Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 76

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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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Chapter 76
“That is…….”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Another maid hesitated before adding her words.
“Though it was only two days apart in date, His Highness made a hurried stop at the estate with scarcely a day’s difference. He didn’t stay long—less than an hour before departing at once.”
“……?”
I narrowed my brows.
This was the first I’d heard of it.
While Sherkan was away from the Imperial Capital, he’d said nothing of the sort.
I’d simply assumed he’d left directly from the Subjugation Site, and never thought to press him on it.
But he had made a hurried stop at the estate before coming to the capital.
“What did His Highness do when he came?”
“He went up to the bedroom on the second floor for a moment, then came back down shortly. Though at the time, Atil was in the garden, and they crossed paths.”
“And after they crossed paths? Merely meeting couldn’t have left Atil like this.”
Sherkan Gonet wasn’t some walking plague.
“Mercy! Does the Grand Duchess not see fit to question more gently?”
As Briget flared with anger beside me, the maid’s eyes began to glisten with tears.
“In truth, in truth…… I didn’t hear what His Highness said to Atil…….”
“What?”
Fury rose in me all at once.
Barely thirty servants remained in this estate.
Briget, sensing my rage, erupted with her own indignation.
“With so many in service to the Grand Duke’s household, and yet you cannot even properly care for one child! What use are creatures like you?”
“Forgive us!”
“Forgive us……!”
The maid’s legs gave way entirely, and she collapsed to her knees. As she knelt, the others quickly followed suit, bowing their heads low.
I drew a steady breath before speaking.
“Why couldn’t you hear?”
The maid answered through barely suppressed tears.
“His Highness was in a terrible mood from the moment he arrived at the estate. We tried to take his coat, but…….”
The maid rolled up her sleeve, tears streaming down her face.
My eyes widened.
Her hand was wrapped in bandages, and blood was still seeping through them.
“Where did this wound come from?”
“His Highness threw the sword he was carrying against the wall, and the Spirit Painting—the one the Emperor bestowed on you—shattered. We were cut by the fragments…….”
“……You mean that frame hanging in the bedroom?”
“Yes, Your Highness…….”
After the Coronation Ceremony, the Emperor had been in such excellent spirits that he’d bestowed upon me another precious painting as a separate gift.
It depicted a Sun Spirit rendered with mystical grace—one of the national treasures of the old Fasa Imperial Palace.
Painted by a renowned court artist of that era, it was a work I too had come to cherish greatly.
So I’d had it hung in the bedroom…….
And Sherkan had shattered that great painting with his sword.
“Were you the only one hurt?”
“…….”
“Speak.”
“Around five of us suffered light injuries. Nothing grave, I assure you.”
Briget looked at me once, then rolled up the sleeves of the maids herself.
One had a cut on her arm. Another on the back of her hand.
And another bore a gash across her cheek.
“…….”
I bit my lip.
I wished blood would flow freely between my teeth.
I know.
Sherkan is a boy made mad by illness.
I know all too well that I cannot be angry with him for it.
I had no right to be angry.
And yet…….
Looking at the maids’ injured faces and bodies, and at Atil hunched in on himself, struck mute by Mutism, I felt something lodge in my chest like a stone.
Everywhere he passed was like a storm.
His moods were unpredictable, his rage knew no restraint when it came, and though not frequent, he suffered from Seizures as well.
Nothing was intact anymore—everything had become ruins.
I wanted to scream and purge the anguish, but Atil was still trembling in my arms, frightened out of his mind.
The injured servants stood before me as well.
Atil especially reacted keenly to my emotions; even held close, his body shook with small, continuous tremors.
……
I stroked the child’s soft, rounded head slowly as I spoke.
“So no one knows what His Highness said to Atil?”
……
“He was in no state to be approached, was he?”
……
The servants answered by lowering their heads.
I parted my parched lips slowly.
I wanted to ask.
“Was it possible that…….”
Sherkan had a seizure when he saw the painting?
Or did he have one when he saw Atil?
But in the end, I said nothing.
“……Your Grace?”
“Never mind.”
……
I lifted my eyes and studied the servants, Briget, and the knights.
Suddenly, everyone felt like strangers.
How many people here knew that Sherkan of House Gonet had gone mad?
Did the servants or Briget know anything about his condition?
In the source material, Briget was distant with Sherkan and quickly returned to the Empress Dowager Gaia’s side.
As for the servants—there was nothing more to say.
After House Gonet went bankrupt, they were sold off here and there.
What bond could exist between them and Sherkan?
Moreover, the larger the house, the more strictly guarded the patriarch’s health condition became.
It was quite possible the servants and Briget knew nothing.
If they knew nothing at all and I carelessly brought it up first…….
‘I’d be the one revealing Sherkan’s crucial secret.’
A sigh escaped me.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask the knights either.
