Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 21

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 21

The room, which had been bustling moments before, fell silent.
The guest who had grudgingly followed along with card games and music box viewings and such things with a semblance of sincerity had finally reached her limit, made a clean break, and departed.
Adrian sent the attendants away and tidied the scattered room himself. It was then that a composed voice cut through the air.
“Is there truly a need to lavish such care on that child?”
Despite the late hour, her appearance was immaculate and her face wore an expression as cold as frost, yet Adrian read the concern bleeding through and let out a soft laugh.
“Mother.”
“Cleo is a doll she has invested considerable effort in. If you’re careless and she discovers it….”
“You have said yourself, Mother, that the people of the Imperial Palace are truly lacking in subtlety.”
The Silent Conflict within the Imperial Palace and the Silent Conflict within the houses of high nobility were not fundamentally so different.
Of course, the Imperial Palace did recognize Succession Right to the Throne even for those born outside the Empress, so the scale of the conflict itself was different.
In the early days of her marriage, the Empress had tried to understand the Emperor. She had attempted to change him, had questioned whether the fault lay with herself and tried to bend. Even when alone, she kept her spine straight, dignified and resolute whether anyone watched or not.
She would have been more deserving of true imperial blood than the Emperor himself.
Yet the moment Cleo gave birth, the Emperor began to regard even the old Marquis Integria—the Empress’s father, whom she had respected her whole life—with contempt and disdain. He mocked and ridiculed him.
The Empress’s father, whom she had always revered, was forced to kneel before the Emperor over something utterly trivial.
Had she recklessly defied the Emperor, her father’s house would have faced ruin, and she herself would have been cast aside, unable to bear an heir.
The future of Castrain would have been as good as lost.
It was then that the Empress abandoned her lingering affection for her husband.
The Empress resolved to raise her son with the utmost care.
She would nurture him into something fundamentally different from his father.
She would sharpen his claws, cultivate his patience so he would not be trampled by such base creatures, so he would not lose what mattered over petty squabbles. Even if he gained everything in the end, she would teach him to see it as the fruit of his own labor—never to grind the common folk beneath his heel.
The very self-respect she could not surrender for the Emperor, she could surrender for her son.
For his future, she could stain her hands not with blood, but with shame.
So naturally, turning away one small child—abandoned even by his own parents from birth—was hardly difficult.
Even if it brought her no joy.
“And yet you grow sad watching yourself become just like them. You have called hypocrisy a luxury, but I have always known it was for my sake.”
Complicity, too, is sometimes violence. Sometimes hypocrisy.
The Empress could not help but know this.
She had already waged Silent Conflict with Cleo, setting countless things in motion. The innocent were used and had to disappear.
But….
“Mother. We can manage this much, can’t we?”
Adrian took his mother’s hand.
“Unlike Brian and Cleo—we don’t need to scrape the bottom. I know you’re trying to be careful for my sake even now. But I haven’t grown so foolish that this much would truly endanger me.”
To give her precious son no weakness, to eliminate even the pretext for conflict itself.
Adrian understood that heart better than anyone. So when he saw his mother’s face twist with anguish as she laughed and wept, his heart plummeted.
To know and pretend not to know. To not know and pretend to know. To play the fool.
He saw himself.
In the Imperial Palace, revealing weakness or asking for help gained no mercy from anyone.
Adrian had the Empress. The two of them could do anything for each other.
But Titania had not even that.
She walked a tightrope, desperately wagering everything on herself. Feigning foolishness and giggling, smiling away even as those who sought to exploit her watched and waited.
Seeing her, Adrian felt guilt. Even knowing his own hypocrisy, he felt it.
So he reached out, however reluctantly.
Adrian embraced his mother, her expression complicated, unable to say anything to her son.
“It will be fine, Mother. That girl seems cleverer than we expected. Just look at today—she exceeded all our predictions, didn’t she? Who knows? With the betrothal to the Castrain Ducal House and all that, perhaps there’s some unexpected fortune waiting for us?”
Of course, Adrian could not have known that his idle words would become reality far sooner than expected.

The fact that nobody pays attention to my education is one of the few advantages of being a princess nobody cares about.
I can sleep in as late as I want. The original Titania would sleep to her heart’s content, saying “Beautiful women need their beauty sleep, you know! What if my skin gets worse?” and throwing fits about it.
Before marriage, young imperial members normally share a palace with their biological mother.
If they have no biological mother, they share one with their adoptive mother or live alone.
That is, the Lilac Palace I visited yesterday is where the Empress and Adrian live together.
Being the Empress’s residence, it is of course very large and grand, so living there together wouldn’t even feel like living together.
However, the moment Elaine gave birth to me, she took to her sickbed and played the role of a chronic invalid. And I too was so sickly that people worried I might not survive to ten years old.
So, on the reasonable grounds that a person with a weak body couldn’t raise a sickly child, I was given independence in the Rose Palace.
After a battle of wills between the Empress and the Empress-consort, we reached the conclusion that “even if she’s sickly, since there is a biological mother, it’s odd for another to take full responsibility for her education,” and thus my position was left hanging.
One of the few female professors at the only academy in the empire was dispatched as my tutor, and from about age seven she taught me basic education and etiquette for a few years.
But before I turned ten, I was often too ill to attend lessons properly, and after ten, my tutor wasn’t particularly invested either.
Since she only came when the academy was on holiday anyway, there was little to be done. I picked up basic manners and common sense, but that was it. After that, freedom.
So the upshot is: I slept in lazily and ended up at the library.
“Even for an ‘Imperial Family Library,’ there’s not much here.”
I came to this library—one I’d never dreamed of visiting before—to look into information about that Demon Sword of mine, currently sobbing pitifully in the corner of my room like “Contractor… where are youuuu….,” but found little of value.
At best, I found a single volume that seemed to roundabout explain the names and origins of ancient weapons and divine-powered arms.
I came across the name “Gloriana” while skimming through it, so I grabbed it just in case.
I wondered if I should write out some kind of borrowing record, but since the library was maintained by magic, access was secured by imperial bloodline proof, and there was no librarian….
I just took it with me.
Is this really okay, running an imperial library like this? Really?
I mean, if I think about it, nobody would dare to make a fuss about books borrowed from the Imperial Family Library anyway.
So if you just take books and pretend you never saw them, nobody would ever find out, right?
Well, it works out for me. I had already cooked up a pretext: “I’ll search through the empire’s history to find the perfect weapon to suit my wonderful betrothed and show off my vast learning….” —
The Rose Palace is currently bustling with repairs to the burned section and various other work.
And the Rose Palace staff pays me the most attention when I’m meeting with my betrothed.
So normally, when no one is looking for me and I have no one to look for, they leave me alone.
Thanks to that, I can saunter around whistling near the famous Imperial Maze Garden like this….
“…Titania?!”
I gasped in shock seeing a small child suddenly falling through a black hole that opened in the center of the Maze Garden.
What is she doing here?! There was nothing about this in the books!?
Without another thought, I chased after Bibi’s vanishing form and threw myself headlong into the hole.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————