The Wind Calms the Fire - Chapter 58

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 58
“Who stops someone who wishes to leave?”
“No one stops me, Your Majesty, yet I have received more kindness than I deserve. Should I not pay my respects to His Majesty before departing? Only……”
“Only?”
“His Majesty said I may call upon him whenever I wish.”
A faint crease appeared between Helena’s brows, then vanished.
She understood well what the Emperor meant by those words.
‘Still at it.’
It was one of several schemes the Emperor employed to draw women who caught his fancy into his bedchamber.
That she had surrendered her husband’s love did not mean it was acceptable for him to parade through women as though they were trinkets.
It was not a matter of affection—it was a matter of pride.
As Empress, she often gathered with the noble ladies of the court.
Every time the Emperor took a new concubine, those ladies would exchange glances with subtle, knowing looks.
The atmosphere sickened her.
Helena turned her gaze elsewhere, trimming flower stems as she spoke.
“It would not be entirely unwelcome to become the mother of the Empire’s sixth prince.”
Rhea knelt on one knee.
“Your Majesty. I have a beloved. I beg your aid.”
Helena’s brows flickered.
“Is your beloved the 4th Prince?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Rise.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Helena said nothing more until she had filled a second vase with flowers.
Rhea waited in silence.
After the second arrangement was complete, Helena spoke.
“I shall consider how best to assist you. Now, withdraw.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Once Rhea had left, Helena turned to an attendant at her side.
“Has the princess met privately with anyone during this time?”
“No, Your Majesty. She has declined all invitations and has not ventured beyond the Lingbin Corridor.”
Helena nodded.
It seemed the princess of Zephyros was a woman whose words and deeds aligned.
The Emperor’s lust toward her was revolting.
‘Does he truly reach for a woman his own son desires? How contemptible.’
Though the Emperor appeared to grope after any woman indiscriminately, there was always calculation behind it.
He typically targeted only women of low birth or married women.
If he took a woman of high station as a concubine, he would owe her a corresponding price.
If he made a princess of a tributary kingdom his concubine, any child born would have to be granted the rank of prince.
Should the Emperor dote upon a late-born child, the succession could shift.
Helena despised such variables.
She had no wish to upset the present order.
Helena spent the afternoon considering how to remove the princess of Zephyros from the Imperial Palace without drawing the Emperor’s displeasure, preserving appearances all the while.
As the sun descended toward the western hills, an attendant approached with news.
“Your Majesty the Empress. Lady Velua requests an audience.”
“I said I would see no one today.”
“It is Lady Veronica Velua, Your Majesty.”
Helena’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Veronica? Show her in at once.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
* * *
“Your Majesty. The Empress requests your presence.”
“……Show her in.”
The Emperor was puzzled.
The pair scarcely met outside formal occasions.
He could not recall the last time the Empress had sought him out first.
They lived as strangers to one another, and yet the marriage between them was not openly hostile.
At least, that was how the Emperor saw it.
He believed he treated the Empress with considerable respect.
When he learned of her barrenness, he had felt inward disappointment, yet now he counted it as a stroke of fortune.
The Empress hailed from the primary lineage of Valentino, the empire’s most distinguished noble house.
Had the Empress—flawless in both station and virtue—borne the Emperor a son, the Empress and House Valentino would have wielded far greater influence than they did now.
Conversely, the Emperor’s authority would have diminished proportionally.
None of the imperial princes possessed legitimate lineage through her.
The Emperor found their weakness to his liking.
In this empire, only the Emperor himself carried true royal blood.
That fact alone had often buoyed him as he approached sixty.
“I present my respects, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Welcome, Empress.”
The Empress’s austere gaze swept briefly across the chamber.
Before the Emperor lay an array of gambling games.
The nobles, who had been indulging the Emperor’s pleasure, rose and withdrew to the side the moment the Empress appeared.
“It seems I have interrupted Your Imperial Majesty’s enjoyment.”
“I was about to rest, in any case.”
At the Emperor’s gesture, they all departed.
The couple sat across from one another on the sofa.
“What brings you here?”
“Your Majesty. From the day I ascended to the Empress’s throne, I have exerted every effort to fulfill my duties. I hope you know this.”
“I am well aware.”
“Yet I have failed in the most vital of those duties. I have not produced a child to inherit Your Imperial Majesty’s noble blood. Should you say I lack qualification, I would have nothing to say in my defense.”
