What Became of the Tyrant After the Pregnant Empress Left - Chapter 66

“I’m usually more of a hands-off type.”
“Maybe that’s why my mother ran away?”
“…You’ve got quite a sharp tongue, don’t you?”
“Well, living in the palace, you tend to pick up various survival skills.”
Lena shook her head, leaning back deeply into her chair. She gazed at the ceiling in silence, as if recalling the past.
Then, out of nowhere, she made an abrupt statement.
“She was an experiment.”
“What?”
“Your grandmother, not Lillia. She was an experiment subject I took in because she had unusual blood.”
Ysaris was so stunned by the unexpected revelation that she couldn’t respond. As she stood there, unsure of what to say, Lena continued in a calm voice.
“I paid her fairly and hired her. You know I’m not the kind of person who’d perform human experiments without consent, right?”
“…Yes.”
“If you think about it, I’m kind of a lifesaver. I took in a girl who was on the brink of death, saved her, and raised her well. Now that I say it, doesn’t it sound a bit like your situation?”
Lena chuckled softly and stretched lazily. It wasn’t a story she particularly wanted to share, but once she started, the words just flowed out.
“We were getting along fairly well, helping each other out. Then she fell for some guy next door and got married. What she saw in that pretty-faced fellow, I’ll never know… But it turned out alright in the end. Their daughter turned out to be quite beautiful. That’s your mother, Lillia.”
“Oh…”
“I’m not going to go into all the little details of the past, so to cut it short—”
Lena paused for a moment before jumping straight to the conclusion.
“Your grandparents died early, so they entrusted Lillia to me. I raised her with care, and what does she do? Runs away as soon as she’s an adult, leaving behind nothing but a single letter! And she took my jewelry pouch with her, too!”
“Hmm.”
“And the letter? What did it say? Something about leaving to find love and romance? It’s insane. I should have known something was off when she spent all day reading romance novels.”
“Hmm.”
Ysaris couldn’t bring herself to defend her mother and just made a small, uncomfortable noise. In her memories, her mother was a gentle and dignified lady, but listening to Lena, she began to picture her as a reckless troublemaker.

…In hindsight, maybe there had been signs.
Ysaris felt a bit sheepish. She wondered if perhaps she had idealized her mother, remembering her as a perfect figure because she had lost her so young.
“Did she never contact you after that?”
“I was away somewhere else, so I didn’t even realize Lillia had disappeared until months later. She had no way to contact me.”
“Why?”
“This place is magically cut off from the continent. It’s easy to leave, but very hard to return, so contact is almost impossible. She knew that and still left, the foolish girl.”
Lena clicked her tongue. When she returned home and found her valuables gone and Lillia missing, she initially thought something terrible had happened. But when she discovered it was just a runaway, she was utterly dumbfounded.
Even though Lillia hadn’t awakened her powers, her bloodline was extremely rare. That’s why Lena had hidden her away so carefully, protecting her all this time. But in an instant, all her efforts had been in vain, leaving Lena filled with both anger and emptiness.
“Honestly, I was a bit angry. It’s a tough world out there for a woman with no status to live on her own, and she just ran off without a word while I was away? She could have at least asked me first…”
Lena spoke as if frustrated, but deep down, she knew the truth. Lillia had known that Lena would never have allowed her to travel across the continent, which is why running away was her only option. Lena couldn’t pretend she didn’t understand this.
While there was a touch of regret and guilt, the disappointment and hurt she felt were much stronger. At that point, she was even angry with herself.
‘This is why I shouldn’t have let myself get attached, she thought. What a mistake it was to get close to an experiment. Why did I bother raising a descendant who couldn’t even use her powers?’
‘I even cut her umbilical cord. I raised her from the time she was a newborn…’
“…In the end, I decided to consider her as good as dead since she left on her own. Decades passed, and I had nearly forgotten about it all—until you showed up. With that same pattern of blood flowing through you as your mother.”