"What do you really want, Uncle?"
Elara didn't ask the last question. She stared at Commander Shu's pale lips, waiting for him to respond.
But Commander Shu didn't answer. Instead, he looked back at her and smiled faintly. "Your Majesty, do you still remember when you were five and drank half a bowl of my heart's blood to stay alive?"
Elara's hand holding the teacup tightened. What?
Commander Shu's gaze swept over her fingertips. The curve of his lips deepened slightly.
"And before you turned seven, you were also raised by me personally. Do you remember any of that?"
When he was seven, during his family's exile, he almost died several times on the road.
The heavy iron chains around his feet nearly embedded themselves into his ankles during the long journey that lasted more than half a year.
But he couldn't cry out, couldn't say it hurt, and couldn't say he was hungry or thirsty, because they had already eaten everything edible. Even the wild herbs and grass on the roadside had long been picked clean.
His grandfather and grandmother died within the first two months of exile. They were old, and the stress brought back their illnesses. The one who loved him and his mother the most, his father, had been executed by waist-cutting three months earlier.
His uncle led the entire family into exile, and they fell overnight from a life of luxury and worship to a state where anyone could bully them, their clothes barely covering their bodies. The shock of this sudden downfall was immense for the whole clan.
Back then, he was seven. Not too young. He had already memorized the books the Grand Tutor had him study, could identify the pros and cons within them, and knew how to apply what he'd learned.
So even if his mother and the others didn't tell him anything, he already understood the situation. He knew that if he wanted to survive this exile, no matter what, he had to endure it.
But the journey, stretching tens of thousands of miles, was too long.
The endless, cruel road swallowed one family member after another. His once familiar relatives all turned into decaying corpses lying along the roadside.
Even the guards escorting them had changed dozens of times, until eventually only a few were left.
In the end, his uncle and mother collapsed too.
Before she died, his mother cut her own wrist, caught the blood with leaves, and held them to his lips for him to drink. Then she gave him a small dagger for self-defense and told him to cut her flesh for food after she died.
He didn't drink the blood, and he didn't eat her flesh either.
With his bare hands, he dug two shallow graves over three days in a spot that barely shielded them from the rain, and buried his mother and uncle.
By then, he was the only one left of the entire clan.
The soldiers who had escorted them had vanished without a trace.
He didn't build a grave marker for his mother and uncle.
After scattering the last handful of dirt over his mother's grave, he picked a pretty little flower from the roadside and gently placed it on the mound.
After doing that, the intense hunger overtook him, and he fainted in front of his mother's grave.
When he woke up, his hands and feet were tied with new ropes.
Around him were more than a dozen boys about the same age, all locked inside a small cage with him.
Outside the cage, a woman holding a whip was directing her men and shouting on the busy street.
This was a small, not very prosperous town, and he had become a slave for sale.
In the following year, because of his good looks, he was bought by a wealthy household. Then he experienced things he had never imagined before.
By the time he finally escaped from that mansion, he no longer felt like a human being.
He abandoned all the etiquette and sense of shame his grandfather and father had taught him. He fought stray dogs for food, hid from the mansion's search dogs, and used his small but calloused hands to learn how to kill and take revenge.
The strategies and knowledge taught to him by his father and grandfather became the best tools in his hands for murder.
If his father and grandfather could see him from the afterlife, they might be so angry they'd curse him and hang him up for a beating.
He thought that with some amusement. Then he spent the next three months making sure the ones who had hurt him most in that mansion died in the most miserable and inexplicable ways.
After getting his revenge, he still didn't feel even a trace of relief.
His parents and loved ones were gone. No one in the world cared about him, and he had no one to care about. Whether he lived well or not made no difference.
He was wise beyond his years and well-read, but no matter how clever or capable, all of it was buried under the weight of that slave mark.
In this world, once marked as a slave, you were doomed to the lowest rank forever, worse than an animal.
He hadn't even turned ten at the time, yet he already viewed life and death with a calm indifference.
After avenging his family, a strange sense of weariness took over him. He barely had any desire to eat each day.
One day he fainted again and was dragged into the mountain brush by a pack of wolves.
They circled him, just about to bite, when an arrow flew from the side and pierced through the head of the wolf whose fangs were already at his throat.
The one who saved him was a woman dressed in gold armor, clearly from a powerful background.
She was strong and sharp-looking. Her presence alone outshone all the guards around her.
But in her arms, she carefully held a tiny girl in a soft white fox-fur coat.
The little girl had a round face like a carved doll. She was so cute and pretty it made people feel tender just looking at her.
Her large black grape-like eyes stared at him from the woman's arms.
The woman waved her hand, and the guards came forward, lifted his body, and brought him in front of her.
At first, she looked him over with some satisfaction. But when she saw the arrow wound through his collarbone and the slave mark beneath it, her expression twisted in disgust.
"So he's a slave. Forget it. Throw him away."
The guard holding him was about to toss him aside, but the little girl suddenly started babbling and reached out with her tiny pink hand, grabbing one of his fingers.
The woman holding her paused and looked into her eyes.
"Elara, you like him?"
The little girl couldn't speak clearly yet, but she held onto his finger and, after babbling for a bit, finally managed to mutter a few vague words.
"Li...like...him...him..."
The woman laughed, pinching the little girl's cheek gently. "Heh, alright. Since Elara likes him, what does it matter if he's a slave? Mama will bring him back. From now on, he's yours."
From that day, he was taken to the imperial capital of that nation and brought into the grandest and most luxurious palace inside the royal city.
His role at the start was to serve as Elara's attendant.
But Elara really did seem to like him. She always wanted him to carry her, and he was in charge of nearly everything she needed.
This palace was far deeper and more complicated than the large estate he had previously been sold into.
Yet staying by her side, he felt a kind of peace and calm he hadn't known in a very long time.
That woman was the Empress of this country, and also the only one in the Periwinkle Kingdom in hundreds of years who was allowed to rule from behind the curtain.
The girl was the only daughter of the current generation of royalty and had been deeply loved and pampered since birth.
But she didn't grow up spoiled by the love she received. She seemed to be born with a clear sense of right and wrong.
For those who treated her well, she would return the kindness in double.
For those who didn't treat her well, she would find a way to get back at them using her little brain, or she would come to him for help and ask him to take revenge for her.
In the third year he was with her as she grew up, the little girl, who could already run and jump, came to him early one morning looking very mysterious.
She showed him a bottle of medicine she had carefully hidden in her clothes like a treasure. Then she whispered to him that this was the best healing and scar-removing medicine she had secretly taken from the palace.
She promised it could heal the old wound on his collarbone and remove the mark under it.
After saying that, she climbed onto his bed without hesitation and reached out to undress him, her small hands crawling into his arms.
He didn't react in time and was pushed down by her. She sat on him with a cheeky grin and kept pulling at his clothes.
Later, the old wound on his collarbone and the mark under it really were completely healed by that bottle of medicine. No one could ever tell again that he had once been a slave.
A year later, the girl reached the age for her early education. She pulled him along to find a teacher to start their studies.
When the woman heard this, not only did she not object, she even told the teacher to pay special attention to him.
He didn't hide much either. He had already read widely and had enough knowledge to catch the teacher's imprecise words.
He wouldn't embarrass the teacher in front of the class, but after class, he would quietly correct those errors while teaching the girl.
After a few times, the teacher finally realized what was happening and turned red while glaring at him.
But the woman just laughed loudly and stopped having the teacher come anymore. Instead, she let him teach the girl directly.
From then on, he became the girl's private tutor. With that role, he regained the status he once had in childhood, when he was seen as superior to others.
In the years that followed, he continued to teach the girl while also noticing how the woman was subtly using different methods to strengthen his connection with the girl.
At the same time, she led him into the court and into the center of the country's power, using every method to build up the influence shared by him and the girl.
The whole country, under the woman's actions, started to feel increasingly oppressive, like a storm was coming.
But the young girl, protected deep in the palace, knew nothing about this.
She still happily listened to him tell interesting historical stories during class every day.
After class, she would drag him to the kitchen to eat something tasty or ask him to secretly take her out of the palace to play.
Time passed unknowingly like that. One day, after he finished telling a story and coaxing the girl to sleep, the woman came to him.
She asked if he was willing to become the regent of the Periwinkle Kingdom.
Back then, he was still just a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, but the woman never treated him like a child.
His mind was also not that of a child. The dangerous, crumbling state of the Periwinkle Kingdom was something both he and the woman clearly saw.
So he understood why the woman wanted to do this.
In order to protect the young girl, he had to become the new powerful figure in the court. After the deaths of the woman and the girl's father, he would need to control the heart of the Periwinkle Kingdom.
Only then could the girl safely continue to grow up.
He nodded and agreed. But even then, the woman still couldn't fully trust him.
She gave him two conditions.