At the End of the Shattered Remains of Pure Love - Chapter 9

“Honey?”

His pale-faced wife looked at him, terrified. His young wife was as timid as she was delicate. He kissed the forehead of his wife, who still looked like a girl, then got up from the bed.

His wife tried to follow him, but he gently soothed her, whispering, ‘It’s nothing.’

“Your Grace.”

“Hernan.”

The man whose name was called took off his helmet. It was a young face. Khalil stared at the flowing blonde hair. The deep blue eyes and tanned face were very masculine and also similar to his own. It was natural. The man before him was his second cousin.

“I apologize for visiting at dawn. I wouldn’t have committed such rudeness if it weren’t for the imperial order.”

His shadowed face looked haggard. Khalil bit his pipe and stared at him intently, then gazed at the lily-shaped pendant on his chest. If he was carrying out an imperial order in full uniform, the matter must be very serious.

However, Hernan waited for him. If Khalil had a problem, Hernan wouldn’t have waited for him. There was no need for consideration. He would have immediately arrested and transported him. So….

“…Did you have business with my wife.”

Their sharp gazes suddenly intertwined in the air. The reception room, sunk in darkness, was terribly quiet. No one breathed. As if both had forgotten to how. If possible, both wanted to fade into the darkness. Forgetting time and existence…. Hernan had quite liked Elaine.

“I apologize.”

The man bowed his head. That dawn, Elaine was summoned to the Varen Palace. As there was no prison in the palace, she had to stay in the detention center until noon.

Elaine cried. The very fact that she had to be separated from her husband was a shock to her. Unable to digest the aftermath of that shock, she sat down and repeatedly shook her head. Saying she couldn’t go. That she wouldn’t go….

It wasn’t her first time seeing the Emperor’s royal guard. Hernan, who led the way, was also a familiar figure to her. Because her father-in-law had quite favored him during his lifetime, even after her father-in-law passed away, he often visited the Count’s residence to comfort her mother-in-law who was left alone.

‘It’s okay, Ellen. You’ve met Hernan often. He’s our relative.’

Even with such words, Khalil couldn’t comfort his wife. His wife cried like a child, terrified. He kissed his wife’s cheeks as she clung to him several times, whispering. I’ll go soon. Varen Palace isn’t far from the Count’s residence. There’s not much time left until dawn. I’ll follow right after, so just wait a little. Even with such words, he couldn’t stop Elaine’s crying, so he soothed her not to fear the armed Hernan.

Because although the shy Elaine blushed, she wasn’t afraid of Hernan.

‘No. Khalil…. I’m scared. Hic, sob….’

Elaine shook her head. A maid ran to support her as she bent her knees on the stairs. The maid wrapped her small body again with the fallen shawl, wiping her wet face and embracing her.

The crying echoed throughout the castle. Later, Hernan had to carry her and put her on the horse. He soothed the young woman as he rode the horse. Elaine sobbed in his arms as if she would die.

There was no law to transport a criminal like this, but she was only nineteen. Even to Hernan’s eyes, she was still a girl, a naive child who couldn’t do anything without her husband. Such a girl had to be thrown into the Varen Palace’s detention center and hear that her brother had become a traitor. Hernan didn’t know how to convey this.

***

There’s only one reason why Elaine was transported. It was the crime that her brother had raised an insurrection led by Marquis Gaspel, the Emperor’s eldest illegitimate son.

The crime of not only communicating with the ringleader but also directly and indirectly participating in the rebel group formed around the Marquis. The crime of trying to poison the young Crown Prince to gain the throne. The act of trying to overthrow the imperial family and further usurp the entire empire for this was an unacceptable range of actions.

However, Elaine was the birth mother of the future Crown Princess. She had no opportunity or reason to participate in such a thing. Above all, she had not participated in the rebellion.

“Didn’t they say her brother participated? Then is there much difference?”

This was the reaction shown by Empress Alisandra when the ringleader of the rebellion, the Marquis, was being tortured in prison. Just because she’s an Eve, she got a husband beyond her station and enjoyed a luxurious life she couldn’t get in her next life….

Was she so ungrateful, not knowing her place?

“But she is the birth mother of the Crown Princess.”

