I vaguely realized this wasn’t my solitary prison, but the King’s royal chambers.
I remembered when my King was still alive, he often held my brother and me in this very room, teaching us to read and write.
My Queen Mother would bring me warm, fragrant honey cakes she’d baked herself.
But I couldn’t even recall their taste anymore.
“You’re awake.””
Kael approached, his face expressionless. He gripped my jaw, pouring a bowl of incredibly bitter blood-tonic medicine down my throat.
His strength was immense. I choked, my eyes stinging red.
“Lyra, don’t look at me with such pitiful eyes!”
Kael sneered. “Even if your hands are clean, unstained by my kin’s blood, as long as you were born into that royal family, you are not innocent.”
The day our kingdom fell, he slaughtered every last royal bloodline of the former regime.
Even the fully formed child in my womb, his own flesh and blood, he did not spare.
Only I was left alive.
I didn’t understand… was this love, or hatred?
It must be hatred.
That’s why he later made me soak night after night in freezing, potent herbal baths, designed to steal away my ability to bear children.
He wanted me to be completely barren. He didn’t want me to bear his children.
He despised me, my lineage tainted.
I wiped the medicine from the corner of my mouth. Before I could speak, a joyous shout came from
outside.
“Your Majesty! The royal healers have confirmed Her Majesty Lena is with child!”
Kael’s expression froze, then his voice filled with excitement: “Are you serious? Lena is pregnant?”
My gaze was distant, watching the joy of a new father spread across his face.
Perhaps the parasites began gnawing again, for my hand instinctively clutched my chest. It hurt so
much.
I had intended to die alone in my desolate prison when the poison finally took hold.
But Kael, of all times, sent me to attend to Lena now.
He knew exactly how to inflict the cruelest torment upon me.
A swift death would have been merciful. Instead, he wanted me to witness, with my own eyes, other women bearing his children.
While our own child, whom he’d personally ripped from my womb, lay buried on the back hill, a lone,
unmarked grave, not even a simple headstone.
Lena smiled at me, a soft, saccharine smile.
“You, born of nobility, my dear sister, His Majesty asks you to serve me, but I couldn’t possibly make you do menial tasks. Just clean up the fallen petals in the front courtyard.”‘
I picked up the broom, looking at the courtyard blanketed in peach blossoms.
3:56 pm
く
Other palace maids openly rolled their eyes at me, their voices filled with disdain.
“A princess from the fallen regime, she’s lucky to be left to rot in her cold palace. Only our Queen is kind enough to call her ‘sister.”
“Noble born? Ha! She’s clearly lower than the cheapest concubine, utterly despised by His Majesty. If I were her, I wouldn’t have the audacity to cling to life so shamelessly.”
Red rashes slowly began to appear on my skin.
I gasped for breath, and suddenly felt a warm liquid trickling from my nose.
I reached up, touching it, and froze.
“Ah!”
