"Watch your tongue. A prince shouldn't speak like that…" She said softly, but her heart was twisting and turning painfully at those words, because she knew. She knew what he didn't—that the dream he was grinning about would never come true. He was a cripple, and no amount of willpower or determination was going to change that.
"Fine… but just know that you have the strongest backers." Ethan grinned, his small chest still puffed out, completely unshaken by the scolding.
"Well, while I wait for you to become my backers, I should first get strong enough to ensure I can protect you two." She said with a smile, and she watched as Ethan's grin dimmed slightly, the brightness behind it flickering before a look of disappointment settled over his young features. He didn't like that answer.
"Fine… but I will not make you wait long. That's a promise… and since a prince can't break his promise... That means I have to go train," Ethan said with a thoughtful look, as though he were making a binding contract rather than a childhood declaration. She reached over and flicked his forehead with her finger, just hard enough to make him wince.
"Go rest." She said helplessly, shaking her head at him. Other children his age cried and threw tantrums to avoid training, begging for one more hour of play. But Ethan was the opposite—he was constantly scheming his way into more training. He had just finished a session, and already his mind was working on how to get another one started. He was getting cleverer and more persistent by the day, finding loopholes in every rule she set for him.
"You're a kid; any more training would only harm your developing body." She said softly, keeping her voice gentle and firm. But deep down, behind the smile she wore for him, she was sighing.
All of his training was meaningless. No matter how many hours he put in, no matter how hard he pushed his small body, none of it would lead anywhere. It broke her heart watching how seriously he took it—the drills, the exercises, the forms he copied from watching the older children. He had the will for cultivation. He had the mind for it. Sadly, he just didn't have the talent.
But those words of his stayed with her long after he had gone to bed. Her son—three years old, barely tall enough to reach her knee—had looked her in the eye and told her to stop cultivating because he would be her backer. He would be her strength. It was so innocent, so earnest, so painfully cute that it made her chest ache. But he was a cripple. And that promise, no matter how much she wished otherwise, was one he could never keep.
Moving forward to the day Ethan found out he had no talent for cultivation… well, she had spent years hardening herself for that moment. She knew it was coming. She had rehearsed it in her mind a thousand times, preparing herself to watch her son's world collapse in front of him.
But no amount of preparation could have made it easier. It shattered her seeing how Ethan, the instant after hearing the results, didn't crumble—he didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't lash out. Instead, he turned his attention to Ellen, immediately shifting all of his focus toward keeping their promise alive, even if it meant he would only be supporting her from the sidelines rather than standing beside her.
It broke her heart seeing how he apologized to Ellen for something that wasn't his fault—for being born the way he was, for failing to hold up his end of a deal that had been stolen from him before he even had a chance.
And then he had tried to look at her. He had turned, searching for her face in the crowd, needing something—anything—from the one person who was supposed to love him no matter what. And she couldn't meet his gaze.
She had looked away the instant their eyes connected, and then she had left the room. She had run, like a coward, fleeing from the look on her own son's face because she didn't have the strength to hold it.
To this day, she regretted not running toward him instead of away. To this day, she hated how she didn't go looking for Ethan in the hours that followed. He had disappeared after the assessment, avoiding her and everyone else in the palace.
She should have known something was wrong—she should have felt it in her bones the way a mother was supposed to. But she didn't go. Not that day. It was days later, when the silence became too heavy and the guilt became unbearable, that she finally went to find him.
She searched the palace until she reached his room, pushed open the door, and found him sitting alone on the floor, wrapping bandages around his arms with trembling hands while tears streamed down his face.
Ethan always tried to act like he was strong. A big boy. Tough and unbreakable in front of her, no matter how badly he was hurting on the inside. And that was exactly what he tried to do in front of her, even now—even through the tears he couldn't stop, even through the fear that was written across every inch of his small body. What mother could see a sight like that and not be shattered on the inside?
"M-mom. D-don't worry. I will be strong. I promise. S-so, don't throw me out… please. I will be an immortal." Ethan said, his voice shaking so badly that the words barely held together. He tried his best to remain strong, to force his body to stop trembling, but it wouldn't listen to him.
His eyes were overflowing with a fear so raw and so deep that it made her stomach turn—the fear of a child who genuinely believed that the people he loved were about to abandon him.
She had run up to him and pulled him into her arms so tightly that he gasped, and she cried with him that day. She held him against her chest and let every wall she had built come crashing down, sobbing into his hair while his small hands gripped the fabric of her robes like he was afraid she would disappear if he let go.
