A Void in the Maze Garden
The room, so lively just moments ago, finally fell quiet.
Their guest had made a show of turning up her nose at everything, yet had dutifully played along with every card game and peeked into every music box offered to her. In the end, claiming she couldn’t bear another second, she had abruptly taken her leave.
Adrian dismissed the attendants and began tidying the disheveled parlor with his own hands. Just then, a cool, measured voice broke the silence.
“Was there truly any need to lavish so much effort upon that child?”
Despite the late hour, the Empress stood with immaculate poise. Her expression was as unreadable as frost-covered glass, yet Adrian easily caught the thread of concern running beneath it. A faint smile touched his lips.
“Mother.”
“She is a plaything Imperial Consort Cleo fashioned with no small amount of care. If you meddle heedlessly and Cleo discovers it…”
“You once lamented that the people of this palace are hardly human at all.”
The ruthless infighting within the imperial court was fundamentally no different from the treacherous feuds of the high nobility. Of course, because the imperial throne recognized the right of succession even for princes not born of the Empress, the scale of the palace’s bloody schemes was on an entirely different level.
In the early days of her marriage, the Empress had tried to understand the Emperor. She had tried to change him. She had even questioned whether the fault lay in herself, bending her pride to smooth the rough edges between them. Alone in her chambers, she had always kept her spine straight, carrying herself with dignity and unyielding pride so that she could look upon her reflection with a clear conscience, even when no one was watching.
In truth, she had always been far more worthy of the imperial mantle than the Emperor ever was.
Yet the moment Cleo gave birth to a prince, the Emperor’s demeanor had shifted entirely. He began to sneer in secret at the Empress’s father, the aging Marquis of Integria, treating him with open contempt. He mocked him, insulted him, and ground the old man’s dignity beneath his boot.
The father the Empress had revered all her life had been forced to drop to his knees before the Emperor over the most trivial, meaningless trifle. Had the marquis dared to push back against the crown, the Empress would have been cast aside in disgrace, left without a child, and ultimately deposed. For the Integria Marquisate, that would have meant utter ruin.
It was on that day that the Empress abandoned every lingering scrap of affection for her husband.
From that moment on, she swore to raise her son with absolute care. She would mold him into a man fundamentally different from his father.
She would ensure he could never be trampled by such insolent, shameless beasts. She taught him patience so that petty slights would never wound his pride and cost him what truly mattered, and she bade him sharpen his claws in the dark. She made sure that even if he eventually seized everything the world had to offer, he would never claim the triumph as his alone or crush those beneath him underfoot.
The very pride she could never sacrifice for the Emperor’s sake was something she surrendered gladly for her son. If it meant paving a clear path before him, she would willingly steep her hands in dishonor and shame, not merely blood.
Naturally, turning a cold shoulder to a little girl—a child abandoned by her own flesh and blood from the moment she drew her first breath—should have been effortless. Even if it brought her no joy.
“And yet,” Adrian said softly, “it breaks your heart to think you might become just like them. You once told me that hypocrisy is a luxury, but I know full well you only hardened your heart to protect me.”
Looking away, turning a blind eye—that, too, was violence. That, too, was hypocrisy.
There was no way the Empress did not know this.
She had already waded through countless silent battles against Cleo, orchestrating machinations of her own. Innocent people had been used as pawns and swept off the board in the crossfire. Even so…
“Mother. Surely we can afford to give her at least this much.”
Adrian reached out and gently closed his fingers over his mother’s hands.
“We don’t have to sink into the gutter like Brian and Consort Cleo. I know you’re trying to remain cautious to the bitter end for my sake, but I didn’t grow up to be such a fool that an act of kindness this small would put me in jeopardy.”
All to protect her precious son. All to avoid handing her enemies a single weakness, to deny them any pretext for war.
Adrian understood that devotion better than anyone alive. That was precisely why his heart had plummeted into his stomach the moment he caught Titania smiling and weeping with eyes that looked as though she were biting down on her own tongue.
Pretending to know what she didn’t. Pretending to be oblivious when she knew everything. Playing the utter fool.
It was like staring into a mirror of his own life.
In this palace, exposing a vulnerability or pleading for help earned no mercy. No one spared an ounce of pity. Adrian, at least, had the Empress at his side; mother and son would move heaven and earth for each other. But Titania didn’t even have that.
She was walking a razor-thin tightrope, staking her very life on a desperate gamble every single day. She babbled and giggled like a half-wit, laughing off the venom of the very people trying to exploit and sell her.
Watching her had filled him with gnawing guilt. Even knowing it was nothing more than hypocrisy, he couldn’t stomach it. And so, clumsy as it was, he had reached out his hand.
Adrian drew the Empress into a gentle embrace as she looked up at him with a complex, pained expression, unable to find the words to scold her son.
