BAMG 02

Chapter 2

She gently stroked her belly. While everyone was blaming her, what had kept Anesa standing was Damien and their child.

“As long as you’re born and Damien becomes emperor.”

As time flowed on without mercy, people’s anger would eventually fade. Thinking that way made her feel a little more at ease.

“Let’s go see Damien.”

She planned to ask him once more to stop the people outside the manor who were shouting. Having made up her mind, Anesa hurried along.

At last, she reached Damien’s room. At that moment, a familiar voice came through the slightly open door.

“When are you going to throw Anesa out already?”

It was her half-sister, Elodie.

Why was Elodie in Damien’s room?

No, more than that. Throw her out?

As her body stiffened at the incomprehensible situation, Damien’s voice followed.

“Just wait a while. She’s pregnant, so how could I throw her out right now? People are watching too.”

At Damien’s answer, Elodie replied as if dumbfounded.

“You don’t seriously think the child is yours, do you?”

Elodie constantly drove a wedge between her and Damien.

“What are you trying to say?”

“It could be the First Prince’s child. Then you’d be raising a tiger’s cub.”

Hearing that conversation, Anesa’s hand trembled.

‘How could she say something so insulting!’

The child in her belly was undoubtedly Damien’s. It was the truth, without the slightest doubt.

Anesa bit her lip at her half-sister’s slander that tore her down.

‘Just as I thought, you should never take in a black haired beast!’

Elodie had bullied her since childhood. But one day when Elodie came to the empire, she apologized for her immature past and blamed herself.

Faced with such a sincere apology, Anesa, who had always longed for familial affection, accepted Elodie and shared sisterly bonds with her.

The betrayal from the sister she had trusted made her teeth tremble.

She of all people knew better than anyone how much Anesa had struggled under such disgrace.

Anesa’s fist tightened.

She had to shut that mouth immediately.

Just as Anesa, face burning with anger, was about to fling the door open.

“I know. That’s why we can check after the child is born, and if it’s not mine, we can just kill it.”

At Damien’s next words, her movement stopped cold.

Was this what it felt like for blood to run cold? Even Damien, of all people, had been thinking such things.

‘Who do you think I’ve been enduring all that blame for!’

Even now, the cries of people outside condemning her were echoing loudly.

Clenching her trembling fists, Anesa recalled the past.

Damien had been the first person to acknowledge her. She had been a princess whose presence was barely noticed in the Kingdom of Edelite, but he discovered her guiding ability and was the only one who rescued her from a life like hell.

For his sake, she didn’t care even if she collapsed from overload while guiding.

And yet.

‘How about you Guide my older brother from now on?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I just feel sorry for him. His ability is so outstanding that he’s never properly received guiding. I think you could manage it.’

Though startled by Damien’s sudden request, she couldn’t refuse him.

‘It’s for me. You can do it, right? It’d be good for my brother to experience proper guiding before he dies.’

Anesa immediately understood the meaning behind those words. If an Esper never received guiding at all that was one thing, but once an Esper had received guiding and then couldn’t receive proper guiding afterward, the result was obvious.

He was trying to use his own wife to seize the throne.

Moreover, the basis of guiding was physical contact.

Guiding someone who wasn’t her husband was no different from committing adultery. For a woman, it was a shameful act.

Her husband was telling her to sleep with his older brother. It was humiliating, but she couldn’t refuse Damien’s request.

And Damien’s plan had succeeded. Hadn’t the First Prince who received her guiding eventually died in a rampage not long after?

She felt sorry for the dead First Prince, but Anesa consoled herself that it had all been for the man she loved, Damien.

She had become the mistress of her husband’s brother to make her husband emperor. That too had been her husband’s will.

Yet they were saying such things about her. Misery swallowed her whole. She couldn’t endure it any longer.

Just as she was about to take another step.

“Hurry up and throw that filthy woman out. You should think about our real child in my belly too, shouldn’t you? Hm?”