TBFP 06

Chapter : 06

“This way, please follow me, Your Highness.”

Hilda’s brightly smiling face was the epitome of kindness.

However, Leticia quickly realized that she didn’t particularly like her.

No, rather than like or dislike, it felt more like she was completely indifferent.

Given that the conflict between the Empire and the Grand Duchy wasn’t a recent development, mere indifference was actually a kind response.

‘Or perhaps the people of the Grand Duchy are unusually kind.’

Leticia glanced around at her surroundings, which were strangely indifferent to her, and then followed Hilda.

However, before Leticia could take more than a few steps, Emma stopped her and spoke sharply to Hilda.

“Please state your rank first.”

“Oh my.”

Hilda, with her eyes wide open, smiled and replied.

“I am the Viscountess Sefrenter. Is that answer sufficient?”

Emma seemed to want to find more fault, but Hilda turned around as if to say ‘follow me’ and added.

“Only direct members of the Basilinte Grand Ducal family can stay in the main castle, so I’ll guide you to the guest house. The fireplace is blocked, but it’s spring now, so it should be comfortable enough for you to use.”

Following Hilda’s guidance, they walked a bit and saw a two-story mansion.

To Leticia’s eyes, it looked like an ordinary mansion, but a sigh escaped from Emma, who was standing beside her.

As they opened the door and entered the guest house, a lobby covered in dust greeted them.

“You arrived earlier than expected, so we didn’t have time to clean. I was going to send some servants to help with the cleaning, would that be alright?”

Emma responded irritably to Hilda’s question.

“That won’t be necessary. We brought a few servants with us, just send them here.”

“Oh my. I don’t know who the imperial servants are. You’ll have to bring them yourself.”

“What kind of nonsense is……”

“The second floor has been cleaned, so I’ll show you to the room where His Highness will stay. In the meantime, why don’t you go and fetch them? You can’t clean this place alone, can you?”

Emma, born and raised as a noble her entire life, couldn’t possibly do any cleaning herself.

Biting her lips, Emma finally gripped Leticia’s arm painfully and put on a pretense of affection.

“I’ll be back quickly, Your Highness. I can’t let you stay in such a dirty place.”

“Okay, Nanny.”

“I’m sorry to leave you alone.”

With those words, Emma hurriedly left.

Hilda smiled brightly and said to Leticia.

“Now then, let me show you to your room.”

Following Hilda up to the second floor, it was indeed clean as she had said.

The only difference from the Empire was that the windows in the corridor were extremely large, and there were no curtains at all.

As Leticia was curiously looking at the windows, Hilda explained.

“In the Grand Duchy, it doesn’t rain or snow. So it’s extremely hot in summer, and equally cold in winter.”

Then why make such large windows for winter, Leticia wondered.

As if reading her thoughts, Hilda added to her explanation.

“We leave them like this in spring and summer, but when autumn comes, we completely block them with bricks.”

Leticia walked down the corridor, looking out the window. Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks when a green forest came into view.

Unlike the wastelands she had seen from the carriage, inside the Basilinte castle, lush grass and trees were growing quite well.

“That’s the Astrid Forest.”

Hilda said proudly, puffing out her chest.

“It’s the only forest in this land. Her Grace the Grand Duchess created it five years ago. That’s why it’s named after her.”

Leticia’s ears perked up. A story about the Grand Duke’s family.

‘So the Grand Duke’s wife must be amazing enough to create a forest in a wasteland.’

“Originally, it was larger than what you see now. And she even managed to create a garden inside the castle. Five years ago……”

Hilda’s words slowed down as if reminiscing about the past.

“His Grace wasn’t as indifferent as he is now. You might not be able to imagine it, but before their marriage, His Grace courted Her Grace the Grand Duchess very passionately. He was quite a fiery person.”

Hilda giggled softly.

“He kidnapped the Grand Duchess and eloped, then held the wedding ceremony the very next day. The Grand Duchess’s mentor had not allowed them to meet, you see.”

In place of the silent Leticia, Hilda chattered on amusingly about the Grand Ducal couple’s love story.

What Leticia learned from this was that Her Grace the Grand Duchess was an incredibly powerful magician.

As the top disciple of the Great Magician Eckle, born with the blessing of water, she could walk into fire unscathed.

Leticia felt a lack of reality at the mention that she could even make it rain in the cursed Grand Duchy of Basilinte.

To begin with, magicians were so rare that one might be lucky to meet one in a lifetime.

There wasn’t much known information about them either.

She had vaguely heard that magic wasn’t something you could learn, but something you were born with, that those born with it were different from others from birth.

And when such a special child was born, the magic tower would take them away and raise them as a magician.

‘Even that story was when Brother Emmit, who played the role of a magician, was insisting on wearing makeup with three eyes……”

Suddenly reminded of her troupe family, Leticia smiled faintly, then stopped when she noticed Hilda staring at her intently.

Hilda, as if nothing had happened, smiled and finished what she had been saying.

“……His Grace was so jealous that they fought quite a lot.”

Leticia was an actress. So she could tell that Hilda’s kind smile was an act.

But what she wondered was this:

Why bother acting in front of a prince who was going to die anyway?

Why chatter kindly about the Grand Duke’s family affairs?

‘Why did she deliberately send Emma away and leave me alone?’

“Are you curious about why I’m telling you all this?”

At Hilda’s question, Leticia could only ask, though it seemed a bit unrealistic:

“……Can you see what I’m thinking?”

At those words, Hilda burst into laughter. Then she shook her head.

“Of course not.”

“But……”

“I’m not that great of a magician. I can only read emotions to some extent?”

Unlike her brightly smiling lips, Hilda’s eyes, which weren’t smiling at all, stared at Leticia.

“If Her Grace the Grand Duchess had continued to teach me, I might have improved my skills enough to actually read thoughts. But she has been sleeping in the western tower continuously for the past five years. Because she used too much magical power trying to revive this cursed land.”

This seemed like confidential information that Leticia shouldn’t be hearing. But Hilda’s words showed no sign of stopping.

“After that, His Grace the Grand Duke went mad. I’d like to use prettier words in front of our little prince, but I have no other way to describe His Grace’s condition.”

Recalling the calm and rational white Grand Duke, Leticia unconsciously opened her mouth.

“His Grace didn’t seem……”

“Didn’t seem that way at all? Haha, that’s right. Usually, mad people don’t know they’re mad. But think carefully, Your Highness.”

Hilda bent down to meet Leticia’s eye level. She whispered as she stroked under Leticia’s eyes with her thumb.

“If it were a curse that could be easily broken by sacrificing a child of Herta, why do you think no one tried it in the past three hundred years?”

There was weariness in her whisper. And a faint sense of pity.

“Your Highness’s death will be of no value. Don’t you want to live?”