Winter Bud - Chapter 36

“Your silence is excessive,” he muttered sharply.

Nanna answered in a voice barely louder than a mosquito’s, “No.” She couldn’t tell how he would react if she said, “Yes, that’s not true.” Nanna only wished he wouldn’t get angrier than he already was. She couldn’t handle him even now.

“Are you angry?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you angry because I took the children from you?”

“I….”

“So you’re protesting, then?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You’re not smiling.”

Nanna was confused. The Emperor spoke as if asking something simple, yet it was difficult to understand what he meant. No, she couldn’t understand why he was asking such a thing at all. Angry…? She wasn’t. Not smiling and being angry were two different things. Besides, Nanna had never been angry with him. Was anger even an emotion she was allowed to feel?

“…That’s not true,” Nanna whispered weakly.

The Emperor looked at her in the dim light and reached between her thighs. The rough texture brushed slowly against the inside of her groin. A shiver ran through her. Nanna clenched her lips tightly, trying not to feel his touch.

Feeling pleasure while spending the night with the Emperor was dizzying. In a different, dreadful way…. That feeling of being defiled was hard to recover from. Because he was another woman’s husband. And that woman was someone Nanna knew well. She knew how filthy it was to lose herself and moan with the husband of another woman—no, her mistress’s husband—between her thighs, the man who had sworn faith and chastity before God.

So to her, too, sex was nothing more than a humiliating duty. If she could avoid it, she would have. That feeling was different from the one she’d had long ago when she’d loved the Emperor, or rather, Orestes.

“I know you.”

His dry, low voice was flat. Nanna gazed dimly at the man filled with certainty. She wanted to ask what he knew, but the words dried up on her tongue. She breathed softly, studying him with distant eyes. The beautiful contours of his face were sharp. The red glow slid smoothly along the lines of his sleek features.

“I know the way you challenge me.”

“…That’s not true. I’ve never challenged Your Majesty.”

Nanna’s eyes tightened. She wanted to know what kind of ‘defiance’ or ‘challenge’ he obsessively clung to. Nanna could only be powerless, tossed around however he pleased. Even when her children were taken away, wasn’t it the same? They were her very life. When she’d been forced to part from them at such a young age, she’d known it would be a farewell for life. That was why she had gone to Duke Everhardt, despite fear and hardship, to the man who had once forced himself upon her. To Orestes, did that seem like defiance or rebellion? Nanna’s eyes reddened with resentment. Her lips trembled as she lowered her gaze, and he lifted her chin.

But Nanna stubbornly refused to look at him. The suffocating tangle of their gazes was unbearable. She even thought it would be better if he just continued his dry thrusting and left afterward.

As it had been in the beginning, Nanna wished no emotions flowed between them. She even missed the days when he’d grab her hair and shove her head into the pillow in one motion. Back then, to Orestes, Nanna had been nothing more than a whore meant to conceive and preserve his seed. Just as he knew himself to be nothing but a stud, he treated Nanna like a broodmare.

Though she was crowned Empress Consort and disguised as a noblewoman, in the end, her essence was the same. Nanna had become Empress Consort only to receive his seed. So, whether he liked it or not, the Emperor had to spill his seed into her until she bore an imperial heir. What romance could there be in that? What trust or loyalty could exist between husband and wife? Counting the days she’d wanted to die, Nanna lifted her gaze at the low voice calling her name.

“…I’m not defying Your Majesty.”

Her weak whisper was lukewarm. His rough hand groped her pussy. A deeper chill ran through her body, her stomach twisting. Her face contorted, but she tried not to let the tears fall. Nanna had borne four children. One had been lost in an accident.

Yet the fact that she’d borne four remained unchanged. Wasn’t that enough? She’d done all she could, tried as much as anyone could. She wanted to say it was time to entrust that duty to another woman, but nothing came out, as if a cork had lodged in her throat.

“Hh, uh….”

“You say you love it, so why that expression?” he asked.

His long fingers pried apart her folds. It felt like her soft, tender flesh was being mercilessly violated. It was far from pleasant. His fingertips rubbed at the entrance of her vagina. Nanna gasped for breath. A shiver ran up her spine, making her hair stand on end. She clutched his thick arm.

He seemed to pause, then pushed his fingers inside.

“Ah, hh….”

The wet moan was horrifying. Just imagining Thea seeing this made her want to crawl into a hole or throw herself out the window. It was extreme, but true. In truth, whenever Nanna was consumed by guilt, she often felt the urge to hurt herself. It wasn’t brief enough to be called an ‘impulse’…. That was why Nanna sometimes felt grateful to be confined in the Western Palace.

If only he hadn’t left her as something like a ‘concubine,’ a ‘consort.’ If only he had abandoned her completely…. If only she’d been cut out of his life entirely, to live on as someone unrelated to him, it might’ve been better. Then maybe she could’ve accepted saying farewell to her children forever.

“Focus.”

The man gripping Nanna’s breast, now stained with anguish, let out a low growl. She choked back tears at his fierce, deep voice, then nodded. After all, he likely wanted to finish quickly too.

“Why is it so dry?”

“I-I don’t know,” Nanna mumbled stupidly.

Orestes glanced at the woman curled up like a frightened girl, then roughly rubbed her tight inner walls. He twisted his fingers, pistoning in and out of the puckering hole. This was the place where he’d last embraced Nanna. Not in the main palace, but the Western Palace, shortly after she’d been confined there.

He’d thought she would cling to him more desperately with each passing day. Even so, he couldn’t keep her under the same roof as Thea, so he’d placed her in a separate palace. Thea had insisted he bring her back to the main palace for show, but he had no intention of doing so.

The annex wasn’t far from the main palace and was suitable for housing a concubine. But….

“Stop, please, don’t put it in anymore.”

“Why?”

“I-I want to hold Your Majesty’s thing soon.”

The woman muttered foolishly. He stared at her lips, which he wanted to bite. Like a goldfish, with only her eyes wide…. Good at whining, yet her pride was high. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand Nanna. Even so, he knew she loved him. Anyone could see it. Thea knew it too.

“Don’t be so scary.”

“Why?”

“That girl. She likes you.”

“What?”

While Thea was organizing her jewelry, he saw the girl who, the moment their eyes met, fled the bedroom as if running away. Watching her go, Thea muttered reproachfully. He looked at the woman in disbelief. Thea whispered, “It’s true,” and then burst into laughter. He frowned slightly around his eyes.

When had it started? There was a woman Thea kept close, calling her her new lady-in-waiting. She had hair so full it fell like clouds to her waist. Her light-colored eyes were the color of water, and her small face with delicately carved features looked as refined as a doll’s. Thea sometimes murmured, “She’s so beautiful it makes me jealous.”

He couldn’t understand it, so he thought about how to respond, then whispered, “Sell her again.” Thea hit his shoulder, calling him cruel. But wasn’t it right to remove from sight what so clearly bothered her?

He too found the woman’s presence irritating. She might think she hid it well, but her sticky glances, her flushed cheeks, and that clumsy demeanor all gave her away. Every time their eyes met, she fled like her tail had caught fire. Was that what annoyed him?

He wanted to get rid of the woman from his fiancée’s side.