The Maid With a Child - Chapter 17

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

17. Useless Devotion
Just keeping him alive would be enough, so why does she fuss over him as if she’d given birth to him herself?
Racalte turned away, filing the words he would someday speak without fail.
But not now. Nothing was to disturb the maid’s sleep.
* * *
“Your Highness! Aagh! Gee gee!”
They say other people’s children grow just by taking your eyes off them. It seemed the same held true even while raising one.
The Baby boasted remarkable development, showcasing ever-escalating destructive power with each passing day.
Now entering his sixth month, his baby teeth were already sprouting in clusters, and he had begun putting everything he could see into his mouth.
While other infants of his age could barely roll over and crawl sluggishly, the Baby crawled at speed as if in military training.
“No, you don’t!”
So Adlen spent the entire day chasing after him, running, and preventing him from putting things in his mouth.
This time, the moment her master stepped away, the Baby had nearly swallowed a Seal that sat on the desk. Her blood ran cold.
She snatched him up quickly, forestalling disaster, but his protests erupted at once.
“Waaaaah…….”
“Aaaaah…….”
The fussiness he’d shown on their first day in Sigelion was only the beginning.
Whether the Baby had now adjusted to his new surroundings or had decided she was fair game, his irritability escalated with each passing day.
“Oh, every bone in me aches……. Huff. Huff.”
Adlen slumped against the wall, cradling the Baby as she caught her breath.
The pain that had started in her wrists had now spread throughout her entire body.
It wasn’t illness—just exhaustion from overuse—but she couldn’t very well say so. Still, with no days of rest, the burden grew heavier by the hour.
“……I’m sorry to the Baby, really, but I just wish Kias would be caught already.”
In the end, a person’s own life was most important.
Compassion, sympathy—all of it withered away the moment she thought she might die.
“……So this training was……. Oh.”
Just then, the Knight Commander and Racalte entered the room.
She forced her aching body upright with effort. Few ever acknowledged her properly, but it was a maid’s duty.
“Welcome back, sir.”
“Mm.”
“?”
Yet today, for some reason, even this brief acknowledgment came back to her.
Adlen blinked, wondering if she’d misheard, but the gaze that swept from the crown of her head to her toes confirmed it. No mistake.
Yet the look didn’t linger.
Racalte went straight into the conference room attached to one side of the chamber.
Since the conference room was built into the chamber itself, there was no door. So Adlen inevitably heard every word of the meetings.
Since she was confined anyway, classified information wouldn’t help her even if she obtained it. And more than half of what she overheard was beyond her comprehension.
So she generally let it go in one ear and out the other. When she was focused on the Baby, she hardly heard anything at all.
“Some of Morn’s operatives have gone dark.”
“We expected they wouldn’t last long anyway.”
“Evidence suggests Kias himself removed them.”
“Kias has returned to Morn? Hmm…….”
But today’s topic was the very same Kias she’d been thinking about. Her ears perked up of their own accord.
“Now that I think about it, the attacks have lessened lately.”
“Has he given up on the Crown Prince?”
“Hardly. He could be regrouping, or he could be waiting for us to let our guard down. Maintain the same level of vigilance.”
“Yes, understood.”
She was engrossed in the conversation when—
“Auweeee!”
The Baby, unable to tolerate even a moment without her attention, announced his presence with a shriek.
The shout was so piercing it cut through the Knight Commander’s voice and broke the conversation.
“Oh, oh, Your Highness. Is it time for food? Shall we have some yummy?”
Adlen hurried to her feet with the Baby in her arms and withdrew to a distant spot.
It was an excuse she’d made up, but by the clock, it really was mealtime.
The beginning of another ordeal.
“Come now, little one. Here we go. The food flies! Whoosh, whoosh!”
“Eeee!”
“Oh no, he doesn’t like that……. Then how about this one, Your Highness?”
Adlen picked up something different—not the food the Baby had put in his mouth and immediately spat out.
