like alarm.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty. I would never flatter myself so far. You've always said your love belongs to my sister alone. You went to considerable trouble for something this rare—it could only have been meant for her. I wouldn't presume to guess at your intentions.”

“My lady,” Lionel began, “His Majesty actually—”

“Lionel.”

One word, and the temperature in the hall dropped.

Lionel fell silent immediately.

Lucien looked down at the woman kneeling on his floor, and the nameless anger in him burned hotter.

“Very well,” he said coldly. “You have one day to finish it. The weather is turning, and the empress feels the cold.”

“As Your Majesty commands.” Evelyn lowered her head.

Her obedience infuriated him more than defiance would have.

He turned on his heel, sleeves snapping, and strode out of Silverleaf Palace.

Evelyn stood and watched him go. For a moment she looked faintly puzzled. Then the moment passed and she was calm again.

“Maeve,” she said to the maid at her side. “Bring my sewing things.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Evelyn sat by the window and began working the white fur into a cloak. Afternoon light came through the lattice and fell across her thin fingers, and the needle went in and out, in and out, quick and practiced.

“My lady,” Maeve asked quietly, after a while. “Are you truly not upset?”

Evelyn's hands paused.

Then she smiled. It was a small smile, barely there, but it was like the first thaw breaking over ice—startling, and unaccountably beautiful.

“Upset?” she said softly. “Why would I be?”

In five days, the death-draught in her body would take effect.

She would leave this palace for good. She would leave Lucien Arden for good.

And she would go south, to the man she had actually loved all along.

Evelyn and Rosalind Hartwell were both daughters of Chancellor Aldric Hartwell, but Rosalind was born to his principal wife, and Evelyn to a lesser one. Evelyn had been a sickly child, so she had been sent south to be raised by her grandmother.

That was where she met Julian Rivers.

His father governed one of the southern provinces. Julian was gentle, unhurried, and quicker than anyone she had ever known. They grew up together—read together, walked out to look at the flowering trees together, watched the spring rain come down over the water together.

He had held her hand once and said, “Evelyn, when you're old enough, I'll marry you.”

She had gone red to the ears. “All right.”

But on the very day she came of age, with the Rivers family already preparing the formal offer, her father sent men south to bring her back to the capital.

He had a use for her. She was to marry the Third Prince, Lucien Arden.

Nine imperial sons were tearing the court apart over the succession, and the old emperor had bound each of them to a great house by marriage. Lucien's allotment was a daughter of the chancellor's household.

Lucien wanted Rosalind.

But he understood exactly how dangerous that year was. Marrying Rosalind meant setting her down in the middle of a knife fight.

So when he learned the Hartwell family had a second daughter, one raised far away in the south, he asked for that one instead.

Evelyn refused.

Her father put Julian's life on the table.

“If you won't marry the prince, I'll see the entire Rivers household executed.”

And then, when she had gone white, he offered her the bargain.

“When the Third Prince takes the throne, I'll give you a draught that mimics death. You'll 'die,' you'll walk out of that palace, and you'll go back to your boy in the south.”

Evelyn agreed.

She married Lucien.

The years that followed were exactly as dangerous as everyone had promised. Assassins. Poison in the food. Traps laid by men who smiled at him in the morning. She was wounded more times than she cared to count and poisoned more than once.

She never complained.

She ran the prince's household so smoothly that it never once occurred to him to wonder how. She was, by every measure anyone used, the perfect wife.

When he was injured and needed a rare medicine, she nearly died getting it.

When his enemies arranged a blade for his back, she put herself in front of it.

At some point the rumor started, and after that it never stopped—that the Third Prince's wife was hopelessly, ruinously in love with him.

Evelyn never found a good way to explain.

The truth was much plainer. She wanted him on the throne so that she could finally leave.

And now it was over.

Lucien was emperor.

Rosalind was empress.

Two days ago, Evelyn had swallowed the draught her father had promised her.

It took seven days to work.

Five were left.