"...You’re so annoying, can’t you read between the lines? You should have gone back to your own house by now," I say to Evelyn’s mother, who just won’t leave this castle. She’s starting to frustrate me. She’s lucky she’s too powerful for my servants to kill her in secret.

"Hahaha!! Between the lines?! What lines are there to read between when you’re hiding the fact that..."

"Quiet!" I stop her before she can speak. I can already imagine what the subject is; after all, she’s been way too close to Evelyn lately. I’m sure she’s about to say something I don’t want anyone else to know, so I use magic to completely seal the sound in the room, preventing Evelyn’s [Shadows] from listening.

"Don’t want to hear it? You did ’that’ to my daughter and now you want to hide it? I’m not stupid!" I stare at Vivienne, irritated by her particular ability, which lets her use electricity to perform x-rays, physical analyses, and even discover things in others’ bodies through gentle electrical pulses.

"I just don’t want Evelyn to know yet. If the shadows heard, that would be bad, don’t you think? You hid it from Evelyn, too." Evelyn thinks she knows everything about her own body, but she only knows about physically noticeable things.

But I, who trained Evelyn to see Hikishin, know her technique is quite weak and she wouldn’t notice ’this’ without some kind of ability to perceive it.

"I hid it from Evelyn because I clearly wanted to see what you were going to do! But I know that look in your eyes! And I’m sure you’re going to do something terrible." She’s more or less right; I’m still thinking the situation over.

"Sit down. I want to know exactly what you know," I tell her, pulling a chair from the table and pushing it toward her, grabbing another and sitting down myself.

"So... what do you really know? I think that-" She quickly raises a hand, interrupting me.

"Evelyn is pregnant. Isn’t that enough for what you need to know?"

"Yes. And what do you want to know?"

"I don’t know? What do you think I, HER MOTHER, should know?" she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes at me as she sits in the chair.

"..."

"It happened about two weeks ago, more or less. Evelyn doesn’t seem to understand how a pregnancy through magic works. It seems that during all our encounters, the core in Evelyn’s chest was accumulating my magic."

"But because of Evelyn’s ’puberty,’ her tail ended up absorbing that magic, and when it was dispersed, it went straight to her uterus, since apparently her tail has a pretty strong connection to her hip area and internal organs." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"It was an unfortunate mistake, indeed." Evelyn got pregnant from a literally astronomically ridiculous chance of three events happening at the same time. I have to say, this is probably the fault of Evelyn’s curse that gives her bad luck, because the chance of those three events occurring was so ridiculously low that I never thought it could happen.

"Mistake, mistake, mistake. You call it a mistake, but you didn’t tell Evelyn! What do you plan to do? If you do what I think you’re going to do, you can be sure you’ll be my enemy for the rest of your life." Vivienne looks at me with hatred for this.

’Does she think I wanted this?’ I don’t need a child stealing Evelyn’s attention.

"I don’t care about your threat. What I do with a child born from my magic has nothing to do with you." No matter how much intimacy Evelyn and I share per week, a baby wouldn’t come from that. I have to say, Evelyn’s bad luck is annoying.

Although I am somewhat to blame, since it was my fault she entered puberty, and besides, my blessing wasn’t in use to prevent this unfortunate event from happening.

"The look in your eyes is disgusting, Esther. I find it so disgusting that you’re my daughter-in-law. You want to kill the baby, don’t you? That’s why you didn’t say anything to Evelyn. Because Evelyn will only notice in about two months, and you want to eliminate the child before Evelyn knows and pretend nothing happened."

"..." I look at the ceiling, thinking about how complicated everything has become because of this irritating woman. Only the two of us know this fact, and if she didn’t know, everything would have passed silently.

"That’s right. I was going to kill this child before Evelyn even knew it existed. So tell me, Vivienne, what do you think Evelyn will do? Do you think Evelyn will, by any chance, fight with me intensely? She’s a dragon. Even if you tell her, it will only make Evelyn suffer."

"You piece of shit, you think I’ll let you do that to my grandchild?" She stands up from the chair as faint purple lightning starts to emanate from her body.

"Let me? I already did it." I smile at her.

