My Husband Is Not the Magic Tower Master - Chapter 24

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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 24

My parents could never have accepted the overnight transformation of their daughter as a matter of course.
Their only child, Rose Stein, had always been unusually fastidious and sensitive.
Yet one day, Rose changed noticeably, and became genuine friends with Elineh—a girl she’d once treated like a toy.
Anyone else would have found it unbelievable.
But my parents accepted my existence almost at once.
That I was “I”.
That Rose Stein could be nothing other than Rose Stein—no tiresome explanation required.
That was their logic, pure and simple.
Mother and Father didn’t divide the old me and the new me into real and false. They simply welcomed back their daughter.
If there was something fortunate about it, it was that Mother and Father seemed to like the me I was now even more.
The world I saw was a story already written, and though it differed greatly from the original Rose, that difference became no obstacle to them loving their daughter.
I had opened my eyes at fourteen. The year I turned fifteen was when I truly began.
I made a promise to them—to my parents who were accepting me as their daughter in their own way.
“I hope the Stein family never suffers because of me.”
“Why would you think such a thing?”
“The Royal Family has been pressing us. That Political Marriage arranged long ago and postponed over the centuries—between the Stein family head and the First King of Delpenia.”
“The Sorcerer’s Love” was a novel rich with behind-the-scenes episodes, despite its light, fluffy romance on the surface.
Rose Stein, the antagonist of the story, had certainly said she would marry the Crown Prince out of jealousy of Elineh, but…
‘My falling for Lucas was presented as mere chance, just a plot device.’
But that wasn’t the whole truth.
From the beginning, an element of coercion had underlain this marriage.
The founder of the Stein Count Family was named, quite literally, Stein.
The First King of Delpenia had been a powerful Fire Mage, and yet he harbored an unrequited love for someone even stronger—Stein, a Water Mage.
How it came to be that way, I couldn’t say, but that’s how the old stories tell it.
‘It seems their complicated circumstances kept them from ever being together.’
The history flowed on through the centuries, and eventually I was born.
What remained now was the Royal Family’s relentless insistence on a Political Marriage, inheriting the First King’s twisted obsession.
This demand had continued for centuries, and every time a daughter was born to Stein, the King would demand she marry the Crown Prince.
Mother called it suffocating.
This promise, rotting and crumbling across the stretches of time, had become like a shackle.
‘The promise was naturally never kept once.’
That much was written in the Diary left behind by the founding family head.
Delpenia and Stein were nothing but relations of mutual hatred.
Something was tangled and twisted, certainly, but I had no curiosity about the fine details.
My interest lay solely in finding the key to break through this damned progression.
Or perhaps an opening that might appear like a miracle.
The original Rose Stein would never have known it, but the tragedy of the Stein Count Family was an unavoidable destiny.
The Royal Family didn’t truly desire a union with the Stein Count Family.
What they wanted was the Stein family’s downfall.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have so eagerly desired unification with Stein, only to abandon it in a moment, casting out Rose Stein and the Stein Count Family under the pretext of a Broken Engagement.
‘There’s a scent to it.’
I believed there was some hidden secret between Stein and the Royal Family.
For instance, perhaps the Stein Count Family held some weakness of the Royal Family—something that couldn’t be revealed.
So I decided to marry the Crown Prince.
If this Ill-fated Connection had to be severed by a direct confrontation, then let it be me—not as Stein, but as the Count’s daughter, someone with little attachment to that life—who should bring it to an end.
“Mother didn’t want to be responsible for Stein either, so she handed the position of family head to Father right after marriage, didn’t she?”
“My dear, Mother came to love your father. Hand over the position? Where did you get such a notion?”
“That’s what Mother says it was, though.”
Until now, we’d been fortunate enough to postpone the promise for centuries.
Strangely, whenever a daughter was born to Stein, she always found her match early and married before the demand came due.
But…
“Am I supposed to run away the same way?”
I was Rose Stein.
The villainess destined to be cast off by the Crown Prince and ruin her family in the original tale.
If my ending was already decided, I wanted to minimize the damage as much as I could.
Perhaps my family might have a chance to survive.
“If we defer necessity again this generation, it will become an ill-fated connection that can’t be undone.”
It was already an ill-fated connection to some degree.
At first, I thought it was simply the melancholic lingering of a man who couldn’t forget his first love.
But watching how the Royal Family still couldn’t wait to deliver a proposal to the Stein descendants made it clear that it was more than that.
On the surface, it was I who insisted on marrying the Crown Prince, but I was determined to sever the Royal Family’s incomprehensible obsession with my own hands.
My parents understood my intentions for marrying the Crown Prince better than anyone else in the world. And because they knew me, they ultimately couldn’t break my resolve.
“…Won’t you be terribly lonely?”
“Don’t worry. If it comes to that, I’ll support you both.”
On the day I awakened as a mage at twenty, I set a major goal for my life.
If the future went wrong according to my predetermined end, I’d open a magic workshop somewhere far away.
I would become a capable mage, after all.
When I joked lightly, promising to work hard for my parents’ sake, they would emphasize something to me again and again.
“You must always remember what we say.”
They told me not to forget.
“You do not love the Crown Prince, Rose.”
That no one wanted this marriage.
My parents had always been uneasy about me taking a position at the Magic Tower, about me steadily building my skills as a Water Mage.
Worried that, somehow, I might truly come to love the Crown Prince….
“Perhaps we were the ones imagining something that made no sense, dear.”
“Don’t they look good to you?”
Those two.
After finishing dinner together, the Stein couple stopped on the stairs leading to their bedroom and spoke in hushed tones.
Throughout Stein Manor were installed large, broad windows that afforded views of the outside.
A decade ago, it had been to monitor Rose’s unstable behavior, but years ago that purpose had changed.
They wanted to watch the changes that had come to their precious daughter, and to cheer her on each time.
“…It’s a lovely sight.”
Rostia Stein smiled warmly at the man and woman walking side by side beneath the setting sun.
“They must be fond of each other, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps, but as a father, I haven’t yet given permission for their courtship….”
“Status doesn’t matter. If he’s someone who can make Rose smile like that, I’d be happy with anyone.”
At her words, which seemed to come from a heart already made up, Jayden Stein, Rose’s father, stroked his mustache with a sad expression.
Cheering for a child’s growth was rewarding at every moment, yet inevitably bittersweet.
Because you must let the child go from your arms even knowing they will break and be wounded.
Unlike Rostia’s thinking, Jayden secretly wished that the man beside his beloved daughter would be of high station, if possible.
Their Rose was far too precious.
Not a single day had she ever been anything but good and warm-hearted.
Despite having an inherited family and fortune, she diligently saved money, became a mage and found employment, and even opened a workshop to support them….
“It breaks my heart. It all seems to be because of me….”
“Let us trust Rose, just as we always have.”
Embracing Rostia, whose eyes glistened with tears, Jayden gazed out at the distant window alongside her.
At the crimson sky growing dark with night, at that pair who sparkled brilliantly there, like lovers united.
The Stein couple murmured, as they always did.
“Be happy.”
Whoever you are, whoever you were.
“Our little one, our daughter.”
Rose Stein.

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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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