The Evil Woman's Child

My name is Freia ellé Regardo, the second princess of the Regardo empire and fifth child of emperor Julian ellé Regardo. Even though I am a princess, the life I'm currently living is way too far from that of a true princess.

I was a child born out of a mere mistake. My father, the emperor, accidentally slept with my mother who is an imperial consort one night and I was made. He thought that he slept with his beloved wife, the empress, who according to him is the only woman he will ever touch and love so he was extremely upset when he woke up the next morning to see the woman he despise the most beside him, naked.

Everyone believed that my mother put a potion on my father's food that night, so he came to her room and did it with her. They think she wanted a child with him so badly that she even dared to seduce the emperor and led him to her room. However, I don't believe that.

My mother, Queen Alissa, is the only daughter of Marquis and Marchioness Roschel. She is a simple woman who only wanted to live a peaceful and quiet life away from conflicts and wars, but that dream of hers was ruined the moment the marquis declared her as the fiancé of the former crown prince, now the emperor, my father.

Even though she didn't want to be engaged to him, she had no choice because she obviously cannot oppose the imperial family. It was an engagement that the imperial family wanted in the first place, so she could never dare to go against them.

Thus, my mother and father were engaged. However, they only acted as a couple in front of the people for show. They never really loved each other.

One day, during their third and last year in the academy, a mysterious commoner girl appeared. Even though she was a commoner, she has the unique magic that branched from light magic, the Holy Magic. She has the ability to heal anyone, any type of wounds, purify people and corrupted stuff and make a person even stronger and healthier after she had healed them. Most importantly, her magic is the best counter for Black Magic, which is the magic possessed by the empire's most powerful and formidable enemy back then, the Ruler of the Black Forest.

During the war against the said ruler, that commoner girl contributed a lot and paved the way towards victory for the empire. After achieving such a great feat, she was given the title of countess. And when they graduated from the academy, my father declared her to be his new fiancé and promised to marry her in front of all the nobles, which includes my mother and my maternal grandparents.

Marquis Roschel was enraged and didn't allow the former crown prince to do as he pleased. So he protested against him and told the former emperor his complaints, in which the latter agreed to. The Roschel family is a powerful family and it will only bring negative setbacks on both sides if they were to go against each other. Therefore, the emperor offered Marquis Roschel the position of the Queen instead to his only daughter, who is my mother.

At first, the marquis doesn't want to accept the offer because he doesn't want his daughter to be the queen, but the empress. However, because of the commoner girl's kind and generous personality, many people supported her and wanted her to become the next empress instead of my mother who has a terrible reputation back then. So Marquis Roschel cannot argue any further and accepted the emperor's offer in the end.

Finally, father married the commoner girl who became a countess, and now became the empress while my mother became the Queen.

Going back to how I came into this world, people believed that my mother wanted to conceive a prince for my father so that she can use her son to claim the throne one day. But I ended up to be a girl, so they mocked and laughed at my mother when I was born for having such delusional thoughts and failing to achieve her malicious plan in the end. That's how they came to the conclusion that she would hate me for breaking her 'so-called evil plans'.

However, that was never the case.

My mother cared for me and loved me unconditionally. Even though all the people in the palace looked down on me for being a 'terrible' woman's child, mother cherished me as if I'm the greatest treasure in the world.

When I was a child, I often heard people saying that my mother hates me because of the very fact that I'm not a boy so I once asked my mother about that. I could still remember the small hint of pain and sadness hidden in the smile she showed me back then as she answered, "You are my precious child. I don't need a throne or a mountain of golds because for me, you are more than enough. Don't listen to what others say because those are not true, okay?"

That's how I believed all those rumors about my mom being a villainous woman to be nothing but false accusations and unworthy to listen to. Because of my mother's compassionate words and her gentle heart, I believed that she is a perfect and angelic person. Until the day of my 6th birthday arrived.

Even though I am a princess, no birthday party was held to celebrate my birthday even once. That's why people regarded me as an abandoned princess. I share the same palace with my mother, which is a worn-out, desolate building unfit to be a place for a queen and a princess to live in. We barely have any servants and those said servants always look at us with contempt and indignation in their eyes. I even saw one of the maids stealing jewellery from my mother's room one day. I told my mother about it but she said to 'just let it be'.

That's when I realized that my mother was such a timid person. No matter how much the servants looked down on us and treated us like insects on the ground that they can freely crush, my mother never fought back and just remained silent, saying that it is better to keep a low profile inside the imperial palace in order to survive.

So it made me question myself.

'Why?'

As the night of my 6th birthday came, I heard loud knocks on the door of my bedroom and what I saw when I opened it is the figure of my mother, covered in blood.

I was horrified and almost wasn't able to recognize her back then.

I tried to scream for help but she quickly put a bloody finger in front of her mouth telling me to not scream.

