The Hungry Tyrant's Bedroom - Chapter 1
The night had deepened. A cool, chilled breeze brushed past the full moon. In the light pouring from the moon, her father’s shadow stretched long across the study floor.
“Floria.”
It was rare for her father to summon her at such a late hour, but even rarer for him to call her name so gently.
“Sit down.”
His soft expression and kind voice were unusual. Rather than feeling happy at the warmth she had never experienced before, Floria found her heart trembling strangely. Her father, who had been silently gazing at her from across the table, finally opened his mouth after some time.
“How are your bridal lessons progressing?”
“Bridal lessons?”
Floria’s eyes widened at the sudden words.
Bridal lessons—an unfamiliar term to her.
Floria was the third daughter of the King of Altomole.
Each of the king’s three princesses had a title attached to their names.
The first, the elegant Natalie.
The second, the beautiful Heliya.
The third, the virtuous Floria.
Floria utterly despised the word ‘virtuous’ preceding her name. There was only one reason the people called her that.
Because she remained confined within the palace, those outside had never had the chance to see her in person. With nothing else to label her, they arbitrarily chose the word ‘virtuous.’
Her father treated her as if she didn’t exist, and her mother shuddered at the mere sight of her, claiming that she reopened old wounds. It was a deep-seated resentment that had begun from the moment she was born.
When the Queen was pregnant with her third child, the Kingdom of Altomole had fervently hoped for the birth of a prince. The nation rejoiced.
The child born was a twin.
Floria had been delivered safely first, but her twin brother, tragically, was stillborn. That alone was devastating enough, but the fact that the deceased child was a son sent everyone into shock.
The princess who survived while the prince perished—Floria.
How long they had waited for a son to inherit the throne.
“If someone had to die, it should have been you, not Adrian.”
Just as her mother had said, she should never have been born.
Unlike her twin brother, Adrian—a name given to a child who had never even existed in this world yet was desperately loved—Floria had received nothing but hatred. She lived quietly, locked away in the palace, ensuring she remained unseen by others.
Naturally, she had never received proper bridal lessons. After all, there was no reason for her to be sent off in marriage to a respectable position.
Before long, she would either be sent to a convent or married off as the second wife of some fallen noble—just like a punishment.
That was what everyone in the palace believed.
“You know better than anyone, Father, that I have never received any bridal lessons,” Floria said.
“Yes, you were still young. I should have made sure you received them sooner.”
Her father clicked his tongue, as if he were some benevolent figure filled with regret.
“There’s no point in lamenting it now. You’re virtuous and wise—you’ll make a fine wife.”
A wife?
Her eyes widened at the unfamiliar word. The way he spoke, it was as if he intended to marry her off at any moment.
“What are you saying all of a sudden?”
“You must go to the Grand Duchy of Sief. To meet Grand Duke Aidan Dubois.”
At the mention of Grand Duke Aidan, Floria’s body trembled.
The Grand Duchy of Sief in the north was a land of barbarians. Most of its territory was mountainous—cold and treacherous. Those who survived there were known to be rough and unrefined. Even the common people of that land were like that.
As for Aidan, the man who ruled over them… people said he wasn’t even human.
Rumors of him were so infamous that even Floria, confined within the royal palace, had heard them.
In neighboring kingdoms, Aidan was called “a demon wearing human skin.”
They said he was twice the height of a woman and twice the size of a grown man.
Could that really be true?
When Floria first heard such tales, she had tilted her head in doubt.
‘Twice my height? That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never seen anyone like that. Could it be nothing more than a terrifying illusion created out of fear?’
But…
“They say he catches wolves with his bare hands and rips raw meat apart with his teeth.”
Even her mother, a woman of refinement, had spoken about him with such vivid horror. It couldn’t be a lie.
But Floria had never cared.
To her, the tyrant of the north was nothing more than a distant legend.
