A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad - Chapter 228
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Powerful Child Searches for Dad Episode 228
The voice he had heard in childhood echoed in his ears.
‘Pides, poor thing. My pitiful son….’
Voices crushed by sobbing.
‘Sob, Your Majesty! People are whispering about our Pides!’
Lavania, the Empire’s Empress.
She, Pides’ mother, had entered the palace through the Late Empress’s grace.
And in the end, she stabbed a dagger into the Late Empress’s back.
‘I only did my duty, Your Majesty the Empress.’
‘….’
‘How could I go against His Majesty? When His Majesty desired me so much, should I have told him not to do this? That’s what she said.’
Lavania chattered to the maids while keeping Pides asleep on her lap.
‘You should have seen that expression then. The Late Empress was like an old mural, you know? She looked decent from afar, but up close, she had no light, no breath, nothing. That’s why His Majesty abandoned her too.’
‘Of course. She was the complete opposite of Your Majesty the Empress, who is as clear and radiant as a flower.’
‘Right, just look at Ardiana. That child takes after her mother, always keeping her mouth tightly shut. A girl who doesn’t know how to act cute or be loved.’
He had heard it until his ears were callused.
How frustrating the Late Empress had been, how hypocritical she was.
How pathetic Ardiana, born from her, was and how she needed to disappear.
‘Isn’t it ridiculous? Someone said that was a favor? That the Late Empress taking me in when I was dying was a favor. How absurd. I only remember that day as shameful.’
‘….’
‘People in high places find compassion so easy. They can do anything if they put their minds to it, and they call that mercy. If that’s mercy, then I’ve already shown it a thousand times, no, ten thousand times!’
‘….’
‘The Late Empress was the same. Those eyes that looked down on people. When I was pregnant with Pides, you should have seen how those usually motionless eyes contorted. You really should have seen it.’
Lavania hated the Late Empress.
That hatred didn’t subside even after the Late Empress left this world.
‘Just thinking about that woman makes me smell rotten figs from somewhere. I feel like I’m suffocating.’
Growing up, Pides vaguely realized.
It wasn’t the Late Empress’s problem, but Lavania’s problem.
Her burned hometown.
A life where despite being born with beautiful looks, she had to roll in mud due to poverty.
Her deep-seated inferiority complex didn’t disappear even after ascending to the position of Empress.
Originally, people are bound to break when they receive something bigger than their capacity.
‘Even if I hadn’t had Pides, you would have still loved me, right?’
‘…Didn’t I say I have to go.’
‘Just answer this and then go! You can look at state affairs later, I, I…! I’m trapped in this prison-like palace every day, only waiting for you! Sob.’
The Emperor seemed tired of such Lavania.
But even so, he couldn’t cast her away.
‘…Do you miss your hometown?’
‘I miss it. Not the hometown that was burned and disappeared, but the hometown before the monster attacks. There was a big lake. I swam there every day, played around, and my parents were all alive….’
At meal times.
At his bedside before sleep.
Following behind the two people walking through the garden, Pides would often become absorbed in those stories.
‘Mother grew up miserably, but I’ll raise you differently, Pides.’
‘….’
‘Remember this. You came first before that child. You were the first to be born with His Majesty’s bloodline in this world.’
‘….’
‘Things like legitimacy or succession rights are all just shells. Shells can be broken anytime. But you have His Majesty’s favor, don’t you? Because your mother is me, Lavania, the Empire’s Empress and mistress of the Imperial Palace.’
When he was ten years old.
On a hill where they had gone to see flowers, he saw a half-collapsed peak.
That day, Ardiana was looking down at the distant cliff below with her back to Pides.
With rock-like eyes resembling the dead Late Empress.
“Brother. Why aren’t you answering.”
His mind instantly became clear.
Pides caught his breath and met Ardiana’s gaze.
‘Those same eyes again.’
Everything around her seemed to blur hazily.
The splendid food and decorations prepared for today’s memorial service.
The eyes watching him.
Even the Emperor’s sighing sounds from behind.
Lavania’s nagging seemed to echo like a hallucination.
‘Please come to your senses! How much more does this mother have to do! Until when do I have to keep doing this! Now you should protect me! You need to take control of the palace quickly so I can breathe too!’
His heart pounded.
His mind wavered and the broken memories in his head connected.
