Chapter 6
Still, I suppose it’s understandable. A girl raised without an education, her self-esteem shattered, couldn’t even think of looking toward the horizon; she just clung to her only fiancé with single-minded obsession.
Even if, on the inside, I’m repeating things like, ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘I beg your pardon,’ ‘I can’t help it either—unless I’d hit my head when I was younger,’ or ‘You’re just a kid, but so is she… no, damn it, that’s just blaming the victim.’
They say it’s incredibly difficult for a person to view themselves objectively. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been reincarnated as an adult from a past life who already knows everything about Titania’s situation in the book.
To me, the ‘me’ from just yesterday felt like a stranger, and a pitiful one at that. I should at least be on my own side.
“But based on what you just said…”
The Young Duke’s eyelashes blinked slowly. His pale golden eyes, hiding complex emotions, offered me a smile that felt like a deception.
“…it seems the version of the Imperial Princess I have seen until now was truly a lie.”
No matter how I look at it, this is what he’s really thinking:
‘I thought she was a brainless idiot, but how on earth did she smuggle out family secrets and stab me in the back?’
“Might I ask who worked so hard to change Your Highness’s mind…?”
Now that’s just too blatant. His inner thoughts—‘She couldn’t have figured it out on her own. Whose spy is she working with?’—were visible behind his words with about seventy percent transparency.
I shrugged and replied.
“You should go and give some water to the tallest yew tree in the garden near the second-floor balcony of the Rose Palace.”
“…Pardon?”
“It’s just that my thoughts changed a bit after I slammed both my head and my body into that tree.”
When I indirectly admitted that I’d nearly died and lost my mind, Young Duke Raymon couldn’t hide his bewildered expression.
Right, it’s an action the Imperial Princess Titania would never take if she were in her right mind….
And even if Young Duke Raymon were to try and dig for information from Titania’s staff at the Rose Palace now, there would be nothing to gain.
What can you do when someone truly dies and wakes up changed?
If there had been even one person ‘truly’ close to her, she wouldn’t have been able to hide the abnormality.
A lady-in-waiting or a maid who cared for her like blood kin. A nanny. Or a friend….
But Titania had nothing. Therefore, whatever the case, the cards I can play—whether he imprisons me in the future or kicks me out after breaking the engagement—are the whims or interests of this ‘fiancé in name only,’ or perhaps a small deal using my knowledge of the future.
“…Your Imperial Highness said you wanted a ‘deal.’”
Perhaps thinking I wouldn’t give him the straight truth, Raymon relaxed his shoulders slightly and cast a searching gaze my way.
“To speak of a ‘deal’ while saying you’ve prepared a ‘gift’ for me… It’s quite contradictory.”
His gaze was sharp enough to pierce anyone who looked at it. I gave a beaming smile as I replied.
“Well, that’s just how life works—give and take. Naturally, if I give you something, Young Duke Raymon, you must give me a fitting reward in return.”
“Even so, haven’t you already told me the location of the <Insignia of Gloriana>?”
“It’s because I trust my fiancé. It’s also a belief that the great House of Castline surely wouldn’t just swallow a gift prepared with all the sincerity of a foolish fiancée and then look away as if nothing happened.”
“How many people would actually call Your Imperial Highness a ‘foolish fiancée’?”
Are you asking because you don’t know? It’s practically the entire empire….
The corners of my mouth twitched. No, I mean, even before, didn’t he at least maintain basic courtesy in front of his fiancée?
No matter how I think about it, he’s definitely taking jabs at me.
Raymon slowly reached for his own teacup. Instead of drinking, he toyed with the handle, making the tea ripple as he spoke.
“…Then, as an Imperial Princess who has suddenly taken an interest in the House of Castline, what do you want in exchange for ‘secretly’ handing over what our family needs?”
His eyes, filled with a storm of various thoughts, watched me with a tenacity that felt as if he might devour me.
I had agonized over this moment for a very long time.
What could I possibly ask from a fiancé who doesn’t trust me and is highly likely to stand as an enemy in the future?
Something insignificant to them, but desperate for me. Something that, even if requested, wouldn’t be a threat to them and wouldn’t lead them to firmly judge me as an enemy.
