Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 35

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

Chapter 35

“That said, I think I understand what the Empress is after. She needs someone to cast a curse on you so you have an excuse to wake up. It looks like she’s personally summoning a High Priest with no connection to the Castrain ducal house, trying to arrange a meeting with you.”
“And in doing so, those maidservants who suffered humiliation in the Empress’s Palace become—what? Noble servants who threw themselves entirely into lifting Titania’s ‘curse’? There’s no way around it now, is there? We’d have to let the past be buried and keep them on, reward them even?”
“I suspect she means to repay them, in fact.”
Adrian smiled bitterly.
I’d sent the maidservants rolling through trials of devotion, saying “Prove your loyalty to your mistress,” and Cleo had seized the opportunity—”My, such prayers are only made by someone truly cursed”—and fabricated a curse that didn’t exist.
I could never have known beforehand that the Emoticon Sword would be a demon blade to anyone else, and perhaps it was mere coincidence that the Empress’s scheme and the sword’s appearance aligned.
No one was ignorant of how lax security was at the Rose Palace. The guards who failed to protect me, who weren’t at their posts when they should have been, would have testified beautifully from their cells to suit Cleo’s tastes. The maidservants needn’t even be mentioned.
“And the Empress Mother will likely be reprimanded.”
A bitter taste spread across my tongue.
Unbelievable. How could I not be allowed even a week’s rest after nearly dying? This spectacular, dynamic Imperial Palace life was too much.
I ground my teeth as I spoke.
“…Because she carelessly allowed such a malicious curse to circulate within the solemn Imperial Palace?”
“If she pushes the narrative that her negligence is why you need protection now, that settles it.”
He really did make thorough use of someone else’s blade!
Either way, the conclusion was simple. I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. But I couldn’t just get up and declare, “There was no curse at all.”
Because then I’d be admitting I’d been lying there this whole time with no illness at all, playing malingerer of my own accord.
Adrian finished speaking with a bitter smile.
“I hear the High Priest will conduct a thorough investigation of the Rose Palace tomorrow, and then come to the Empress’s Palace to heal you. A sealed proclamation authorizing cooperation has already arrived.”
They’re investigating the Rose Palace tomorrow? Obviously they’d seal off the entire area, preventing anyone from coming and going, and tonight they’d secretly bury the evidence of the curse.
Tomorrow they’d bring in a High Priest of their choosing and make the curse a fait accompli.
I was truly boxed in. I’d underestimated the Empress. She’d made it so I knew what was happening but couldn’t stop it. Still, I couldn’t just accept this.
I turned over what knowledge of the original work might apply to this situation. And I made my decision.
“…Please call someone from the Castrain ducal house. Tell them it’s urgent.”
When survival and the future were at stake, pride could wait.

