Despite everything she had endured, Isabela still retained the beauty of the girl who had first fallen in love. Fine lines had settled at the corners of her eyes and her cheeks had softened slightly, but that was all. Her violet eyes still shone with an air of mystery, and her thick black hair gleamed like the finest silk some merchant had traveled to a distant land to procure.

The dazzling beauty that Heliones and Isabela shared had in fact been inherited almost entirely from their mother.

Isabela, her long hair elegantly twisted and pinned up, lifted her chin with an air of cool dignity and extended her hand. It was the privilege of the one woman who could demand a show of deference from the emperor, but Heliones ignored his mother’s hand with a cold expression.

“You. Leave.”

Without taking his eyes off Isabela, Heliones dismissed Helena. Helena pouted at Isabela, clearly reluctant to go.

“I don’t mind staying. Everyone in the world will find out about me eventually anyway.”

“Leave. Now.”

Isabela had said she did not mind, but Heliones did not relent. Helena recognized that her brother’s reaction was not ordinary and quietly left the study.

She wanted that woman removed from her brother’s life without question, but she had no intention of severing ties with her brother in the process. She could only hope their mother would play that role well in her place.

“We haven’t seen each other in half a year and you’re rather cold.”

Without any particular show of hurt, Isabela withdrew her hand and settled into a nearby chair.

“Sit down. You must have things to say.”

Heliones pressed his lips together and released them several times, swallowing his anger, then let out a long breath and took his seat.

“What are you trying to accomplish?”

“What do you mean?”

At her son’s question, Isabela rocked herself back and forth, playing dumb with practiced ease. Heliones knew that was a habit she had when she was anxious, but he had no patience left to spare for his mother’s feelings right now.

“Mother. As you well know, I am not a man who speaks empty words.”

“Of course not. I gave birth to you.”

“Then you knew what you were doing. You knew the things I said to you were not mere threats.”

“Naturally. Why do you think I endured this situation for a full half year?”

“Then why not simply stay as you were? Why come back and try to stir up public opinion with lies?”

In response to Heliones’s question, Isabela removed the somewhat thick lace gloves she had been wearing despite the summer heat. Her left wrist bore quite a number of marks, each one carved there over the years whenever she had used them to threaten her children.

“You used to be a son who cherished his mother dearly. But as you can see, there is no room left to add more. And I have also come to understand that a man mad with love for a woman has little use for his mother’s wellbeing.”

Heliones looked at the familiar scars, the ones that had filled him with tremendous fear throughout his entire childhood, and no longer trembled. He felt no grief, and he did not plead. He simply regarded the woman sitting across from him with the detachment one might show a stranger.

“Are you saying you are prepared to accept the disgrace?”

“Disgrace? I’ve decided to stop caring what others say. Though really, can you say anything to me? You didn’t even know about your niece’s death or your sister’s divorce. At least I never turned my back on my own family.”

Pfft. Heliones let out a short laugh. She had spent his entire life making him tremble with fear that she might die because of him, and had neglected him whenever he was not of use to her, and yet she had the nerve to say something like that.

Half a year of seclusion had apparently done nothing to change his mother’s character.

“I do feel sorry about that. I intend to do everything I can to help Helena heal.”

“As if you would. If her brother exposes their mother’s secrets and her mother dies because of it, you might be fine, but Helena won’t be.”

There it was again. This time it was not her own life she was holding hostage, but the shattered soul of a daughter who had already been broken twice over, using it to threaten her son.

Rather than meet his mother at her own level, Heliones wanted to make one last appeal to whatever maternal feeling might still exist in her.

“Mother. I want to be happy. When I am with Lucian, I truly am happy. All the complicated problems disappear and I feel like we are the only two people in the world. And I think I could live forever in that world where it is just the two of us. Waiting on her.”

Heliones knelt before Isabela and pleaded. She had not been a good mother, but he did not want to reach a point of no return with her.

But Isabela, who had already walked the path her son now wished to walk, gave a scornful little sniff and shook her head.

“I’ve done that too. It’s not as happy as you think.”

“Did you not say you never regretted it even once?”

“I did. And I still don’t. But at least your father was not the enemy who killed my father. Remember this well. At least Lucian did not kill anyone with her own hands. You killed the mad king with yours. Just the two of you? When it is only the two of you left, won’t that fact come back to Lucian someday?”

Heliones pleaded once more.

“Yes. Everything you say is right. There may come a day when that truth becomes a source of pain. But I do not want to spend my life regretting the path I never took. I do not want to live looking back on moments when I almost found happiness.”

Heliones knew his heart was set on a rather reckless and bold path. That was precisely why he spoke plainly. His happiness, all of it, depended on Lucian.

“Fine, expose it if you want to expose it. I don’t care.”

Isabela let out a long string of sighs, looking as though she could no longer stand the sight of her son in such a pitiful state, and rose from her seat.

“I will give you one week. Issue a correction.”

“Why wait a whole week? Go ahead and expose it right now.”

“Even if Rodencia has fallen, Lucian’s maternal family still stands. Surely you are aware that House Iledn is also a relation by marriage.”

The former queen consort of Rodencia had been shunned even by her own family for giving birth to a non-ability user and had met a wretched end, but she had still been born of a great house. Her kin continued to hold influence outside of Rodencia, and the most prominent among them was House Iledn.

Heliones was not appealing to his mother’s conscience. He was hinting that if the truth came to light, the repercussions could be larger than she anticipated. They may have turned their backs on her for bearing a non-ability user, but there was no reason to assume they would not be furious upon learning she had been falsely condemned and killed.

“Who is going to care about a woman who died over twenty years ago. Do as you like.”

Isabela replied lightly, rose without a trace of hesitation, and walked out of the emperor’s study.

‘How dare you think you can win against your own mother? Love? How ridiculous. You became emperor because I bore you, because I endured that shame and raised you. I will use this opportunity to separate you from that woman once and for all, so that you can never defy me again. Whether the price is my reputation or Helena’s soul, it doesn’t matter. As long as you, you foolish wretch, come back to obey your mother. Tsk tsk, and you don’t even realize I’m doing all of this for your own good.’

Isabela felt rather like a great mother, one willing to make sacrifices for her son’s sake. He was blinded by love and standing against her now, but she knew her son better than anyone. In the end, even for Helena’s sake, he would not be able to expose the secret.

‘Hmm. What kind of woman would be suitable? Moderate looks would be best. He is an emperor, after all. It would be a problem if he went and made a fool of himself falling for another woman. Moderate looks, a family with wealth but only middling power. That way she will cling to him all the more desperately to become empress.’

Her time as empress had been cut far too short because of the mad king. But now that she had become empress dowager, she had to place everything that had ever humiliated her beneath her feet and repay every last disgrace.

‘Everything I do is for you. So that no one will ever be able to call you a bastard again.’

Isabela made her way back to her chambers, turning over suitable young ladies in her mind.

‘Nelia, was it? She comes from a rather small kingdom, but she was set to inherit a diamond mine, wasn’t she? Though her face is too pretty, and she is that man’s daughter after all…’

‘Delmir… isn’t bad. She has her looks, but that *ssault incident broke her spirit once, so she won’t be insolent.’

‘The princess of Thorn has the best qualifications on paper. A pity she couldn’t have been just a little less plain. Tsk tsk.’

The moment she returned to her chambers, she ordered the maids still unpacking her things to bring her paper and pen.

Humming a triumphant little tune, she began writing invitations to the families who were desperate to produce the next empress.