The Maid With a Child - Chapter 9

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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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9. Damned Either Way
“?”
Even as her face drained of color like parchment, Adlen found herself confused. By now, there would have been more than enough time to sever her head a dozen times over.
Yet the masked assailant did not move the blade further. Instead, he posed a question.
“Are you from Morn, by any chance?”
It was an absurdly out-of-place inquiry.
Adlen could not speak with the steel pressed against her throat, so she shook her head.
The assailant asked another question.
“Your parents—they aren’t from Morn either?”
“?”
Was this an assassination attempt or an interview?
The masked man showed no immediate intention of killing her. Rather, he seemed to recognize something in her—prying into personal details as though searching for a connection.
She could not possibly be someone he knew, yet this moment was an opening.
“P-please, spare me. I’m just a servant who knows nothing.”
Adlen’s voice trembled like the bleat of a goat as she pleaded.
Unexpectedly, her plea worked.
The assailant’s eyes narrowed as he studied her, then drew his blade slightly back.
“I’ve no interest in killing useless people. Just hand over the child quietly.”
So that was the real purpose after all.
Adlen bit her lip.
This was precisely what she’d been dreading.
Was some divine servant watching her from somewhere, testing the depth of her dedication? *Let us see just how exceptional you are as a servant,* they seemed to whisper.
Give up the child now and plead for your own life—fail as a servant. Refuse in the name of your master’s orders—fail as a living person. Both paths led to ruin.
But even if she surrendered the child and survived this moment, wouldn’t her master eventually kill her anyway? If not by his hand, then by execution for the Crime of Defying Royal Command.
Adlen clutched the child tighter and held her ground.
The assailant’s eyes grew even narrower.
“Do you know what that child is and still refuse?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You do?”
“I—I know, so I c-can’t hand them over. Dead either way if I give them up, dead either way if I don’t.”
Besides, the masked man could silence her permanently with a single blade stroke.
Every choice led to the same conclusion: death, death, death.
Even as her life hung by a thread, the sheer absurdity of her fate nearly made her laugh.
Perhaps facing such odds repeatedly teaches a person nerve—or perhaps it simply breaks the mind.
“True enough. Then let me propose something different. Come with me to Morn instead—what say you?”
And remarkably, the assailant seemed to accept her logic and offered a new proposal in its place.
What manner of assassin was this?
Yet she could not afford to consider it.
“If I refuse, I die right here?”
“If you and the child leave with me now, I’ll see you settled wherever you wish. Morn or anywhere else.”
“…!”
Her resolve wavered. Deeply, powerfully wavered.
The situation was the same either way—death was equally certain. She had no family in Teplan, no connections, nothing at all.
If that was true, she could take what she needed and slip away to some quiet corner of the world.
“Decide quickly.”
The masked man, sensing her hesitation, pressed her for an answer.
“I… I…”
But would her master ever truly forget her?
If she fled now, it would be the ultimate betrayal of Sigelion’s honor.
Could such a betrayal ever be forgiven?
Her master would hunt her to the ends of the earth—to Morn or anywhere else. She would be found. She was certain of it, remembering the cold light in those eyes as they had studied her.
A rabid dog that never released its prey. The bloodstained blade of the Emperor.
That man, to whom such nicknames clung so perfectly, would surely take her life by his own hand.
“So… that is…”
Adlen’s choice was already made. If death was inevitable either way, she would find the means to delay it as long as possible.
“Please, save me, master!”
There was only one moment to seize.
Now, when the masked man believed she might surrender—when his blade had drawn back just slightly.
Adlen screamed with all her strength and hurled herself toward the floor.
Clang!
“?!”
A sound rang out that shattered her original plan.
The idea had been to dodge the blade coming at her, roll magnificently across the floor in two and a half turns until she reached the corridor wall, then crawl away like a cockroach toward the intruder’s blind side—in theory.