“So are you saying that the child born by that wench is immediately my son’s wife? Are you saying that unborn lowborn has been appointed as Crown Princess?”

Alisandra was beyond cynical, she was irritable. Only one thing had been revealed in a situation where nothing was clear. One thing: that behind the frequent accidents happening to the Crown Prince were the rebels, and among those rebels was Elaine’s brother. Yet she sent the royal guard to the Count’s residence without considering anything else.

How much trust Count Spetunia had gained from the late Emperor. How deep the affection the Emperor had for him was not important. Moreover, the Empress herself was close to Count and Countess Spetunia, but even that seemed not to matter.

Although Countess Spetunia lacked humility due to her origins, her gentle and innocent nature meant she didn’t commit any rude acts to incur the Empress’s hatred.

Moreover, wasn’t she carrying the Crown Prince’s precious bride in her womb? As much as Count Spetunia was close to the Emperor, his wife also received the Empress’s love from close by. And yet….

“Nothing is unchanging. Is she the only Eve in the world? There’s no law that only the daughter born by that lowly wench should become the Crown Prince’s bride. It’s not even a child that has been born yet.”

The Empress didn’t part her lips anymore after those words. What the Empress wanted to say was clear.

The insulted authority of the imperial family is more important than an unborn child. Attempting to shake the Crown Prince’s position is a clear challenge to the imperial family and a crime of trying to overthrow the state.

***

Alisandra was the noble daughter of the Albrov family, the great lord of Gishu and the only ducal family in the Riscarlo Empire. Although she grew up with her older brothers after losing her mother at a young age, because her aunt was renowned as the queen of high society, she grew up accumulating high intelligence as well as dazzling beauty. And so at seventeen…

There was no maiden more beautiful than her in the capital. Egg-white smooth skin and captivating blonde hair. Eyes as brilliant as stars. Elegant speech without a trace of eastern accent and sophisticated style.

Above all, the fact that she was a talented student who had been privately taught by a prestigious professor of the academy was quite helpful for her imperial marriage with the then Crown Prince. Alisandra was a woman without worries until then.

The fame of being a daughter of a great noble and beauty that shook not only the empire but the continent…. She was a woman with nothing to envy or be jealous of. If it weren’t for ‘Eve’. No, if the child in her womb hadn’t been an Adam….

One day she heard from her father-in-law that the child in her womb was an Adam. It was something she had never thought about. Even if it wasn’t an Adam, it was a precious child.

Her father-in-law, Maximilian, had a fierce struggle for the throne among his brothers before ascending to the throne. Even with the Emperor alive and well, they were desperate to kill each other.

Thanks to that, her father-in-law had to bury his many brothers with his own hands. The next generation was left with only one descendant, Clodas, due to his mother Marie Clementina’s frailty. So he was a precious child.

Even if it wasn’t an ‘Adam’. But that blind monk…. That monk called the poor son of God said that a superhuman was curled up in her womb.

Hiding her confused feelings, she wrapped her belly. Her father-in-law embraced her, unable to contain his overflowing joy. He said now she should become the Empress.

Alisandra was perplexed. But he declared his abdication before she could prepare. Saying they must prepare to welcome an ‘Eve’ right away…. From then on, she began to crumple little by little.

‘Eve.’

Adam’s woman. And Adam’s mother. Sadly, Alisandra was not an Eve.

Despite the son she carried being an Adam, she was not an Eve, they said. That such a quality was not in her at all, but miraculously Adam had entered her womb.

It was frustrating. I am Adam’s mother. I am the woman carrying Adam…. Why am I not Eve? For a while, she couldn’t understand. But initially, she wasn’t the only strange thing.

Her husband was also not an Adam. Only a son born between an Adam and an Eve was ‘Adam’. Even if the mother was an Eve, if the father was not an Adam, that child was merely ordinary.

Nevertheless, they said the child was an ‘Adam’.

‘So it’s resurrection and second coming. Don’t you understand, Your Highness?’

The blind monk clicked his tongue at her who didn’t understand.

Alisandra felt insulted by that attitude. To cry and thank God’s blessing for this absurd fact she never wished for. But…. How could that be? The child is an Adam.

Why is she not an Eve?