Chapter 116: ​A Cradle of Thorns

Alisha leaned closer to Roland, her voice a poisonous honey that filled the silence of the room. “Do not be in such haste, Roland. A hunter who strikes too early loses the prize. You must be patient to earn your reward. I will reveal the intricacies of my plan when the stars align… but for now, we wait.”

She slowly turned her gaze toward the portrait of Serene, the sapphire of her eyes hardening into shards of jagged ice. A faint, haunting whisper escaped her lips, directed only at the painted face of the woman she once called a friend.

“I will send you back… exactly where you belong.”

The months bled into one another, a slow, agonizing procession of grey days within the suffocating walls of the Tharron estate. As the seasons shifted, so did Alisha’s silhouette. Her belly began to swell, a constant, physical reminder of the union she loathed.

Standing before the full-length vanity mirror, Alisha stared at her reflection with a visceral, silent revulsion. She did not see a miracle of life; she saw a stain. To her, the life stirring within was not a soul to be nurtured, but a parasite, a living badge of her own desecration.

She pressed her palm against the curve of her stomach, her touch lacking even a flicker of maternal warmth.

“I have tried every way to kill you, you little parasite,” she hissed at her own reflection, her voice trembling with a cold, jagged edge. “But it seems you are as stubborn as the blood that sired you.”

A slow, predatory smile crept onto her lips—a expression that didn’t reach her hollow eyes. “I never imagined that I would eventually turn you into my only lifeline… my final escape from this hollow tomb.”

Throughout those long, grueling months, Alisha lived like a ghost within the Duchy of Tharron. She was a silent observer, a shadow moving through the gilded corridors, patient and lethal, waiting for the perfect moment to strike the first match that would set their world ablaze.

Across the capital, the atmosphere in the Imperial Palace was no less grim. Since the day of the wedding, Lucius had become a shell of the man he once was. The vibrant conqueror had been replaced by a statue of ice and apathy. He was drowning in a sea of despair that no crown could alleviate, his nights consumed by the bitter burn of wine and the haunting memory of a white lace veil.

The halls of the palace echoed with his hollow footsteps, and the only person who dared to approach the wreckage of the Emperor—the only one who offered a flicker of solace in his self-imposed exile—was his younger sister.

The months of silent resentment culminated in a night of jagged shadows and agonizing screams. Within the stifling air of the labor room, the midwives hurried back and forth, their voices a frantic blur of commands.

“Push, My Lady! Just one more!”

​When the first cry finally pierced the heavy silence, it held no joy. To hide the scandal of its true conception, the word was spread that the child had arrived in its eighth month—a fragile lie to cover a devastating truth. The midwife, after cleaning the infant, approached the exhausted mother with a warm smile, cradling a bundle of white linen.

“She is exquisite, My Lady. A perfect beauty.”

​Alisha turned her head, her sapphire eyes—now dull and hollow—meeting the gaze of the newborn. She saw her own reflection in that tiny face, the same delicate features, the same cursed beauty.

“Get that creature away from me!” Alisha shrieked, her voice a raw, jagged blade that made the midwives recoil in horror. “Now! Out of my sight!”

​The room fell into a stunned, fearful silence. No one could comprehend the sheer venom in her voice, nor the look of absolute loathing she cast upon her own flesh and blood.

​Hours later, when the house had settled into an uneasy quiet, Alisha forced herself to rise. Her body was a map of pain, but a darker, more visceral urge drove her toward the ornate bassinet. She stood over the sleeping infant, watching the shallow rise and fall of its chest. The scent of milk and new life made her stomach churn with a sickening bile.

​”You stole everything,” she whispered, her voice a demonic rasp in the dark. “You are the shackle that bound me to this hell. You are the thief who murdered my future.”

​With a trembling, ice-cold hand, Alisha reached out. Her fingers hovered over the infant’s fragile throat, a thin, porcelain neck that could be snapped with a single, decisive movement. Her eyes burned with a terrifying, obsidian fire.

“What if I simply ended it now? What if I erased the proof of my shame?”

Alicia’s fingers trembled, hovering like pale wraiths over the infant’s throat. Her eyes glittered with the frigid luminescence of death. “What if I end it now?” she whispered to the shadows. “What if I simply erase this living proof of my subjugation? This tether to my own brokenness?”

