Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 96

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

Chapter 96

The room was shabby.
Had it been the Lande Marquis House, perhaps it would have been bearable, but to Cleo, who had not so much as glanced at frugality since entering the Imperial Palace, it differed not at all from a beggar’s quarters.
No—even the room she had occupied during those wretched days as a handmaiden attending to her elder sister at the Lande Marquis House was better than this. The Marquis House had only placed her beside the noble legitimate daughter to break Cleo’s spirit, not to inflict physical torment. The station of a handmaiden attending a highborn lady was not inherently poor; she had been given a proper wage and the environment to dress well and maintain her appearance.
But this room….
Cleo found herself frowning without intention.
The dank, musty smell of dust. The peculiar staleness of a moisture-laden chamber. A faint medicinal odor threaded through it all. Anyone with a delicate stomach would retch. In the midst of it all, Elaine sat upon the bed, her eyelids fluttering open and closed with scarcely any light behind them. Eyes the color of wilting leaves on a plant in its final hours before death.
‘I had hoped for a face that looked like a corpse about to expire.’
Cleo bit her lip, seized by a sense of defeat.
A sickly woman who had not stepped outside Licoris Palace for years. Dark hollows beneath her eyes, collarbone jutting sharply. Even her visible wrists were thin as reeds. She resembled a sugar figurine that might crumble at the slightest touch.
Yet she was beautiful.
Rather, she possessed an almost uncanny quality that arrested the eye. Like a pressed flower slowly decaying in a sealed case…. A delicate porcelain figurine discovered in the ruins of some forgotten century. Had one brought an innocent child into this room, they might well have asked if she were not an angel or a frost spirit.
“For what purpose does Your Highness the Empress call upon me?”
“Would it be acceptable if I called you sister?”
Elaine gazed at Cleo instead of answering. Cleo wrinkled her nose as she surveyed the shabby furnishings about the room. Then, taking it upon herself, she drew up the worn chair beside the bed and sat. In any other place, she might have mocked such poor hospitality, but today Cleo had not come to mock her visitor.
“Look at the state of this.”
With an air of concern, Cleo quickly extended her hand and grasped Elaine’s, which lay atop the blanket. Her hand was dreadfully cold. Was this truly a human hand? Cleo was momentarily struck speechless by a ghastly sensation as if touching a corpse, but forced herself to speak.
“You are the Second Empress, who has borne a princess no less, and yet you are reduced to this? His Majesty has been far too cruel to you.”
“…His Majesty has done nothing wrong by me.”
Her voice was small, exhausted as though all will had been extinguished from it. This made Cleo suspicious.
The Second Empress had no reason to go on living.
Her relations with her family—such as they were—were abysmal, and her relationship with Princess Titania was worse than that of strangers. The Emperor’s favor? The Emperor was a man who had lived his entire life as Emperor. Should he encounter a woman who had rejected him, not even the first beauty in the realm would catch his eye, pride wounded as he was. Yet at each imperial banquet, he made a point of leaving a seat conspicuously vacant, letting slip the smallest hint that his mind remained occupied….
Everyone within the palace was a creature of desire. There were none without want; they merely hid it with cunning. Even a face gray with sickness, if arranged prettily and brought before the Emperor with a smile, would delight him as though he had been gifted a diamond mine. What reason could there be to reject such an easy path and instead choose a life within the palace that was worse than death?
“Then who has wronged you?”
Cleo asked softly. Elaine did not answer.
“Is it the Princess Titania, by her mere existence burdening your body and binding you eternally to the Imperial Family?”
“…….”
Elaine remained silent.
“Granted, I too suffered ill health for some time after bearing Brian. But you nearly died in the process. It is small wonder you find the sight of the child difficult….”
Titania would no longer be used by Cleo. The love-starved child she had been would now understand that all the affection Cleo had offered had been false. And yet….
‘Is it truly because I am a bad child that you dislike me, Mother?’
Cleo’s mouth twisted.
Before she had turned ten, Titania had been often ill. Whenever Cleo deigned to visit—rare as rain in drought—the child’s eyes had brightened with gratitude for the affection. It had been easy enough for Cleo: to comfort a fevered child clinging to her, crying for her touch.
‘Oh, Titania. Why would you say such a thing?’
‘B-because… because I was born, and Mother became sick because of me….’
