♡ TL: Khadija SK
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A man was lying at Theodore’s feet, and beside him, the knife that had stabbed Theodore was thrown on the ground.
This man was a pickpocket who had come to steal the gold coins that Theodore had tried to give to Annette.
Originally, the thief intended only to tear the bottom of Theodore’s pocket with the knife and extract the gold coins, but Theodore, feeling threatened, instinctively defended himself.
It was a ridiculous incident where he was stabbed with a knife that had been used to rob him while trying to protect Annette with his body.
Theodore turned and kicked the man at the same time, causing the pickpocket to hit his head on the hard stone steps and collapse while bleeding even more than Theodore.
“This is why I told you this place isn’t safe.”
“Are you mocking me right now?!!!!!”
Annette screamed when she saw blood flowing endlessly from Theodore’s waist.
At the same time, a man who had been inside the restaurant ran toward the pickpocket and pinned him to the ground, breaking his arm.
“Are you alright, Your Highness?”
“It’s just a minor wound.”
It was the same man who had been sitting at the table next to them, watching them during their meal.
“Who is this man?”
“Your personal escort.”
“My escort?”
“Did you really think I would send the Grand Duchess outside without a guard to protect her?”
Theodore tried to smile but frowned due to the pain.
“Damn it.”
He leaned on Annette, resting his head on her shoulder while covering his bleeding wound with his hand.
“Are you alright? No, it’s impossible for you to be alright. The hospital… Let’s go to the hospital.”
“I’m not going to any hospital.”
Theodore groaned in a whisper that only Annette could hear, just like when he had come to Elysia asylum a few months ago.
“It’s bad enough that I was stabbed in public already.”
Upon hearing his words, Annette swallowed her scream.
***
Theodore returned to Flores Palace as quietly as possible.
Since he had been stabbed in the middle of the street, rumors had already spread, but they had to keep his condition as secret as possible.
So Theodore could neither go to the hospital for a proper examination to determine his exact condition nor receive appropriate treatment.
If his physical condition became known to those around him, enemies might try to take advantage of the opportunity and attack him.
“I’m done. His Highness lost a lot of blood, but the wound itself isn’t deep.”
“Well done.”
Annette praised Lisa’s work instead of Theodore.
Theodore looked extremely displeased.
The fact that he had entrusted a nurse he usually ignored with treating his wounds was very irritating to him.
Even Annette was unsatisfied with the treatment process.
Since she couldn’t leave the nurse alone with her husband in the bedroom, she had to be there as well.
Because of this, during the process of disinfecting the wound and stitching the injured area, Annette saw all the blood and torn flesh without any additions or omissions.
The only interesting thing was that Lisa was no longer afraid of Theodore this time.
“Look at this. His Highness didn’t believe my words until the end, but now the day has come when you trust Lisa and have entrusted her with your life.”
“What life are you talking about? It’s just a minor scratch.”
Annette tried to tease Theodore a little when his waist was finally wrapped in bandages, hoping to lighten the harsh atmosphere in the room.
Lisa had said that the knife hadn’t reached any internal organs and that the wound wasn’t serious because it had been inflicted in an area with a lot of muscle.
Nevertheless, it was impossible to deny that he was in severe pain.
Even though it wasn’t a life-threatening injury, Theodore was hurt nonetheless.
In addition to the pickpocket’s stab wound, there were many other minor scars on his body.
Annette realized how dangerous the world she was living in as she looked at the scars that covered Theodore’s body, causing her voice to tremble involuntarily.
“Assassination… Do you face things like this often?”
“My enemies tend to remind me of my status from time to time so that I don’t forget my position.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t an assassin targeting us?”
“The fact that the knife I was stabbed with wasn’t poisoned clearly means that man had no intention of killing me. If you ever get stabbed by someone who truly wants to kill you, you’ll learn how to tell the difference.”
Theodore had overreacted to the pickpocket only because there had been people who had attempted to assassinate him in a similar way in the past.
But surprisingly, the pickpocket turned out to be just a real pickpocket.
It was exhausting for Theodore, who had gotten injured while trying to protect Annette, to think about the possibility of an assassin targeting the Grand Duchess.
Theodore had tried interrogating the man to see if someone had sent him after them, but he was just a well-known thief from the back alley.
The same applied to the culprit, who was utterly baffled by the pointless reactions Theodore had shown.
He was a poor pickpocket who didn’t know the face of the Grand Duke and his wife because he had only recently come to Laider.
As punishment for stealing money from others’ pockets in the crowded streets, he was temporarily locked in the basement of the Flores Palace.
“Since when has that man been accompanying me?”
“Since you left the villa.”
Anette’s expression sank deeper into despair.
It was clear she couldn’t say what she truly wanted to say and was simply circling the topic by asking other questions.
Her face, which seemed like it would burst into tears at any moment, was extremely fascinating, so Theodore pretended not to notice it, even though he did notice her expressions.
“… Would you have avoided this stab if you were alone? You are injured because of me, aren’t you?”
Finally, Anette gave up her pride and expressed her true feelings.
This woman knew why Theodore was hurt.
Just before the pickpocket came running toward her, someone else approached her.