* * *

Raymond had naturally assumed he wouldn’t see Titania for some time after she’d said, “Don’t interfere anymore.” Yet surprisingly, the moment he learned what the Empress had done in the Imperial Palace, Titania contacted him without hesitation. Asking for help. Cashing in one of the debts he thought he’d settled.
Time was running out, and knowing the influence and capabilities of the Castrain family well—it was time to use them.
As Raymond listened to a plan woven from methods he’d never imagined, with a hint of force, gamble, and performance, his lips trembled without his awareness.
‘Why go this far?’
That was what he’d nearly asked.
Even the Castrain family recognized that the Empress was up to something suspicious. They were simply waiting to see how to respond, since it didn’t directly harm the Castrain house.
Of course, if direct harm had come to Titania, they would have acted. But they wouldn’t have responded this aggressively.
Titania, resting comfortably in the Empress’s Palace, seemed at ease. Raymond had brought her books, and she’d murmured to herself while reading them; she’d said she treasured nothing more than sprawling lazily in bed, eating snacks at leisure. He’d never expected her to respond to this situation this way.
Whether she simply pretended to sleep and received the High Priest the Empress had brought, feigning to wake, or revealed that she’d already awoken before he arrived—
Either way, Titania wouldn’t suffer any immediate loss.
Everyone—both the Castrain family and the Imperial Family—knew the ‘curse’ the Empress spoke of wasn’t real. This was merely the Empress’s provocation.
Somehow aware of Raymond’s gaze fixed upon her, Titania blinked her vivid green eyes and spoke.
“This won’t cause great harm to the Castrain family.”
“…I was not concerned with such matters.”
“Is it that you worry about being inadvertently drawn into the Succession Dispute?”
“Are you concerned for Prince Adrian?”
That wasn’t his true thought. When he recalled the expression on Titania’s face as she’d smiled, saying “Please don’t interfere further—I’m in your debt,”—he couldn’t bring himself to voice what he truly wished to say.
Yes, that face. That clear line between us. Let us conduct ourselves with propriety, that’s enough….
A smile like a mask cobbled together from the shattered pieces of a heart that once cried out—let me love you, see me, I’m here.
The moment he thought of that smile, his breath caught without warning. As it had when he held that limp body, corpselike, unable to breathe in his embrace.
He felt like a criminal. A single careless word, a fleeting expression, and his emotions wavered. Had Raymond been even slightly more objective, he might have noticed how strange it was that someone who’d witnessed the deaths of people and Magic Beasts ceaselessly since childhood would be shaken by so little.
“I suppose this makes it seem like I’m helping the Empress Mother this time? And ultimately, helping Prince Adrian become emperor. Looks like I’m manipulating things so the Castrain family joins that faction, doesn’t it?”
When a suspicion-tinged answer came back, Raymond nearly responded without thinking.
That it wasn’t like that.
If she’d said instead, “Rather than a debt, I’d like the Castrain ducal house to support Prince Adrian as the next heir apparent,” the family would have reached that conclusion easily after consultation.
He knew. He knew that Titania wouldn’t use him, or himself, or the Castrain family like this.
But how could he know?
How could he say it? On what grounds?
Suddenly Raymond felt the weight of that helplessness.
He couldn’t dare to speak as if he understood Titania—the isolated young fiancée from the Imperial Palace who’d only known how to throw tantrums—and the tender emotions she’d shown him with singular devotion.
Emotions that festered endlessly in hatred, in rage, in inability to let go, corrupting even herself. Yet their foundation alone—
He alone knew that it was a blindness from which she could never turn her gaze away. But he couldn’t say it.
From some point on, as he’d told himself countless times—truly, from that moment on the balcony when her head struck concrete and she fell into unconsciousness.
That young, blind girl, his fiancée who’d loved him—she died. And when she opened her eyes again, she said she “understood” Raymond, but didn’t dare to hope for love….
And so Titania had been reborn as someone who could use Raymond and the Castrain family for herself.
That much, he could not say. It was an instinctive sense.
Why?
How so?
Before he could even grasp his own question, something that might or might not have been an illusion appeared and obscured his vision.
—I’m sorry…….
A desert seemed to form in the deepest part of his chest. The moment he heard the voice, beneath that parched, cracked earth, it felt as though someone whispered against his equally desiccated, fissured heart.
—I’m sorry.
Almost a whisper, like one running out of breath. Straw-like hair lay tangled on the ground. Exhausted green eyes appeared. Those eyes that had always flowed muddy as floodwater—now clear as spring water after rain. Eyes that seemed to hold answers unto themselves.
—I’m sorry that someone like me loves you.
If you scraped together every last dried-out feeling and ignited it one final time, would it burn like this? If you gathered brittle autumn leaves turned to ash and threw them between embers, would a flame grow any greater?
Indescribable emotion surged.
He wanted to seize those emaciated wrists in this very instant.
To demand what she meant, what she was trying to do. What she intended. To tell her to stop playing games and come clean.
To show such an appearance—as though she might die, as though she might vanish. What scheme was she pushing forward with so carelessly?
Like an ember spreading across a drought-stricken field becoming calamity in an instant, he felt he might lose his mind and cry out at any moment.
Yet before that inexplicable emotion could completely consume his heart, the illusion vanished without warning.
Raymond had no chance to fully compose himself before he heard Titania’s frigid words.
“I know my place well enough, so there’s no need.”
“…Might I ask what you mean?”
“Since Bibi isn’t here, I’ll be honest.”
Titania, who’d often worn a smiling face even before little Bibi, had at some point begun speaking with a countenance far too weary for her years.
“You don’t like me, does the Castrain family.”
“That is not—”
Struck as if from behind, Raymond couldn’t bring himself to deny it outright.

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