A Plausible Excuse
The man who served as Elaine's escort knight had always been known as a commoner, but the truth was somewhat different. He had been born into high nobility, only to sever ties with his house and enter the temple, which he later left for reasons of his own. That was the secret he had once confided to Elaine. It was an unconventional past, certainly, but he was a free man now, and they were in love. Elaine had naturally believed he would accept her proposal to run away together. Instead, her lover had spoken with quiet finality.
"…I cannot do that."
"Why?! Why not! You love me, don't you?!"
"God has bestowed a mission upon me. I must protect you."
"If you're supposed to protect me, then why aren't you stopping them from handing me over to that wretched excuse for an Emperor?!"
Elaine had wept and begged until, at last, she dragged the full story from his lips. In the end, it had been devastatingly simple.
The mission God had given her lover was plain: Elaine was destined to enter the imperial palace and give birth to an extraordinary child. His holy charge was to protect the woman who would bear that child. To fulfill that purpose, he had cast aside his name, concealed his noble birth, and taken service as a lowly escort knight to a count's daughter. Hearing those words, Elaine had shattered from within.
"Do you not love me?"
"…"
"Did you only seek me out because of that mission? If not for that… did none of this mean anything to you at all?"
Her lover had answered only with silence, plunging Elaine into absolute despair. Broken and hollow, she gave up on everything, entered the palace, and conceived the Emperor's child.
Not long after giving birth, word of her former lover's death reached her. Elaine had known instinctively then: the man had allowed himself to die. He had never even attempted to flee.
What was God? What was a mission? What was destiny?
Was the child in her womb truly more precious than her very existence?
Elaine despised the newborn infant.
She found it laughable when the palace staff fussed around the baby in a panic, crying that the child was frail and might perish at any moment. If God had decreed her birth for some grand, divine purpose, He would hardly allow the creature to die so easily.
Having long ceased to expect love from her own parents, Elaine had only one person left in the world.
She possessed a secret friend, one whom no one else knew existed. Their first meeting had taken place when Elaine found her collapsed and bleeding in the gardens of the Bradley estate. Ever since Elaine saved her life that day, the woman had slipped past watchful eyes to visit in secret, and before long, they had become irreplaceable companions.
Her friend was nothing like an ordinary noblewoman. Elaine had never once seen her in a gown. It was obvious from a glance that she carried some tremendous, unspoken history.
She wore her hair cropped short and spoke with fearless candor. The faint scent of blood seemed permanently etched into her skin. More than anything, the fact that she could evade imperial surveillance and slip into the palace even after Elaine had become an imperial consort—languishing, sick and bedridden within her lonely quarters for years—only cemented Elaine's certainty of her friend's extraordinary nature.
"Have you been well, Elaine?"
"Where… where have you been all this time? I thought… I thought I was going to die. I missed you so much…"
"…You haven't been well at all, have you? I'm sorry I couldn't come visit you more often."
Looking at the bitter smile on her friend's face, Elaine's heart had suddenly plummeted into her stomach. That gaze. It was a look she knew all too intimately. It was the very same resolve her lover had worn when he declared he could never run away with her. It was the look of someone who had made an irrevocable decision.
"I came to say goodbye."
"Good… bye…?"
"I had a daughter. She's so lovely, so adorable. She has brown hair and the most beautiful blue eyes."
"…"
Elaine had never heard a whisper of her friend marrying, let alone being pregnant. Yet to simply chalk it up to the years they had spent apart felt horribly wrong. An ominous dread rose like bile in her throat. Inside her mind, Elaine pleaded desperately.
Don't abandon me, too. Please, not you. Don't tell me that I was never truly important to you either… I already know that compared to all of you, I have nothing. I am worthless, powerless, unable to escape this place without someone's help. I know I possess no strength of my own…
"You might not entirely understand… but the truth is, this world is in grave danger. I've spent a long time fighting to stop it, and having my baby only hardened my resolve. I intend to pour everything I have into making sure she can live safely. …So that your child can be safer, too."
I need you right now!
Elaine had wanted to scream the words aloud.
Yet she knew. Her friend was embarking on something magnificent, something beyond Elaine's wildest imagination. She was leaving to save the world, to secure a future for the daughter she cherished so deeply.
Her friend was not like Consort Elaine, who had failed to become anyone's beloved lover, cherished child, or true companion—who was rotting away, slowly withering inside the gilded cage of the imperial palace.
Because she was lonely.
Because she desperately wanted someone to need her.
Because she wanted someone to look at her, rather than her newborn daughter who had been betrothed to House Castrein the moment she drew breath—revered, lauded, and coveted by all under grand pretexts.