It was someone who just happened to be heading toward the restaurant at that moment.
At the same time, the pickpocket was waving a knife in the air.
In an instant, Theodore thought that if the person approaching Anette was an accomplice of the pickpocket, they were likely planning to stab Anette and try to kill her.
In a brief judgmental mistake, Theodore didn’t run from the pickpocket but pulled Anette toward him, unknowingly covering her body with his own.
At the same time, he moved his body to the other side of the street, the direction from which the knife was coming.
In short, it was as though he voluntarily exposed his body to the stab to protect Anette from getting hurt.
Therefore, if they followed the cause step by step, Theodore’s current condition would be due to Anette.
Of course, Theodore didn’t think so, but this woman felt guilty because her heart was tender amid an unusual situation in an unexpectedly strong topic.
“If you hadn’t acted so unnecessarily smart, the matter would have been over by just tearing your clothes and taking the money, so why didn’t you avoid the knife…”
Anette tried to blame Theodore, but she swallowed her words again.
It seemed that if she said more here, it would make her feel deeply embarrassed.
The way her lips trembled was like a puppy that got its fur wet under the rain somewhere, so Theodore forgot the pain and smiled sarcastically.
“He didn’t intend to kill you, but I panicked and placed my body in front of him by accident because it was the first time I saw someone holding a knife.”
“Are you joking with me in this situation?”
Anette frowned as much as she could and buried her face in Theodore’s bed.
After a while, she raised her head again and looked at him in silence.
“Can’t you be more honest and say what you really want to say? That way, you won’t regret later that you didn’t speak up in time.”
“I…”
“Come on, don’t hesitate.”
Anette lowered her gaze for a moment and thought carefully.
“What I want to say is… I’m sorry for what happened before.”
“What?”
“Your mother’s ring. I threw it forcefully on the table carelessly, and luckily it didn’t break. It’s a precious keepsake, but I was rude and ignored its value.”
This time, Theodore frowned.
Anette thought he frowned because he remembered the moment when she threw the ring, but in reality, Theodore couldn’t understand her words at all.
Why was she sorry?
And when he remembered that ordinary humans usually cherish their mother’s keepsakes, he burst out laughing.
“Hahaha… Are you sorry for this silly reason?”
“Silly? Isn’t it a precious ring?”
“This ring is something that only imperial nobles recognize, so I gave it to you to ensure they know your identity and believe that you are my wife. It has no other meaning at all, so don’t worry.”
“Yet, it’s a keepsake from your beloved mother.”
“Don’t think of me and my mother as an ordinary family. Not all mothers and children are affectionate with each other.”
Theodore thought about his mother after a long time.
Scenes that could not be called memories flooded his mind.
“My mother was always worried that I would die first.”
“That’s natural because she loves her son.”
“No, she loved His Majesty the Emperor.”
“Is that different? She loved her family.”
“Very different. She was worried that if I died, the connection she had with His Majesty the Emperor would disappear, and she would be abandoned.”
Her actions were natural.
But Theodore’s mother was not what everyone thought.
It was known that she was an extraordinary concubine who betrayed the current emperor and tried to place her son on the throne, but unexpectedly, she sincerely loved the former Emperor Dominic.
She loved him so much that she wanted to be recognized as his legitimate wife even after their death.
However, the love between the emperor and the concubine was a problem for anyone.
Some people laughed at Maria because she was naive and stupid, saying she didn’t know her place, but in reality, she knew it very well.
She was just pretending not to know.
Maria, who knew very well why the emperor’s love was a sin and why it shouldn’t happen, was always worried.
At the same time, although she believed in love, she did not believe in men.
She knew that Dominic truly loved her, but many things made her not trust him as a man, including his position as emperor, the presence of the first empress, Eleonora, and his legitimate son, Philbert, as well as the countless beautiful women in the Odientian Empire.
No matter how much Maria loved Dominic, the pressure that he could one day abandon her made her uneasy for her entire life.
That heavy heart was relieved with the birth of her son.
“Are you angry with your mother?”
“The word anger isn’t enough to describe how I feel. I hate her.”
Theodore’s voice sank deeply in the midst of the pitch-black darkness.
Anette felt a deep sense of confusion involuntarily.
Theodore had openly revealed his negative feelings, which went beyond anger to hate.
“Didn’t you say I shouldn’t hide anything from you? So, take a good look at this.”
Theodore took off his blood-stained shirt and turned his back to Anette.
On one corner of his back, there was a strange tattoo that didn’t match his clean body.
“This…”
A butterfly tattoo with one wing torn.
Anette had seen this pattern in a history book of the Odientian Empire.
It was now gone, but in the past, it was a mark that distinguished slaves.
“Why this pattern on your body, Your Highness…?”
“My mother tattooed it on me with her own hand.”
“Excuse me?”
“She took her 10-year-old son in front of the current emperor Philbert, knelt submissively before him, and personally held the pattern and engraved this symbol on my back with her own hand so I could become a slave to them.”
Maria herself carved the slave mark on her young son’s body, who carried the emperor’s blood.
No, she was only a mother in name.
Anette was so shocked that she forgot how to breathe for a moment.
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T/N: This time it seems that we have a shitty mom ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌
