Chapter 6 (2/2)

“What happened, Your Highness?”

“Just like you heard it, dad. I…”

“I heard His Majesty pushed you back while hurriedly standing up in order to clear the empress’s misunderstanding. That’s why you miscarried a baby. Is it true? ”

“…Who spread such frivolous rumors. It’s because I foolishly stumbled, so don’t listen to groundless rumors, dad.”

My father never heard or repeated bad rumors about the empire and the imperial family.

I couldn’t believe my ears when he asked me that question, so I just smiled at him as if nothing happened.

No matter who gossiped about me, I had to set the example as a member of the imperial family while refraining from saying or doing anything that could disgrace the empire and the imperial family.

My father, who looked at me for a while without saying anything, spoke in a low voice. There was loneliness in his blue eyes. His navy blue eyes were filled with bitterness.

“Oh, what I heard is true.”

“Daddy.”

“… You were gravely injured. Take a good rest. ”

While I was looking at my father, I lay in bed, thinking of his reminder that I should take a rest.

But how can I relax at all? As I lay still, several things came to my mind. His cold look and eyes, his cold voice with which he declared that my child would never be his successor without showing joy at all, and his cold-hearted actions when he simply called for the maids to take care of me even after I fell bleeding then followed the empress.

I felt heartbroken. I was more heartbroken by the fact that he was following her than by the fact that I lost a child I hadn’t seen yet. Perhaps it was fortunate that the child was not born to a woman like me who was frustrated more by the fact that she did not gain his love than by the fact that she lost a baby. Come to think of it, maybe he was right when he said I was indeed a cold-hearted woman.

I felt like I would go crazy when I just sat silent. So, I started working randomly. When I wake up in the morning, I read and read papers even though my head was in the clouds. I kept reading a mountain of documents until all the maids went to sleep and the day broke. When I had no more papers to read, I reread the documents I had already reviewed.

Every time I lay in bed, I kept recalling what happened that day. Every time I took a nap, I had a nightmare. I didn’t want to lie down nor sleep.

How many days passed? Or weeks? Months? When I was writing something in a dream-like state, I heard the maids whispering among themselves quietly. They said Jiun had his baby.

“Hahaha.”

I made a hearty laugh at their funny gossip for a long time. I kept laughing, while struggling to breathe, until the stunned maids ran out and my dad came running to me to talk.

“What are you doing, Your Highness?”

“Daddy, isn’t it so funny? Her Highness, that woman allegedly blessed by God got pregnant. Ahahahaha. ”

“Your Highness?”

“Isn’t it funny? My baby is gone, but she got pregnant. I can’t have any babies for the rest of my life, but she will have a baby. Isn’t this funny? Ahahahaha! ”

“Come to your senses!”

My father grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me back and forth. I tilted my head.

Why isn’t he enjoying this funny story? Why is he staring at me like that?

“What is the matter with you, dad? Isn’t it funny, dad?”

Stars flashed in my eyes. I came to my senses when I was hit by my father for the first time in my life. I didn’t have the nerve to look at my father’s face when he was gasping for breath, so I looked down slightly.

“… Sorry, Dad. ”

“Now, have you come to your senses?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to show my ugliness.”

“I wish I had not married you off to him.”

I learned the royal courses as soon as I took my first step after I was designated as his wife.

Like the head of the empire’s foremost loyal family, my father never resisted the imperial decision to take me as the crown prince’s wife by treating me as the child of the prophecy.

Even when there was a confrontation between the factions who wanted to make the mysterious girl his wife and the faction who wanted to make me his wife, my father, as a faithful servant of the imperial family, didn’t raise any objection to the crown prince’s decision to take Jiun as his wife. And he humbly accepted the prince’s humiliating order to have me, who was originally chosen as his wife, accepted as his concubine.

Despite that, my father now said he regretted that he married off me to the prince. I could hardly believe my ears. Did I hear wrong? My father was not the type of man who could have said that.

“What did you say, daddy?”