Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 241

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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 241

Light gathered in the empty air, coalescing into a vivid blue circle. It expanded slowly until it reached a size large enough for three or four people to stand in, then stopped. A sharp beep sounded, and Rasper pressed a button inscribed on the side of the circle. The circle split open like a door, revealing the figures who had been standing inside.
Pan looked as exhausted as a victim who had spent the entire night in a labyrinth chasing a serial killer, sweat pouring down his face, while Titania cradled a trembling Divine Beast in her arms and looked toward them with an embarrassed smile.
“Oh, it’s been a while, Lord Rasper.”
“Just call me Rasper, if you don’t mind.”
“Hmm, is that so…. How have you been?”
“Well enough, as you can see.”
Illian studied Titania as she spoke with Rasper, his eyes wide with surprise.
Rasper had said he had a guest to invite, and suddenly requested the space be cleared, then withdrew something from his pocket and sent a signal before retrieving a Mana Stone and hastily drawing a Magic Circle on the ground. Not long after, light gathered in the empty air and discharged these very guests.
Whatever they had endured before arriving here, their clothes were a mess, their hair tangled, and traces of all manner of struggle clung to them. It wasn’t only Titania. Pan, looking as though he had fallen straight into hell itself, continued to grab Rasper’s shoulders and shake him.
“What was that last thing, you stubborn apprentice! Are you trying to get your master killed in a foreign land!”
“Haha, it looks like you’re not hurt, at least.”
“You scared me half to death! Half to death! Pushing your master at some monstrous older brother of yours — what the blazes!”
“Well, I couldn’t have gone myself. He’s rather sensitive to the auras of us siblings.”
Rasper patted his master’s shoulder as though accustomed to such outbursts, then turned his gaze toward Titania, who had been watching the entire scene with an inscrutable expression.
“This is Illian. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Titania?”
“Ah, I don’t mind if you just call me Titania….”
“I’m more comfortable with this. In any case, we have much to discuss. Don’t we?”
Illian felt a strange sensation. He had watched both Titania and Rasper for a very long time.
Though admittedly, he had known Rasper since birth, while his acquaintance with Titania was shorter, it would be a lie to say his heart had not gone out to this young princess — a Contractor of Beloborg, the god of light, with a honest, kind, and pure heart.
Yet the Titania he faced again in this moment carried a certain strangeness.
Her appearance was as disheveled as someone caught in a storm and cast adrift, yet her eyes remained serene. Rasper’s gaze, as he looked upon her, held the same quality.
“Yeah, we do.”
Titania smiled brightly.
“We have so much to talk about. So much to do.”
Ah.
Watching her, Illian found his mind turning to the past.
‘Please look after him.’
‘No, why me? That stubborn friend wouldn’t listen to anyone anyway. Besides, that tone of yours is rather unsettling.’
‘If you’re going to take the title of Duchess, at least mind your manners — or so the head attendant begs me to say…. She doesn’t mind whether I sharpen my words or curse, I suppose, but it bothers me nonetheless.’
In those days, Illian too had been young. Years after their first meeting, after fighting and causing chaos countless times before finally binding their hearts together, when she had peacefully become pregnant with their first child.
The position of Duchess of Castrain was precarious. For this reason, Illian had resolved to remain at the Castrain estate, at least until their first child was safely born.
He was one of the few people around them who understood how, in the first place, this combative pair had ever come to share a heart.
The former Duchess had a fierce temperament. She was not someone to be cowed by dismissal or disrespect. She carried herself like a wild mare wandering the plains, as though she would gore with her hooves anything that dared stand before her.
But after marriage, once her uncertain social standing as a low-born Duchess and the chaos surrounding her husband’s relentless refusal to tolerate anyone who so much as breathed a word against his wife had stirred the court into turmoil — she grew visibly calmer. She let her heated temper, once popping like kernels of corn in a fire, gradually settle.
Out of love.
Not for his sake, though he didn’t mind, but because she hated that he might hear harsh words spoken about him because of her.
The truly funny and tragic truth was that the Duke of Castrain felt exactly the same. The Duke himself couldn’t have cared less if anyone tarnished his own title, or trampled upon the proud history of the Castrain Family.
But he could not endure the idle chatter of base creatures who spoke carelessly of his wife, so he gritted his teeth and threw himself into politics. He declared with steel in his voice and passion in his heart: his wife was the only one.
So it was that the Duchess of Castrain, watching her own swollen belly, spoke calmly of things she could never voice before her husband.
‘What if I die in childbirth?’
‘That won’t happen — I’m here to see to it. You’ll be fine.’
‘No, I mean — if it does, you’re to save the child.’
‘You have no shame before a priest at all, do you? Are you accusing me now of being so incompetent that I can’t even save one mother?’
‘He’ll turn away from me without a second thought, eyes wild, ordering you to save me.’
‘By the gods, the both of you are equally stubborn — I hardly know whether to call it a beautifully matched pair or a wife who knows her husband far too well…. But he won’t listen to me either, and yet he expects his wife will? That’s hardly fair, is it….'”
The details are immaterial. To conclude: she delivered her first child without incident, and went on to bear two more after that. Though she died not long after Rasper’s birth, she never faced that dread crossroads of choosing between mother or child in a moment of crisis.
Yet here, now, such old and buried memories rose to the surface.
“Illian.”
The princess who had once feigned death before all eyes now held a remarkable serenity. Even her disheveled appearance could not conceal the bearing that radiated from her.
Her pale-green eyes were strikingly transparent. Within those eyes, like pale-green watercolor dissolved in clear water, there seemed to be no room for even a speck of dust — no hesitation, no doubt. Those were the eyes of someone who had resolved something with absolute certainty.
“I need your help.”
Eyes that did not expect refusal.
Illian had lived a life of service. He was the kind of man who would gladly cast aside his own life if it meant saving all others. If salvation was promised, if it was truly within reach, he would turn a blind eye to small sacrifices even if it meant he himself fell into the fires of perdition. That was the kind of man he was.
Even if it meant stealing away the scant light that had touched his friend’s painfully difficult life, there was no help for it. The goddess of justice wears a blindfold and measures only the weight on her scales. It cannot be helped.
Weighing the one you hold dear on those scales with eyes open — who could bear such a thing? Only a priest who understands that God is not eternal and immutable, and therefore strives to live through tomorrow by borrowing the strength of humanity itself.
‘He cannot do it. But you — you can.’
The dead Duchess had known that.
And Titania, too, knows this truth.
“…Yes.”
So Illian yielded, as though bowing before his god.

* * *

The Imperial Palace was in festival mode.
Banquets were held every day. The halls were filled with brilliant flowers, wine, and food. Even without cause, nobles were summoned. The intent was clear: don’t think of scheming behind closed doors — just stay where we can see you and enjoy yourselves. Laugh and make merry.
The Emperor appeared only when the mood struck him, then withdrew again, while it was mainly Cleo the Empress who attended each day without fail.
As extravagant banquets were held daily without regard for budget, the palace staff were being worked to exhaustion. Even hands not normally dispatched to banquet duty were pressed into service.
Because of the Empress’s insistence, decorations required brilliant crimson flowers every single day, and there were never enough blooms.
As a result, nearly every member of the palace staff found themselves reluctantly handed seeds and pots and tasked with cultivating the flowers. Those who allowed them to wilt, fade, or fail to bloom properly faced punishment. Yet careful cultivation could prove quite lucrative.
Like the drugs that had circulated before, these flowers spread through the palace in no time at all. The Emperor himself found the exotic and resplendent blooms fitting to imperial dignity and was satisfied, and when he signaled the nobles to participate in the flower festivities as a complement to the banquets, they had no choice but to obey.
The nobility bought the flowers at great expense and displayed them as ornaments, however reluctantly.
Perhaps the only place in the palace that paid no attention to these flowers was the Empress’s Palace.
“If you’ve given birth to a failure, at least have the shame to show for it.”
The Empress regarded Cleo with cold eyes, her lips painted in a deliberate, vivid crimson.
She had adorned herself with obvious provocation — dazzlingly ornate, breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin gleamed as if dusted with gold and pearl powder. Fabric in a shade nearly identical to the brilliant crimson petals. Luxurious ornaments braiding together rubies and garnets with diamonds, pearls, black obsidian….
Yet no amount of makeup could hide the drawn hollowness around her eyes or the faint tremor in her hands. For all her outward confidence and self-assured smile, a deep well of anxiety stirred within her.
Until now, Cleo had visited the Empress’s Palace many times to mock and provoke her. Yet today felt different.
“Your Most Exalted Majesty. The Emperor truly despises Adrian, I’m told — he cannot even bear to see his face. An imperial prince hated by the Emperor…. Even with my simple mind, if I examine the imperial genealogy, I can see it would be difficult for him to have much of a future. I’m afraid I’m not learned enough to recite the history of the Empire by heart as you are.”
Cleo drew Brian close proudly at her side. The Empress let out a scoffing laugh and spoke.
“And what exactly are you trying to say?”
Cleo did not hesitate.
“Recognize my son as the only Crown Prince of this Empire, Your Majesty.”
A cold silence fell.

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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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