The Snow Leopard Baby of the Black Leopard Family - Chapter 8

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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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Chapter 8
Cassius found himself at a loss for words.
‘……A barn? A storage shed?’
He looked down at the small girl trembling before him.
Wherever had this tiny child spent her life, and how?
She met her own father and, rather than resent him, spoke as though sleeping in a barn or storage shed would be perfectly acceptable.
Cassius could not begin to fathom what trials his young daughter must have endured to speak such words.
Moreover, the expression on the child’s face was so fragile, as though tears might spill at any moment, that Cassius found himself wanting to weep alongside her.
‘I thought she was dead.’
After Lena disappeared while heavy with child, Cassius had searched the entire empire for her, yet could not find so much as the hem of her dress.
Desperate to know even whether the child lived or died, he had combed through every orphanage in the empire, poring over lists of children day and night—easily dozens of times.
Clinging to the slimmest hope that the child might yet be alive.
Years passed, and the Nestian family formally notified the Asterian that Lena had died.
Lena Nestian, they said, had perished in childbirth the very year she vanished.
Along with the child.
The Asterian had held a funeral for Lena and the dead child without ever receiving her body.
Yet here the daughter he believed dead stood before him, alive and well.
Cassius felt a terrible helplessness at the thought that he had done nothing to prevent her suffering.
At the same time, guilt consumed him—he had never once held his own daughter since the day she was born.
He reached toward the child instinctively.
After losing Lena, Cassius’s dreams had always been visited by Lena and his daughter, whose face remained blurred.
He had heard them calling to him in phantom voices hundreds of times. He wished to find solace in the child’s small warmth.
He wished to know that the girl standing before him now was truly alive—not merely a dream, a phantom voice, or some hallucination he had endured all these years.
But when Cassius’s hand reached toward her, the child squeezed her eyes shut.
Perhaps she thought he meant to strike her. Beneath his hand, her small frame trembled visibly.
Unable to fathom the depth of her wounds, he slowly withdrew his hand.
Only then did the child open her eyes slowly and step back beside Ian, putting distance between herself and Cassius.
He had countless questions burning to ask her.
Where had she been all this time? How had she lived? Had she eaten enough? And Lena—what had become of her?
But judging by the child’s state, he sensed these were not questions he could ask now. He decided to give her time.
His expression clouded, Cassius rubbed his face with dry hands. He turned his gaze beyond the closed reception room door and spoke.
“Is anyone there?”
At his summons, two maids standing outside the door entered the reception room and bowed respectfully.
They were two maids with kind expressions—one with reddish-brown hair, the other with auburn.
“Take the child away. She seems startled, so give her something warm to eat and prepare a temporary room for her.”
He paused before continuing.
“She seems wary of strangers, so see that she doesn’t encounter the other servants.”
Cassius looked down at Thiel and asked as though seeking permission.
“I have matters to discuss with our guests. Could you leave for a while?”
Thiel glanced between Ian and Cedric for a moment, then nodded slowly.
The maid standing to Cassius’s right smiled softly and extended her hand to Thiel.
The small girl grasped the maid’s hand firmly and hurried out of the reception room in quick, short steps.
***
‘……Is he very angry with me?’
Thiel wondered as the maid led her along in quick steps.
The moment she said she wished to stay here, Cassius’s expression had gone rigid and cold.
He had given no response at all about her staying at the Asterian.
Neither yes nor no. Nothing.
So Thiel naturally understood his silence as a refusal.
Even as she walked holding the maid’s hand, her eyes kept stinging, and she could not lift her head.
‘……What am I going to do now?’
He despised her. He would hardly give her money to live on outside.
So if she were cast out from here, she would truly be thrown out with nothing. Thiel glanced down at the dress she wore.
It was kind Ian and Cedric who had bought it for her……but perhaps she would have to sell this dress to pay for her meals.
The thought filled her with such remorse toward Ian and Cedric that tears began to pour down her cheeks again.
By then, Thiel and the maids had arrived at a small, pretty room beside the kitchen.
Because it sat just next to the kitchen, the scent of freshly baked bread wafted into the room.
The maid led Thiel to where a small, pretty cream-colored sofa sat.
“Now, if you would sit here……, miss?”
Only then did the maid notice that the small girl’s face was covered entirely in tears, and her eyes widened.
“Goodness, what’s wrong? Shall I bring you back to Cassius?”
The maid seemed to think the girl was crying from being separated from her father.
Thiel shook her head frantically.
“No, hiccup, no…….”
Once the tears began, they would not stop. Thiel wiped at them frantically with a troubled expression.
The maid spoke with concern as she watched Thiel.
“If you rub so roughly, you might hurt yourself. Wait here and I’ll bring you some water to wash with right away! Ria, stay with the young lady!”
