At the End of the Shattered Remains of Pure Love - Chapter 12

It must have been dawn. Elaine looked at her husband immersed in the deep blue darkness. He was now her master, not her husband. So it was the same for the child. Her child was not a child to him, but merely a possession. Something that could be sold off at any time….

And Ellen couldn’t bear such a tragedy. What if she had died, unable to overcome the labor pains? She didn’t know that the pain of being alive could be this great.

“Honey.”

Khalil called her. The man who had been by her side for a full day was in a disheveled state. He was still in his ceremonial attire and was just holding her hand, unable to do anything about the blood that had stained him from her.

“How are you here?”

“Because you’re sick.”

“I mean….”

“My bedroom is still your room. Our daughter will grow up here. Nothing changes.”

“How can nothing change?”

Elaine asked again. The man didn’t contort his face. He just looked down at the whimpering child. Elaine was so full of hatred that she couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t hold the child or br*eastfeed.

“I will always do my best for you. No matter what others say about us, no matter how you think of me….”

“How dare you, how dare you….”

She bit her lip to avoid being consumed by sobs. Khalil tried to wipe her cheeks. She roughly pushed the man away and trembled violently. After glaring at him as if she would die, she embraced his neck.

She didn’t want to lose it. It was better to ruin it with her own hands than to have it taken away. Yes. It was better to ruin everything with her own hands.

***

Time passed. The Crown Prince, who had ‘survived’ the treason without a scratch, was as tall and upright as a straight-grown tree. He was already eight years old.

It seemed like a leisurely afternoon at a glance. Ferlin, the Prince’s attendant, quickly moved his steps through the corridor. Thus, he arrived at the Prince’s study. The Prince, who had been informed of his arrival, ordered the door to be opened. Soon, the tightly closed door of the study opened, revealing a boy with his back to the light.

“…She ran away?”

“Yes.”

Sweat trickled down. Ferlin also couldn’t believe what he had heard. But it was clear that she had run away.

Ferlin, the Prince’s attendant, recalled the small child who he wasn’t sure whether to call a ‘fiancée’ or a ‘bedroom maid’, and looked at the Prince. He was only eight years old. Yet he was as tall as if he were at least twelve. Wasn’t it said that Adams originally grow abnormally fast? And then, as if they stop growing at a certain age, they don’t age. It was a story he had read in an old book.

“Where to?”

“We are in the process of determining her whereabouts.”

Ferlin answered briefly while observing his master. Nothing could be read from his insensitive gaze. He mulled over what he had been notified from the Imperial Palace. This dawn, Count Spetunia’s bedroom maid had run away with the child.

The Imperial family was furiously angry about this. The Emperor was as upset as the Empress, and Count Spetunia was in trouble again. How would the Crown Prince react to this situation?

Ferlin moved his lips while looking at the expressionless boy. The Prince, unlike other children, didn’t show his emotions well. It wasn’t that he was poor at expressing himself or accustomed to wearing a mask. He was born with a narrow range of emotions. He began to speak, blaming himself for not getting used to the boy even after eight years.

“That’s right. It seems her mother kidnapped her from Count Spetunia.”

“That’s mine…”

The Prince murmured. He put down the quill he had been moving slowly, without making a sound. Ferlin swallowed dry saliva with a strange tension. The purple eyes, whose mood was hard to read, searched the empty air.

The Prince met the child once a week. From when that child came into the world until now. The two-year-old child was the Prince’s living doll.

“We will find her.”

Ferlin answered heavily.

The boy, who had no childlike aspects at all, stood up and entered the small bedroom connected to the study. The child’s study room, which would be used as an office in the future, was connected to a small bedroom where Count Spetunia’s illegitimate daughter stayed once a week.

The bedroom had beige wallpaper with gentle imprints of white apple blossoms, and antique-style furniture like a dressing table that a two-year-old baby wouldn’t need.

He walked past the portraits of beautiful noble ladies of the court to the round bed where the baby was usually placed. The portraits of noble ladies hanging in the room were all portraits of past the Emperors’ Eves.

The bed was egg-shaped, originating from when the Prince saw Count Spetunia’s swaddled illegitimate daughter and called her a ‘chick’.

