Royal Secret: I'm a Princess!

FIRST, IT was Calyx Dalton who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and claimed that he was a de Moonasterio.

And now, another crow appeared and claimed that he was a Kesser.

Neoma's big brain worked double time.

[I feel like there's a connection here, but I can't pinpoint it yet.]

"You're saying you're my brother?" Trevor asked. Well, he practically growled lowly at Dilan Crowell because that was how angry he sounded. And he sounded scary even though he wasn't raising his voice yet. "You must be fucking kidding."

[Oh… Trevor cursed.]

That made her proud of him.

"I only had one brother, and I'm sure as hell it wasn't you," Trevor continued. "And if you were my brother, then you should have been way older than your current age. Only the de Moonasterios and people with the blood of gods age slowly. You do not have the blood of any god. Moreover, your soul matches the age of your physical body."

Of course, the demon boy could see things like that.

[I often treat Trevor like a clown because he's goofy, but I shouldn't forget that he's supposedly the youngest Sorcerer of his time.]

"Look at my earrings, Brother," Dilan Crowell said. "Only the Kessers could wear them, and you know that very well."

"You might have Kesser blood because although House Kesser doesn't exist anymore, it's possible for our descendants to exist up to this day," Trevor said coldly. "However, it's impossible for you to be my brother since we were born in different eras."

"We may be born in different eras, but I assure you we have the same father, Trevor Kesser."

Oh.

[That dude is confident.]

Trevor, who looked pissed, probably noticed that Dilan Crowell looked too confident to be lying.

[That or the dude is just good at lying.]

However…

"Dude, I have a question," Neoma said when she couldn't contain her curiosity anymore. "You introduced yourself as a Crowell. Does it mean your mother is a Crowell?"

Dilan Crowell looked at her with a blank look on his face. "That's correct, Your Royal Highness. My mother is a Crowell."

[He said 'is.']

Neoma got goosebumps when she finally started to put the puzzles together.

[My big brain is connecting the dots!]

"Is?" Trevor, who also caught on, asked. "Your mother is still alive, and yet you're claiming we have the same father? My father is long gone, you fake bastard."

Dilan Crowell shrugged. "I'm not here to convince you, since I don't need your validation to claim that I am a Kesser."

"You can't scam me–"

"Sperm banking," Neoma said, accidentally cutting Trevor off. Both young men turned to her, but she just continued her "monologuing." "Posthumous sperm retrieval is also possible."

"Moon Princess?"

"Posthumous sperm retrieval is a procedure where you collect a dead man's sperm. Ah, it's called 'Seed' here," she explained to the demon boy. "The crows may have collected your father's sperm when he was still alive, or perhaps when he had just died. Then they froze his sperm and use them later."

Dilan Crowell's face turned grim as if Neoma just said something that she shouldn't.

Aha!

[That reaction makes me confident that I got it right.]

Trevor, on the other hand, looked confused. "Use the Seed later? What do you mean by that, Moon Princess?"

"Intrauterine insemination or IUI, aka "artificial insemination." It's a procedure where a physician inserts the sperm directly into the woman's uterus," Neoma explained as simply as she could. "It could also be in vitro fertilization or IVF, a procedure where you surgically remove the woman's egg cells aka Bean, and the man's sperm aka Seed. Then you join the woman's egg and a man's sperm in a laboratory dish to create an embryo."

The demon boy knitted his eyebrows. "Embryo?"

"A fetus, a baby," she said. "Once the embryo is successfully created, it will be transferred back to the uterus in hopes of achieving pregnancy."

The shock on Trevor's face told her that those procedures weren't known to this world yet.

However, Dilan Crowell glared at her.

[The names of the procedures might be different in this world. But based on the dude's reaction, everything I said was right.]

Hah!

Trevor then glared at Dilan Crowell. "What kind of sorcery is that?"

"It's not complete sorcery," Neoma chimed in. "It's modern science. However, there might be some sorcery involved if it happened in this world." She smiled at Dilan Crowell. "Isn't that right, Mr. Dilan?"

"I was informed that Your Royal Highness is highly intelligent," Dilan Crowell said. "But nobody told me that Your Royal Highness is also creative. Since you can never inherit the throne, perhaps, Princess Neoma is planning to be a novelist as a fallback?"

Trevor growled at Dilan Crowell again. "Princess Neoma is destined to become the first empress regnant of the Great Moonasterion Empire, bastard."

Dilan Crowell just scoffed.

Now that she had confirmed that she was right about how Dilan Crowell was conceived, she started to get angry.

[Those crow bastards wouldn't have stopped with de Moonasterios and the Kessers, right?]

"We may have the same father, but you're obviously the inferior brother," Trevor said, scoffing. "How can you not see that my Moon Princess is meant to be the empress regnant and not a mere novelist? Are your eyes for decorations only? Don't tell anyone you're a Kesser– you'll just embarrass me."

"Trevor, my traitorous chingu, calm down. There's nothing wrong with Mr. Dilan's suggestion. In fact, I already have a plot in mind," Neoma said cheerfully, then she cleared her throat before she went monologuing again. "What do you think about this story? It's about a villainous clan called 'Crowells' who taints the world with Darkness. They're originally a weak-ass family, but they gained power by swallowing other households. And do you know how they do that?"

"That sounds interesting, my Moon Princess," Trevor, who quickly caught on her "act," asked merrily. "How do the villainous clan swallow other households?"

