บททั้งหมดของ The Wicked Empress and her Possessive Beast: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

By the time the assembly was dismissed, Silverhall no longer resembled the disciplined heart of an empire. It resembled a jeweled hive someone had struck with a spear.Nobles flooded the corridors in clusters, whispering so violently that whispers became almost indistinguishable from shrieks. Diplomats abandoned dignity in favor of immediate correspondence, demanding ink, parchment, and the fastest riders available to send news back to their sovereigns that the Beast Emperor of the Black Dominion had either suffered a catastrophic break from reason or had initiated the strangest diplomatic maneuver in continental history. Servants carrying tea trays were stopped every few steps by frantic ladies desperate to confirm whether they had truly seen a northern emperor kneel at the foot of Halrem Vaelith’s throne.With every retelling, the story became more absurd. Some claimed Draevor had proposed marriage in the middle of the council chamber, while others insisted he had offered Halrem an

By the third morning of Draevor Kaine’s residence, Silverhall had ceased asking whether the northern emperor intended to behave strangely and had moved on to the far more practical question of how many servants would collapse from witnessing it.The answer, Halrem suspected, was several.She entered the southern audience chamber shortly after sunrise to receive merchant petitions and provincial complaints, expecting at minimum a tedious but manageable morning. Instead, she found the center of the marble floor occupied by six northern soldiers standing in a rigid line beside an object so enormous it appeared to have been delivered by siege equipment.It was a chest, though not an ordinary ceremonial coffer. The monstrous blackwood trunk was reinforced with iron and marked with the wolf insignia of the Black Dominion, while the two servants standing beside it looked as though they had personally carried the thing out of hell itself.Halrem stopped at the threshold.Chancellor Edrin, who

The morning after the banquet toast, Silverhall woke beneath a storm of gossip so dense it seemed to seep through marble.Servants whispered while changing linens. Noblewomen sent notes before breakfast. Ambassadors requested private meetings under the transparent excuse of discussing trade while actually fishing for confirmation that the northern emperor had indeed raised a goblet to Halrem Vaelith as though she were not an empress but a personal fascination. Even the palace guards had developed the dangerous habit of glancing at Halrem whenever Draevor appeared within ten feet, as though proximity itself had become state entertainment.Halrem bore all of this with the frozen dignity of a woman one insult away from institutional homicide.By midmorning she had retreated to the Royal Infirmary, partly because the imperial physicians had requested her consultation on an unusual poisoning case and partly because sickrooms contained fewer diplomats. The infirmary occupied a quieter south

Halrem spent the remainder of that morning regretting the laugh.It had not been a generous laugh, nor a warm one, nor anything that could reasonably be mistaken for softness. It had been a brief involuntary surrender to absurdity, a reflex produced by the sheer impossible persistence of a man who admitted to hunting an empress through her own gardens as if this were a normal diplomatic occupation.Unfortunately, Draevor had looked at that single sound as though she had handed him a military victory.That alone was enough to sour her mood through luncheon.By afternoon, she escaped to the western administrative wing under the excuse of reviewing servant quarter expenditures. In truth, Halrem often inspected the lower palace reports personally because no one else in Silverhall seemed capable of understanding that servants were the bloodstream of the palace and that neglecting them led to infestations of both disease and incompetence. The corridor leading toward the servants’ registry w

By the sixth day of Draevor Kaine’s residence, Silverhall had exhausted the possibility that his behavior was temporary.At first the court had believed the kneeling incident in the Grand Meridian Chamber to be an isolated northern spectacle. Then they had believed the prolonged residence was political maneuvering. Then they had hoped the gifts, the banquet toast, the constant appearances beside the empress, and the public interruptions were merely some barbaric interpretation of diplomacy that would eventually lose momentum.It had not lost momentum. If anything, it had gathered force, and by now every noble in Silverhall understood the horrifying truth with perfect clarity: the Beast Emperor was neither embarrassed nor deterred, and he possessed absolutely no interest in subtlety whatsoever.He was courting Halrem Vaelith in plain sight.The realization had made the imperial atmosphere almost feverish. Ladies whispered behind fans. Ministers carried reports while simultaneously list