I Pretended To Be Dead And Ran Away - Chapter 58

Thanasis had not been this twisted from the beginning.

When he was young, Thanasis was sensitive but not a bad person at heart.

However, due to that sensitivity, he was a person who was very troubled even by himself.

Moreover, for some reason, after giving birth to Thanasis, the empress continued to have only daughters.

Since the outdated notion of preferring males as emperors was still more accepted in this Apentina Empire, the empress wanted to have more sons but failed repeatedly.

And the emperor, whom the empress hated, kept causing trouble by producing princes here and there.

Among those princes, exceptional children would occasionally appear.

Thanasis’s mind was also extraordinary, but since the emperor did not love the empress, he did not love Thanasis who resembled her.

When Thanasis’s abilities were on par with other princes, he would always choose others and insult Thanasis to humiliate the empress.

Because the emperor did not love Thanasis much, the empress also gradually came to not love Thanasis.

Moreover, although Thanasis obeyed so well like a marionette when young, as he grew up, he increasingly rebelled against the empress’s words.

And except for possessing special abilities, Princess Jeiren, Thanasis’s younger sister, was the smartest and strongest child of the emperor in this palace.

The empress always felt regretful whenever she saw Princess Jeiren.

If she had been a boy, she wouldn’t have had to worry about Thanasis, and with her innate talent recognized by the ministers, there would have been no political opponents.

In that sense, the empress had been constantly testing her son.

If Thanasis couldn’t absorb magic stones, she thought the first princess would be more useful than Thanasis and planned to support her.

However, for some reason, Thanasis’s body absorbed all the fire magic stones without dying and grew stronger.

The only critical flaw was that he couldn’t control his magic.

That problem was resolved in the year he turned nine. Because there was the Nirnberg princess.

Thanasis’s chronic problem was that he would release magic uncontrollably like an explosion.

As a result, flames would erupt like bombs and burn everything.

But when the Nirnberg princess was around, just by touching her, Thanasis could use magic stably.

It was the empress who provided the Nirnberg princess to Thanasis.

The empress had to suffer great losses due to the disappeared Nirnberg princess.

Because of her disappearance, Thanasis’s position weakened, and although he was made crown prince with difficulty, the opposing forces grew stronger.

The empress had to listen to the resentful complaints of the first princess every time, and Thanasis distanced himself from people, hating his mother and even his sisters.

Such an empress.

“What’s your name?”

“I greet the Moon of the Empire.”

Was facing Reniel.

The empress had to eliminate countless political enemies to keep this position, and had experienced numerous threats to her life.

It would be no exaggeration to say that if the empress were to be burned alive here, only vicious hatred would remain.

The empress despised this imperial family. She despised everything that didn’t go her way.

To such a person.

Reniel before her eyes seemed like a key that would once again find the lost opportunity.

“My name is Reni, Your Majesty the Empress.”

Lilith Nirnberg. That was the original name of the Nirnberg princess.

The name was clearly different.

However, her appearance resembled what the Nirnberg princess she had seen at age five would look like if she had grown up.

Clear sky-blue hair like pure water, violet eyes sparkling as if crushed amethyst had been ground and put in. And even plump pink lips and marble-like skin.

The only unexpected thing was that, unlike her pure impression, she had a body that would make men’s lust boil.

While her body alone seemed vulgar, it was beautiful in harmony with her face.

The empress thought Thanasis couldn’t have really brought this woman as a bedchamber maid.

‘Your Majesty the Empress! The, the maid you sent…’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘His Highness failed to control his magic and…’

‘Speak in detail!’

‘It turned to ashes the moment it entered the room…!’

The empress had sent women countless times to persuade the rogue Thanasis.

Because Thanasis wouldn’t listen, there was a need to at least have him make a son.

However, each time Thanasis failed to control his magic and killed the women as if they were assassins.

He would unintentionally eliminate women just by opening the door and entering at will.

It wasn’t by choice that the empress gave up on that part.

It was because everyone begged and gave up, saying they didn’t want to enter the room where Thanasis was.

‘Your Majesty the Empress…! Please spare me!’

‘I have family outside the palace. If I die, my family won’t be able to live!’

‘Please don’t send me to the Crown Prince’s palace!’

‘I’d rather die if you tell me to. But I can’t go to His Highness the Crown Prince.’

There were many maids who pleaded like that.

“Raise your head.”

The empress said so and approached Reniel.

Around them, the empress’s maids and servants stood in line.

The empress realized Reniel was taller than herself.

“Kneel on the floor.”

“Yes, Your Majesty the Empress.”

Reniel knelt on the floor as ordered.

Then the empress placed her folded fan under Reniel’s chin and lifted it with force as if appraising her.

Reniel found that gaze burdensome and lowered her eyes, waiting.

The empress found her bright eyelashes curious, like frozen snowflakes.