"Ssh! It's mommy! Baby, please don't scream. Please..!"

She whisper-yelled as rivers of tears started flowing down her bloody cheeks. Her eyes painted fear and confusion while looking down at me as if she doesn't know what to do. She looked like a person who is out of her mind!

I was unable to speak or move at that moment. A mixture of emotions surged within my heart as I looked at my mother, who I believed to be a woman who can't even point a knife to someone, now covered in blood right in front of me.

She wasn't hurt but blood is all over her body. It only led me to one conclusion...

"M-mom, are you hurt?"

"No, no! Mommy's okay!"

"Then did you hurt s-someone?"

"....I-I..."

She wasn't able to answer. She was hugging herself with trembling hands and her pupils shook like a criminal who got found out about his crimes.

My whole body turned cold and my already widened eyes opened even wider as I take in the fact that my mom, who I believed to be an angel, had hurt someone.

My head slowly shook left and right on its own with disbelief and refusal painted over my face.

'No...No...'

Even though my mind fully concluded that my mother had hurt, or possibly killed someone, my heart told me otherwise. I refused to believe that my mother harmed someone else's life. I told myself that she would never do that and even if she did, it was not intentional, right?

Suddenly, I heard a commotion outside of my room and some people, who I believed were the servants, seem to be talking to someone with high authority.

It was a man's voice. The man was screaming and anger is evident in his voice.

"WHERE IS THAT F*CKING B*TCH?! DRAG HER OUT HERE!"

"Y-Yes, Your Majesty!"

Then several heavy footsteps were heard inching closer and closer to my room.

"There's blood leading to this room!"

"OPEN IT!"

As I try to process everything that was happening, my mother's bloody hands grabbed my arms. I was startled and looked back at her with a horrified expression on my face.

Tears started building up at the corners of my fear-stricken eyes as my mind fell into chaos.

In the middle of that chaos, my mom told me something.

"Freia, listen to me."

At that moment, a loud bang was heard and the door of my room suddenly exploded into smithereens. Mom carried me in her arms and covered me with her body so that the flying debris from the broken door won't hurt me. After that, everything happened so fast that I wasn't able to clearly process everything anymore.

All I could remember is my mother uttering words to me that I couldn't hear with tears on her face, the heavy footsteps of the knight's coming into my room, a scary-looking blonde-haired man with dark brown eyes and my mother getting strangled to death by that same man. He wasn't even contented by just strangling her, he also pierced her heart with his sword. All of that happened in mere seconds right before my eyes, on my 6th birthday, in the place where me and my mom cherished each other.

Due to the overwhelming fear, I fainted and didn't know what happened next.

☽︎༒︎𑁍༒︎☾︎

The day after that, I woke up and found out that my mom was gone. And the person who killed her is none other than the emperor, my father.

At first, I didn't believe it and went to her room. But she wasn't there. Next, I searched all the other rooms, but still no sign of her. I furthered my search for her and went through every nook and cranny of our palace, but I didn't see even a strand of her beautiful silver hair.

I was so desperate to see my mom again and kept refusing to believe that she died that I even sneaked into the Iris Palace, the place where the emperor lives, to ask for my mother.

But what I never knew back then was that I entered the door that almost led me to my death.

"A-Ack! P-pwease! Fa....thew!"

This was exactly what happened to my mother. This was exactly how she died, she was strangled to death by my father and he will pierce her heart.

"WHO SAID YOU COULD CALL ME FATHER?! I'M NOT YOUR FATHER!!! AND YOU DARE TO SHOW YOUR F*CKING FACE TO ME AND EVEN MENTION THAT WOMAN'S NAME IN FRONT OF ME?! AFTER WHAT SHE'S DONE?!!"

"S-Sow....Sowwy...I'm sowwy..."

"Your Majesty! Please calm down! You might kill the princess if you don't control your emotions!"

"So..wwy..."

After that, I didn't know what happened next as a result of passing out after almost getting strangled to death by the hands of my own father.

☽︎༒︎𑁍༒︎☾︎

"Your mother killed the empress. Her head is now displayed on the gates of the capital while the empress is going to have a proper burial five days from now."

I was shocked beyond belief that I fainted once more after hearing that horrid truth. I just woke up from fainting after I was almost killed by the emperor yesterday, and now I was told that my mother died because she killed the empress.

And not just that, they even told me, a 6-year-old child that my mother's head was hung at the gates of the imperial capital.

Everything was too much for me to handle. It was beyond my mental capacity as a child to accept the sudden and unexpected death of my mother, who was the only person who ever stayed by my side and cared for me in all those 6 years of my life. I almost went crazy!

Six years may not be that long, but it was the most important part of my life where I could still feel my mother's embrace and warmth.

'But now, she's gone...

She's no longer there with me.

No one's by my side anymore.

I'm all alone now.'