Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 114

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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 114

Elaine’s Lover was known to be of commoner birth, but the truth was somewhat different. He was born to a high noble house but had severed ties with his family to enter the Temple, and later left the Temple for reasons of his own—or so he had confessed to Elaine. His past was admittedly unusual, but ultimately he was a free man, and they loved each other. Elaine believed his proposal would naturally be accepted. Her Lover spoke with absolute certainty.
‘I cannot do that.’
‘Why?! How could you refuse me?! You love me!’
‘I have a Mission granted to me by God. I must protect you.’
‘You must protect me, yet you won’t stop me from going to that wretched Emperor?!’
Elaine wept and pleaded, and finally she learned the full story. It was simple enough.
The Mission that ‘God’ had granted to Elaine’s Lover was straightforward: Elaine would enter the Palace and bear a child—something special. He had come disguised as the escort knight of a mere Count’s daughter, hiding his past and status, so that he might protect her. When Elaine heard this, she broke.
‘You don’t love me?’
‘…….’
‘You came for me because of that Mission? Is that all I am—nothing else, no meaning beyond that?’
Her Lover said nothing, and in her despair, Elaine gave up everything. She entered the Palace and became pregnant with the Emperor’s child.
Not long after giving birth, she heard of her Lover’s death. Elaine understood instinctively: that man had chosen to die. He had not fled.
What does God matter?
What does a Mission matter?
What does Fate matter?
Was my child more important than me?
Elaine hated her child.
Others fussed over the girl’s weak constitution, fretting she might die—which Elaine found amusing. If God had reasons for letting her be born, surely He wouldn’t allow her to perish so easily.
For Elaine, who had never expected affection even from her parents, only one person remained in the world.
Elaine had a secret friend whom no one else knew of. Their first meeting came when she found this friend bleeding, collapsed in the Count’s garden, and pulled her to safety. After that, the girl would visit Elaine in secret, away from prying eyes, and soon they became inseparable.
She was nothing like an ordinary noble lady. Elaine had never seen her in a dress. It was clear she carried some extraordinary burden.
Her cropped hair, her bold manner of speaking, the perpetual scent of blood clinging to her—and most tellingly, even when Elaine became Empress and spent years confined within her Palace, withering away in sorrow, this friend still found ways to visit, evading everyone’s notice.
‘How have you been, Elaine?’
‘All this time—what have you been doing? I thought I’d die. I missed you so much….’
‘…I’m sorry I couldn’t visit more often. You haven’t been well.’
Watching her friend’s bittersweet smile, Elaine felt her heart suddenly plummet. That gaze. It was terribly, achingly familiar—the same look her Lover had worn when he declared he could not leave with her. A look of firm resolve.
‘I came to say goodbye.’
‘Goodbye…?’
‘I had a daughter. She’s very lovely and beautiful. Brown hair, and such pretty blue eyes.’
‘…….’
Elaine had heard nothing of a marriage, nothing of a pregnancy. After so many years apart, she might have let it pass—but an ominous dread rose in her throat. She whispered to herself in her mind:
Don’t leave me. Don’t declare to me that I was never really that important to you, not like them. I know I have nothing, that I’m worthless, that without someone’s help I can’t even escape. I know I have no power at all….
‘You won’t understand this, but… this world is actually very dangerous. I’ve been working to prevent what’s coming, and after my daughter was born, my resolve only hardened. I want to do everything in my power so that she can live more safely. …And so your child can become safer too.’
I need you right now!
Elaine wanted to scream.
But she understood. Her friend was going to do something grand beyond Elaine’s imagination. To protect the world, and her beloved daughter’s future….
Unlike Elaine, who could never be a cherished lover, a child, or even a friend—locked away in the Imperial Palace, slowly withering.
Because she was lonely.
Because she wanted someone to need her.
Her daughter, from birth exalted with grand talk of being the Castrain Family’s betrothed, with everyone desiring her—she wished her friend would see her, not that. She couldn’t voice such shallow reasons, afraid her friend would say, ‘Were you always so petty? Don’t you understand me?’ If she heard that from someone who’d traveled all the way to the Palace just to say goodbye, she thought she might truly want to die.
She couldn’t bear to hear it from the one person she’d come to see, the one person making the effort to bid her farewell.
‘Even if we never meet again…. Live well.’
With that fleeting smile, her friend vanished.
Her friend had been silent about her own Family—the one she had left of her own accord. But Elaine could guess. It was the Castrain Family. The very family to which Elaine’s daughter had been betrothed from birth.
Buried beneath a tangle of twisted emotions, Elaine thought: I want to die. And yet.
‘If I die easily, Cleo will use Titania’s existence as leverage to control the Castrain Family.’
The Bradley House can fall for all she cares. But she didn’t want her friend’s Family to suffer. Once Titania came of age, this betrothal would end one way or another.
‘So I just have to endure until then….’
Endure.
She ached with bitter longing for those she held dear, abandoned in the Palace with her. She despised them. How glibly they spoke of futures and worlds.
Everyone seemed to whisper to Elaine, ‘Just play the role of that child’s mother,’ so she set her teeth and turned away from Titania.
The neglected child grew twisted, as children do. When Elaine heard of this, she felt a strange satisfaction mixed with remorse and doubt.
If her birth had damaged Elaine’s life so thoroughly, if she’d made Elaine lose everyone dear and be locked away in the Palace—
Shouldn’t she at least become someone impressive and worthy?
Perhaps, because Elaine was her birth mother. Because that garbage of an Emperor was her father. It was bound to amount to nothing more. Everyone had made the wrong choice.
So Elaine felt a strange satisfaction and a peculiar guilt. If that child grew up warped, Elaine might die more content than anyone. Perhaps she could even pity that child.
But circumstances changed. No one played the parent, yet the child grew up strong and….
Now she could look upon her own mother with ‘that’ kind of gaze.
Like those who had disappeared from Elaine’s side. Solitary and high, magnificent on her own.
“So let’s see how things unfold.”
Elaine smiled thinly. It was a smile as pale as morning mist.

