One Hundred Nights with the Devil - Chapter 15

Most people interpreted the Emperor’s silence that way, but Elena kept feeling suspicious that there must be another reason.

‘The Emperor’s attitude towards me that day was incredibly suspicious, after all.’

Elena chewed over the unsolved mystery and moved her steps. The place she was in was a hidden spot within the Grand Temple, accessible only to those the Pope had granted permission to enter.

Entering the small garden concealed between tall trees, Elena offered a greeting towards the tomb built with stacked white, smooth stones.

“I’m here, Mother.”

A white cloth marking the owner of the tomb welcomed Elena in place of the dead. After checking that there was no damage from rain or snow, she removed a dried flower crown and placed down a bouquet she had picked herself on the way.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I’ve been busy with various things.”

The flower crown she had left before departing for Wellington made a rustling sound in Elena’s hand. She took that as her mother’s laughter and continued speaking.

“There were no hardships. Not at all. Because no matter what happens, it won’t be as painful as when I lost you, Mother.”

Her mother, Claudine, who never shied away from harsh suffering and only embraced her with love, was from a very wealthy family. But the woman’s life was too short, and its end was too tragic.

She left her daughter, who was barely seven years old, alone in the world and passed away.

‘Poor woman.’

If she hadn’t gone out to work with a sick body to buy a piece of bread for her own birthday. If she hadn’t given birth to her. If she hadn’t left home to protect the child she carried alone.

If she hadn’t loved the man who swore marriage and dragged her into his bedroom multiple times, then unilaterally broke off the engagement claiming he would become a priest. If she hadn’t been afraid of that petty desire, which claimed he couldn’t stand not loving her, and that if she loved him, she ought to accept him.

If that damn bastard hadn’t desired her.

She could have lived.

With a frail body, raising a child, she died of a fever without even getting to use medicine. Just at that time, an epidemic spread, and the villagers ignored the child’s desperate plea to save her mother, and eventually, young Elena was left abandoned with her mother’s corpse.

She had to dig the ground alone and stack stones to make her mother’s tomb.

And the seven-year-old Elena, who came out onto the streets to live, became an eight-year-old who was pointed at as a beggar by children her age. When she turned nine, she couldn’t endure the hunger, was caught stealing horse feed, and was beaten almost to death.

The person who saved her as she was dying was a priest who was doing missionary work in the Southeast. Elena did not believe in God, but she believed in the priest who healed her broken and torn body. So she tried to hold a little faith.

Until she was twelve, when the Pope recognized the heirloom she possessed from her mother.

<You, where did you get that necklace.>

<……The ring on that necklace, I gave it to Claudine as an engagement gift.>

The Pope readily accepted Elena as his daughter. But that act was merely a ‘mistake’ stemming from momentary guilt and pity. The Pope soon regretted it, and was extremely wary of the relationship between him and Elena being revealed.

The psychological pressure of absolutely never being discovered was poured out onto the weak.

Because her conduct was poor, because the way she indulged her appetite was disgusting, because in her lonely heart she secretly called him Father… In the end, simply because she resembled him, the Pope severely abused Elena.

She wanted to run away. At the same time, she wanted revenge.