‘Since she’s a chick, she should be in an egg.’

Ferlin recalled that dizzying moment. The baby’s mother, shining with strange hostility, and the stiffened father of the baby didn’t seem to care at all, which was cheerful. The attendant found this aspect of him both chilling and gloomy. Far from being cheerful, he didn’t have an affectionate side even to his own parents.

As soon as he saw the Count’s swaddled daughter, he called her a ‘chick’, and then ordered the imperial craftsman to make an egg-shaped bed frame, saying that chicks sleep well in eggs.

The bed that the Prince had personally prepared was extremely luxurious. It wasn’t just a wooden frame, but was decorated with gold and jewels, making it incomparably lavish. Thanks to this, it had recently become fashionable among wealthy nobles to give such egg-shaped beds as gifts to babies.

“Your Highness.”

The boy picked up a small rabbit doll from inside the bed.

“My chick should be in my egg, Ferlin. Because she’s a baby born for me. Right?”

The boy asked, turning around while fiddling with the cloth doll. Ferlin felt a slight chill and closed his mouth.

The Prince often said such things about his Eve. That his future loyal subject, Count Spetunia, had impregnated a hen for him. He couldn’t find a response to the boy’s murmuring with an indifferent face, without any childlike mischief.

But he was the Crown Prince and an Adam. There was no one to refute him. Besides, it wasn’t particularly wrong. That child was prepared for the Prince. If the Prince hadn’t been born, there would have been not even a small point of contact between that child’s parents.

“So they kidnapped her from me.”

The Prince chewed over each word. For a moment, a strong force pressed on his knees, almost making them buckle. Ferlin suppressed a groan and knelt on the floor with his knees where the force had been applied.

***

Despite the Imperial family’s fierce anger, Count Spetunia couldn’t find his concubine and daughter for a long time. He searched thoroughly from Copena, his concubine’s hometown, to the farm in Pesa where they had stayed, but all those who could have hidden the mother and daughter had just passed away.

This was because after the execution of the eldest son, Simon, the Marche couple, who were Simon and Elaine’s parents, had taken their own lives. The situation of the remaining siblings was also miserable. The Marche brothers, who had once lived wealthy lives with the help of their son-in-law, were degraded to slaves and were to be sold as slaves to nearby farms.

Among them, the second and third sons took their own lives, and the fourth son fled abroad. So there wasn’t a suitable place for Elaine to hide with her daughter. Yet, the Count couldn’t find his daughter and concubine. To this, a nobleman sneered with a sullen expression.

‘Could it be that Count Spetunia is hiding them?’

‘Why would Count Spetunia do such a thing…’

‘That concubine must have been quite extraordinary. I heard she couldn’t grasp her position even in normal times, and recently her denial of reality had become severe.’

Dissatisfied murmurs echoed off the high ceiling. The Emperor didn’t want to suspect his friend, but it was taking longer than expected. The next day, he deployed the Imperial Guard to Count Spetunia’s search party. The search began again from Copena to Pesa. As entry to the capital was controlled, armed soldiers were stationed in the square and at the triumphal arch.

But unbelievably, they couldn’t find a trace. How could they disappear so completely? How could a young woman with no one to rely on, without even a male protector, with a two-year-old child, go this far…

As they repeatedly lost leads even after deploying the Imperial knights, now even the Empress suspected Count Spetunia. However, the Count rather bared his teeth and coldly refuted.

‘I am Your Majesty’s subject before I am a man. How dare I deceive anyone?’

The Empress stared at the firmly tempered man. His gaunt face was sharp enough to feel savage. She looked at the man as cold as a piece of metal, then turned her gaze away. The Emperor summoned the pursuit team and threatened them, but they couldn’t find any meaningful clues. Five years passed like that.

***

The discovery of Count Spetunia’s young daughter was a very coincidental event. Even that, if it hadn’t been for the coincidence, they might never have found her, and if we assume that, the coincidence must have been a divine revelation.

However, Count Spetunia, that is, Khalil, didn’t want to say that his daughter’s illness was a divine revelation. Some said that the bedridden child was being punished for Elaine’s betrayal of the Imperial family, but he wanted to tear the mouths of those who wagged their tongues like that.