“…It will be fine, Mother. She’s far cleverer than she lets on. Just look at what happened today. Didn’t she shatter all our expectations? Who knows? Since she’s tied to the Castrein Duchy through her engagement… she might just bring us a windfall we never saw coming.”
Of course, Adrian had no way of knowing that his idle words would come true in the most literal, absurd way possible before long.
Hello! If you’re asking, it’s an utterly peaceful, uneventful afternoon!
One of the very few perks of being a good-for-nothing, neglected imperial princess is that absolutely nobody cares about your education.
There isn’t a soul around to nag if you sleep in until midday. The original Titania had thrown monumental fits about it, crying, ‘They say beauty requires abundant sleep! What are you going to do if my delicate skin gets ruined?!’ and spent half her life curled up in bed.
Under normal circumstances, an unmarried, underage royal resides in the same palace as their birth mother. If their mother has passed away, they live with their adoptive guardian or receive private quarters once they come of age. In other words, the Lilac Palace I visited yesterday was the shared residence of both the Empress and Adrian. It was an enormous, palatial estate worthy of the empire’s first lady, so even while sharing it, they probably rarely ran into each other unless they intended to.
However, the moment Consort Elaine gave birth to Titania, she collapsed into bed and became a permanent invalid. Titania herself had been so frail that everyone whispered she wouldn’t survive past the age of ten.
Naturally, the reasonable question arose: how could a sick woman possibly raise a dying child? And so, I was shipped off to live independently in the Rose Palace.
Then came the political tug-of-war between the Empress and the concubines. They eventually concluded that since her biological mother was still breathing, having another noblewoman oversee her upbringing would be terribly awkward. Thus, Titania’s status ended up floating in absolute limbo.
Around the time she turned seven, one of the few female professors from the empire’s sole academy had been dispatched to teach her basic reading, writing, and general manners for a few years. But before turning ten, Titania was sick so often she could barely attend a single lesson, and once she hit ten, the tutor couldn't even be bothered to pretend to care.
To be fair, the professor only came by during the academy’s seasonal breaks anyway, so it was hardly surprising. She picked up just enough etiquette and literacy to avoid being labeled an illiterate savage, and that was the end of it. Ever since, life had been completely, delightfully free.
The conclusion? I slept until my limbs went numb, rolled out of bed, and strolled over to the library.
“…For an Imperial Family Library, this place is remarkably underwhelming.”
I had dragged myself all the way here—a place the original Titania wouldn't have set foot in if her life depended on it—solely to dig up information on that ridiculous emoticon holy sword currently sniffling ‘Contractooor…’ in the corner of my bedroom.
Unfortunately, my search bore little fruit.
At best, I managed to unearth a single, dusty tome that spoke in vague, flowery metaphors about the origins and monikers of ancient armaments imbued with divine authority. As I flipped idly through the parchment, the name ‘Gloriana’ caught my eye, so I tucked the volume under my arm just in case.
I wondered briefly if I needed to sign a loan slip since this was an imperial archive, but the entire facility was magically maintained and cleaned, and the entrance wards only reacted to imperial bloodline verification. There wasn’t a single librarian in sight.
So, I simply walked right out the front doors with it.
Is this really how they manage the imperial royal archives? Truly? No wonder the empire’s treasures keep going missing.
Well, now that I think about it, if a member of the imperial family walks in and borrows a book, who on earth would have the gall to hound them with a return deadline? If you leave no paper trail, you can just smuggle out whatever you want and plead absolute ignorance, and nobody would ever be the wiser.
Not that I’m complaining. It works out splendidly for me. I had even painstakingly prepared an alibi just in case: ‘I am scouring the glorious history of our empire to find a legendary weapon worthy of my dashing fiancé, so that I may dazzle him with my boundless intellect!’
Back at the Rose Palace, the servants were running around like headless chickens preparing repairs for the burned wing and handling a dozen other chores. And the only time the staff ever paid the slightest bit of attention to me was when I had an appointment to meet Raymon.
Which meant that on ordinary days, when nobody was looking for me and I had no reason to seek anyone out, they left me entirely to my own devices.
Thanks to that glorious neglect, I was currently strolling near the famous Imperial Maze Garden, whistling a jaunty tune under my breath as I took in the crisp afternoon air, when—
“…Bibi?!”
My jaw dropped in sheer horror.
Right in the dead center of the hedge maze, a pitch-black abyss had torn itself open in the earth—and a tiny child was currently plummeting straight into it.
Why on earth is she here?! There wasn’t a single word about this in the novel!
Before my brain could even process the absurdity of the situation, my legs moved on pure instinct. I sprinted forward and threw myself headfirst into the swallowing dark after her.