Sandes hugged Lebil tightly, agonizing for a long time before coming to his senses and putting the child to bed.

Though Lebil was curious, Sandes told him it was too late and that he would tell him the story tomorrow before leaving the room.

As if waiting, Ranta was standing in front of the door as Sandes came out.

“Take me to where the maid is.”

After the sorrow and agony, what surfaced was anger.

Unable to even imagine what truth he would face, Sandes tried hard to find reason.

Sandes felt his footsteps were endlessly heavy.

The next day, Erina was surprised by Sandes who came early in the morning to ask her out on a date.

“There’s a place I need to go, and I want to go together with you.”

Erina found his appearance different from usual.

He was smiling at her as always, but it felt forced, and she could feel his carefully spoken words trembling slightly at the end.

He looked somewhat unstable, just like herself who had learned the truth.

Something seemed to have happened to him.

“Alright.”

At Sandes’ request, they rode together in a carriage.

Perhaps because they left before breakfast had even begun, the road the carriage passed was quiet.

It was strange that Sandes, who would have constantly talked to her normally, was just quietly looking out of the carriage, but Erina couldn’t say anything at his unusual appearance.

His sky-blue eyes, which had always been clear, were clouded as if covered by dark clouds.

She wanted to ask if he was worried, but Erina couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth.

Between the two, there was only the sound of horses running vigorously and the carriage wheels rolling diligently.

Just as Erina was contemplating whether to strike up a conversation and ask what was going on, Sandes opened his mouth.

“Erina.”

At his trembling call, Erina carefully reached out and held his hand.

Then, Sandes, who had been looking out of the carriage, turned to look at Erina.

Sandes could not ignore the kind comfort held in her fingertips.

Did Erina know?

That despite her pure white and delicate appearance, when she looked at him with unwavering directness, she felt more solid than any fence.

Sandes, captivated by the warmth she gave, ended up revealing a secret he couldn’t tell anyone.

“My mother was already a palace maid to the Empress who was married. But she caught the eye of the Emperor who was blinded by lust and was forced to become a concubine.”

Sandes’ mother was excessively beautiful.

In the Imperial Palace, her beautiful face instead became poison.

“My mother’s husband died at the hands of the Emperor for refusing the order to bring her in as a concubine, and my mother’s young daughter, my half-sister, had to be raised by relatives.”

As if that wasn’t enough, using the name of treason, the former Emperor ruined my mother’s husband’s family, turning them into a fallen noble family.

It was the beginning of history where the former Emperor threw the Imperial Authority to the ground.

Of course it was historically forgotten, but it was an incident that many still remembered.

“Only after giving birth to me was my mother able to escape the palace with the help of the current Emperor and hide with my sister and me.”

According to my mother, with someone’s help, she was able to settle down and live well in a village next to a mana stone mine.

“Although it was a village in the countryside, the three of us were happy.”

But the problem was that the village was part of the Eols County.

“My sister, who had outstanding beauty like my mother, caught the eye of the former Count Eols and was dragged away to become a concubine by force, just like my mother.”

It was a coincidence upon coincidence that the former Count Eols visited the village that had no exchanges.

It was such an ominous and unlucky event that it felt almost like fate.

“My mother was shocked to see my sister living the same life as her and took her own life.”

The fate of the two beautiful mother and daughter was truly cruel.

“Left alone, I went to the Eols estate to find my sister, but I was always chased away at the door.”

Sandes could not forget those days that were still filled with only pain.

The time when he struggled to somehow regain his family remained as a scar for Sandes.

Then one day, the former Count came and threatened to kill his sister if he came to the count’s house one more time.

Sandes couldn’t do anything with those words.

He was afraid that any single action of his own might lead to his sister being tormented to death.

“Eight years passed like that without being able to do anything.”

He wanted to do something, but he was the Emperor’s illegitimate child who had to be seen as a commoner while in hiding.

Eight years were spent unable to do this or that.

“Then one snowy day, my sister appeared before me. Bringing along a very small nephew.”

The sight of his sister appearing with a small bundle of flesh could not be said to be doing well, even as an empty word.

Her once shiny hair was dry, and she was excessively thin to the point her bones showed.

Her beautifully shining eyes were dark and her complexion was sunken.

“In front of my eyes, my sister apologized, entrusted the child to me, and breathed her last. Just like my mother, right before my eyes.”

“Sandes.”

After that, Sandes lived on, unable to die.

