Chapter 123
“…She is not yet six, so it may not have manifested properly and is simply not visible. Perhaps it would be best to wait a little longer and see.”
“What… what in the world does that mean! My daughter… what?”
It was true that the ability-control organ manifested at age six, but it should have been visible on the examination. Functioning and existing were two different things. And yet, in the end, no such organ could be found in Ailee.
‘My daughter… born unable to even function as a proper person. Such a beautiful child. It can’t be.’
Illina grew anxious. If the Count took a concubine, and that concubine bore a proper child, she would become an outcast in her own home.
When the Count heard the news, he demanded the child be killed at once. Illina couldn’t do it. How could she kill this tiny infant? My daughter. How? She begged and pleaded, asking him to wait, just until Ailee turned six. She insisted everything would be fine then.
Illina was consumed by anxiety day after day, but she tried to treat the child well. If I just give her enough love, surely her abilities will blossom when she turns six, making all this worry seem foolish. She clung to that thought.
But Illina could not completely shake her anxiety. She felt as if her perfect life was ending. Her plan to have only one child changed; she would have two more. After Lane and Lizzy were born, she was a nervous wreck until they, too, could be properly tested.
Ailee, smiling brightly, oblivious to her mother’s turmoil, was both infuriating and endearing. Illina couldn’t help but love her. Remembering her own childhood, she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the pitiful girl.
Amidst this turmoil, Lane and Lizzy were born, healthy and whole, possessing the organ. Not only that, but their organs manifested before they turned six, allowing them to use their abilities far earlier than other children.
Illina groaned, clutching her head against a pounding headache. Ailee, sensing her mother’s distress, timidly offered her a flower she had picked.
“Mother, a present.”
Ailee was beautiful. She was adorable as a pixie, with a sweet disposition. But that was all. She had come to soothe her mother, oblivious that she herself was the cause of this torment, and Illina could feel no joy.
They tested Ailee again and again, but the results were always the same. At six, at seven, and at eight. Illina’s frustration curdled into anger.
The twins’ abilities, in contrast, grew stronger by the day, as if they had absorbed the power Ailee lacked. They were extraordinary. And that wasn’t just a mother’s bias—an objective eye could see the twins were brilliant and powerful.
‘Why! Why!’
‘If only the twins had been born, and not Ailee, I wouldn’t have this stain on my life. I would be known as the Countess who bore gifted children, not the mother of a defective one. Then people in high society wouldn’t dare bring Ailee up to me like this!’
The twins grew into splendid ability users, but their accomplishments were always overshadowed by rumors that the eldest daughter was a simpleton. The twins were indeed brilliant, but unless they proved to be once-in-a-century geniuses, Illina knew she would forever be known as the woman who had given birth to an idiot.
Worse, dishonorable rumors circulated as if they were fact: that Ailee was the product of an affair, or, conversely, that the twins were the Count’s children by a mistress, secretly adopted and passed off as legitimate.
“What are you going to do about all these disgraceful rumors? This is precisely why he should have married a daughter from a proper family!”
“…I apologize, Father.”
“Tsk. I can’t even stand the sight of you. Know that you are only tolerated here for Lane and Lizzy’s sake.”
It wasn’t just her own reputation; Ailee’s birth alone had caused people to view the comital house as cursed. No one like her had ever been born before, and rumors began to spread that the child was a monster.
Merchant guilds, fearing they too might lose their abilities by associating with the “cursed” family, began to sever trade agreements. The domain’s people lost faith in their lord and began to leave.
‘Ailee.’
Illina stared at Ailee. She was a pretty child, but she no longer seemed endearing. The way she smiled timidly, always watching her mother’s mood, was detestable; her crying was even more infuriating. If it weren’t for you. If only you had been born like the twins.
She could not lose everything she had built. At this rate, she and Ailee could both be cast out. She could be exiled at any moment, accused of bringing “something impure” into the house that had led to its decline. She could not let that happen.
There were only two ways to reverse their fortunes: Ailee would have to miraculously manifest an ability, or Lane and Lizzy would have to become geniuses. …There was, of course, another way. Getting rid of Ailee. But she couldn’t kill her. She felt no affection, and she hated the sight of the girl, but she still couldn’t bring herself to kill her.
Around that time, Illina began a secret transaction. Taumiel. It came from a nation that sold a d**g so rare it was vanishing even from official records. She acquired it through a merchant guild on the black market.
Before the people’s distrust reached its peak and trade relations collapsed completely, Illina gave the d**g to Ailee and the twins.
She knew it amplified abilities at the cost of severe side effects, but she hadn’t known that nine out of ten who took it died. She had only been told they would “suffer later.” That their amplified abilities might “leak.” She hadn’t had time to investigate the details. She’d brushed aside the concerns and simply demanded the most potent d**g they had.
So Illina reasoned.
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