But the empress had no talent for handling magic, so she couldn’t tell Reniel’s abilities and felt frustrated.

“Kyaa!”

“Get out of the way!”

“The, the small sun of the empire…”

“Can’t you hear me telling you to get lost?”

“Cr-Crown Prince! The Empress is inside… Ack!”

Bang!

Soon the reception room door opened with a commotion.

“Mother.”

“You’re here early.”

Thanasis’s expression upon seeing the empress was strangely different from his usual one distorted with anger and irritation.

“Everyone leave. I want to talk with just the three of us.”

At that, the servants around carefully vacated their spots.

“Sharon, bring some tea.”

“Yes, Your Majesty the Empress.”

The empress gave that order to the retreating maid and moved to the sofa first.

Thanasis sighed and helped Reniel up from the floor.

He was habitually checking on Reniel.

“I hear you went outside the palace without permission to bring this child?”

“Didn’t I tell you? What else do I need to say?”

Thanasis replied irritably and tried to take Reniel out.

“If you go out that door, know that wench will be found dead tomorrow.”

Reniel didn’t know much about the imperial family since it wasn’t mentioned in the original work.

What she had seen was that when Thanasis returned to the palace, his father had died and he naturally became emperor.

The people of the imperial family she saw then all feared and avoided Thanasis, but carried out his orders well.

Certainly.

Although the imperial family in “Impossible Even in Dreams” that she remembered had such circumstances.

It seemed quite different now, perhaps because he wasn’t emperor yet.

“Do you think that kind of threat will work? If Reni dies, do you think people in mother’s palace will be able to live? Everything will be burned to ashes.”

“Are you saying you’ll kill me too?”

“Do you think I can’t do it? Mother, you’re still all talk when you can’t kill me.”

“Tan.”

“You seem to have forgotten that Jeiren, the daughter you love so much, keeps giving me night visitors. Thanks to that, I can now discard you and my other sisters anytime.”

Reniel was surprised by the much more brutal conversation than she expected.

She didn’t think Thanasis and the empress would get along, but she didn’t know they could casually make death threats.

“That.”

As Thanasis tried to take Reniel out, the empress continued speaking on her own.

“Did you pick that up from the Nirnberg ducal family?”

“No.”

“Then why is that here?”

Thanasis knew his mother would recognize Reniel the moment she saw her.

Of course, he didn’t expect her to recognize her this quickly.

“What’s going on?”

The empress asked leisurely, crossing her legs.

From the moment she said she recognized her, Thanasis would have realized he had already lost.

Seeing him roll his eyes as if she was indeed his weakness, the empress smirked and said.

“Isn’t it strange? I heard the Nirnberg princess was recently found and is recuperating in the ducal territory. Why is she here?”

“I guess the Nirnberg princess is there.”

“Then I suppose that one is your fiancée.”

Thanasis wanted to dismiss that as nonsense.

But he couldn’t deny the engagement. It would be troublesome if he broke off the engagement with Reniel, who would become the Nirnberg princess in the future.

Moreover, the Reniel before him didn’t know she was the Nirnberg princess.

Thanasis was at a loss for what to do in this situation.

“You, speak.”

The empress raised her chin and looked at Reniel.

Reniel also looked around uncertainly, her hand held by Thanasis, unsure of what to do.

“How are you here?”

“I was saved by His Highness Crown Prince Thanasis. So I came along.”

“Tan? He helped someone?”

The empress laughed as if finding that amusing. Then she looked at Reniel and said.

“That thing isn’t capable of that. That monster is very selfish and doesn’t know how to care for others. He didn’t save you, he just showed you kindness because you’re useful.”

Reniel was surprised by the contempt thick in the empress’s voice, but.

“But His Highness the Crown Prince is not that kind of person.”

She couldn’t help but answer like that when Thanasis looked at her as if hurt.

“What?”

“The His Highness I know is not a monster. Rather, I received a lot of consideration on my way here. I want to do anything I can for His Highness in the palace.”

Reniel still thought it strange that they kept mistaking her for the Nirnberg princess.

No matter how she thought about it, it didn’t make sense. She even had documents stating she had been in the poorhouse since she was five years old.

The Nirnberg princess disappeared just before turning six.

And Reniel didn’t doubt it at all because she had also confirmed documents stating she was in the poorhouse until she was ten years old.

Moreover, even from what she remembered after age ten.

Even though she stayed in the poorhouse with such striking hair and eye colors, even if she was known as a boy, shouldn’t someone have come to check at least once with hair and eye colors like this?

Besides, even after she entered the Le Pelique ducal family and gained financial stability, it wasn’t that she had given up on finding her roots from the beginning.

“Those words, you really came all the way here to be a bedchamber maid out of gratitude?”

Reniel nodded without hesitation at the empress’s words.

Originally, the Thanasis Reniel knew was homosexual, so there was no other meaning.

Rather, the one who seemed most flustered by her words was Thanasis.