Chapter 210: Chapter-210

As Heena walked down the corridor, the System materialized beside her, looking confused.

“Host… was that really a false pregnancy? How is that possible? The tests before showed—”

Heena looked at the System and laughed—actually laughed out loud. She flicked him gently on the head with her finger.

“You fool! Do you really think after coming to this world, after being ’poisoned’ by those bastards, I would just let it go?”

“What do you mean?” the System asked nervously.

Heena’s smile became absolutely wicked.

“The day those consorts tried to poison me, I decided I couldn’t let that grudge go so easily. So after I had them arrested and released, I hired servants in their households. I had them add a little… ’supplement’… to the consorts’ food.”

The System’s eyes went wide. “What kind of supplement?!”

“You know how farmers deal with pests?” Heena said conversationally. “Like snails that lay too many eggs and destroy crops? They use substances that sterilize them—remove their ability to reproduce.”

She looked at the System with cold satisfaction.

“I did the same thing to the consorts. All five of them have been consuming small, undetectable doses of a sterilization compound for months now. They’re completely infertile.”

The System was absolutely ’shocked’.

“HOST! You—you sterilized them?!”

“Temporarily,” Heena clarified. “The effects will wear off in about two years if they stop consuming it. But for now? None of them can father children.”

“So Seraphina’s child couldn’t possibly be theirs because they’re ’sterile’?!”

“Exactly,” Heena confirmed. “Even if she HAD been actually pregnant—which she wasn’t—the child couldn’t have been any of theirs. I made sure of that.”

She smiled coldly.

“I don’t leave anything to chance. Every possibility was covered. Every angle was planned.”

The System looked at his Host with a mixture of admiration and fear.

“Host… you’re terrifying.”

“Thank you,” Heena said pleasantly. “Now, I desperately need sleep. And maybe some time with my actual husband, since I haven’t seen Larus properly in days.”

She walked toward her chambers, leaving chaos and destroyed reputations behind her.

What Heena couldn’t tell her System—because honestly, he was too innocent—was that the sterilization wasn’t temporary at all. Those five men would never be able to have children for their entire lives. The damage was permanent.

And as for Seraphina’s fake pregnancy? The Wale Fruit had actually been given to her by Heena herself, through carefully placed servants. Heena had orchestrated the entire thing from the beginning.

But her little System was too pure, too naive. If she told him the full truth—that she’d permanently sterilized five men and deliberately set up an elaborate fake pregnancy scheme—he might literally have a breakdown from the moral implications.

So Heena just stayed silent about those details.

The immediate work was done, yes. But now thousands of documents and administrative tasks were waiting for her attention. The aftermath of all these political maneuvers required careful management.

Heena went to her chambers—the Empress’s personal rooms—and literally collapsed onto her bed without waiting for anyone or anything. She didn’t even change out of her court robes. She just fell asleep from pure exhaustion.

Night fell over the palace.

—

The next morning came slowly.

When Heena finally woke up, she noticed something immediately: Larus hadn’t come to her room during the night.

A small smile flashed across her face, because honestly, she’d been so tired that she wouldn’t have had any energy to deal with anyone, even him.

She stretched, feeling her joints pop after sleeping in one position for so long. Her mouth was dry, her hair was probably a mess, and she desperately needed to use the bathroom and wash her face.

Heena stood up from the bed and walked toward the door, intending to call for servants to bring water and breakfast.

She grabbed the door handle and pulled it open—

And immediately felt resistance, followed by a body falling backward.

On pure instinct, Heena reached out and grabbed the person before they could hit the floor.

Larus jerked awake with a startled gasp, his eyes flying open in surprise. He blinked several times, disoriented, then turned to look up at Heena.

“Ah!” he said, his voice rough from sleep. “You’re awake! Good morning!”

Heena looked down at him, still holding him to prevent him from falling, and then her eyes took in his appearance properly.

He was wearing the same clothes from yesterday—she could tell because they had too many wrinkles and creases. His usually perfectly styled hair was mussed and sticking up in several directions. There were pillow creases on his cheek from where he’d been sleeping against… the door frame, apparently.

Heena’s eyes narrowed.

“Were you waiting here the entire night?” she asked slowly.

Larus smiled sheepishly—that embarrassed, guilty smile of someone who’d been caught doing something foolish but well-intentioned.

“Um, actually,” he said, “I came to see you yesterday evening, but when I arrived, the servants told me you’d fallen asleep. I didn’t want to disturb you because you looked exhausted, so I thought I’d just wait here until you woke up. And I… I don’t know when I fell asleep myself.”

He laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Heena looked at him like he was the biggest fool in the entire empire.

Then she reached out and knocked him on the head with her knuckles—not hard, but firm enough to make a point.

“Do you have a brain or not?!” she scolded. “You’ll get sick sitting outside like this! What if you’d caught a cold? What if your back is hurt from sleeping against the door? What were you thinking?!”

Larus smiled sheepishly, looking up at her with those gentle eyes that always made her heart do inconvenient things.

“But I was waiting for you,” he said simply. “And it wasn’t on purpose—I really did just fall asleep by accident. I was going to stay awake the whole time, I promise.”

Heena wanted to scold him more, wanted to call him an idiot, wanted to lecture him about taking care of himself—

But she couldn’t help the small, fond smile that tugged at her lips.

“You’re impossible,” she muttered, helping him stand up properly.

“I know,” Larus agreed cheerfully. “But you married me anyway, so—”

As they were having their lovely little morning banter—Heena still half-scolding, Larus still looking sheepish but pleased—Heena suddenly heard footsteps approaching from down the corridor.

Multiple footsteps. Formal footsteps. The kind that announced themselves before arriving.

She turned her head toward the sound.

And then she saw them.

The five consorts.

All five of them, walking together, dressed in formal attire, approaching her chambers.

They stopped dead when they saw the scene before them.

Their faces went absolutely pale—like they’d seen ghosts, or witnessed something that fundamentally broke their understanding of the world.

Because there, in the doorway of the Empress’s personal chambers, stood Heena and Larus.

Heena was in her sleeping robes—informal, comfortable clothes that no one outside her immediate servants should ever see. Her hair was down and slightly messy from sleep. She was holding Larus’s arm to steady him.

And Larus was clearly wearing yesterday’s clothes, was clearly rumpled and disheveled, and had *very obviously* spent the night right outside her door.

The implication was clear, even if the reality was innocent.

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