Previously
Sienna grows into a cynical beauty plagued by insomnia and fear of her mother's fate. As the Emperor falls ill with pneumonia, the court shifts its loyalty toward Joseph, and Marianne openly mocks Sienna by boasting of Joseph's military influence and her own desire to marry the Grand Duke.
How to Break Up with You Perfectly, Episode 17
It made no difference the day Sienna finally lost patience and went straight to the council. The head of the council received her politely enough, but he gave her words no heed at all.
‘Your Highness, we cannot overturn the imperial code that has governed the empire for centuries simply to indulge your personal ambition.’
Rather than consider it, he merely rebuked her with a pathetic, patronizing scowl.
‘Now that Joseph has formally begun his succession training, the ground beneath your feet must feel scorching hot.’ Though he left the thought unspoken, the way he looked down on her as though she were a trifling nuisance conveyed it plain as day. Even so, Sienna refused to be cowed and struck back.
‘The world has changed. Is it not far more absurd to keep abiding by statutes penned centuries ago?’
‘Enough. As you can see, this is not a place for Your Highness to set foot in.’
Only then did Sienna cast a sidelong glance around her. The nobles assembled for the meeting were exclusively men. Every one of them was staring at her with the exact same expression as the man who had just chided her.
Sienna pressed her lips firmly together and thrust forward the documents she had compiled with her own hands.
‘Surely reviewing them is no great hardship.’
The council head took the thick dossier from her, though his displeasure remained written plainly on his face. She had to content herself with just that much.
Having spent days reading dense rows of legal script with hardly any sleep, she lacked the strength to drag the dispute out any further.
In the end, all that mattered was keeping the Emperor in the dark. And bedridden as he was, drifting in and out of lucidity, word was hardly likely to reach his ears anyway.
Just as she turned away, however—
‘She pulls the exact same stunts as her mother. It’s enough to make your skin crawl.’
At the hushed whispers behind her back, Sienna ground to an involuntary halt.
‘Blood will out, won’t it? Watching her run wild without knowing her place makes me feel like I’ve stepped back ten years.’
‘She knows full well how the Empress met her end, yet she never seems to tire of it.’
‘If she’d only keep quiet, His Majesty would see fit to arrange a respectable match for her in time. Instead, she wastes her breath on these hopeless schemes.’
‘True enough. Still, blood child or not, I’d be sick to my stomach having to look at a daughter who’s the spitting image of the woman I put to death.’
The snickers paralyzed her reason. Stiffly, she looked back over her shoulder, only to see their figures already walking off into the distance.
Her fingertips trembled faintly. The urge to march right up to them and strike them across the cheek flared hot, yet she knew all too well that doing so would only come back to haunt her.
Whatever his personal standing as a mere noble, he was the head of the imperial council, while she, princess of the realm or not, was as precarious as a flickering lamp before a howling gale.
Instead of calling out to halt the nobles, Sienna clenched her fists tight and resumed walking. She drew a deep breath to choke down her fury, but the emotion surging up from the depths of her chest was impossible to quell.
It was a foregone conclusion that the moment her father died, her half-brother’s blade would turn toward her, and with no one on her side, she was merely seeking a way to survive. Was that so wrong?
If Joseph ascended the throne, Marianne’s safety would never be in question. Dahlia’s would be assured as well. But not Sienna’s.
Just as the nobles had sneered, a father who had treated her like a ghost would hardly look after her circumstances now, nor did she have maternal relatives left to back her up. In the end, she had no one to rely on but herself.
Even so, was this truly the right course?
It wasn’t as though she had never considered seeking asylum abroad, far beyond the reach of Joseph’s hand.
Yet asylum was ultimately nothing more than a pretty word for running away. Furthermore, even if she did flee overseas, there was no guarantee of complete safety. Throughout history, had the exile of powerless royals ever ended in anything but misery?
No matter which direction she turned, every path seemed to end in a sheer precipice.
Unable to sleep, Sienna wandered the rear gardens the entire night. Only after gazing gloomily at the pale, clearing dawn sky did she make her way back inside the palace.
In the pitch-black dawn, not a single soul was in sight down the corridor where the guards should have been standing watch. Feeling a faint prickle of unease, Sienna stepped into her chamber, only to understand the reason the instant she saw the figure standing inside.
‘Where are you coming from at this hour?’
As if confirming the recent rumors that the Emperor’s condition had taken a dire turn, the father she had not laid eyes on in so long looked noticeably frail. Caught off guard by the unexpected visit, Sienna stood frozen in shock for an instant before hurriedly sinking to her knees.
‘Greetings, Your Majesty.’
‘I asked where you have been all this time.’
Unable to fathom the intent behind the question hurled at her out of nowhere, Sienna could only dart her eyes about, struck dumb.