​Before her fingers could constrict, Roland’s hand clamped around her wrist like an iron shackle. With a violent wrench, he flung her backward, sending her stumbling against the edge of the bed. There was no fatherly warmth in his gaze—only the cold, sharp resolve of a hunter protecting his prize.

​”Stop, Alicia,” Roland hissed, his voice as thin and lethal as a razor’s edge. He stepped between her and the cradle, his towering silhouette casting a long, suffocating shadow over the small, breathing bundle. “Your purpose ended the moment this creature drew its first breath. Your role as the ’vessel’ is complete.”

​He took a slow, deliberate draw from his cigar, exhaling a cloud of grey indifference as he looked at her with a gaze colder than her own. “Remember our pact. You remain under my roof only until the divorce is finalized. But for that to happen, you must deliver what was promised. I want Serene, and you want your stolen throne. Let us each go our separate ways—but you must move now.”

​Alicia recoiled into the dimness, her hair falling like a silken curtain to shroud her features. A faint, ghastly smile touched her lips as she looked first at Roland, then at the child who was, to her, nothing more than a transit ticket to a higher power.

​”Of course… I will,” she whispered, her voice a chilling caress. “I will give you your Princess, and I will reclaim my Emperor. And let everything in between burn to ash.”

The week that followed the labor was not a time of recovery, but a calculated vigil of ice. Inside Alisha’s chambers, the air didn’t carry the sweet scent of a newborn; it was thick with a stagnant, suffocating bitterness.

​The infant’s cries often tore through the midnight silence, sharp and desperate, yet Alisha remained unmoved. She would sit by the window for hours, her gaze fixed on the distant lights of the Imperial Palace, ignoring the midwives’ frantic whispers. When they brought the child to her, she didn’t reach out. She didn’t even look. To her, that wailing voice wasn’t her daughter; it was a rhythmic reminder of her shame, a noise she endured only because it served as the perfect backdrop for her upcoming tragedy.

Within days, her poisoned missive had already breached the gilded gates of the Imperial Palace. She played upon the strings of Lucius’s heart with the precision of a master surgeon; she knew that his unyielding nobility was his most profound vulnerability.

She penned words that dripped with a manufactured, suffocating helplessness: “I have brought a child into this world… and I pray Your Majesty might bless her cradle, for I have no other pretext to see your face one last time.”

She was certain. She knew with a terrifying, absolute conviction that he would come.

On the morning of the appointed day, the Tharron estate held its breath, suspended in a stifled, electric tension. Lucius stormed into the grand foyer, his movements a blur of desperate, fractured authority. He knew that crossing these moral thresholds was social suicide, but his heart had long since abandoned the law. He moved like a silent hurricane, and not a single servant dared to obstruct his path; the Emperor’s fury clung to him like a shroud.

But before his hand could graze the handle of her door, her scream shattered the mournful silence. Lucius froze, the very blood in his veins turning to ice.

Alisha caught the heavy, unmistakable rhythmic thud of Lucius’s boots echoing in the hallway—a sound she had memorized in her dreams and nightmares alike. As his shadow stretched beneath the door, she unleashed her first shriek, timing her collapse with the precision of a master of ceremonies.

“You violated me!” Alicia shrieked, her voice trembling with a masterfully orchestrated collapse. “You made me your woman by force only to spite Lucius! And now… you still haunt Serene as if I am nothing? We have a child, yet you are still trapped in her shadow!”

Lucius threw his weight against the door, the oak splintering as he burst into the room to find Alicia standing amidst a whirlwind of paper. She had flung a bundle of letters into the air, and they drifted around her like the black wings of ravens.

“All these love letters between you and her!” she cried, pointing at the scattered parchment. “What if I were to do the same with Lucius?”

In that instant, as if driven by a demonic frenzy, Roland lunged at her. He seized her golden tresses with a calculated brutality, jerking her head back until her neck strained. “My love for Serene is none of your concern!” Roland roared in a jagged, infernal rasp. “Do you truly think Lucius still desires you as you pine for him? You are nothing but a ghost in his bed!”

A single letter fluttered through the stagnant air, landing precisely at Lucius’s feet. His gaze locked onto the wax seal—the unmistakable, sharp crest of the Imperial Family. It was the private seal of his own sister, Serene.

His eyes fractured with a dawning, visceral horror. He found his voice, a jagged whisper echoing in the wreckage of the room.

“Alicia… what is the meaning of everything you just said?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep