Stone Thrown into the Lake - Chapter 1

Queen Yvor Adela, who had once climbed to the highest position as a woman in the kingdom, was now in an underground stone prison without even a single chair.

It was very quiet inside the prison as her last maid, who had been crying out until a while ago, was taken to the execution site two days earlier.

Yvor did not dislike such quietness. She couldn’t stand the sound of dumb maids who didn’t even know what her will was.

「”How dare you reciprocate in such a way when her majesty was so merciful to you, how dare you do a coup? I can’t believe you put her in prison. The new house of Salzmia is truly a seed of a thousand things, such ungratefulness.”」

T/n: the idiom “a seed of a thousand things” is used similarly as “a dime a dozen” here

However, the leader of the coup, whom the maids condemned in unison, and the right arm of the new king, Duran Craig, the Lord of Avonbury, was Yvor Adela’s dear brother.

When she thought of him and the future he would have as he made his own family, Yvor was thrilled that even her own downfall was sweet.

Now, with the blood she would be shedding, Salzmia’s power would become something no one could ever overlook, how could she not enjoy it? Only for this fall did she become a snake willing to twist the king.

Gremory-Bunt-Salzmia, the three poor families who were once neglected and ridiculed by the public as to whether it was possible to call them the seventh great family that was part of the top of the country.

The six families who were once almost exterminated later formed a bunga but they were still not able to escape Salzmia’s feet for the next 100 years.

T/n: a bunga is a family in which some of the members were separated and independent from the house they originally belonged to and set up a separate house. It could also be a branch family.

Leave her, you should be pouring tea and bake cookies for me instead.

Where were the tongues of the women who used to insult her now? She would not even pick up the gold pot that the late King Rand II made for her.

And then there was her younger brother, why had he only sat at the end of the table with those broken knights when she occasionally attended the grand noble meeting?

Shouldn’t he be standing next to the new king?

Everything went as she wanted. So the maids who dared to blame her brother were foolish. Her lovely sibling did his part well without having the need to care about them. Yvor wanted to run around the capital while she carried him on her back if she could.

Duran did really well. The very thing he was now called, the Marquis of Salzmia, proved how excellent her brother truly was.

Since he was a bastard, he had to climb several stairs with numerous thorns to succeed his family.

In this matter of succession, she had to oppose his succession rather than to help him. This was because they should not be seen as good siblings.

Duran Craig should not be the favored brother of the vicious new queen who drove the king crazy. He should be a symbol of justice and the one to antagonize her.

Therefore, Yvor Adela, was one of the thorns in his way. Perhaps she was the maze that her half-brother had to break through on his last step of thorns.

Despite all that, her younger brother brilliantly took the name of Salzmia’s House and Marquis in his hand.

It was also the right calculation to remove herself from the family right after succession. By then, what she could do to the family would not be big enough as there would be no risk of anyone receiving the family name because of her.

Really how could my cute Deu be so brilliant. Yvor cried with joy on the day she heard that she would no longer be using the name Salzmia.

It was also really good that Duran was the first to reach out when Yvor made the king twisted and kicked out Prince Murka. The new king could not forget Salzmia, who reached out to him at his most difficult times.

Until he became a king, he would remember clearly who led him to the throne and protected him against his enemies. And finally, remember that the head of the house of Salzmia abandoned his sister to make him king.

Now she had only one thing to do.

Yvor Adela was happy to die as a wicked woman who ruined the previous king and harassed the new king.

Yvor Adela was always ready to die no matter the circumstance.

She was born to die for her family, she lived to die for her family, and now she was left alone, ecstatic for her own end. The path from the prison to the execution site was a flowery path and this was prepared for her by her brilliant brother.

Yvor refused to tolerate the dreary atmosphere and indulged herself with the dreamy sweetness she was feeling instead. She fully accepted the sense of freedom, achievement, and all the ecstasy. As she began to sing softly, the guard, whose back was towards her as he stood far away from her, trembled.

At the height of her happiness, she kept singing without paying attention to the guard. The guard finally looked back at her, who was singing with happiness and joy for the future. Yvor didn’t care about either. Although she was afraid of death and felt lonely in prison, she felt lonelier and more scared than this when she was a child.

Yvor was born in a prestigious family, but her family was not very wealthy at that time. Even Avonbury and Serium, which were now rural properties, had held the title of Marquis, yet their wealth was less than that of a baron in the capital.

There was nothing more to say because the moment of her birth was when the families who were supposed to be ruined in the first place, joined to maintain their names.

Ivor’s father was born to a Salzmia man and a Bunt woman, and his mother was the last of Gremory’s blood. Born between the two, Yvor naturally received the names of all three families.

They were the three names that were on the verge of perishing, but they possessed enough tradition and honor to make them that it could strangle a person just by its weight. A baby born with those names hanging around their neck couldn’t even cry at will.

What was death and loneliness in prison? From the moment she was born, she lived without knowing that Yvor Adela was a human being. Yvor Adela was not a person until the moment she met her younger brother.

To her mother, she was like a diary to prove her existence, and to her father, she was like a treasure chest that would one day make the family grand.

But to Yvor, they seemed like a quill or a key that repeated the same actions every time they met. She wasn’t human, and no one was alive around her.

As soon as he was seven years old, Yvor Adela became the lord of Serium and went down to Serium Castle alone. Since then, the seven-year-old girl has been alone in the castle for several years.

Her mother, who was not a very healthy person, went down to Avonbury after giving birth and lived in a bed, while her father rarely came down from the capital to see his family as he was too busy from trying to raise the status of the family, so she would rarely see her parents except for a few days in a year.

Instead, it was the tutors who filled her surroundings. Her father forced her to have all kinds of education. It was a terrible memory to think about. In the beautiful lakeside castle, young Yvor never had the chance to grow up.

And one day, after enduring such suffering that she even became numb to it, the ever-quiet Serium Castle became noisy. It was because the father sent her younger half-brother down to Serium Castle for a while. Her mother lived in Avonbury, so there must have been no choice.

Indeed, even after having his eyes washed, not a bit of consideration could be found for his wife and daughter, but Yvor still thanked God.

Pr/n: “eyes washed” here means having seen clearly.

They were bitter and lonely days. The size of the loneliness was so great that little Yvor didn’t even know she was lonely. She just thought that life was like that.

She thought it would be impossible to receive a word of kindness and a friendly touch, and it was only natural that her name was like a hard and cold stone thrown at a sinner.

Until that day, the day she met Duran, who was younger than Yvor.