Oh, how she had failed him as a mother. She had promised herself that day—swore it on everything she was—that she would do anything in her power to find a way to help him cultivate. Whatever it took, whatever it cost, she would give him back what had been stolen.
But she also had to punish him. Because those cultivation stories he had been reading—the ones about cripples who turned out to be super talents—had poisoned his mind. In every one of those stories, the moment the protagonist was revealed to be talentless, everyone around them abandoned them. Family, friends, allies—all of them turned their backs without a second thought.
And Ethan, barely more than a child, had internalized every one of those narratives. He had genuinely believed that the same thing was going to happen to him. That she would throw him out. That Ellen would forget him. That everyone would leave.
So, the books were banned. No more cultivation stories, not a single one. And no more training either, because in his desperate attempt to prove that he wasn't worthless, Ethan had pushed his small body so far beyond its limits that he had broken his own limbs in the process.
From then on, Ethan stayed with her. He was by her side constantly, slowly healing, slowly recovering—not just his body, but the parts of himself that the world had cracked open that day. He stayed with her… until one day, without warning, he left.
Flashback End.
"Is the reason you left because…" She trailed off, the words unable to leave her mouth. She didn't know how to finish the sentence. She didn't know if she wanted to hear the answer.
"Because I found out trying to get you to love me was never going to happen. From the very start, it had always been me reaching out to you… You never loved me." Ethan said with a downcast look, his eyes fixed on the floor of the cell.
"Don't you dare say I never loved you!" She yelled, the words tearing out of her with a force that surprised even her, her composure shattering completely as she stepped forward and gripped the bars of the cell.
"Then why did you cripple me!" Ethan yelled back, losing his composure for the second time, and the accusation hit her like a physical blow.
She froze instantly—completely, totally frozen—as though every muscle in her body had locked into place at once. All she could do was stand there and look at him, her mouth open but empty, her eyes wide and glassy.
"You and Ellen were the only two people I ever held close to me… You were my mom, and I loved you more than life. From the moment I opened my eyes, I became glued to you… Before I even took my first breath, you hated me." Ethan's shoulders dropped, the fire draining out of him as quickly as it had come, and the cell fell into a silence so heavy it pressed against the walls. Neither of them said anything. Neither of them moved. The only sound was the faint drip of water somewhere in the corridor, counting the seconds that neither of them wanted to fill.
She reached out through the bars, wanting to touch him, wanting to pull him close the way she had when he was small. But Ethan snapped her hands away before she could make contact, the motion sharp and defensive. Then, almost immediately, a smile appeared on his face—forced, practiced, and completely hollow.
"I'm joking. You probably thought that was true." Ethan laughed, and just like that, the mask was back. The charm, the deflection, the easy grin that kept the world at arm's length—all of it slid into place like armor clicking shut. She recognized it instantly. She had watched him build that mask piece by piece over the years, and she hated it more than she had ever hated anything in her life.
She looked at her son for a long, silent moment, reading the lie behind the smile the way only a mother could. Then she opened the cell doors, entered, and grabbed Ethan. Ethan resisted, pulling back, but she was stronger.
She pulled him close as she sat down on the hard bed, and like old times—like the days when he was small enough to fit entirely in her lap—she had him rest his head against her thigh.
"Stop…" Ethan said weakly, but there was no fight behind the word. His body had gone limp the moment her fingers began running through his hair, rubbing his head in slow, gentle circles the way she used to when he couldn't sleep.
"I do love you." She said softly, her gaze drifting past the cell walls, past the corridor, past the palace itself—staring out into the vast, endless nothing beyond it all.
"What is love if not selfish? I want nothing from you. I expect nothing from you. And yet I love you with all my heart." She said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Yes, I did try to kill you. My reason for that was that I didn't want to hurt you… But I did. And all your life, you have been seeking the love I should have been giving you from the very beginning." She said, and the tears she had been holding back finally broke free, rolling silently down her cheeks and falling onto Ethan's hair.
"My little rabbit, why are you coming into contact with another woman?" A chilling voice cut through the moment like a blade through silk, drawing both of their attention instantly. Raven stood outside the bars with some food, her cold gaze locked onto Ethan with an intensity that could have frozen the air between them. She didn't spare a single glance toward the queen of the United Empire right there. It was as though the most powerful woman in the nation simply didn't register as worth acknowledging.