Elaine could never bring herself to voice such shallow, pathetic grievances. If she heard the friend who had risked everything to slip into the palace just to bid her farewell say something like, Were you always this narrow-minded? Can't you understand me?, she felt she would truly want to die.
"Even if we never see each other again… take care of yourself."
Leaving behind that fleeting smile, her friend had vanished into the shadows.
Her friend had always spoken sparingly of the household she claimed to have walked away from of her own volition. But Elaine had pieced it together easily enough: it was House Castrein. The very house to which Elaine's newborn daughter had been betrothed.
Buried beneath a tangled mire of suffocating emotions, Elaine had thought to herself: I want to die. But…
If I die so easily, Consort Cleo will use Titania's existence to wrap House Castrein around her finger.
She did not care whether House Bradley burned to ash or prospered, but she refused to let harm befall her friend's family. Once Princess Titania came of age, that engagement would reach its conclusion, one way or another.
So until then…
She would endure.
She missed the precious people who had abandoned her alone in the imperial palace with an intensity that bordered on madness—and she loathed them just as fiercely. They spoke so effortlessly of grand notions like the future and the world.
It felt as though everyone was whispering into her ear, telling her, Your only purpose is to play mother to that child. And so Elaine had clenched her teeth and turned her back on Titania.
Predictably, an abandoned child grew crooked and bitter. Whenever reports of the girl's misbehavior reached her ears, Elaine had felt a bizarre mixture of vindictive satisfaction, regret, and doubt.
If bringing that child into the world had required destroying Elaine's entire life—if it had cost Elaine every single person she held dear and condemned her to rot inside this palace—then shouldn't that child have grown into someone far more grand and magnificent?
Perhaps it was because Elaine was her mother. Perhaps it was because a piece of trash like the Emperor was her father. Perhaps this pathetic result was all the girl could ever amount to. Perhaps every single person had made the wrong choice.
That thought had brought Elaine an unsettling blend of twisted satisfaction and guilt. If the child remained broken until she reached adulthood, Elaine believed she could die more contented than anyone. Perhaps, in the end, she might even find it in herself to pity the girl.
Yet things had shifted. Though not a single soul had ever acted as a parent to her, the child had grown tall and strong on her own…
And now, she could look upon her own birth mother with those eyes.
Just like the ones who had left Elaine behind. Aloof, untouchable, as though she alone stood righteous and magnificent.
"So let us see how this unfolds," Elaine murmured with a faint, hollow chuckle, a smile as fragile and pale as the dawn mist.
"Are you alright?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
I offered a bright smile to the Empress, looking at her through eyelids barely kept from swelling by an ice compress. Her expression was grim, practically radiating maternal worry. Beside her, Adrian's usual easygoing grin had vanished completely without a trace.
"With so many people worrying over me, it would hardly be rational to let myself be shaken every time by someone when I can't even tell if she genuinely cares about me."
"…"
The Empress let out a quiet sigh.
"You do not need to push yourself so hard. Nor do you need to disguise your feelings. …You are still young, child. There is no reason to bottle everything up inside so tightly…"
"How is His Majesty holding up?" I asked, deliberately changing the subject with breezy nonchalance. "I imagine he must be in rather high spirits."
Catching on to my intentional deflection, the Empress fell quiet for a heartbeat before answering.
"…He came to me, asking whether it might be wise to bestow a new residence upon Consort Elaine, claiming the Licorice Palace has grown far too dilapidated."
"Oh."
I let out an appreciative sound. What a breathtaking pile of nonsense. The inner palace's domestic affairs were managed far more by Consort Cleo than by the Empress.
Granted, a matter as momentous as granting an entirely new palace technically fell under the Empress's jurisdiction. But had the Emperor ever cared about proper decorum or established protocol before? He had spent years treating the Empress like a decorative sack of barley while doing whatever pleased him.
Adrian chimed in, giving a casual shrug.
"From what I gathered, he's desperate to shower her with mountains of lavish gifts under the excuse of, 'Well, wouldn't this be far more practical than granting an entire palace?' But he doesn't have a solid justification to bestow such treasures out of nowhere. And if he gives them directly, he's terrified of court whispers accusing him of favoring a mere consort excessively. So he's dropping hints, hoping Mother will bestow them on his behalf instead."
"Wow! What a petty loser!"
"Well, he's clearly walking on eggshells around Consort Cleo as well."
I had expected as much. He had probably gotten entirely swept up in the moment in front of Consort Elaine, grandly boasting about how he would give her this and grant her that, only to find himself in an awkward bind the second he turned his back.
"In that case, shall we hand His Majesty a plausible excuse?"
I smiled brightly, and both pairs of eyes snapped toward me at once.