A child’s senses are animal-like. Titania had understood instinctively that Cleo, maneuvering herself as the child’s ‘only’ protector, would not welcome a daughter seeking her true mother. And yet, despite this understanding, there was no other source from which the child could seek answers.
‘S-so, if I become a good child. If Mother… if Mama….’
Cleo had Brian, after all.
Cleo came to visit only when she pleased, but Titania could go to Cleo whenever she wished—or so she could not. The disparity in the relationship was absolute. The child had yearned desperately for an absolute protector. The Empress Cleo had merely smiled, allowing the child to long for her true mother instead. If Elaine responded vacuously, then…. Yes, this time I will kill her. So she had calculated.
But Elaine had never given a second glance to her young daughter, no matter how close death hovered. She had turned away even when the child wept and pounded at the doors of Licoris Palace. As Titania fell into dehydration from crying so much, Cleo had held and soothed her, thinking it fortunate that she need not bother herself further.
As a result, Titania had come to feign death at Cleo’s merest word.
Cleo had cultivated her so well, but now it seemed the girl had truly died and been reborn, for the way she carried herself now…. Cleo barely suppressed her warped emotions and spoke in a coaxing tone.
“I heard the story of when you bore Titania. A most beautiful daughter, it is said, born in your image, and the moment His Majesty the Emperor rejoiced and resolved to send her to the Castrain Family, you collapsed into unconsciousness. Though it is also said your constitution has always been delicate….”
When Titania was first born, the Emperor had not yet wholly abandoned his affection for Elaine.
To an Emperor fond of women, the greatest beauty in the realm had slipped from his grasp. It would have been stranger still had he relinquished her easily. Yet after giving birth to her daughter, Elaine had seemed to renounce life itself. Both young Titania and Elaine had weathered the brink of death more than once due to illness. Even an Emperor could not easily drag a bedridden invalid from her sickbed to the outside world.
“You dislike the child, don’t you?”
Cleo was certain of this.
Not all parents love their children.
Not all mothers love their daughters.
The pull of blood? Is there truly some unbreakable bond between parent and child? It is all nonsense. An unwanted child, once born, will naturally become beloved? Rubbish. In this world, a gambler with eyes drunk on the game will sell his own child into slavery for a handful of coins.
“Had there been no one watching, you might have done away with her entirely. Unfortunately, sister, your daughter was destined from birth to be the tie between the Castrain Family and the Imperial House. You could not lay a hand upon her.”
“……What exactly are you proposing to say?”
This irritated her. Cleo felt almost like laughing. Here she was, delivering words with the weight of ‘you loathed your daughter so much you could have killed her,’ and the response was this lukewarm answer. Neither defensive nor denying.
My suspicion was correct.
Titania, you stupid thing.
Fretting over one such as that as though she were your true mother….
‘You intend to kill Empress Elaine? Then I shall truly become the child of the Empress Consort. She will truly become my dear family from the Castrain Ducal House.’
That was right.
The changed girl would recognize, should something befall her birth mother, that Cleo’s hand was behind it.
But she had not anticipated that Cleo might bring her despised mother into her web instead!
“I will speak plainly. If you cooperate in my affair, I will have you released from the palace.”
Elaine’s eyes widened in surprise, blinking rapidly—the most marked change in her demeanor since Cleo had entered the room.
Women the Emperor had taken for a single night could freely leave the palace after a certain time had passed. Even empresses without children had been naturally driven out by the power struggles within the palace. But an empress who had borne the Emperor’s child, or the Empress Consort herself, could never leave.
Perhaps that was why Elaine had been driven to despair and confined herself within these walls.
She needed nothing—only freedom.
“……How would you manage such a thing?”
A note of urgency now colored her voice, different from before. Cleo sensed victory within reach.
“In truth, His Majesty the Emperor has two healthy sons and the capable Empress Consort at his side. He has no further need of additional empresses. A princess was required to form a betrothal with the Castrain Family, but…. Given your constitution, remaining in the palace and bearing more children is an impossibility, is it not? And the princess herself is not being confined to your side or disciplined under your hand.”
“Do you think I am unaware of these facts?”
Her tone was sharper than before. Cleo mentally filed away her revised assessment of Elaine.
“I will have you escape.”
“…….”
Elaine’s pupils trembled faintly.

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