The Sand Bride - Chapter 83

The strategist discovered that the marquess who had recently inherited his title from his father had a beautiful bastard child with a merchant’s daughter from his youth, and suggested to the princess that she send this bastard child to Gharyam in place of a royal daughter. And the princess did so.

Areshi’s grandfather and mother were strong merchants, but their strength was an advantage that stemmed from the coldness of calculating profit.

The beautiful nineteen-year-old Areshi’s mother and grandfather received a massive sum of money and handed over her custody to the royal family. As soon as Areshi became a royal daughter, she had to embark on a long journey, listening to her weak father’s tearful pleas and the princess’s threats that weren’t quite threats.

Thus, crossing the hellish sand desert with the scorching sun overhead, the country she arrived at was Gharyam. There, Areshi met her husband and bore a daughter, but it was difficult to form attachments. She longed to step once again on the land with fresh vegetation and sometimes cold, accumulated snow.

In the year her daughter born with the king turned one, Areshi began to struggle with her desire to return to her homeland, torn about leaving her young daughter behind. Her husband, the king, was a man who did not control his women. Having built trust by bearing him a child, if she truly wanted to flee, she would be able to return to her homeland.

Holding her young daughter’s plump, small hand and hesitating, Areshi ultimately gave more weight to her own life and fled to her homeland, leaving her daughter behind. She could not cross the desert with a young baby. Even if she waited until the child grew up, she could not escape with a child who had the king’s blood.

“Mother!”

Upon returning to her homeland, Areshi first sought out her mother and grandfather.

Her grandfather had long been dead, so she was able to meet her mother, who was living with a husband she had acquired. Her mother did not welcome her daughter who had fled. Instead, she only scolded her daughter, fearing retaliation from the marquess family and the royal house.

It was a month later that Areshi discovered she was pregnant. Since she had not been intimate with any man other than the king, the child in her womb was certainly the king’s child.

As soon as Areshi’s mother learned of her pregnancy, she sent word to the royal court. Areshi gave birth in a shabby villa of the Donova royal palace.

Her daughter’s younger sister in Gharyam. Areshi gave the child, who had white hair and blue eyes like herself, the name Bianca.

“Bianca, tell me it will be alright.”

Neither alive nor truly alive, neither present nor truly present. In such circumstances, Areshi gradually crumbled.

Since no one comforted her, Areshi desperately wanted to be comforted by her young daughter Bianca. So from the time Bianca could speak, she learned words of comfort before words of affection.

“It will be alright, Mother.”

“Yes, Bianca.”

Young Bianca did not push away such a mother. Each time she spoke those words of comfort whose meaning she barely understood, her mother would smile gently and embrace her.

“Everything will be alright.”

Murmuring such words of hope.

However, because of her, Bianca came not to believe in hope. When Greta was officially recognized as the king’s child, information about Greta spread to the Kingdom of Donova in an instant. And it was also revealed that Greta had a mother from the Kingdom of Donova.

The princess, now king, slapped the brought Areshi across the face and insulted her as a completely useless wench. (t/n: Although the ruler is a woman and uses the word “king” instead of “queen,” it’s more on to emphasize her power and position as a king in her own right.)

The king, who had strong desires for power, became increasingly greedy over time, even turning her own children against each other to fill her own belly. The greedy king prioritized her own desires in the present over the future generations after her death.

The King of Donova hated and abused Areshi for not giving her power. Her hatred included not only lust for power but also compensatory psychology caused by Areshi, who reminded her of her own brilliant youth and vigor from the past, unlike her current fallen state.

While behaving irrationally and abusively toward Areshi, powerless Bianca could only watch her mother’s suffering without being able to do anything. The helpless girl could only utter the countless words of comfort she had always given.

“It will be alright. It’s alright, it’s alright…….”

When Areshi finally died from the old king’s usual abuse, the treatment of the remaining Bianca became very simple and clear. When her mother died, clever Bianca fled on her own before suffering a miserable fate.

Bianca, who had to be self-sufficient to survive while hiding from the king’s eyes, learned how to shoot a bow and how to survive from a hunter she met deep in the mountains. Even though she had only learned a few times, Bianca shot the bow very well. The blood of Gharyam certainly flowed in her veins as well.

But the king was persistent, and she left for Gharyam, choosing to become a slave to be sold to the Aldana temple.

Thus she came to Gharyam, approached her sister Greta, and pretended to be from a servant background in the Kingdom of Donova, giving Greta the ‘justification’ for war she had desired.

The fact that they had abused and killed Areshi, the former king’s wife who had fled, without returning her to Gharyam became an excellent justification, and Bianca was able to stand beside Greta as a witness to that.

“I witnessed your mother’s death.”

Upon hearing Bianca’s words, Greta’s eyes sparkled as she asked.

“What do you desire?”

Bianca smiled and answered.

“What I desire is only one person’s head.”

Since her grandmother had already been killed by Karzhen at Greta’s command, that one person was precisely the king.

Bianca learned that Greta wanted to erase her own weakness, and she also learned that this weakness was precisely Areshi. She also discovered that it was Greta who had framed Areshi’s mother’s merchant guild, Emorte, with smuggling charges and requested Karzhen and Hakan to subjugate them.

“But she was still your mother—don’t you feel sadness at her miserable death?”

“I send contempt, not sadness, for the destruction of the weak.”

One day, when Bianca said this, Greta spat out sarcastic words. It was a reaction as if she had heard something disgusting. With that, Bianca was able to put a period on the observation of Greta she had begun.

Greta wanted to burn away her weak aspects completely. She was a woman who was born more resembling a beast from birth and raised as a beast. She lived learning to despise tears and bare her teeth. To such a Greta, her own origins as a weakness were nothing more than something that deserved to disappear.

However, Bianca knew that the letter in the glass bottle was her mother’s letter and was certain that if Greta read it, she would help her.

Areshi’s letter left to her half-brother, the only merchant who had looked after Areshi. The letter in the glass bottle that Areshi left, hoping that someday he would deliver it to Greta as he traveled back and forth to Gharyam, contained Areshi’s words of love for Greta. But nowhere were there words of regret.

Indeed, after reading the letter in the glass bottle, Greta was silent for a while. Bianca quietly withdrew, and Greta let her do so.

The next day, Greta called for Bianca first.