* * *

“Are you alright?”
“I don’t see why I wouldn’t be.”
I smiled at the Empress through eyes barely soothed by an ice pack. The Empress looked displeased—her face openly worried. Adrian, too, had lost his usual easy composure.
“With so many people concerned for me, it’s unreasonable for me to be shaken by someone whose genuine care for me I can never know.”
‘…….’
The Empress sighed softly.
“You don’t need to push yourself. You don’t need to hide your feelings. …You’re still young. There’s no need to suppress yourself so harshly….”
“How is the Emperor feeling? He seems to be in an excellent mood.”
Sensing I’d deliberately changed the subject, the Empress fell silent for a moment before speaking.
“……He asked me whether it might be good to grant you a new Palace, since Licorice Palace is so old.”
“Oh.”
I was impressed. It was truly beautiful nonsense. Cleo actually managed the Palace’s affairs, not the Empress.
Yet such a major matter as granting a new Palace fell technically under the Empress’s authority, even if the Emperor had never respected such formalities—treating the Empress like a decorative sack of grain while doing as he pleased.
Adrian interjected with a shrug.
“But really, it seems like instead of granting a new Palace, he just wants to shower you with all sorts of things under the excuse that it’s ‘better than not.’ The thing is, he doesn’t have a proper justification anymore, and if he gave you gifts directly, he’d be criticized for showing excessive favor to a mere Consort. So it looks like he’s hoping the Empress will give them on his behalf….”
“Wow! How pathetic.”
“Well, he seems conscious of Cleo too.”
I’d suspected as much. In front of Elaine, he swears up and down that he’ll do this and that, full of empty promises. But once he leaves, he gets stingy, worried he’s been too generous.
“Then, shall we give the Emperor a more plausible excuse?”
Both turned their gazes toward me as I smiled brightly.

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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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