Chapter 37

When she lifted her head, she saw a man with fiery crimson hair approaching, two glasses in hand. His face was one she knew well, and Adeline’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Prince Cayden?”

“Haha, I’ve told you to just call me Cayden.”

The man, smiling with easy charm, was none other than Cayden Crawford.

He was the second prince of the Crawford Empire.

“Since your partner seems to have stepped away, shall we talk for a moment?”

He was also the man her father, Diego, supported as the next emperor.

︵‿୨ ₊‧꒰ა ཐི༏ཋྀ ໒꒱ ˚₊ ୧‿︵

Cayden Crawford.

He was the second prince of the Crawford Empire, his features sharp and fierce in the way of his father, the emperor.

He was the only son of the late Empress Melia, who had passed away long ago. As the only legitimate son born to an empress, he should, by all rights, have ascended to the title of crown prince without the slightest question over succession. Yet he bore a grave flaw, which was that his mother’s family was of little consequence.

Empress Melia, his mother, had been a woman of great beauty. Her beauty could be summed up in a single sentence.

A woman who had risen from a mere lifelong lady-in-waiting at the palace to the rank of empress solely through her beauty. Though nominally the daughter of a noble house, Melia’s family—the Blancans, and thus Cayden’s maternal house—were barons in title only. They were a remote, impoverished lineage that had managed to cling to their noble status solely by sending their eldest daughter into the palace as a lifelong attendant. The reigning Emperor, Albert, had truly loved Melia, and she, in turn, had accepted his courtship and become his empress.

The problem began from that moment onward.

‘All ladies-in-waiting of the imperial palace were of noble birth.’

Especially those serving the empress, who were carefully chosen from high-ranking families to forge political ties.

These were young ladies who had never so much as lifted anything heavier than a teapot, let alone performed the slightest menial task. It was hardly to be expected that such women would welcome serving, as their empress, a woman who had once been a low-ranking lady-in-waiting. Had the empress’s family been powerful, offering connections worth cultivating, the situation might have been different.

But Empress Melia was no such case. Rather than being attended to, she was often ignored or treated with quiet disdain by her own ladies.

‘And as the years passed, even the Emperor’s love for her was not what it once had been.’

An empress was meant to be the emperor’s political partner, someone who could aid him in times of difficulty and wield influence in the affairs of state. However, Melia was wholly unversed in such matters, and with no true power in her family, she could never fulfill that role.

Thus, Emperor Albert gradually began to regret having taken Melia as his empress.

“No matter how much I loved Melia, another woman should have held the place of empress.”

By the time such words had become a frequent refrain for Emperor Albert, Melia had given birth to a daughter. But the child, frail from birth, didn’t live to see her first year. In the palace, the neglect and isolation persisted, compounded by the change in her husband, the only person she had ever been able to rely upon.

And then, the death of the daughter she had borne with such difficulty.

Driven to the brink, Melia gradually lost her spirit, and Emperor Albert, in turn, began to see her as devoid of charm. Despite the fact that he continued to share her bed out of duty, in the hope of producing an heir, that was all it was, an obligation.

“In the end, what I need is not a puppet of an empress, but a true political partner.”

As this conviction took root, Emperor Albert took a consort from a powerful and influential noble house. From that union was born the first prince, Fabian Crawford.

Then, half a year after Fabian’s birth came the second prince, Cayden.

When Adeline first learned of his upbringing, she couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of pity for him.