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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 78
Chapter Title: Her Person
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The witch will try to kill our whole family.
I was starting to see that the witch was far more frightening than Baldeck. Baldeck, being a nobleman, at least had some sense of propriety, but the witch had no such restraints.
‘At this rate, we might actually have to flee to escape the witch…’
As I mulled this over, the carriage arrived at the manor. I’d expected the butler to greet us, but the one who came out was Nina.
With a bright face, she looked back and forth between Eric and me.
“The mistress has returned! You’re back early, aren’t you?”
Eric and I met each other’s gaze.
‘…Just when I escape one, another appears…’
I forced a bright smile and looked down at Nina.
“Yes, we are. Very… early…”
✵ ✵ ✵
The next morning.
Ella was asleep on the sofa in her office.
Kai had heard she’d been in a long meeting with engineers from the Royal University the previous night. Perhaps that was why she looked exhausted even in her sleep.
Kai crouched by the head of the princess, who was sleeping soundly on her back.
He took a small rabbit doll from his coat for her.
Click, click. As he carefully wound the spring, the rabbit doll’s hands waved up and down. Kai placed a fan made of peacock feathers into the doll’s hands.
Sway, sway…
The fan fluttered, stirring a gentle breeze over Ella.
“Hmm…”
Seeing Ella’s face, which had been beaded with sweat from the heat, grow much more comfortable, the corners of Kai’s own lips curled up.
‘The princess is a master of science and engineering. She believes a day will come when the power of engineering surpasses magic. On that day, she says, she’ll be able to provide the people with electricity cheaper than mana stones.’
That was what the attendant had told Kai.
The attendant, just entering middle age, had no family. The princess, who didn’t even seem to have memorized his name, had given him a private residence and precious jewels.
‘It is because I am her person.’
Despite owning a spacious residence, he still lived in the princess’s palace. Kai stayed in a room connected to his, and they always ate dinner together.
My person.
Watching the attendant, who seemed to take such pride in serving the princess, Kai recalled Ella’s words.
‘You are my son! A son of Gerda! A warrior of the North! How can a man like you not handle one of your own underlings?’
It was a starkly different way of referring to them than his father, who would casually call the people of the Grand Duchy his ‘underlings.’
The Grand Duke knew how to rule his underlings with violence and force, but he did not know how to understand their hearts.
He did not know that a seed of rebellion could grow in his underlings, and that this rebellion could one day consume him. Kai had always seen his father as being in a precarious position.
So when his father tried to frame and execute the village elder—the wisest man in the Grand Duchy, revered as a father to his people—Kai did not perjure himself as his father had ordered.
Instead, he defended the elder, and for that crime, his tongue was cut out. The village elder was exiled, and Kai became a man of the North welcomed by neither its people nor his father.
Because he had not chosen a side.
‘Cripple!’
And now he was a cripple, needed by neither side.
In any case.
Ella was the polar opposite of the Grand Duke. She never wielded violence or force against her attendant, against Kai, or against anyone.
She didn't hesitate to use money to buy people off if necessary, even employing underhanded methods, but she always paid a price.
She was skilled at understanding the hearts of others. She was simply inept at understanding her own.
Calling someone ‘my person,’ yet not knowing their name, she would subtly give away her heart.
How could she know how much this lowly being would covet…
…calling me ‘her person.’
‘I do not trust you. The princess has chosen to keep you by her side only because she sees your value as a prisoner. You must prostrate yourself as if you were dead and beg for her mercy.’
Just as the attendant said, she probably saw him as nothing more than a prisoner.
Kai clutched at his faintly beating heart.
Kai had a chronic illness. While his older and younger brothers became great warriors, Kai had been bedridden until the age of fourteen.
It was because of the curse of a magical beast embedded in Kai’s chest.
The North was an unknown land. Things believed to have vanished in ancient times sometimes appeared there, their power overwhelming that of humans.
He had gotten lost in the forest once when he was very young. There, he met a wicked fae called a troll.
The moment the troll growled at him, he fainted.
When he awoke, a northern mage told him:
‘It is a curse on your heart. The slightest exertion could cause it to harden. The way to break the heart’s curse is unknown, so you must live cautiously for the rest of your life.’
So… perhaps he had been a cripple from the start.
A cripple who played with dolls, holed up in the study like a loner, while the warriors practiced swordsmanship outside.
Feeling the loneliness of that time prickle his heart, Kai looked at the rabbit doll.
Click, click…
With the sound of the spring unwinding, he could see the mechanical parts moving continuously inside the rabbit’s glass eyes.
The second son of Grand Duke Gerda, unable to become a warrior of the North due to the curse on his heart, enjoyed making mechanical hearts like this for heartless dolls.
If only someone could implant a mechanical heart in him.
Then, when others were in pain or sorrow, his heart could remain as hard as his father’s or his brothers’.
Instead of weeping with them… if only he could… then maybe he, too, could have been a useful son…
“…Are you crying?”
It was then.
Ella’s blue eyes were now watching Kai. He tried to pull back but lost his balance.
“!”
Ella grabbed Kai’s hand and pulled. Kai’s body fell on top of hers. His eyes widened.