Whether they knew or didn’t know, it made no difference.
How could a Grand Duchess, newly married, seem to know so much about the patriarch’s mental illness?
There was no good way to explain it.
I felt as though I were sinking into a quagmire.
I looked down at Atil.
What did Sherkan say to you?
Did he rage at you, tell you not to be so loathsome?
Is that why you became this frightened and lost your voice?
Or was it simply.
That Sherkan’s gaze terrified you so badly you were startled this badly?
No matter how noble blood flowed through his features, Sherkan’s eyes gleamed blood-red, and when his lips were sealed, the oppressive aura of a predator radiated from his entire form, unsettling.
Even the ladies who admired Sherkan’s beautiful face from afar would freeze in silence the moment they stood before him.
For a child as young as Atil, it would have been all the more startling.
But that alone wasn’t it.
Atil had somehow survived in that deep, treacherous coal mine—could the simple encounter with Sherkan have given him mutism?
It didn’t make sense.
A chill crept through my chest.
“After His Highness left, Atil’s hiccups wouldn’t stop, and he ran a high fever all night. After that, he’s only been able to speak these three words…….”
“What did the physician say?”
“Only that he was frightened beyond measure. We gave him medicine and the fever broke, but he still cannot speak more than these three words.”
……
The servants hung their heads low.
‘Sherkan is mad.’
He’d come back to this castle having gone mad.
And the painting I’d thoughtlessly left in his space, and Atil’s presence, seemed to have touched something in his fractured mind.
‘It’s because of me.’
I pressed my forehead against Atil’s small head and whispered like a sigh.
“I’m sorry, Atil.”
“No… it’s not… it isn’t…”
…….
Watching Atil fidget with such anxiety, I felt a sharper ache bloom in my chest.
I stayed motionless, doing nothing but stroking her hair.
I lost track of how much time had passed.
“Grand Duchess…”
“Shh.”
One of the maids tried to call out to me, but Briget silenced her with a gesture.
In the Garden, the air had frozen solid—the maids, the knights, even Briget herself held their tongues.
‘It’s cold.’
How deeply lost in thought had I been, to forget that late autumn’s wind cuts sharp?
“Let’s go inside.”
My voice came out glacial. The maids exchanged uncertain glances before one ventured to speak.
“Grand Duchess, should we call the physician again? Perhaps Atil is still so young that she’s simply frightened of His Highness. With gentle coaxing, surely…”
That was when it happened.
Atil, trembling with fear, began shaking her head wildly like something possessed.
“No! No!”
“Atil?”
“No!”
My low mood crumbled under a sudden wave of bewilderment.
As Atil began to seize in my arms, even Briget’s composure shattered—she rushed forward in alarm.
“What do you mean no? Atil, calm yourself and speak slowly.”
“No… no…!”
Atil gasped like a goldfish, her mouth opening and closing uselessly, until at last she buried her face in my neck and burst into tears.
“It’s not… it’s not…”
…….
Briget extended her hand toward me.
“Grand Duchess, pray allow me to carry her. The weather grows bitter—do step inside. Should Your Highness fall ill, I would never forgive myself.”
“Take Atil in first.”
“As you wish, Grand Duchess. Please, guard your health.”
Briget lifted Atil from my embrace and carried her away, patting the small girl’s back as she went.
“All of you, go about your duties.”
“Yes…”
The maids and knights scattered, glancing nervously at my face as they left.
Alone in the now-empty Garden, I sank down on my knees.
I buried my face in my folded knees and exhaled a long, ragged breath.
“Damn it all…”
A longing rose in me for a cigarette I’d never even smoked.
I reached out lifelessly and began to dismantle the trap Atil had constructed.
What must Atil have felt, afflicted with Mutism, when she set these traps?
I stared blankly at the ground and muttered to myself.
“Why was I born as something like Lorelettia in this godforsaken world…”
This world was unutterably cruel to me.
Whenever I tried to grow close to someone, they betrayed me.
I think I had harbored some expectation of Sherkan too.
That he would save me, that he would rescue me.
With each small kindness—the way that boy was generous enough to spare me even a fraction of what he had—my heart was creeping slowly toward him.
I had deluded myself into believing he might be gentler with me.
That was why I felt this unbearable sting now.
I had sworn never to believe again. Never to let myself hope.
The characters destined to receive the heroine’s love will, in the end, betray me.
The laughter, the favor, the affection I had barely managed to claim from them—all of it evaporated like a mirage at a single word from Ayu, meaningless and hollow.
Sherkan of House Gonet will never show patience to anyone but the female protagonist, Ayu.
In the face of that incomprehensible boy’s mercurial heart, I am nothing.
How reckless of me to mistake his kindness, however brief, for warmth.
I brushed the fragments of brittle, fallen leaves from my skirts and rose to my feet, moving forward.

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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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