Mikhail holds his cold smile fixed on the stunned Queen Yuehua, letting the silence hang heavy and accusatory over the bound, bleeding figure of the Hero kneeling between them. His response is delivered with an air of calculated, chilling detachment.
"I don't know. You tell me, Queen of Eldrath."
His words, calm and utterly lacking in respect, shift the burden of explanation—and the weight of scandal—entirely onto the Queen. He watches Princess Meilin, who's staring at Ren Takahito with an expression of sheer, agonizing horror, her eyes wide with the sudden, brutal failure of her secretive life.
Queen Yuehua, unable to process the deliberate chaos introduced into her court, struggles to reassert control. "Honored Prince," she asserts, her voice wavering between authority and confusion, "I don't understand what you're trying to do here. I have never seen this man in my life. You are disrespecting my court, bringing a nobody in here tied up like an animal!"
Mikhail allows his face to contort into a mask of righteous offense, turning the Queen's dismissal into a weapon. "Oh, so he's a nobody?" He speaks to the assembled ministers, forcing them to consider the absurdity. "If he's a nobody, then how can he discreetly enter and exit this palace? Like someone is helping him from inside." His eyes sweep the hall, increasing the tension before delivering the final, devastating accusation. "If he is truly a nobody, then how did my men catch him coming out of Princess Meilin's private chambers late last night?"
The statement lands like a thunderclap. The entire court erupts in a collective, horrified gasp. Every single eye in the room pivots away from the captive Hero and locks onto Princess Meilin, who instantly casts her eyes downward, unable to meet the crushing weight of public scrutiny. Her silence speaks volumes.
Mikhail continues to press the attack, his voice laced with patronizing disappointment. "I didn't know your beloved Princess," he addresses the Queen directly, "had this kind of... ambition to seek out such companions and conduct herself in a manner so utterly unbecoming of a future Queen."
The Queen, tears already welling in her eyes, spins around desperately toward her daughter. "Meilin! My daughter, please! Tell the Prince that it's all a misunderstanding! Tell him it's a lie! I know my daughter wouldn't do such a thing. Please!" The ministers, sensing the total breakdown of the alliance, begin shouting over one another, urging the Princess to defend herself: "Say it's false, Princess!" "It must be a misunderstanding!" "Deny it!"
But to all their frantic pleas, Princess Meilin remains tragically silent, her head bowed low, her body trembling. Large, silent tears begin to track down her cheeks, dripping onto the intricate fabric of her court dress. Her refusal to speak is the ultimate confirmation.
Mikhail takes a long, exaggerated sigh, feigning boredom with the drama. "Hmm. Still no reaction. A pity." He shrugs, turning his attention back to the bound Hero, as if Meilin's shattered reputation is no longer his concern. "Fine then. I don't think the court would mind the death of a nobody and a common thief who broke into the royal residence." He speaks the words with the casual cruelty of someone swatting a fly. "Hilowat."
Hilowat snaps to attention. "Your Majesty."
"The weapon," Mikhail commands, his voice ice cold. "Mace."
Without a word, Hilowat reaches beneath his cloak and produces a heavy, spiked mace—a brutally blunt, non-ceremonial instrument designed for destruction. He offers it hilt-first to Mikhail. Mikhail takes the heavy weapon, testing its weight, and then, with slow, deliberate precision, swings his arm back, raising the mace high above his shoulder, aiming its spiked head directly at the defenseless, gagged head of Ren Takahito.
Just as the weapon reaches the peak of its backswing, poised to descend and end the Hero's life before his story ever begins, a sound rips through the shocked silence—a raw, bloodcurdling scream.
"NO! STOP!"
It's Meilin. Her denial of the affair had been absolute, but the imminent violence against the man she loves tears away her last defense. With eyes completely filled with panicked tears, she bolts from her seat and rushes toward Mikhail. Her heels click frantically on the stone floor until she reaches the executioner's platform. Her voice is cracked with raw, painful emotion. "Please don't kill him, Honored Prince. I'm begging you..." She takes a ragged breath, the words tumbling out in a devastating torrent. "I love him. I'm going to be... the mother of his child!"
She drops instantly to her knees before Mikhail, her regal dress crumpling on the floor, her hands clasped in a desperate, pleading gesture.
The collective sound in the courtroom is not a gasp but a visceral, widespread murmur of absolute shock and disbelief. The revelation of the pregnancy—the final, irrefutable proof of the insult to the Empire—is a humiliation that transcends mere adultery.
Up on the throne, Queen Yuehua, faced with the complete destruction of her daughter's honor and the end of the alliance, lets out a small, silent cry of anguish and falls backward onto her throne, her composure completely broken. Mikhail stands above the kneeling princess and the bound Hero, the heavy mace still raised, his expression a mask of chilling, satisfied power.