Rania quickly rubbed her soft cheeks against her mother’s face to express affection.

“Yes. Enoch told me. That you showed interest in the second son of House Bellington. But Enoch seemed quite displeased.”

“That’s unfair! Enoch has never even seen that child!”

Rania began to throw a tantrum, even mixing in words that adults awkwardly used.

“Mother. I want to play with that child. The other children are boring. Right?”

At Rania’s appearance as if she would lie down on the floor and cause a scene at any moment, the grand duchess sighed.

Actually, the grand ducal couple had no intention of preventing Rania from meeting Bellington’s bastard. The child was an Artua. There was no way it would be a problem for the daughter of a sovereign with strong ruling power to associate with a bastard.

Rather, the couple’s argument was that they should punish anyone who made an issue of such a thing and disparaged the Artua bloodline.

But their second son Enoch opposed it so strongly.

⟨Is that an ordinary bastard? Moreover, didn’t you say you would entrust Rania to me starting this year? I would like you to follow my wishes this time.⟩

⟨You don’t know Rania. If you forcibly prevent that child from doing what she wants, far from submitting, she will use cunning tricks.⟩

⟨She’s only eight years old. Didn’t she recently call the second son of Count Turgo to play every day, then cast him aside when her interest waned? This time too, she’s just throwing a tantrum because things aren’t going her way, and she’ll quickly lose interest. If we can just buy that much time, we can sufficiently separate them.⟩

Perhaps the one who would learn a lesson from this incident would be neither Rania nor the children who were retaliated against, but Enoch.

‘That child will also have to accept that he can’t wrap his eight-year-old sister in his arms and raise her to his liking.’

Rania was lovable, but she wasn’t an easy opponent for Enoch, who had just turned twenty, to handle. Enoch wouldn’t be able to accept that right away.

Enoch was also her son whom she had raised for twenty years, so how could she not know his heart?

Her second son wouldn’t easily bend his stubbornness apart from his hurt feelings, and the more that happened, the more her youngest would rack her brains to tame her brother to her liking.

Since both Enoch and Rania were born power-type humans, they had no choice but to clash like this and find balance.

Of course, it was certain that Enoch would gradually be pushed back by Rania. Her cute youngest sister would grow up quickly.

“But Rania, I’m curious. Why do you suddenly like that child?”

“Mother, have you never seen Rian even once?”

“That’s right. Will you tell me what kind of child he is?”

Rania, who had been having her own power struggle with her mother, straightened her posture and began to chatter.

“First of all, when I first saw that child, he was in the garden, right? But his hair color was like a deer. Last year I saw a deer with exactly the same color as that with Father in the garden.”

“That’s right. I remember a very young fawn crouched alone after losing its mother.”

“Rian looked exactly like that. He looked like a pitiful fawn without a mother. But when I found out he was a person, he also looked like the thief I saw with big brother at the festival before.”

“Mm. And then?”

“But then, when I saw his face, he looked exactly like a doll! One person!”

Rania raised her voice with unusual excitement. It was genuine excitement of an eight-year-old child, not made up.

“It was really amazing. That child is one person, but he looked like a motherless deer, sometimes like a young thief with his wrist cut off, and then he looked like the doll I cherish. So I want to see him more!”

“You mean you’re curious about how that child will look again.”

“Yes! So I hope I can see him soon. I’m curious about how he’ll look next time I see him. Mother, please look with me then and tell me how he looks to you. Ah, but for that to happen, that child has to come again. Right?”

Not missing the opportunity, Rania made another request.

‘She’s just like her father in being persistent.’

The grand duchess smiled thinking of her husband. The two were so alike that sometimes, even though she had given birth to her from her own womb, it felt like a child her husband had made alone.

If she had been born a little earlier. And thus hadn’t had power preempted by her two older brothers who were born first.

Then wouldn’t Rania, who resembled her husband the most, have become the next grand duke?

Though the possibility of becoming a benevolent king wouldn’t have been great, Artua would have achieved prosperity under her intelligence and cruelty.

“I’ll think about it. I’ll convey well to your father and brother that you really want to meet that child, so don’t worry.”

“You must tell them. Especially to Enoch!”

“Yes. While we’re talking, will you tell Enoch to come to the office? He probably returned to the mansion by now.”

“Yes!”

Rania quickly got down from her mother’s lap and ran toward the door. When she knocked on the door with her small hands, the knights waiting outside opened the door for her.

Among them was the knight Rania had used to frighten the children.

“Sir Ralph.”

Rania extended her small hand to the knight.

“Accompany me to Brother Enoch.”

“Yes. I will escort you.”

“No, not carrying me. I’ll hold your hand.”

The knight with a shallow wound on his thigh hesitated for a moment, then took the tiny hand extended to him. Soon he walked down the corridor limping, following her.

“You know. I’ll apologize for hurting you. But it was something I really needed.”

“Yes. I’m glad I could be useful.”

“You were useful. I asked Father and Mother to call a priest, so just endure a little. Got it?”

“Thank you.”

The sound of conversation gradually grew distant. Then, the sound of Rania loudly calling her brother’s name could be heard as she stopped in front of Enoch’s room nearby.

Only then did the grand duchess order the office door to be closed.

The door closed silently, and left alone, she picked up the materials that had been placed face down on the desk. It was a portrait of a child drawn by a skilled artist.

The boy with brown hair without dust looked like a pretty doll.

‘He resembles Viscount Bellington a lot.’

The gloomy gray eyes must be his mother’s. The grand duchess recalled the Bellington family funeral she had attended long ago.

⟨No matter how desperate the family was for money, they shouldn’t have sent their younger brother to the subjugation force like that. He wasn’t even that great a knight.⟩

⟨Wouldn’t he have known himself? Since the family was about to collapse, he must have volunteered with a gambling mentality.⟩

⟨Even so, someone who had been married for less than a year……⟩

⟨Well, there wasn’t much affection between the couple anyway. Look over there.⟩

The gaze that was too indifferent to be looking at her husband’s coffin. It wasn’t difficult to recall those gray eyes.

⟨Mother. That woman doesn’t seem sad about her husband’s death.⟩

⟨Enoch. You shouldn’t say such things where people can hear. And how can you be so certain? People have different ways of accepting and expressing grief.⟩

The funeral that had been bizarre enough for her accompanying second child to frown — was that already ten years ago?

Perhaps because she had aged that much too. The eight-year-old child in the picture felt pitiful to her……

“Child.”

The grand duchess called the child like talking to herself.

Rian Bellington. The child born from Viscount Bellington’s adultery with his dead brother’s wife.

Was it coercion, or was it love that abandoned human ethics?

She could find out by unfolding the materials the subordinates had brought, but she postponed knowing the truth.

“You were a motherless deer, a young thief who would die miserably with his wrist cut off, and also a doll that a child cherished. Next time, what else will you become to please the child before…… being abandoned?”

Or perhaps you would survive tenaciously without being abandoned.

As a mother, she couldn’t gauge the future. Perhaps the conclusion would only come after her own death.

‘Still, you must live. Just like my child who was born noble and will die beautifully, you too must ultimately live from birth until death. You must endure.’

Perhaps this current abnormal curiosity might transform into love.

The daughter of Artua with blue eyes, was ultimately like her father. Even if she possessed a nature that unhesitatingly shed others’ blood and inspired terror.

Since an intelligent child, even if twisted, couldn’t be ignorant of love.