A dream in which I was wandering through a snowy mountain.

Out of breath, my vision blurred, and all I could see was a blinding white.

My feet were frozen, and I couldn’t feel anything, but I continued to wander through the mountains.

“Hah…”

The faint breath of the heavenly mist clouded her vision. Her feet sank deeply, firmly into the snow.

Knees repeatedly gave out. She reached out with her trembling hands.

There was something I was looking for.

Just when I thought I had it firmly in my hand, it was gone…

“…!”

Yi woke up screaming and flailing her hands in the air.

The freezing cold of the dream was gone. On the contrary, the heat that enveloped her body left her breathless.

No matter how wide she opened her eyes, she could see nothing but a dark night, a small, narrow room, a tattered lantern, and a silken golden sword.

The sword was the only thing worth selling in the otherwise decrepit, deserted room.

Upon it, Yi was kneeling, groveling. Like a sinner.

The only difference was that it was a man’s body, not a rope, that bound her.

She shuddered faintly beneath the man pinned against her, his arms wrapped around her body. The man patted her skin.

“Are you awake?”

The man’s palm pressed against her bottom. As if to confirm that, she held his shaft in place.

“Hmph…”

Yi shook her head slowly, still dazed from the dream.

But to keep her from slipping into a momentary reverie, the man moved his waist, gripping her around at the waist to keep her from drifting away, pinning her beneath him with an audible snap.

Her mouth opened of its own accord. It was a soundless scream.

She gasped for air. Every time the man moved, she gasped like a drowning child.

It was still dark in front of her, and the man mounting behind her was frantically stamping on her. It felt like she was interacting with an animal, not a man.

The man on her bottom, straddling her like a doe on a mate, sank his teeth into the nape of her neck.

The moment his teeth sank deep into her flesh, her eyes went white.

She twisted like a prey whose throat has been bitten, reflexively leaning forward to escape.

“Where are you going to run?”

“Hmph!”

His prick flopped down, spitting out half its length.

A knot formed in her stomach.

A rumbling in the pit of her stomach that hadn’t eaten in a while. Arms gripping the floor collapsed.

Head resting on the top edge of the bed, swaying violently.

Dizziness, flickering white and black in front of her eyes. Unable to breathe.

He ran his tongue over the gash on the nape of her neck.

Whether she was frightened or dazed, or both, she picked at the needle with trembling hands.

Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she would clutch at a simple piece of metal that had never been used before, a piece that she could not afford to give to a sweet young lady.

At the sudden misery, Yi scoffed, knowing she still had that much emotion left in her. It was ridiculous.

To be in the position she was in now, being ravished by the man who had abandoned her.

Unable to form a proper groan, she laughed inwardly.

“Pfft…”

Suddenly, his hand grabbed her roughly by the hips. His shaft buried itself so deeply that it made her gag. She gasped and barely managed a few gurgles as the flesh filled her stomach.

The man laughed lowly.

It was an odd laugh, devoid of any trace of amusement.

Biting her waist, he flipped her over, his hand clamped over her mouth as the blanket was too tight to reach behind her back. His hand covered her chin to her cheeks.

“Do you hate me enough to make me sick to my stomach?”

As she struggled to breathe, the man continued to ask her questions.

“How much do you hate me, how horrible and…”

In the darkness, only the man’s eyes flashed like demon flames.

The eyes she’d seen for the past ten years were as eerie as ever, and Yi shut her eyes tightly, unable to face them any longer.

A hand slipped between her legs and pressed her inner thighs apart.

The bottom that had once held so much so quickly closed, and opened again at his touch. The lust that had been pooling in her stomach trickled down her hips.

Even with her eyes closed, she could feel what he was looking at.

In her shame, she tried to think of other things. Like when he would stop. How long, the man who hadn’t undressed her in ten years of marriage, had been shoving his hard flesh between her humble legs?

‘Soon it will be over. Soon he will be out of here’, she muttered to herself, repeating the words she had said before she blacked out.

This night would be over soon, just like their first night together ten years ago.

A decade ago…

It was the day his father returned to Hanyang after a long journey.

Yi had been lying in bed since midday, caught in a summer dust storm that no longer bothered the rest of the village.

She was small at birth and always sick as she grew up.

Despite not having any inherent illnesses, she was always bruised and sick often. If she hadn’t been born the only child of a wealthy, powerful family, she would have died before she could walk, people would whisper.

