The Maid With a Child - Chapter 72

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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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72. How Dare You Touch My Person
If the Baby had squealed with delight the moment Adlen scooped her up, Kias might have let her keep her—just to seem magnanimous. But she did nothing of the sort.
“Let her go! I won’t let anyone take our baby’s happiness away!”
“What are you—”
Adlen’s grip on his leg was stronger than he’d anticipated. He could have kicked free, could have thrown her off with ease, but something held him back—some reluctance to use force against the woman he’d just rescued.
Even a brigand needed principles, it seemed.
“If you take the baby, there will be war! I won’t allow it! You can’t take her!”
Adlen’s voice climbed higher, sharper with each word.
The Baby’s wails joined the chorus, and the noise threatened to split Kias’s skull in two.
“What do you know of war? What do you know of that child to speak so carelessly? To play at caring?”
But Kias, too, refused to yield, his voice rising to match her own.
Heat flooded his mind all at once, and he couldn’t contain it.
The child of his youngest sister, his only sibling, dead through senseless accident—and the last seed that would carry on her line. This sole heir.
Kias had crossed the Line of Death a dozen times over to reclaim this child.
Raiding an enemy stronghold in the heart of hostile territory was impossible without accepting death. His subordinates had already fallen countless times in previous assaults. Yet Kias never resented their sacrifice. For the Baby, their deaths were necessary, inevitable. He would have given his own life just as readily.
Kias was as prepared to lay down his own life as any of them.
Far more than his life hung in the balance for the Baby.
If one truly understood the weight of that existence, one could never leave such a child by the lakeside like some common babe, wasting away the idle hours in play.
Keeping a whale in a fishbowl and calling it happiness.
There were limits even to such arrogance.
Kias set the Baby down briefly beside him, then pried Adlen away with both arms.
Against limbs as unyielding as timber, all her strength was useless.
Adlen hit the ground hard.
“There! Over there!”
By luck, someone’s ears caught the shout.
The sound of approaching footsteps echoed from beyond the trees.
Too slow—but not slow enough.
“Damn it.”
Kias cursed under his breath.
Every time he saw this woman, something rose to the surface—something that made him hesitate to kill her. He should have done it from the start, without a moment’s doubt.
His body had moved on instinct to save her from danger, but he should have let her die for the Baby’s sake.
There was no time to drown in regret.
Kias reached for the Baby to flee.
“Adieu!”
But the Baby, moving with that familiar swift grace, scurried before he could touch her and burrowed into Adlen’s arms instead.
Adlen clutched the child tight against her chest and pressed herself flat to the ground.
Politics, schemes, explanations—none of it mattered now. She would not surrender the baby. And if she did hand her over, it would only be to someone she was absolutely certain loved her more than she did.
“……Tch.”
Buying time by holding her ground—it had been the right choice after all.
The riders who came thundering up were Racalte’s knights, flanked by Sigelion’s guard.
“Bold, aren’t you, General Kias.”
“!”
Adlen’s eyes flew open, tears of relief spilling down her cheeks.
“Sir Racalte!”
In an instant, Sigelion’s knights encircled Kias.
“Is this all you prepared?”
“…….”
Kias said nothing and drew his blade.
Racalte, too, dispensed with words and met him with steel. But their duel was brief.
Kias had hidden reinforcements of his own. Covering fire erupted from all sides to shield his escape.
Kias used the chaos to flee.
Racalte had no way to cut through the hail of arrows and pursue.
“……We’ve lost him.”
The skirmish died down, both sides withdrawing without decisive victory.
Yet for those brief moments of combat, the ferocity had been absolute—Racalte and his knights all heaving ragged breaths.
“Hah……”
Racalte exhaled slowly, his gaze lifting to the sky.
From the Royal Palace to this place, he had ridden without pause.
Upon arrival, he had run himself ragged searching for the missing Adlen, and the moment he heard her scream, combat had begun immediately.
A succession of moments so breathless he scarcely remembered drawing air at all.
Racalte had barely steadied his breathing when he turned to look at Adlen.
“Adlen, are you all righ—”
“Master! Waahhhhh!”
Adlen threw herself into Racalte’s arms, rushing toward him as he knelt and tried to check on her.
Racalte held her tight, gathering her close.
“Wahhhhh! Ohhhhh!”
Ewin, that damned bastard—and Kias’s sudden reappearance, nearly losing the Baby—it all crashed down at once.
Adlen’s mind reeled from the cascade of horrors.
There was only one person she could trust, only one person to lean on: her master.
She couldn’t even speak of what had happened; she could only weep.
Racalte held her in silence, waiting until her sobs subsided—small mercy enough for a shattered comrade-in-arms.
But the rage boiling beneath his skin was something he could not name.
* * *
Once home and finally calm, Adlen recounted everything Ewin had done in meticulous detail.
At the Lakeside, Stenker’s knights heard the sounds of combat and arrived too late, collecting the fallen Ewin and carrying him away.
At the time, Racalte had assumed Ewin was another victim of Kias’s cruelty.
“I should have pinned it on Kias and left him dead.”
Racalte ground his teeth, bitterly regretting the opportunity lost.
“He dares lay a hand on my people? The audacity.”
Adlen had never seen him this incensed.
She’d thought of them as colleagues—he’d called them that more than once, treated them that way—but she’d assumed it was merely a formal designation, a word without deeper weight.
Yet his reaction was that of a true comrade-in-arms, one who’d fought back-to-back on the battlefield, struck by an unexpected blade.
“What would you have me do?”
“I—what do you…?”
“I’ll handle it however you wish.”
“I haven’t really thought about what to do with him. I’m just grateful it didn’t end worse, that we’re all safe.”
She didn’t want to think deeper, didn’t want to be entangled further.
Racalte’s eyes hardened as he watched her shake her head weakly.
“Men like that must be crushed thoroughly. Otherwise they’ll never hesitate to do it again.”
In the military, there were always troublemakers.
If you let them off lightly—”People make mistakes, after all”—they’d inevitably cause the same disaster twice over. Only when they truly grasped that there were consequences did they refrain from repeating it.
Those capable of genuine remorse don’t cause trouble in the first place.
“Then…perhaps ensure I never cross paths with him again, anywhere.”
“Bar him from society entirely?”
“Can you do that?”
“There’s nothing I can’t do.”
It wasn’t difficult.
Especially since no specific punishment had been mandated, the methods were limitless.
Among countless options, Racalte resolved to employ the most vicious.
* * *
An accident lasts only a moment, but its aftermath lingers.
Though she was unaware, the wound left in her heart bled in ways she couldn’t see.
“Mmm…ah…don’t…”
Adlen whimpered in her sleep.
Racalte opened his eyes quietly and approached the sofa in the Living Room where Adlen and Habel slept together.
At first, even the sound of his footsteps would wake her; now she wouldn’t stir until after his morning training. Her senses had dulled.
But tonight was different from that peaceful rest.
She was trapped beneath a nightmare, unable to wake.
It revealed the true depth of the wound carved into her heart.
Since she’d told the story herself, she must have omitted the most painful and shameful parts. Even accounting for that, it had been a terrible ordeal.
“…Mm…”
Adlen whimpered again.
Still no sign of waking.
After watching her for a long moment, Racalte exhaled slowly and reached out his hand.
Of all people, it had been Kias who pulled her from that living nightmare.
To maintain his standing as her master, he had to be the one to save her from the one in dreams.

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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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