I Will Live for Your Death (20 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 87

That incident occurred when Ilyd was still Crown Princess.

At the time, the Empire was fiercely battling in the eastern region of the Western Continent. Factories producing steel and manufacturing weapons and ammunition ran nonstop, unexpectedly thriving in wartime prosperity.

The Crown Prince and Crown Princess decided to visit one of these factories as a gesture of encouragement, as the Empress Dowager had strongly insisted that their presence would visibly bolster the Empire’s military morale.

Reporters also followed the royal couple to the factory scheduled for inspection. All they needed was to arrange a suitable scene—lightly encouraging workers for a photo op—as they had always done before.

Everything proceeded as usual: meeting the factory manager and patting workers’ shoulders in encouragement, just as planned.

Quietly standing beside the Crown Prince, Ilyd slipped away toward the inner part of the factory. Everyone was too absorbed in Claudius’s words and actions to notice or stop her.

Inside, the heat was palpable even from a distance. The deafening machinery sent shivers through her body. Who worked in there, and what kind of labor did they perform?

She had handled guns before, but only for hunting—they had never been anything more to her. She’d heard only vague descriptions from her older brother about how and where they were made. This was her first time actually seeing it herself. Just as she stepped inside, heart pounding—

Someone firmly gripped the hem of Ilyd’s skirt. A small, sudden resistance. Startled, she looked down.

“You work here too…?”

Could such a young child truly labor in a factory? He looked no older than ten. The soot-covered boy nodded. Ilyd lowered herself to his eye level.

“It’s a gift.”

A small wildflower was abruptly thrust toward her. How had he found a flower in such a barren, scorching place? It must have been a wild bloom hidden somewhere in the factory’s corners. Ilyd accepted it with a gentle smile.

But the child’s bare feet, peeking beneath his clothes, alarmed her. Tiny, bare soles—smaller than her own hand—covered in soot and wounds.

She pinned the flower to her brooch, removed her glove, and wrapped her bare hands around the child’s dirty, twitching feet.

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