The Maid With a Child - Chapter 12

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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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12. I Want to Love.
His grasp of human relationships was simple and unambiguous.
If they were enemies, he killed them. If they were allies, he let them live.
If they were convenient, he kept them close. If they were troublesome, he cast them aside.
Yet this maid was an ally who could become an enemy at any moment, and keeping her near should have been convenient, but everything she did was inconvenient and grating.
The problem had transcended the simple arithmetic of kill or spare—it had become something far more complex.
“What am I to do with you?”
“Please, let me live!”
Yes, he should let her live. She hadn’t committed outright betrayal. She hadn’t done anything worthy of death.
He toyed with the idea of killing her preemptively, but he needed her for immediate purposes. Besides, she wasn’t a soldier—a civilian couldn’t be disposed of as casually as one would on a battlefield.
The source of his dilemma was singular.
He had no reliable method to bind this maid to him more securely than he already had.
Fear of death could only compel false loyalty so far. Threats of murder worked the first time or two, but their effect was already waning. Soon enough, she’d likely decide her life was forfeit anyway and make her move.
Nothing was supposedly more precious than one’s own life, yet people often abandoned theirs with surprising ease.
‘Hmm?’
In that moment, a thought surfaced in Lakcart’s mind.
Among the things people cherished as much as life itself was their home, their livelihood. That was why, even in war-torn regions, people rarely fled—they endured, building their lives around the conflict.
Yet Adlen had wavered at a stranger’s persuasion to cross over into Moren in mere moments.
“If you crossed over to Moren, how were you planning to survive?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Adlen lifted her head sharply, tearing her gaze from the faintly stirring infant in her arms.
“You said you had no connections in Moren. Do you have any at all?”
“No? I mean, yes—I’ve never even met anyone from Moren.”
“So you were planning to abandon your home, your property, your family, everything in Teplan, and cross over alone? How did you mean to get by?”
“I… I have nothing in Teplan, sir.”
Adlen scratched her cheek awkwardly as she spoke.
She truly had nothing—it was almost embarrassing to admit.
No house, no wealth, no family. Not even a single friend, despite all her years of labor.
“…Nothing at all?”
Lakcart’s brow furrowed in disbelief.
“That’s right. I was abandoned as a newborn in some war zone, and someone took me to the Orphanage. So I have no parents, no family, nothing like that.”
“…”
“I’ve only been working since I left the Orphanage a few years ago, so I don’t have a house of my own or any real savings.”
It was slightly less embarrassing to admit such poverty to someone she called master.
In the master’s eyes, she—a penniless maid—was likely indistinguishable from a street beggar or a common merchant who’d managed to buy a single house.
“What about the people from the Orphanage?”
“They’re all too busy surviving.”
The instructors from the Orphanage came to mind first—the ones who’d tried to talk her out of leaving, wanting to exploit her labor for free.
They’d told her that someone as naive as she was would never see real money and would be bled dry by others. But it was they themselves who’d done the bleeding.
The other children, the older ones and younger ones—they weren’t much different.
The instructors were greedy, squeezing the children like fruit, and the children had grown up the same way.
The moment word spread that Adlen had taken a job as a maid, they came asking to borrow money. Once she refused them all, they simply stopped coming around.
There had been a few exceptions, of course. Some were kind as angels, others like siblings to her.
But it was strange: such children always left the world early.
So no one remained by Adlen’s side.
“A life with nothing to regret in Teplan. Then what can I use to hold you?”
If she had a family or a close friend, he might have leverage—some way to keep her bound.
But Adlen’s life was like a glass sphere; there was nowhere to grip it.
“I really won’t waver anymore, I swear…”
Adlen stammered over Lakcart’s muttering. This was just lingering doubt. She’d wavered for a moment in the face of the blade, but the aftermath had dragged on far too long.
Fear of that aftermath had given her the resolve never to waver again—at least not until a blade was pressed to her throat, death hanging by a thread. Beyond that threshold, of course, all bets were off.
“Hmm…”
Yet trust, once shattered and fallen to the ground, was difficult to retrieve.
Under the weight of Lakcart’s suspicious gaze, Adlen found herself desperately puzzling out ways to anchor herself more firmly.
“If I had a family, wouldn’t it be impossible for me to leave?”
She’d never had one, so she couldn’t be certain.
“A family.”
The lines on Lakcart’s brow deepened.
Her answer clearly hadn’t moved him.
“The world is full of people who abandon family and friends alike when greed blinds them.”
“That’s what they talk about! Me, I don’t think I’ll refuse marriage just because I want to meet a handsome man instead of a toad, or bear a kind child instead of a mischievous one, and build a modest family together—that’s my lifelong dream. Or… at least, I think so. Probably.”
Under her master’s deeply skeptical gaze, Adlen’s confidence crumbled.
“The truth is, that’s also why I didn’t like becoming a nursemaid in the first place.”
“What does that matter?”
“A nursemaid usually stays attached to her young charge for life. What man would want to marry a maid with a child hanging from her skirts?”
Few men welcomed a woman whose attention belonged first and foremost to her master’s offspring rather than to her own household. It was a sorrowful reality.
Adlen did not consider herself fortunate enough to meet such a man.
“…A man, then.”
Lakcart murmured, worrying his jaw between his fingers.
At those words, Adlen understood clearly what she truly wanted.
It was a man.
If a man who loved her tried to keep her from going to Moren, clinging to her even as steel kissed his throat, she felt she could endure it.
“Yes, a man, sir.”
For now, she had no marriage fund, no livelihood secured—she wasn’t even thinking about marriage.
She planned to save enough first: money toward a house, a few pieces of furniture—and only then would she search for a husband.
If fate had sent someone her way before then, she might have seized him without hesitation, but regrettably, no such person had appeared.
“That sounds rather simple, actually.”
Lakcart smiled as if he’d spotted an opening to victory.
“Then I’ll find you a husband.”
“…Pardon?”
Adlen stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
Was her master truly offering to arrange a match for his own maid?
“If Sigelion puts its weight behind the arrangement, they’ll think twice about it at the very least. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll have them kidnapped, hunted down, whatever it takes—I’ll bring you a husband.”
Lakcart was entirely serious.
And the proposal was rather tempting.
Adlen swallowed hard.
Her master’s methods were not to her taste, yet if Sigelion’s influence were truly brought to bear, any man would at least reconsider his position.
But Adlen, though her ears had perked up for a moment, soon let her shoulders sag and shook her head.
“No, forgive me, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Would a man brought to me that way ever truly love me?”
If the only goal were to establish a household, then matching conditions would suffice. Many people in the world married that way.
There was wisdom that said marriage wasn’t about marrying someone you love, but rather marrying someone whose circumstances fit when it’s time—that it should be reality, not dreams, and that’s how it had to be.
But Adlen wanted to dream.
To love each other, cherish each other, hold each other dear. To look only at one another, to live only for one another. That kind of true family.
Without that, it meant nothing.
“…Love?”
Lakcart repeated the word heavily.
A word he had never expected to hear, never expected to think about in his lifetime—yet today he’d heard it several times over.
He had never witnessed it, never practiced it, never felt it, and he’d never even been curious about it.
Yet it seemed desperately important to Adlen.
“Yes, love. What I want isn’t a political marriage arranged by matching conditions—it’s marriage where we love each other and promise to spend our lives together.”
“…”
Lakcart regarded her in silence.
His eyes held countless unspoken words.
What absurd conditions. Daring to refuse your master’s matchmaking? Pure impudence. As if. Let’s see how grand this love of yours turns out to be. Tch. If I can’t win her over with a man, what else am I supposed to dangle in front of her?
Go a little further and I’d be sick of the trouble, but something will work out. Might as well just kill her and be done with it.

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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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