Thiel wanted to stop her, but the kind maid had already rushed from the room.
Not long after, the maid who had left saying she would fetch water returned.
She gently asked permission before carefully wiping the child’s face with a soft touch.
She finished by gently patting the small face dry with a soft towel.
Just then, the maid called Ria appeared, carrying a tray from the kitchen laden with pastries and bread.
They were the cookies from earlier that Thiel had missed eating when Cassius had entered so loudly.
Rumble—
An embarrassing sound came from Thiel’s stomach. The girl wrapped her arms around her middle, her face flushing crimson.
“This is……!”
She tried to offer an excuse, but none came to mind.
The maids smiled knowingly at the child and began setting desserts one by one on the small tea table before the sofa.
“It’s lunchtime, so of course you’re hungry. While Cassius discusses matters with his guests, do eat these first.”
The maid placed a fork in Thiel’s hand.
Only then did Thiel nod.
If she was going to be cast out anyway, it was best to eat as much as she could.
Once she left the Asterian, she didn’t know when she’d have warm food again.
‘Warm food’ was not even the issue. If cast out, she might have to rummage through garbage bins in the streets to survive.
‘……I should eat as much as possible.’
She would eat enough to go two days without hunger, even after being thrown out.
With this resolve, Thiel gripped the fork firmly with all five fingers.
The child had rarely used a fork in Nestian, but she knew how from watching Rowen use one.
Thiel clumsily stabbed the corner of a cake and brought it to her mouth.
The sweet-bitter taste of chocolate and the tongue-melting sweetness of whipped cream swept across her palate.
Thiel’s eyes widened.
Soon after, she began mindlessly pushing cake into her mouth.
***
Ian explained to Cassius how he had come to meet Thiel.
How pathetic the child had looked when she spoke of running away from her grandfather in fear.
He also mentioned the scars that covered Thiel’s body and how the Nestian had dismissed her as a “mad little servant” when she fled.
Cedric added his own account.
“Throughout the carriage ride, she was very anxious. She ate nothing at all, seeming too nervous to take a meal…….”
Cassius, who had been listening in silence, clenched his teeth.
Rage rose to the top of his head, and he could barely contain it.
What in the world had they done to that small child?
‘……I can guess, of course.’
Why the Nestian house had hidden and raised Lena Nestian’s daughter.
The two great houses of the Panther Clan—Nestian and Asterian—had been locked in enmity since ancient times.
The Frost Panther with the Innate Ability of ice, and the Black Panther with the Innate Ability of flame.
Whenever a new Head of House was appointed, the two families would gather and test their Innate Abilities against each other. The house with the stronger Innate Ability would become the Clan Leader.
This was a rule passed down through the ages.
And for six generations now, the Asterian had held the position of Clan Leader.
Because of this, Nestian’s power had dwindled with each passing year until it had long since become merely a hollow title of nobility.
The Clan Leader’s house controlled everything that belonged to the Panther Clan.
Both the Ewald Duchy of the Asterian and the Buchanan Duchy of the Nestian fell under the Asterian’s rule.
And so the Nestian had no choice but to despise and oppose the Asterian as long as this rule existed.
After all, ice defeating flame was nearly impossible.
Into such circumstances was born Lena Nestian, a wielder of a formidable ice Innate Ability.
Lena Nestian.
She possessed an Innate Ability far stronger than Cassius Asterian, the most promising heir to the Head of House of the Asterian.
So everyone believed that when Lena and Cassius became Heads of House, the Nestian would naturally become the Clan Leader.
That is, unless Lena refused the position.
‘I am not suited to be Head of House of the Nestian, Father.’
For reasons of her own, Lena had refused the position of Head of House and chosen instead to become the wife of Cassius Celestus Asterian.
By her choice, the Nestian lost what would have been their strongest heir and the future Clan Leader of the Panther Clan.
Cornelia Nestian, now the designated next Head of House, lacked both the strength of her elder sister’s Innate Ability and a noble character, making her unsuitable for the role. If things continued as they were, the Asterian would once again become the Clan Leader.
‘……That’s why they hid the child.’
Because she was Lena’s daughter.
They must have hidden and raised her believing the child would be born with a tremendous Innate Ability.
If the child’s Innate Ability awakened powerfully, the Nestian could become the Clan Leader’s house.
They meant to use a small child as a pawn in the adults’ political games.
Cassius felt disgust at the transparent, dark schemes of those people.
Just then, someone knocked urgently on the reception room door. Cassius allowed whoever it was to enter.
The one who entered was the maid who had taken Thiel away earlier.
Beads of sweat dotted her forehead as though she had run here in haste.
The maid spoke hurriedly.
“The……the young lady the guest brought……!”
When she said “the young lady the guest brought,” there could be no one but Thiel.
At the maid’s words, all three men jumped to their feet.

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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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