Of course, it was only something she’d imagined, so its chances of working were decidedly slim, but she’d gone through with it anyway, desperate for her survival instinct to pull off a miracle.
Yet the intruder’s blade met resistance—another weapon had flown in from somewhere and knocked it aside.
“…Master?!”
And impossibly, as if answering her call, Master actually appeared.
How on earth had he managed to materialize at exactly the right moment, as though he’d been waiting all along?
With his miraculous arrival, he brushed past Adlen, who’d collapsed with wide eyes, and dropped a single icy word in his wake.
“I saw you wavering about running.”
“……”
I’m finished.
I should have bolted when he said to bolt.
Greed always brings punishment.
Master discarded the blade he’d thrown and drew another, and in that same instant, knights came pouring out from all sides.
“?!”
Adlen turned to stone.
All those people had been watching her the entire time. If things had gone differently, she could have died as a pincushion, bristling with arrows.
“I’ll give you this much—you’ve got nerve. I didn’t expect you to walk straight into the lion’s den like this.”
Racalt addressed the intruder.
Even surrounded completely, the intruder showed no sign of panic.
“And there you are, General Racalt, walking about in perfect health. I could’ve sworn those wounds were bad enough to keep you bedridden for weeks.”
“Enough strength to take your head, General Kias.”
Under different circumstances, it would have sounded like old friends talking.
“Pity I won’t get to see that pretty face after it’s parted from your neck.”
“Then you’ll have to wait and see.”
Their exchange was brief.
Racalt immediately signaled his knights. In a heartbeat, arrows, spears, and nets came hurtling toward the intruder.
Clang! Bang!
But the intruder was far from passive.
She’d thought he was alone, but masked figures came swarming from everywhere—reinforcements.
“!”
Racalt’s brow twitched. He’d suspected backup was hidden somewhere, but there were far more than he’d anticipated.
In an instant, the corridor erupted into something close to a brawl.
“Ahhh!”
Even as the combatants rained blows on each other indiscriminately, the intruders didn’t forget their primary target—Adlen.
A Dagger whistled past, grazing her hair, and Adlen screamed in terror. There was nowhere to run; fighting was breaking out in every direction.
All she could do was press herself flat against the ground, clutch the child to her chest, and pray to Master.
In a moment like this, Master mattered far more than any god. There was no question about it.
Her prayer was answered sooner than expected.
“Chase them down!”
Having gotten what they came for—the child—the intruders bolted the moment an opening appeared.
At Racalt’s command, the knights gave chase.
Heavy footsteps thundered away into the distance.
“Wahhh… please… help me…”
But Adlen, too panicked and crying to understand what was happening, remained lost in her fear.
“I’ll think about whether to let you live or not, starting right now.”
“!”
At that moment, Master’s voice dropped from above her—cold as ice, dripping with menace.
The chill jolted Adlen back to herself, and she lifted her head.
The sight before her made her swallow hard.
Blood was splattered everywhere, testament to the ferocity of the battle.
“Huh… hhgh…!”
The color drained from Adlen’s face.
She turned and found herself staring up into Master’s cold, unwavering eyes—eyes fixed on her while he held a blade dripping with blood.
The warmth in those eyes spoke volumes.
Will you be next, or will you be spared?
“I-I’m sorry! Please, just let me live!”
Adlen seized the hem of Racalt’s trousers and wailed.
“…Sigh.”
Racalt had nearly committed to this betrayal, but he lingered in the torment of deciding whether to kill or spare the traitor he’d already condemned. Yet even one as cold as he could not bring himself to choose death first when faced with the pleas of a commoner, a handmaid of his own household, a fragile woman.
“Get up. It seems we’ll need to renegotiate.”
Racalt spoke to Adlen in a glacial tone, shaking his leg to peel away her clinging form in one fluid motion.
“Yes, yes, of course…….”
Having narrowly escaped with her life, Adlen scrambled to her feet before her master could change his mind.
“?”
But something unexpected unfolded.

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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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