That Baby who would accept anything placed before him was gone.
The same ingredients cooked differently, or pieces cut to different sizes, and immediately it was spit out.
Sometimes she rejected the food because she disliked the spoon going into her mouth, or disliked the angle of the hand holding it, or even disliked the number of times the spoon was stirred.
It was the kind of tantrum that could drive one mad.
“……Phew.”
Adlen took a deep breath to calm her frustration, then stirred the spoon with deliberate care.
Tempting her with taste alone had its limits. What remained was technique.
“Mm!”
“Oh my, you’re eating so well. Do you want more?”
“Mm-mm!”
“Then shall we have another bite? Here we go, whoooosh. The spoon goes this way, and that way, and whooooosh—where will it go? Into our little one’s mouth! Pop!”
She was doing things at the orphanage she’d never once attempted with her younger charges.
At the orphanage, where food was already scarce, she’d been too busy with open mouths begging to feed.
That thought could make life feel hollow, but then the baby would go *nom*, opening her mouth eagerly, and in that moment Adlen would feel such warmth that everything else melted away.
“Do you remember that child is the Crown Prince of an enemy nation?”
The baby’s meal was nearly finished.
Racalte had appeared at some point after concluding his meeting.
The master only spoke to her when he had something to say.
The bandage on her wrist was still intact. There was no atmosphere suggesting escape.
“Y-yes…… of course…….”
Adlen answered hesitantly, looking bewildered.
“So why are you being so devoted to her care?”
“?”
Adlen tilted her head at Racalte’s words.
What was wrong with raising her well and carefully……?
“Then…… what should I do?”
“Roughly. Just keep her alive.”
“…….”
“Just…… do whatever works.”
She had no intention of lavishing special care or raising her with particular devotion—if she’d meant to, wouldn’t she be making far more fuss than this?
Adlen couldn’t quite accept that she was being particularly devoted in the first place.
“Making such a production over feeding her a single spoonful of rice, wearing your wrist to the bone comforting her cries—that’s devotion.”
“Ah…….”
Now that he mentioned it, it did seem like devotion. Adlen scratched her head sheepishly.
“But…… I can’t just be rough with her either, can I……? She’s not a grown woman; she’s just a baby who knows nothing.”
No matter that she was the Crown Prince of an enemy nation, a baby was a baby. For that reason alone, she deserved to be cherished and treated with care. That was only natural.
“She’s a baby, yes, but she’s the enemy’s Crown Prince. She’s a hostage. Don’t forget that.”
At Racalte’s point, Adlen’s downcast eyes darted back and forth.
What was he saying she should do about treating a hostage?
Not comfort her when she cries, not feed her when she’s hungry?
With no answer coming to mind, she couldn’t respond. Instead, her lips just puffed out in a pout.
“Setting aside the matter of the Crown Prince’s treatment, you yourself have nothing to gain by giving her so much affection.”
“I’m not losing anything by being kind to her…….”
“I’m watching. Your health.”
“……Ah.”
If a bill fell from her wallet every time some part of her ached, she’d certainly understand she was at a loss.
But since it wasn’t visible, the sense of loss didn’t come easily to her.
Yet truthfully, even if she were at a loss, she doubted her behavior would change.
“To me, she’s just a baby who came into my arms…… I want her to be happy and live well, if she can. Being held hostage in an enemy nation at such a young age is already pitiful—if she has to suffer on top of that, it would be too cruel.”
“She’s already enjoying more happiness than she deserves.”
“Eh-eh-eh?”
Adlen found herself entirely unable to agree with the master’s words.
“But the young lady was surely born with both parents, even an uncle…… She must have had excellent nurses and nursemaids…….”
Unlike someone like herself, born without parents, the Crown Prince had been born into a household where both parents lived, blessed by everyone.
Even if one could never receive enough love, there could be no excess of it.
“The nurses and nursemaids who fled the moment the defense line broke?”
“?!”

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