TW: Rape, confinement
[TL;DR located at the bottom]
"The empress told the emperor to rape my mother to gain an heir. My mother, who worked at the palace as a royal magician, had her life ripped apart. Just like that. Moreover, they wanted to claim that I was the truthful heir to the throne so they imprisoned her here."
What Hylli was saying right now wasn't something to be said lightly. I wondered if it was okay for me to learn such incredible secrets.
Hylli retracted a lot of parts to simplify the tale. I had a lot of questions about her treatment as a royal magician and what happened after she was imprisoned, but I decided to let it slide and focused on the story being told.
"I truly knew nothing. Before the empress succeeded at becoming pregnant and before everyone began to focus elsewhere, I mean. I thought that things just felt different because all the attention I received had shifted from me. I still thought I was a child loved by those around me back then. I wanted to be that child."
My heart hurt as he spoke that he acted like a child who was beloved by his surroundings. In other words, he wanted to be a pure, innocent child.
"But I coincidentally bumped into my mother. I ended up getting close to her. My mother sometimes sneaked out of her room and played with me when I was younger. When I went to sleep, she sneaked into my room and sang me lullabies and fairy tales. I thought of her as my mother before I even knew that she truly was my mother."
Hylli spoke with a melancholy, memory-laden voice as he looked at the woman in front of her. His voice was drenched in sadness.
"I wanted to become the emperor to free her, so I practiced my sword in order to not lose to the second prince. Thanks to that, I became the prime candidate to the crown. Part of that is thanks to you. I'm always grateful for that."
Hylli truly did put everything into his sword. He was almost strangely hardworking at it too. Thinking of that hellish muscle training he put me through was surefire proof of it.
"But the empress didn't like that at all. She wanted her real son, the second prince to become the next emperor, but I was just an obstacle. So she tried to figure out a way to take care of me. Through the black magic artifact in the Orde family. Black magic isn't too well known, so if there's an autopsy done then it just looks like they passed from an illness."
Just as I thought, the magic was truly black magic. But if Hylli was the one that was supposed to die, why was the woman in pain instead? I suddenly had a thought flash in my mind that was obvious but heartbreaking.
"The emperor was persuaded by the empress and passed her the artifact. And, like that, she met with my trusted mentor to put a curse on me slowly, day by day, to kill me. But my mother, who had been a magician, noticed it and pulled the magic into herself. She fell ill slowly, all alone. And I didn't even know."
Hylli's mood grew murderous at the reminder. The rage that he felt wasn't directed towards anybody but himself.
"When the empress noticed how I was still healthy, she realized what my mother had done and tried to kill her first. And when I saw that my trusted mentor, who acted on behalf of the empress, was moving suspiciously just as my mother grew more ill, I couldn't help but be suspicious."
"Was what you asked me to look at last time related to your mentor?"
I also know who the mentor was, so I bit my lips. Hylli couldn't look at me as his head hung low. I realized why our swordsmanship mentor had suddenly changed.
"Yes. Thanks to you, I was able to put a stop to it. I had to kill my mentor with my own hands. It was obvious that the situation would grow worse if they were kept alive–they were obviously plotting against me. I still remember when I killed him. When I tried to kill him, he began to talk about all the memories he held with me. As he begged me not to kill him. Absolutely disgusting."
He had a difficult time speaking of what happened after, so he took in a deep breath. It seemed like Hylli's hurts stemmed from more than just his mother.
"I killed him. I'm sorry. I'm sor... That's….."
Hylli muttered, voice filled with guilt. Hylli had trusted and followed them, so the betrayal that he had felt must have been too much to handle. And he must've been more miserable because he'd had to kill them.
"Stop talking about them and tell me more about your mother."
"….."
Hylli, who had been shaking slightly moments before, calmed down and began to continue his story.
"...to protect my mother, I first told the empress that she had passed through rumors. And I made this secret area to hide her."
This detailed space-time magic circle was something that he had asked of Cory's father. The DuBois marquis had been Hylli's mother's colleague and close friend, and he had happily volunteered to help.
"I know that she doesn't have too long to live because the curse has spread too much. White magic doesn't work well against it, so the Blanche family's magic doesn't help."
Hylli's face crumbled as he spoke.
"The curse that my mother has first attacks the body, then their mind. My mother can't escape the memories of the worst times of her life. And now, she can't remember all of the memories she has with me and only remembers things that terrify her."
"….."
"But now she'll be back to normal. Thank goodness."
He muttered, sighing deeply. The tears that had welled in his eyes began to fall.