She could not begin to understand why a man so grievously ill that people openly whispered he wouldn’t survive the year had come to her room without a single soldier in tow.
When she offered no proper reply and only stood there parting her lips in utter terror, the Emperor’s brow furrowed deep with displeasure. With that disdainful gaze pinned upon her, Sienna stammered out an excuse like a hiccup.
‘I was… taking a walk.’
‘At dawn, before the sun has even risen?’
The Emperor let out a scoffing sneer at the preposterous excuse. Then a brief silence descended.
The only sound breaking the stillness was the tap, tap of his long fingers drumming against the table.
The longer the silence stretched, the harder it became to maintain her composure. Terror had already seized Sienna’s body, leaving her trembling violently. The hammering of her heart rang loud in her ears, and her breath grew increasingly ragged.
This was the father who had never once looked in on her after her mother died. At the same time, he was the exalted Emperor—a being who could wring her neck whenever he pleased.
That careless drumming against the tabletop alone frayed her fragile nerves to ash. It was a terror engraved deep in her very instincts.
All the while, the Emperor’s face remained entirely indifferent. At the end of the suffocating stillness, he finally spoke.
‘Put an end to this foolishness.’
The words that broke the silence were hard to parse. Sienna managed a voice that barely rose above a whisper.
‘I do not understand what you mean…’
‘I heard you went to the council today.’
She feigned innocence, striving to project whatever calm she could muster.
‘I did nothing to cause you concern.’
‘Nothing to cause concern? I imagine you decided that standard yourself.’
As if he had never expected the truth from her in the first place, he gave a harsh snort. Then he tossed something down in front of her.
With a dull thud, a thick sheaf of papers dropped at her feet.
Gazing down at it in confusion, her face suddenly went stark white. The papers were none other than the proposal she had handed to the council noble earlier.
She had spent whole nights drafting it under the conviction that the Emperor was too far gone in mind ever to read it. It was the desperate plea of someone fighting to survive, but through his eyes, it would look like nothing more than an arrogant demand.
With the proof of her clandestine deeds flung right before her eyes, the terror she had barely kept under wraps burst open. Her entire body shook uncontrollably against her will. It was glaringly obvious that something had gone terribly wrong.
Fixing his cold gaze upon Sienna, who was trembling like an aspen leaf, the Emperor asked,
‘Have you truly forgotten how your mother died?’
‘It is not like that, Your Majesty…’
As the Emperor’s voice rose, Sienna felt as if she had shrunk back into the seven-year-old child watching her mother perish. No—the moment the sheaf of papers was hurled before her, her mind, as fragile as a thin sheet of glass, had already shattered completely.
‘If you are so dissatisfied with your current lot, very well. I shall grant your wish. Do you think a man who has cast aside two wives would hesitate to banish his own child?’
At the chilling edge in his voice, a terrified Sienna threw herself to her knees at his feet.
‘Your Majesty! That is not it at all!’
‘Then what is it? Did you covet the throne?’
Sienna could not answer the blunt question. To deny it would be a lie, yet to affirm it was tantamount to confessing to treason with her own lips.
As she failed to muster a single answer, merely trembling her lips, the Emperor’s expression hardened into a different kind of severity.
‘Foolish girl.’
At that muttering note of contempt, her frantic shaking cut off dead. As if he had no more time to waste, the Emperor rose from his seat.
‘I shall overlook it this once. Never dare pull such an idiotic stunt again.’
He delivered the warning in a chilling, merciless tone. His intent was so transparent that Sienna let out a hollow laugh in spite of herself. In the end, her father had come here in person for only one reason.
Do not covet my son’s seat. Merely to deliver that wretched warning.
A bitter resentment surged within her.
‘Am I truly so unfit? Merely because I am a woman? I am the only child born to Your Majesty’s only lawful wife…!’
‘You are also the daughter of a traitor. Your mother sought to kill me to place you upon the throne.’
A tear spilled from Sienna’s eyes as she looked up at him. Even so, his countenance remained icy.
‘Is that all? Taking advantage of my confinement to a sickbed, you shoved such an absurd bill before the council. And you dare fancy yourself an emperor?’
‘Your Majesty, I only—’
‘You are excessively arrogant.’
Sienna froze solid at the cold reprimand.
‘Flaunting it to no purpose and making enemies is equally foolish. In every respect, you are unfit to rule. You are dull-witted and blinded by vengeance.’
Not a sliver of warmth remained in that icy visage. The sheer chill of it pierced Sienna with deep, sorrowful bitterness.
‘…Did I ever have any other path?’
She had long known she was nothing more than an abandoned child, but that did not mean her father’s contemptuous gaze left her unharmed.