“Speak not so. You are without flaw. Though the princes were not born from the Empress’s womb, they are all her children.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“Has someone treated the Empress with discourtesy?”
“No, Your Majesty. Perhaps I have simply grown older. I find myself wishing to know what it means to be a mother. Would you grant me this?”
“Do not ask permission for what is only natural. Are you asking for a rod for discipline, then?”
Four of her children have reached manhood, yet none has married. Whenever marriage is mentioned, each has a birth-mother to advocate for him—what place would there be for me to intervene? But surely with the 4th Prince, I might take a hand?”
The Emperor visibly knitted his brow.
“These past days, a certain rumor has been circulating widely enough to reach my ears. I hear the 4th Prince has found someone he wishes to marry.”
“……I did not know the Empress took such keen interest in the 4th Prince.”
“Your Majesty. Though I did not bear the princes myself, I have fulfilled a mother’s duty toward them. I take interest not only in the 4th Prince, but in all of them.”
“I know.”
It was true—the Emperor knew that the Empress sent gifts to all the princes faithfully on New Year’s, year-end, and their birthdays.
The Emperor himself had acknowledged the Empress’s considerable role in maintaining harmony throughout the Imperial Palace.
How many concubines, nestled in the Emperor’s arms and whispering false intimacies, had harbored ambitions to seize the Empress’s seat?
Yet the Emperor had never once considered replacing her.
Helena made no tiresome demands and created no disturbance.
“Are you saying you wish to arrange the 4th Prince’s betrothal yourself?”
“That matter must first receive the 4th Prince’s own opinion. However, I thought to undertake the engagement arrangements myself. His birth-mother is distant, and the princess is a foreigner. The child has few elder figures to rely upon.”
“I have not yet approved their union.”
“Do you object to it?”
“First, we must determine how to treat the kingdom.”
“Indeed, matters of state must come first. I merely raise what follows after.”
The Emperor replied with a reluctant expression.
“I shall give it deep consideration.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Though before you reach your decision, there is time. The princess is unfamiliar with our empire’s customs and culture—I thought to instruct her. Whether you permit the marriage or not, she will eventually enter the imperial household, and even if she does not, as a princess of a kingdom within the empire, there are things she ought rightly to know.”
“You intend to teach her yourself?”
“If I take personal charge, I fear there will be gossip later that the 4th Prince received special treatment when there are four other princes. I thought to entrust the task to someone suitable.”
The Empress’s reasoning was sound and clothed in propriety.
Given that he had his eye on the Zephyros princess himself, he lacked the footing to refuse.
“Do as you see fit, Empress.”
“I am grateful, Your Majesty.”
After the Empress departed, the Emperor spoke to his chief steward.
“Bastian. Find out why the Empress is interfering.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The chief steward, having quietly gathered intelligence from the Empress Palace, reported back.
“It appears that Veronica Velua called upon Her Imperial Majesty.”
The Emperor’s expression darkened.
Veronica, a bastard daughter of the previous Emperor, was by blood his half-sister.
Of course, the Emperor had never once thought of her as his sister.
Nor had he ever shown her contempt as a bastard.
Veronica Velua was a blood relation whom the late emperor had cherished dearly, and her influence in society was formidable.
‘I heard she’d withdrawn from public life lately. Why the sudden change?’
The emperor guessed that the 4th Prince had sent Veronica Velua.
‘So the 4th Prince knows how to play such tricks. Clever, I’ll grant him that.’
He’d thought the 4th Prince had no real connections to speak of—this was unexpected.
The emperor’s interest evaporated in an instant.
He’d been waiting, half-hoping the Zephyros princess would come seeking him, thinking ‘so much for that,’ when this happened instead.
The 4th Prince’s frantic scrambling over a woman was beneath contempt.
‘Tsk. The fool knows nothing. A true man masters women—holds them, commands them. And he’s already dancing on her string.’
The next day, the Chief Chamberlain delivered his report.
“Your Majesty. The Zephyros Delegation departs the Imperial Palace today. The Empress has…….”
The emperor waved a hand, cutting him off.
“Yes, yes. The Empress has seen to it herself. Tell the Minister of Foreign Affairs to arrange the delegation’s departure date for their return to the kingdom.”
The emperor issued the command without lifting his head from the bed.
“I shall convey your order, Your Majesty.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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