"..." She seems to be thinking about something, probably searching for the answer in recent actions. Then she touches her belly, probably remembering that I’ve been doing this quite a lot to Evelyn’s body these past few days.

"You’re poisoning my daughter!" She’s smart and notices quickly.

"Oh no, no, no! Evelyn isn’t being poisoned. Her body is immune to most poisons. Now, what she’s carrying inside her? Well, that thing probably won’t be so lucky." Poison doesn’t work on Evelyn, but it will affect the ’baby’ inside her, so it’s perfect.

Creeeak

"..." I hear the sound of the door opening. It makes my body tense up, and Vivienne’s tail swishes in alert.

"...E-Evelyn?" I look at the door, where I see Evelyn with a completely empty look on her face.

"...I-Is that..." Before I can make up some excuse, Evelyn interrupts me.

"Recorder. It’s on your back." Evelyn says before anything else. I use detection magic on my hand, passing it over my back until I pull out something smaller than a grain of rice. I look at the tiny object in my hands, so small it went unnoticed.

"...Evelyn, this isn’t..."

["Oh no, no, no! Evelyn isn’t being poisoned. Her body is immune to most poisons. Now, what she’s carrying inside her? Well, that thing probably won’t be so lucky."] Evelyn takes a small object from her pocket and it emits my exact voice.

"Like I said, it’s a Recorder... I knew something was wrong... Esther, do you think I’m an idiot? That insults me, since you’ve been acting strange these past few days... and I was wondering why you were putting strange things in my food..."

"Since when?" I ask, staring at her, while Vivienne remains silent. The atmosphere in the room is horrible and heavy.

"I’ve been recording you since I let you take control of the kingdom’s paperwork. It was to make sure no other woman would get their hands on you... since I have to go to war..." Evelyn squeezes the recorder in her hands until it breaks with a snap.

"..." Evelyn turns and leaves the room, closing the door weakly behind her. I glare at that damn Vivienne.

"This is your fault, you wretch!" I would never have spoken aloud about what I was doing, which is why Evelyn never knew. After all, I don’t share things about Evelyn with anyone, but this wretch made me talk.

"Hahahaha! My fault!? I think it serves you right! Who told you to poison my daughter!" I try to go after Evelyn, but Vivienne grabs my arm.

"Where do you think you’re going? Didn’t you see Evelyn wants to be alone!? I’m not letting you go lie to my daughter. She needs time to see how terrible you really are!!" I look at the door, but instead of losing my composure, I get quiet and smile.

"?"

"You’re right. Evelyn needs time to think alone. And guess who she’ll choose? Me, her beloved wife, or a baby that’s barely started to form and that she has zero emotional attachment to?"

"Evelyn doesn’t need me to go there and lie. She’ll come to an answer that satisfies me on her own." I pull my hand away. In the end, it doesn’t matter; everything will turn out how I want, even though Evelyn knows about this.

"You are so vile, you viper. How can you be satisfied with the sadness of the person you claim to love after poisoning her child?!"

"..." I ignore her, releasing the room’s magic, which no longer serves a purpose. Besides, I have to congratulate Evelyn for putting that thing on me without me noticing, despite my magic. She’s gotten quite skillful since becoming queen.

"One day, this sick obsession of yours with Evelyn will be the cause of your death. Being jealous of a baby that isn’t even born yet is so sick it’s indescribable," Vivienne says to me before I leave the room.

"..." I leave the room, ignoring her. Why should I care? Why should I feel anything for destroying a clump of magic? I don’t care if that thing could one day become a life. Right now, it’s just accumulated, condensed magic.

And in the future, it would be an emotional thief that would take all of Evelyn’s focus away from me. I prefer to destroy everything before I have to share even a crumb of Evelyn’s attention with another being.

’I bet Evelyn won’t even care.’ Why would Evelyn care? I think she’s just hurt because I hid the fact from her, but I’m sure if I had told her, I could have easily convinced her to get rid of that thing inside her body.

I just didn’t tell her to protect her from the decision. After all, in our relationship, everything will always be my fault, the fault of my choices. So what’s the problem with me deciding what was best for my future and Evelyn’s future?

"I should get back to work soon. Later, I’ll bring some sweet treat for Evelyn, and that’ll be that."