"By stealing the eggs and the sperms of the people who belong to powerful clans, then they proceed to conceive a child that carries half of their filthy blood," Neoma said, growling a bit this time– her eyes glowing red now. "Dilan Crowell, you don't have a little Roseheart in your "family," do you?"

If the Crowells had the audacity to steal eggs and sperms from the de Moonasterios and the Kessers, then they also had the guts to do that to other families such as the Rosehearts.

[Come to think of it, the Kessers and the Rosehearts are both FALLEN families.]

Perhaps the two prominent clans' downfall had something to do with the Crowells and their evil schemes.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Princess Neoma," Dilan Crowell said, then he smirked arrogantly while looking at her pink hair. "However, I think I may have seen a pink-haired child on the estate once."

SNAP.

That was the sound of her patience snapping.

"Haaah," Neoma said, letting out a deep sigh. Then she swung Skewer, sending a boomerang-shaped dark energy from the curved blade towards Dilan Crowell. "Go to hell, fuckface!"

***

"IT'S BEEN a while, Nichole," Nikolai greeted his twin sister casually. Then his eyes moved to the man standing next to Nichole. "You, too, Dominic Zavaroni."

The former saint just smiled and nodded at him politely.

It was surreal to see his twin sister, who looked so different from what he remembered.

Nichole had cut her hair short, and that hairstyle actually made them resemble each other even more.

Dominic Zavaroni looked different, too. He also cut his long hair short. It actually made him look younger. But instead of donning the white robe that he used to wear as the saint, he wore the same black hooded robe that Nichole wore.

"Yes, it's been a while," Nichole said indifferently. "I didn't expect you to follow Lady Vespera and meet me, though."

Well, if he was still the old Nikolai, he probably wouldn't meet his twin sister.

However, his children had softened him up.

Moreover, now that Mona was back in his life, he couldn't imagine returning to the miserable and cruel person that he was once.

He wouldn't say that he was a good person, though.

[I just learned to treasure my family– and that includes Nichole, of course.]

"I see that you've been considerate in choosing the location of our meeting," Nikolai said while looking around the Light Temple. It was destroyed by Hanna Quinzel's fight with the God of Eternal Darkness and the Dark Elf. Unfortunately, the reconstruction hadn't been finished yet. "And I also see that you've put a powerful barrier around."

"I'm just trying to be careful," Nichole said bitterly. "But I see that you've become lax, Nikolai. After all, you allowed the crows to live in the Royal Palace."

He looked at Nichole and saw the resentment in her eyes.

[She must have felt betrayed.]

He understood where his twin sister was coming from, and it actually pained him.

"It's not like I wanted to welcome the crows in the Royal Palace," Nikolai explained. "However, the situation required me to do so. I'm sure you already know that Juliet returned with Calyx Dalton and claimed that he was her son. Since Calyx Dalton has the de Moonasterio traits, people won't believe me if I denied him as my son. I have to protect my position until I can safely hand over the throne to either Neoma or Nero."

However, he neither confirmed nor denied that Calyx Dalton was his child.

"Nikolai, is Calyx Dalton my son?"

He avoided Nichole's gaze because he couldn't handle the pain in his twin sister's eyes. "We're not sure," he said. "But we believe that Calyx Dalton might be your son."

"Are you kidding me?"

He turned to Nichole when he felt her approach him.

And as soon as he did, his twin sister grabbed him by the collar.

"How did that happen, Nikolai?" Nichole asked angrily. "I heard there was evidence that Juliet gave birth to Calyx Dalton. Hence, I was hoping you'd tell me that the bastard isn't my son. So why aren't you telling me the thing I wanted to hear from you?!"

Nikolai clenched his hands tight. "Neoma told me that there's a method in the modern world she came from where it's possible for a woman to get pregnant with someone else's child. She said that your Bead, the one she calls 'egg cell,' might have been removed from you. Then using a Seed from a male de Luca, the crows used it to create a child with your Bead. After the baby was conceived that way, they put it inside Juliet's body."

To be honest, he had a hard time wrapping his head around Neoma's explanation even though his daughter had explained it as simply as possible. It wasn't like he didn't have faith in Neoma. It was just hard to believe at first.

However, that was the only reason that could explain how Juliet gave birth to Calyx Dalton when he was sure he wasn't the boy's father.

"Are you telling me that I can no longer have a child with Dominic because those damned crows have ruined my reproductive organs, and yet I had given life to Calyx Dalton– that damned young crow who threatens the throne?!" Nichole yelled, her voice filled with anguish. "What the hell are you doing, Nikolai?! For someone who's supposed to be the strongest man in the empire, why haven't you eliminated the crows yet?!"

His twin sisters' words hurt.

But to see Nichole crying in anger pained him even more.

He couldn't remember when was the last time he saw his twin sister cry. Yet, here she was now– tears brimming from her eyes filled with pain, weeping in front of him.

[For Nichole to show her vulnerable side to me…]

"Nichole," Dominic said softly, then he quietly put his arms around Nichole's shaking body. "I'm here, I'm here."

Nichole turned around and buried her face against Dominic's chest, then she sobbed harder.

All Nikolai could do at the moment was watch his twin sister crumble before him.

He was really pathetic.

[Just like in the past, I can't do anything for Nichole.]

***

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