"But she'll soon pass."
He smiled in relief, but he couldn't help his sadness as the future loomed ahead of him.
I looked at Hylli and remembered what his mother had said earlier.
The most miserable time of her life was when she had been pregnant with Hylli. And she had hated the emperor, the empress, and the child she held in her stomach. Seeing how she had tried to rip her stomach apart, she seemed to have an incredibly negative reaction towards Hylli.
And Hylli had quietly listened to it all. How would it feel to have somebody you loved forget you and stare at you with hateful, frightened eyes? And if that was my mother, who had bore me?
Hylli had plenty of reason to go absolutely insane just based on the situation with his mother, but there was also the point of his mentor. I was proud of Hylli, who had calmly taken in the situation and had done everything that he could do. I was amazed at how he was still sane after all of it.
"Thank goodness."
Hylli's face morphed into a relieved smile but he couldn't help the tears falling. He wiped the tears off of his face but more kept falling down.
Hylli looked up and stared at his mother who was quietly sleeping on the bed.
Her treatment was finished at this point. Swan, who had overdone his magic, was slumped on the back of the chair. The woman's expression was comfortable after the treatment. It looked like she was finally free from her endless nightmare.
"She's a strong, ambitious person. She's not someone who should be treated like this, but because of me…."
Because of me. Hylli muttered to himself, face full of hurt. The words were filled with self-hatred. I wanted to say something, but after witnessing everything earlier I couldn't say anything. It was too heavy a topic.
Hylli sighed deeply as he spoke again.
"At least, at least at the end."
He couldn't seem to form the words. His voice was almost gone.
"At the end..."
I hope she's not in pain.
Hylli barely finished the sentence with his hoarse voice. It was too quiet to hear clearly.
Swanhaden, who had finished treating Hylli's mother, Caradil Evgedin, walked towards Hylli and me.
Swan took a seat in the corner of the room next to me and Hylli. He sighed deeply and scowled. He looked exhausted. I patted Swanhaden on the back–he had done a lot of work, working on the curse and coughing up blood. Swanhaden's exhausted expression suddenly disappeared as he stiffened. He looked up towards Caradil, who was asleep on the bed.
Her eyelashes were long enough for me to see from where I was sitting. She was middle-aged, but she was so beautiful that I couldn't look away.
I suddenly recalled the original story that I had forgotten for some time. To repeat again, none of these backstories ever came up in the story. There was no mention of Hylli's mother or the Lunaasha villa. The story was centered around Hestia, and the only things we knew about the male characters were face-value.
There was no explanation as to why the male characters suddenly changed the way they did, and the novel only talked about how aggressive and selfish their affections were. There might have been a bit of explanation for Hestia's family, though.
I wasn't sure if the author liked Hestia the most, but the novel just focused on romance. It didn't mesh too well with the setting and general background, though. If the book went into a bit more detail about the male characters, we might've been able to fix the curse.
Thanks to the dreams that I'd been having, the memories I had of the novel were becoming clearer. I now knew why Hylli's personality in the novel had changed this way. He had bore all of this hurt within him until he had broken.
Yvnes was the same way. Hylli was coldblooded scum, and Yvnes was cruel, manipulative scum. I slowly began to worry for Swanhaden and Hestia.
Cory was the only one in the original novel who didn't obsess over Hestia. Honestly, the other male characters didn't obsess over her more than use love as an excuse to bully her, but Cory didn't bother her at all.
In the original novel, Cory was a quiet, irritative person who seemed to have deep self-loathing. He also seemed to treat others callously. He had a lot less screen time compared to the other male characters. I thought it was because he was always at the library or practicing magic somewhere.
I didn't even want to bring up Swan from the original novel. I didn't know what made him that way, but Swanhaden in the original novel was so bad that he shouldn't have even existed.
TL;DR: Hylli mother is named Caradil Evgedin. She was a royal magician who was both beautiful and talented, and the empress persuaded the emperor to rape her to have Hylli. She did, and was subsequently imprisoned in the palace to prevent others from finding out about the whole situation.
Once the empress had her own child (second prince), though, Hylli was basically tossed aside and was cursed by the empress so he would be unable to become the next emperor. The empress and Hylli's trusted mentor cursed Hylli slowly to kill him, but his magician mother found out and pulled the curse towards herself, causing her to go mad.
The curse is removed, but she'll soon pass because the curse has been in her for too long. But she won't relive the most distressing, horrifying parts of her memories (when she was pregnant and imprisoned in the palace) and she'll recognize her son.