“Your highness! What happened?!” Luna exclaimed upon seeing Sezh return to the palace, “Oh lord, look at your face!”

“I just had an upset stomach,” Sezh explained before adding, “Raytan didn’t do anything to me. Far from doing anything that could harm me, he even escorted me to the palace by himself. I’m not lying.”

Luna was so surprised by Sezh’s statements that she couldn’t even formulate a proper reply and only stared at the princess with her eyes wide open.

“Are you sure that nothing really happened?” Luna asked again.

When she caught sight of the jewelry box in Sezh’s hand, she tilted her head in confusion. Sezh just evaded her prying eyes and made up an excuse.

“It’s nothing. This was just going to be a birthday present, but I thought it was not suitable enough for him so I brought it back.”

Sezh really wished that Luna would just leave it at that, but the look on her face was saying that she didn’t believe Sezh and wanted to ask further. She was like a hound chasing after a scent, refusing to let go of the trail.

“Did anyone else come to the birthday dinner?” Luna persisted again with her questions.

Sezh shook her head, “Only Orson.”

Aside from Raytan, Lise, and Sezh, only Grand Chamberlain Orson had been in attendance, but even then he only stood by to deliver the emperor’s message.

“I see,” Luna clicked her tongue, “So he did it again this year.”

It turns out that the emperor always summoned Lise to his palace on Raytan’s birthday. Normally, there were two reasons why he would call for her on that day: firstly, he didn’t want to see Raytan in person, and secondly, he didn’t like it when Lise held birthday parties for Raytan.

Sezh was told that this happened since Raytan held his only-one-guest birthday party. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that Raytan’s situation was actually more pitiful than hers. While Sezh was lost in thought, Luna became worried again because Sezh had mentioned Orson. When Sezh asked why she looked so concerned, Luna told her it was because Orson was close to her biological mother, Yerena. But was there anyone in this palace who wasn’t close to her mother?

Luna had already been anxious enough to find out that Sezh had gone to Raytan’s birthday party, and hearing that Orson had been there only worsened her fears. The situation was bound to become more chaotic, but Sezh, of course, had no idea about what that entailed.

If Yerena were to find out about this, Sezh anticipated that she would be beaten like a helpless dog to a vicious master. In the past, she would have shivered in fear, but not now. She had suffered through her mother’s punishments before, so this time likely wouldn’t be that scary. Sezh reasoned that she could get away with getting hit a few times.

Unbeknownst to her, she really would be beaten like a dog.

***

Yerena arrived at Sezh’s palace early in the morning.

“You insolent bitch!”

Slap! Sezh was jolted from her sleep in a daze. Yerena’s slap knocked her back onto the bed. Her cheeks were tingling red.

“There’s a limit to how much you can deceive me! How dare you celebrate Raytan’s birthday?!”

Yerena snatched Sezh by her shiny blonde hair and yanked with such force that the girl tumbled from the bed onto the floor.

“Lady Yerena!”

Luna rushed in, her face quite blue. She carefully moved to block Yerena, who had again slapped Sezh on the cheek.

“I beg you, please calm down… please…”

Sezh looked up at Luna’s back while touching her throbbing cheek.

Before she had returned to her younger self, Sezh had always been terrified of Yerena’s wrath and Luna would have to intervene and protect Sezh this way every time. Many things have changed since then, however. Sezh had even experienced death and returned to life, after all!

Of course, the situation right now was still quite difficult to deal with, but it was nowhere near as bad as before. She had already become accustomed to Yerena’s lashes.

“Luna! You are the same, you insolent bitch!”

Yerena struck the lady in waiting’s cheek this time. Sezh frowned. She didn’t care when her mother beat her, but she did care when that anger was turned onto Luna, who was innocent. Sezh placed herself between Yerena and Luna, who had fallen to the floor, like how she had done for her before.

“Mother, I was wrong… If you want to scold me, just scold me, but don’t do this to Luna-“

Yerena kicked Sezh in the stomach way before Sezh could finish her sentence.

Sezh hugged her torso and whimpered. Yerena didn’t feel even an ounce of remorse for her actions against her daughter, all the while glaring at Sezh with wide eyes. She looked like a raging hippopotamus.

“It was such an eyesore that I had to see her, and now you just joined her side!”

Yerena was livid that her own daughter dared to fraternize with ‘that bitch Lise’ and ‘that cursed Raytan’. Yerena’s dislike for the other concubine and her son was exceedingly obvious, and she held no fondness for Sezh either. From Yerena’s point of view, it seemed as if all the unsavory things around her stuck to one another, so Sezh understood why Yerena said that Sezh deceived her. Unlucky things shouldn’t stay together.

Yerena was a woman with great ambition, and the size of these complex yet unlucky things around her sticking together was as big as her ambition. The emperor continued to favor Lise, who had borne him a son. Meanwhile, Yerena only had a daughter. If the emperor had perhaps paid more attention to and slept with Yerena several times a year, she probably wouldn’t have needed to unleash her anger onto Sezh like this.

Yerena had been sent to the Imperial Palace before Lise, but beyond that she couldn’t receive the Emperor’s favor. To add insult to injury, she hadn’t been able to conceive any children with him. It was a miracle that she even managed to become pregnant and bring Sezh into this world in the first place.

A few years after she entered the Imperial Palace, Yerena slept with the drunken emperor for the first time since their first night. Her actions resulted in a daughter, Sezh.

Though it was not the best outcome, having Princess Sezh was far better than having a cursed son. And Sezh had some potential use for the future, so the circumstances were not that bad. If Sezh was able to marry into a good family, the alliance could bring Yerena some benefit later, as someone sometimes told her in a comforting voice.

Whenever Yerena heard that, though, she would always beat Sezh within an inch of her life, again and again. In her eyes, Sezh was not that pretty and had no social skills, so Yerena frequently disciplined and abused her to near-death for her poor performances in social gatherings.

Because of the constant violence that Yerena exacted upon Sezh, the poor girl grew more slowly than her peers. When she was even younger than she was now, she suffered from social anxiety, depression, and aphasia. These conditions only exacerbated Yerena’s opinion of her, so in Yerena’s eyes, Sezh was nothing but a useless bitch.