‘…Are you trying to push me?’
Standing at the edge of the cliff, Ardiana asked in a young voice.
What state of mind he had reached out his hand with.
How he had come to think he should push that child from there, he still couldn’t be certain.
However,
‘Go ahead.’
The important thing was that the moment he heard those words from Ardiana, his body froze as if by magic.
Pides couldn’t do anything.
Like a rabbit before a lion, he was completely and perfectly defeated.
‘If killing me would put Brother’s mind at ease, then do so.’
Eight-year-old Ardiana seemed unafraid of anything, unlike him.
Not the cliff that stretched endlessly behind her.
Not Pides’ hands that could push her to her death with a single movement.
And,
“Stop.”
Not even the Emperor, who had been watching it all from behind,
“What a commotion on such a good day.”
Yet hadn’t said a single word until the end.
Pides stiffly turned his head.
The Emperor was staring at him with a sunken expression.
“The Princess speaks correctly. Let it be revealed here and now.”
The Emperor looked at Ardiana a beat later.
“The Princess has secretly assisted with state duties and mercenary-related affairs.”
People began to murmur.
“As you all know, the Princess has been excluded from state affairs due to poor health. Despite having succession rights, she has remained secluded in the palace for this reason.”
In truth, health reasons were just an excuse.
Not only Pides, but everyone gathered at the memorial service knew this.
The Emperor’s attitude toward Ardiana had been transparent and consistent all along.
Neglect, and exclusion.
That’s why Pides had been able to justify his actions.
The first poisoning attempt at thirteen, after what happened at the cliff.
And all the countless assassination plots that followed.
“In that sense.”
But the Emperor continued speaking calmly, as if such a past had never existed.
“Let us all raise our glasses to commemorate the Princess’s recovery.”
The hand wearing the signet ring lifted a cup.
The nobles hesitantly stood up.
“For Talochium.”
“For Talochium!”
The frozen atmosphere quickly returned to normal.
People deliberately chattered more brightly and cheerfully than before.
Feeling the Emperor’s gaze withdraw, Pides trembled with clenched fists before glaring at Ardiana.
“…Follow me. We have something to discuss quietly.”
“Of course.”
Ardiana answered expressionlessly.
Pides silently spat out curses and turned around.
Ardiana didn’t immediately follow but stopped in place.
She bent down to face Astie beside her.
Neat eyebrows.
The white forehead above them.
A few weeks ago, the secret letter from Tesetan that a maid had secretly brought her lingered in her mind.
[There is something I learned from beyond dimensions.
Something you too must know.]
She had wondered what it could be.
She had pondered deeply about what fact would make Tesetan write such a thing.
Fortunately, since all she had to do in the palace was contemplate, she had plenty of time.
Then, those memories began to surface.
‘What are you saying? That I’m pregnant?’
‘I humbly report that…’
While walking alone in the garden.
Or while gazing at swaying leaves.
In the emerging memories, she was in a dark and cramped space.
In that place where only a single candle provided light, an elderly doctor bowed his head as if troubled.
‘Your Highness’s body has endured too much poison. So now even ordinary medicines no longer work.’
‘So what exactly are you trying to say!’
‘Haven’t you been drinking antidotes like water? Now your body mistakes all medicines for poison and rejects them. Poison, antidotes, all other medicines too…’
Was there a window open?
The child’s fine hair seemed to flutter in a breeze from somewhere.
‘What the hell did you do to the young lady?!’
It would be a lie to say she didn’t feel strange about what she learned in the underground plaza of the Royal Palace.
She had loved Tesetan.
To think that he would have and raise a child with someone else in the future.
‘I was curious.’
Who could Astie’s mother be?
It couldn’t be her, barely surviving in the Imperial Palace, so naturally it would be someone else.
It was bitter, and somehow her heart felt heavy.
But.
‘…The medicine didn’t work.’
Last night.
Another scene unfolded before her eyes like an answer.
The version of herself in it was collapsing endlessly.
Clinging to Cadia, her only maid, swallowing pitiful sobs as if she were dying.
‘My body rejected the medicine. I got pregnant by mistake. I’m going to kill that child. Make it die like me. I, I… ugh, ughhh.’
Ardiana’s eyes trembled as she looked at Astie.
It was a precarious gaze, not like a rock, but like dew hanging from the tip of a blade of grass.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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