His mother’s dying wish for him to live happily and his sister’s dying wish to take good care of the child kept clashing, so he couldn’t kill himself either.

“I wanted to let everything go… but I heard the child’s cry. The cry of my small and fragile nephew.”

What made the dazed Sandes stand up was his nephew Leorbil with crimson eyes that he hated to see so much.

He hugged Leorbil, who had lost his mother and was crying as if he would stop breathing from hunger, and cried for a long time.

He wasn’t the only one who had lost family.

This child, born against his will, was the same.

“So I was able to live on. Although I was occasionally caught up in bad thoughts, the love and happy smiles given by my nephew who knew nothing allowed me to live.”

Breathing with the happiness the child gave, he lived on.

Although it was difficult because he was clumsy at raising the child who knew nothing, even that was bearable when Leorbil smiled brightly.

“But then one day, my nephew died in a fire. Everything was burned black, and all that could be identified was the necklace left by my sister.”

Erina silently held Sandes’ hand that was growing cold, sharing warmth.

“After losing my nephew, I really wanted to run away, thinking the whole world had ended, but my brother found me. The current Emperor, His Majesty.”

Enzo, who was the Crown Prince, was in the middle of inspecting various parts of the empire after the former Emperor died and he ascended to the throne.

Meeting Enzo was also a fateful coincidence.

On the day Sandes met Enzo, as if entranced by the same sky-blue eyes as his own, he ended up telling Enzo about his past days without hiding anything.

Then Enzo sympathized with him and ordered him to live.

“He told me to live. No matter what mindset I had. Even the share of my mother and sister who lived unhappy lives until they passed, and the share of my nephew who left without even being able to bloom.”

He said to take revenge on those who drove him to this state if nothing else, to not let go of the thread of life like that.

At those words, Sandes clung to Enzo and wailed.

The sadness he had hidden burst out, unable to show his own misfortune to his family who had been more unfortunate than him, and heartbroken by the sacrifices they had endured to keep him alive.

“I dreamed of revenge in order to live. I uncovered and erased the former Emperor’s disgraces from history for insulting my mother, and I wanted to destroy Eols for causing my sister’s death.”

Fortunately, Enzo also hated his father, the former Emperor.

With Enzo’s help, the former Emperor was erased from the empire, but Eols could not be destroyed.

It was because Enzo already greatly trusted and relied on Peiron.

With the thought of carrying out revenge once Eols’ ugly aspects were revealed and trust was lost, he had a long plan in mind.

He didn’t know when he could start, but he dreamed of revenge in order to live on like that.

“After meeting you, my dream could begin.”

Because Erina came to find him, Sandes was able to begin the revenge he had only been planning.

Also, meeting her, he learned about feelings and came to know the emotion called love.

It wasn’t just emotions that he learned.

He was also able to find the truth hidden in Eols and the nephew he had lost.

“Yesterday, I found out. That my nephew, whom I thought was dead, is alive.”

“Oh my, what a relief!”

Sandes tightly grasped Erina’s hand.

“My nephew was the child you saved. Lebil, who grew up being abused without knowing anything at the orphanage belonging to Eols County.”

“Lebil?”

Erina was so surprised that she trembled and widened her eyes, still holding his hand.

Even in the midst of this, Sandes could smile at her lovely appearance.

“Yes. But that wasn’t all I found out.”

Through the maid who came to find him, Sandes learned all the pieces he didn’t know.

It wasn’t just the late former Count Eols who caused his sister’s death.

No, rather, the former Count Eols had loved his sister so much that he tried to keep her alive somehow.

The one who made his sister wither away without a chance to breathe, hidden from view, was none other than Mirea.

“It was all because of Mirea Eols that my sister died and I thought my nephew was dead.”

“Mirea Eols? You don’t mean the Eols matriarch?”

Sandes smiled weakly and gently stroked the back of Erina’s hand.

The cruel things Mirea had done to his sister, vividly conveyed by the maid, couldn’t leave his mind.

“She incited the servants to make my sister no different from a slave. Starving her, beating her, and even making it so she couldn’t sleep well.”

“That’s insane…”

It was crazy enough to make anyone who heard it automatically say it was insane. His sister lived miserably for 8 years like that.

All to protect him and his mother.

The former Count and Mirea always mentioned him and his mother to his sister who wanted to lose her mind, making it so she couldn’t die.

Even though she could have let everything go and no one could say anything.