It wasn’t the kind of thing to say to a twelve-year-old girl, but it wasn’t wrong either.

What’s it like to be a kid who never steps out of the room when his father comes home after a long absence?

‘A child who is not worth half a dime.’

As Yi Seo lay there thinking about it, her nanny, Yeong Sun, came into the room with a medicine bowl.

“Why is Father here?”

A man who served as a provincial official could not leave the province he was assigned to without some sort of emergency.

Perhaps her father had come to the main house in Hanyang once last year, to pay his respects to his great-aunt.

But no one had been sick or had died recently, so she wondered what he was there for.

“You should take your medicine first, honey.”

Yi sat up and took the medicine bowl. As she silently drank down the bland liquid, her nanny spoke up.

“You saw the valley last year, and this year you passed the passage safely, and there are already rumors about what a good time Master is having.”

But what does that have to do with my father’s arrival, I wondered.

“So now that he has the wheel, he’s going to send all the great armies out to fight.”

Yi Seo was very intelligent for a child of her age, even though she was weak from birth and spent most of her time in bed reading books.

As soon as she heard her nanny’s words, she realized why her father had come home.

The only time the district governor could be away was for a wedding. Her father, Kim Su-Mal, had only one child, Yi Seo.

“Am I getting married?”

“Oh, no, you’re not.”

Her Nanny quickly shook her head.

She laid Yi Seo down as if to say, “Don’t think about it. It’s just talk. Madame doesn’t want to hear it. She said that if the royal family is going to be involved, the youngest daughter of your uncle, the old man, would be a good choice.”

And just as Yi Seo’s milk supply was provided by Yeong Sun, so too was her mother in turn provided for her. Yi’s mother often confided in her as if they were siblings.

“But my father wants to marry me off, so that’s why you’re here.”

“Even if he did, how could I break his insistence? There’s nothing in the family that doesn’t go according to his will.”

Yi’s father was a man of strong bones, but he was no match for Yi’s mother, whose father, though not a servant of the king, had been honored by the previous king and served in the army.

From the beginning, the marriage was a one-sided affair, with her running the household and him traveling the countryside.

I was hoping to have a child to bond with, but instead, the first child was Yi Seo.

She was laid low with a seizure before she was two years old, and since then, she’s been a little girl who never knows when to expect her death.

She was so young that neither her mother nor her father would look at her anymore.

Since then, she’s been thinking that she’s going to die someday.

Marriage seemed to be a distant memory, and the day of the offering was near.

“Anyway, don’t worry about it, miss, and go to sleep.”

“How can I not care if it’s about me?”

“It’s not about you, honey. You haven’t even had your first period yet, so what are you talking about?”

It was common for people to marry when they were ten years old, but the marriage ceremony was held at the age of twelve. For Yi Seo, she was still young.

But even though it was obvious, Yi Seo’s mother’s words didn’t go unnoticed.

“Will I still be alive by then?”

“…”

That’s how much she’d been raised, and her eyes moistened at the words.

She felt like she’d set herself up for failure when she didn’t know how much longer she’d live, when she could have just said nice things.

Yi Seo’s heartfelt heavy, so she deliberately grabbed her hand and asked her.

“I’m just curious, Nanny. This is the first time I’ve heard of him, but I don’t know if that great lord will be my groom. Which lord is he?”

Despite her innocent question, she didn’t expect to be able to do so.

‘If somehow things got twisted and turned, and I ended up getting married…’

I felt sorry for the groom, the young man who would get stuck with a wife who would die at any moment…

Like her mother, who ended up with something like herself as her first child.

Several days have passed since Father returned home.

As I lay in the unyielding summer heat, I had almost forgotten about my tale of woe. I suppose because I thought it would never happen in my life.

So when I went to my mother and father in the morning, when the summer fever was almost gone, I was puzzled by what I heard.

“There’s some bad news about you.”

At his father’s words, Yi Seo glanced at her mother, who seemed reluctant to hear what had happened, but did not object.

“I am weak…”

“It’s a medicine. The ceremony will take place before winter, so make sure you don’t get cold in the meantime.”

That was the end of it. He never even told her if she was getting engaged or married.

When her father, unwilling to say anything more, led her out of the room, as if she were being driven away, her mother, who stood beneath the stone, embraced her.

Her small body buried itself in her arms.