Ella looked up at Kai, who was now one with her on the narrow sofa.
“…It seems I’ve allowed an unchaste attendant into my palace…”
“!”
Kai scrambled up and backward. He ducked his head low, pressing the palm of his hand against his increasingly hot cheek.
Watching him, Ella staggered to her feet. She then glanced at the rabbit doll on the table.
She picked it up and aimed the fan toward Kai.
“…It seems you need this more than I do.”
“…”
Kai lifted his head slightly.
His cheeks were flushed a rosy pink. Ella smirked.
‘I don’t have a taste for forcing myself on prisoners…’
Ella was planning to pass a war law in the next council session. A law stating that even in wartime, prisoners could not be carelessly killed or kept in squalid conditions.
And here she was, about to pounce on a prisoner. That would not do.
Ella shook her head and massaged her shoulder. Sleeping on the sofa had left her entire body feeling stiff.
“Damn… engineers… They have a million reasons why something can’t be done…”
Ella recalled the engineers from last night who had scoffed at all her ideas, saying, ‘The princess has a remarkable imagination.’ They only started taking a more serious attitude after she’d said, ‘If this is the level of men who call themselves professors, I’ll just have to cut your salaries.’
‘Still not at the level I want, though…’
Ella had no intention of invading foreign countries or conquering new lands to counter Robert.
War was old-fashioned. How could she lead Helenia by resorting to attacking and invading whenever a crisis arose?
‘Indeed, the future of the continent is money.’
Ella stared intently at the rabbit doll, which looked as if Kai had crudely made it.
“This sort of thing… you could sell it, you know? Did you study engineering?”
Kai shook his head. Ella began to think deeply about something, right until the attendant’s voice came from outside.
“Your Highness. Duke Orleans has arrived. He requests an audience.”
Ella furrowed her brow.
“Hah… He just had to come see me this early in the morning. A bad omen.”
Ella gave Kai a wide grin.
“Don’t you think so, too?”
Kai couldn’t answer. He was too busy letting the breeze from the rabbit doll’s fan cool the heat rising within him.
✵ ✵ ✵
Having only briefly wiped the sleep from her eyes, Ella greeted the Duke with a haggard face that clearly showed she had been up all night.
Baldeck Orleans.
He had a well-maintained physique that made it hard to believe he had a grown son.
His hair was combed back, revealing a jawline that radiated masculine energy. The man looked at Ella, and the corners of his lips lifted in a sneer as he sat down across from her.
Looking up at the arrogant Duke’s expression, Ella recalled the two pieces of news she had received yesterday.
The first was that Imeline had caused a major scene at Margaret’s salon. Ella, who owned a few of Anthony’s paintings as an investment, had sold them off the moment she heard the news.
Ella’s selling of the paintings was not some righteous retribution for Anthony’s criminal acts. It was simply because Anthony’s value in the art market was about to plummet, and Ella was someone who saw art not as art, but as money.
‘Thanks to your swift news, I was able to get out without too much of a loss, Madam.’
‘Don’t mention it, Your Highness.’
The one who had delivered the news, allowing her to sell the paintings, was Margaret, who had stopped by the princess’s palace yesterday afternoon to receive an invitation to Ella’s birthday party.
‘But to give away the paintings right there at the salon. That’s not like you, Madam. I would have thought you’d choose a more discreet method to mitigate your losses.’
At Ella’s observation, Margaret had smiled gently and set down her teacup.
‘It was not a matter of loss… I, too, learned a great deal, Your Highness. Especially about the virtues an artist must possess.’
Learned a great deal? Virtues?
Ella was sick of moral lessons. The only reason she supported things like the war law was not because it was the ‘right’ thing to do, but because it was the ‘less old-fashioned’ thing to do.
‘Young Lord Eric would hate to hear me say this.’
In any case, she decided to use this opportunity to solidify her alliance with Margaret.
‘What if I were to help cover some of your losses, Lady Margaret? For instance, by purchasing about ten paintings from a promising new artist at your salon?’
Then the painter whose work the princess bought would see their value rise, and the princess, in turn, could later resell the paintings at a higher price. It was a good opportunity for them both.
Margaret had nodded.
It meant the deal was struck. Of course, Margaret had left after applying some not-so-subtle pressure to sign the mana stone mine contract quickly.
The second piece of news had arrived via Eric’s messenger bird.
*Baldeck has returned. He is scheduled to have an audience with His Majesty the King tomorrow, so he has likely brought news of Prince Robert.*
Recalling the words on Eric’s note, Ella smiled sardonically. The Duke was no different from the messenger bird that had brought Eric’s note.
A messenger bird that existed to carry some trivial, useless achievement of Prince Robert's from the North to His Majesty the King, who would then excitedly create an occasion to praise it.
And the Duke, after receiving the King’s grand commendations, must have stopped by here on his way back to the ducal manor just to vex her.
If that was the Duke’s intention, he had succeeded brilliantly. Ella was already feeling nauseated.
“Did Robert perform some piddling feat of arms? You must have, for you to come rushing over here at the crack of dawn when you’ll be at the palace for my birthday party in a few days anyway.”
