Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 57

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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 57

Destroy the Holy Relic?! Remove the Barrier?! After all these Dedication Ceremonies, after keeping it alive by every means possible—you want to destroy that Barrier?
You’d turn this whole area into a Magic Beast den? This is insane. Completely insane. My thoughts spilled out of my mouth, and a response came back.
“That’s exactly what must be done. That Holy Relic is a forgery.”
“…What?”
“If blood is applied to it, the Princess will be in danger instead.”
“Why would you kidnap someone and explain all this in the dark without even revealing who you are?!”
“Because I cannot trust the Princess. You cannot trust me either, can you?”
Had I been drugged? Did I inhale some kind of gas? A voice unfamiliar even to myself echoed into the empty air.
“Of course I can’t trust you!”
I jumped to my feet, incredulous.
“Logically speaking, would you trust someone like that? Would you?! You kidnap a sleeping person, move them somewhere, and then suddenly say, ‘Hey, stop working on that and destroy it.’ Would any sane person listen to that? And you couldn’t even come to me properly in broad daylight…!”
“Is that why you’re angry? You’re not sensing the urgency, it seems.”
“Even if it is a forgery, if I destroy the Holy Relic, do you understand what will happen immediately?”
“I cannot meet you in daylight.”
“Why?! Do you have honey smeared on your face? Did you get some disease in your legs…!”
That was when it happened.
The lights flared on.
I looked at the scene before me and lost all words.
The room was strikingly luxurious. But what captured my attention more was the figure standing before me.
At first glance, he appeared to be a boy about my age.
His neatly arranged brown hair was swept back and tied at the nape of his neck. He wore thick-rimmed glasses. His tailored suit in shades of brown fit his frame perfectly, emanating the composure of an adult man. His eyes were the same shade of brown.
However, the whites of both eyes fixed on me were bloodshot—as though the blood vessels had burst entirely.
Both feet of the figure sitting in the chair were bound tightly with bandages. The absence of splints suggested it wasn’t a simple fracture. Even both hands, layered with gloves so that not a single wrist was visible. Everything about him radiated something deeply wrong.
“My name is Flux Roman Ben Cortez.”
With one corner of his mouth raised, he regarded me with a desolate expression. His eyes looked
“Young Count Cortez.”
as though he might tear apart everything in this world without warning.

* * *

“I have no intention of playing mother to that child.”
The Empress spoke calmly.
The room was spacious and quiet. For a private meeting between the Empress of the realm and the heir of a great noble house, it was perhaps slightly modest. But neither occupant paid attention to such trifles.
“For someone with no such intention, you’ve wagered quite heavily on this affair.”
Raymond’s voice was monotone. The Empress gazed down at a teacup from which neither of them had drunk.
The tea had long gone cold and bitter, yet the Empress’s lady-in-waiting, stationed like a shadow near the door, remained perfectly still. She understood well that such minor service was not the business of this conversation.
“Your Majesty the Empress released a Magic Beast within the Imperial Palace itself. If the Empress consort had learned of it, she would have branded you a traitor conspiring against the Emperor.”
“Then what was I to do? If I misstepped, I would be the one charged with Treason.”
The Empress dropped a sugar cube into the tea she would never drink.
“For now, I must bide my time. Until the Emperor’s fury cools, I shall keep my head down and do what pleases him. It’s actually better that Titania goes through the Dedication Ceremony. Adrian and Brian will be treated as Imperial Family whether they attend one ceremony or not. But that child is different.”
Titania did indeed possess the Right of Imperial Succession.
She was the youngest in rank and, more than being viewed as Imperial Family, was regarded primarily as a “princess destined to marry into the Castrain family”—and thus dismissed accordingly.
If the Betrothal to the Castrain family were broken and something happened to her birth mother, her position could become uncertain beyond anyone’s guarantee.
So even if the ceremony was now merely a name, having her participate under her own name was, at least, better for Titania.
“And now you wish to act as her betrothed?”
The silver spoon clinked against the teacup.
The Empress had been trained in propriety from infancy; she would make no careless gestures. This sound was deliberate. Raymond’s golden eyes settled like wet sand.
“Should I not?”
“That child would have given her life if you had merely smiled and held her hand once.”
Raymond’s body went rigid.
“So I chose to turn away, as I did not wish to lure and exploit an affection-starved child as the Empress consort does. I refused responsibility, turned away like one ignoring a cast-off beast on the roadside.”
Titania had changed like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. She had come to understand situations with clear-eyed judgment and had forged her own path even at the cost of sacrificing herself.
“That child raised herself. So I have no intention of belatedly playing mother. Adrian is my only son. So even if you come to me now, saying you’re concerned about Titania and wish my permission to follow her…”
The Empress smiled bitterly.
“How could I possibly grant such a thing?”
“…The situation in the Southern Region is not normal. It may not please you, but it is necessary.”
“No. You came to me because you needed an excuse.”
The Empress’s lips curved upward in a joyless smile.
“You know well that the child does not regard me as her mother. You know that permission means nothing. If this were truly necessary, would you have come here to ask me? No—you wanted to use my name as an excuse to justify yourself to Titania.”
The Empress observed the figure before her, who had become like a statue.
Even in ordinary times, his expression was sparse. And when meeting the Empress, his visits were almost always on official business—making it even more so.
Yet, like a small child forced to swallow bitter medicine, like a condemned prisoner who understood he could not escape though every part of him screamed to flee—his rigidly set shoulders and lips that could not form a defense seemed dangerously fragile.
His lips, which had trembled for some time, finally produced words.
“…It is just for a betrothed to concern himself with his betrothed.”
“Was the Betrothal between the Princess and yourself ever just and ordinary?”
“In the current Castrain family, the Princess is…”
“Yes, the treasure of the Castrain family. That adopted daughter, Bibi. Would things be as they are now if you had not saved her?”
“…Not entirely the same, no.”
As Raymond answered, he seemed very much aware that he was making excuses.
The Young Duke of the Castrain family had never hesitated when making choices.
He selected what aligned with priority. In that calculus, there was no ‘self.’ There was no desire.
“Do you mean to reproach me for deceiving the Princess?”
Then what happened when a problem arose that could not be prioritized?
When only problems with no answer stood in the way?
“Do you wish to condemn me for not caring how she fell to ruin, thinking I would eventually abandon her anyway?”
‘Find someone you love and marry them.’
Raymond had never forgotten the moment Titania had spoken of breaking their Betrothal.
‘I have lived without owing anything to Your Majesty the Empress. I think I owe nothing to anyone in the Imperial Family. Perhaps it was a shameful life for the Castrain Ducal House.’
Words flowing ceaselessly in her quiet manner.
‘That’s why, you see, with just the slightest pity. Just sympathy. I thought, “I can manage this much,” and you held out your hand. I hate it when someone sacrifices themselves. I really do. I hate it when anyone loses even a hair’s breadth. I hate it most of all—that I begin to see a price to be paid when I help that foolish, ignorant, stupid Princess.’
As I listened to those words, an abyss opened within me. It felt as though someone had struck the back of my head. All the more so because I knew those were Titania’s true feelings.
It was, in essence, the stance of one who had concluded that his own existence was a burden to others.
A shameful life for the Castrain Ducal House…
Her love had become something shameful to her. My throat felt blocked. I should have said it wasn’t true. But I couldn’t speak. My voice felt strangled.
Clinging to someone I do not love, becoming a burden—shameful. My own choice nearly killed me, and yet I survived by burdening another.
For her, all of it was simply that kind of thing.
That the unconscious Titania was brought to the Empress’s Palace was the independent decision of the Castrain family.

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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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