“The staff of the Rose Palace are quite lacking in many ways; even though their master was injured and ill, not a single one feels a sense of responsibility.”
Even if it wasn’t poison but a simple accident, a member of the imperial family almost died.
At the very least, it would be natural to perform maintenance on the area I fell from. But no one cared.
It simply meant that since I woke up fine in the end, it was over.
Why on earth did the young Titania Sol Kite Hamastion suddenly fall from the second-floor balcony of the Rose Palace and hover between life and death? No one was curious.
The reason was simple.
Because she wanted to draw the attention of her biological mother, who never looked back at her. Because she wanted to see her face, even if just for a moment.
Because she knew she would surely be rejected if she went for a simple reason.
So, if she fell from about the height of the second floor and got moderately hurt, then maybe. Maybe her mother would show some interest. Maybe she would look upon her with pity and worry.
Even though her mother hadn’t shown any interest even when she was infinitely sickly as a child. Even so. Because whenever her brothers, the First and Second Princes, were even slightly ill, the Empress and the Imperial Consort would turn the entire palace upside down.
The young Titania had heard a passing maid grumbling, ‘No matter how much of a troublemaker they are, a parent’s heart softens when the child is sick. No parent can win against their child,’ and that was the best she could come up with.
If she were caught faking it, she might be even more despised.
So.
Since it was the Imperial Palace, and since it was only the second floor. Since she wouldn’t die….
Having made up her mind, she had paced the terrace for a long time, paralyzed with fear.
How much that child must have trembled as she looked down from the second floor.
She was terrified and miserable, but she couldn’t leave, and she couldn’t tell anyone.
Because she was so afraid she would hear the words, ‘Your biological mother really hates you, so she won’t care even if you fall and get hurt.’
While she stood frozen, unable to take the step, a passing maid burst open the firmly closed door without warning.
Titania, startled by the presence, fell from the balcony just like that.
Because she was a coward, perhaps she would have given up at the very last moment.
Persuading herself that she might end up with a scar on her face or lose her life, she might have stopped.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have fallen from the second-floor balcony, but instead would have forced herself to trip on the low stairs leading to the first floor, ending with just a few shallow scratches on her limbs.
But Titania fell from the balcony in the end.
The insensitive movement of one of the rude staff who showed no courtesy to their master—flinging open the closed door of the master’s room without a knock.
In the end, that person pushed her back. Even if they didn’t think it was murder, it was murder.
The scared, terrified, and selfish young Titania died forever within me the moment my past life awakened.
Titania wanted to be loved.
I know that will never happen.
“I need one loyal guard knight and one maid.”
Therefore, in front of the fiancé who was wary of me, I threw the empty teacup far away as I spoke.
Crash, shatter. My face was reflected in the broken shards of the teacup. I was smiling like a piece of glass, mangled and broken.
“People who are capable of both killing and saving lives.”
* * *
“Has the Imperial Princess truly gone mad?”
It was on the way back after ending the private audience with the Imperial Princess. Raymon remained silent at Cassian’s incredulous reaction. As soon as he heard the terms of the deal, Cassian had clutched his head as if he had a migraine.
And with good reason. Even now, the afterimage of the Imperial Princess he had just faced remained in Raymon’s mind, refusing to fade.
“Falling from the second floor… and hitting a tree? Is that tree some legendary World Tree or something? Does a person change like that because of it? Wow… No… This is…”
‘The staff of the Rose Palace are quite lacking in many ways; even though their master was injured and ill, not a single one feels a sense of responsibility.’
It was a major incident where the Imperial Princess had nearly died and barely regained consciousness, yet the Imperial Palace was quiet.
There wasn’t a single maid who tried to stop her from having a private audience with her fiancé, saying it would be too much for her body while her wounds hadn’t even fully healed yet.
Though it was said that Titania originally hated it when underlings interfered in her meetings with her fiancé….
That cold green gaze as she reproached her own staff. Those lips wearing a painted-on smile.
‘I need one loyal guard knight and one maid.’
The Imperial Princess Titania did not have a guard knight.
In the first place, it was because she was an Imperial Princess who rarely left the Imperial Palace—no, who ‘could not’ leave. No one wanted her to officially debut in society, build a network, and grow into an outstanding individual.
