WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Malfoid

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Fragments of Thorns and a Cradle ◈

Chapter 8

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Content Warning: child abuse; domestic abuse; physical violence; pregnancy loss; sexual coercion or assault; sexual exploitation and slavery.

"He will forget anyway. He is only three."

"My lord..."

"A child who still clings to his mother saying he wants her milk, what could he possibly know?"

[Non-graphic summary of sexual material involving a child observer: Endymion continued the assault despite Marie's pleas and concern for their child. He wondered whether Ewin's nightmares had begun because of him. This violent pattern was routine and accounted for half their sexual encounters.]

Marie knew that her children's eyes would not restrain him. Whoever watched, he would not fear them. But when she angered him, even his innocent children became targets.

She thought his love must be empty. Yet she had believed parental love would be beyond such cruelty.

[Non-graphic summary of sexual material involving a child observer: Endymion recalled the physician's instruction to abstain during pregnancy but disregarded it, compelling Marie to perform sexual acts. She focused on ending the abuse quickly and protecting Ewin.]

Marie thought only of her crying son and behaved as Endymion demanded. It was not difficult. Every female slave became her master's whore from the moment she was given to him.

Even if she managed the household and raised children like a mistress, she remained nothing more than a concubine to others. Marie knew it. She had heard it until she was sick of it and had been taught it cruelly. Knowing one's place was the most important thing in life.

Therefore, no one needed to envy or hate her. Even if she dressed like a noble daughter and sometimes seemed better than them in every way, a female slave was only a female slave.

Even if she wore good things, ate good food, and lay in bed with her master, she was still only a slave.

So it did not matter. For her children, Marie was always ready to become a rag that cleaned beneath her master.

[Non-graphic summary of sexual material involving a child observer: Endymion abruptly stopped, angry that Marie's attention remained on her crying child rather than on him. He accused her of acting like a prostitute when he had demanded that she act as his concubine.]

There was nothing on Marie's face. No joy. No pleasure.

He saw no warmth in her, only pallor. Even while mechanically complying, her eyes went only to the crying child. Marie did not realize it.

Seeing her move while her thoughts were elsewhere filled him with a disgust he could not understand.

It was a feeling that had consumed him ever since Marie bore his children. No, he had felt that confusion before the children had even seen the world. But it had grown worse after Ewin, his second child, was born. He remembered tormenting Marie beneath those feelings, exhausted by his own displeasure.

Roymar had seven children by his female slave. Including the miscarriages in between, she must have been pregnant roughly ten times. Yet he said he had never experienced confusion as profound as Endymion's. Had he not said that he had remained stable ever since the first pregnancy?

"Jealousy."

Count Roymar had said that while smoking and reflecting on his relationship with his own concubine. His eyes had still wandered over the severed head of an old enemy leader. Endymion had tossed it to him after returning from battle.

"Jealousy?"

"It is simple. You are jealous of your children."

"Me? I am jealous of my own children? I am their father. I love them."

Endymion did not believe him. He glared at the man who spoke of him without knowing, thinking of Marie's children.

Endymion had not entered Marie's children in the family register, but he loved them because Marie had borne them. He naturally wanted more children, but Marie's poor health made that impossible.

Yet Roymar claimed he was jealous of his children.

"Fathers are often jealous of their sons. More so when they are young men, and more so when the children are still new to them. Of course, your love for them is sincere as well."

"But you..."

"I am human and a man. Sometimes I am jealous of my sons too. But in your case, it is more severe."

Endymion had frowned deeply. Count Roymar smiled faintly. Endymion, lips pressed in displeasure, gave the enemy leader's head to young soldiers. They played catch with it like a ball and laughed.

"What do you dislike?"

"There is nothing I dislike."

As Endymion turned to leave, Count Roymar spoke again.

"A female slave is a concubine in the end. In youth, she may love her master as though he were her lover, but it lasts only a season. It changes nothing about her fate as a concubine. A miserable lot does not become otherwise."

"..."

"Women like that have nothing to rely on except the children born between them and their masters. Their hearts cannot help leaning toward them."

Endymion's face twisted completely. He stared sharply at the man before leaving. He might have endured the other words, but he could not bear the phrase, Their hearts cannot help leaning toward them.

It did not mean that Marie would stop loving him. Marie had not even said so. Yet murderous rage rose in him until he trembled.

Who was Roymar to judge his relationship with Marie as though he knew it all? He alone was Marie's entire world. Without him, she had no world in which to stand and no place to breathe.

Those little creatures could never become a pillar for Marie to lean on.

He wanted to drag Marie out of the tent, where she had hidden because she was afraid to see wagons bringing severed heads. He wanted to demand whether she truly loved him less than those little creatures. Whether she planned not to love him because she thought he could not protect her, because she believed she could not depend on him.

"Am I less important to you than a newborn that wriggles like a tadpole?"

He was too angry to think.

Marie had never said the children came first. She had never whispered that her heart had already turned toward them, that she could not even see him, that she loved their sons more than him, her master and husband.

Yet he was angry. Angrier than ever, wanting to crush and kill anything.

If he threatened her, Marie would quickly cry and shake her head. She would sob that it was not true. But what shook him so absurdly at Roymar's words was that he already knew Marie had eyes only for the children.

From the moment the thing was conceived in Marie's womb, from the moment it began growing in her body, the way she looked at him had changed. He knew it. Marie had changed.

His mother said every woman changed when pregnant, but he refused to accept it.

Marie was a woman who must never change in any way. Even if it was natural for a girl to become a woman and a woman to become a mother, Marie was his Marie. Her world had to contain him alone.

"Marie."

"Yes?"

Marie had been holding a needle. Endymion looked at her flat stomach. A few months before, it had been swollen nearly to bursting. Now it was flat again, as though it had never been so. She did not look like a woman who had borne a child. She had the face of a girl, like a child who would never grow.

Sometimes, when he pressed his nose to her breasts, they smelled of milk. It had not been a scent she carried before pregnancy. Marie had once held only the soft scent of roses and apricot blossoms because the maids always put rose oil or dried apricot blossom powder in her bath. But after pregnancy, she always smelled sweetly of milk.

"...Do you want to see the child?"

He looked down at the cloth she was sewing. The small piece of cloth in her white hand was a garment for the baby.

Even that irritated him. It made him so angry he could not endure it.

Perhaps he should never have had children with Marie. To be treated this way by a female slave...

No. He could not. Otherwise, she would become like Agnes.

"Do you not want to see him, my lord?"

He could not think of an answer. Her eyes were innocent, like fragments of green forest trapped in glass. He felt as though he had been stabbed.

Endymion looked at those clear eyes, then twisted his face. He took the cloth from Marie's hands, threw it to the floor, and crushed it beneath his military boot.

Marie looked up at him in shock. Moisture gathered in her clear eyes, stirring something strange and unsettling in him. He seized Marie roughly. She settled into his arms by habit.

Everything about her was familiar to him, just as every part of him was familiar to Marie. Even her bursting sobs were familiar.

Yet sometimes she felt alien and strange.

"I should never have had a son by you. I should never have given you anything..."

Endymion swallowed the words he did not say and kissed her.

Regret welled up in him. Endymion swallowed the words he had not spoken and kissed her. He sucked wetly at her tongue, shared saliva with her, mounted her like a beast, and rubbed his erection against her thigh. Marie said nothing. She only looked up at him with a shattered expression.

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