RTTE 03

Chapter 3

“…Your Highness, you don’t mean you’re actually planning to take us to the North, do you?”

Unlike the capital, the center of refined culture, the North was an extremely dangerous place.

She was planning to take them to a land where monster attacks occurred practically every other day?

“What do you mean, actually? I’m completely serious.”

“Your Highness, do you truly believe that’s possible?”

“Surely His Majesty the Emperor wouldn’t refuse his younger sister’s one final wish before she leaves the imperial palace?”

It was common for a princess leaving for a foreign land through marriage to take her personal maids with her.

Besides, if Lumiere started making a fuss about dying again, it would only become troublesome. The Emperor would probably grant her a request of this magnitude.

The moment the three women realized that, the color drained from their faces.

Lumiere swept her indifferent gaze over them.

Once she left the imperial palace, she would never see these people again anyway.

She didn’t remember their names.

Nor did she care to know them.

Having mentally classified them simply as Number One, Number Two, and Number Three, she pointed at the maid who had been the most insolent toward her.

“Will you come with me?”

“Pardon…?”

“Judging by how boldly you behaved earlier, I think you’d adapt quickly even in an unfamiliar place.”

“…Your Highness, wouldn’t it be more beneficial for you to take someone trustworthy with you, especially to an unfamiliar land?”

“Well, I’m going to die one way or another, so what use would anyone be to me? I only need someone to accompany me on the road to the afterlife. I don’t care who it is.”

“Your Highness, what do you mean, you’re going to die?! How could you say something so dreadful…!”

“Didn’t you just say I was going to die soon anyway?”

“Th-That was…”

Lumiere slowly swept her gaze across the three women, whose faces had gone completely pale.

“So? What will you do? Will you follow me?”

The first to surrender was Number One.

“Y-Your Highness, please withdraw your command! Such a duty is far beyond someone like me!”

“Then which one of you will come with me?”

Would there really be a volunteer willing to travel to a frontier constantly threatened by monsters?

“……”

“……”

“……”

Just as expected.

All three women fell into an utterly pathetic silence, avoiding her gaze.

“To think my maids’ loyalty amounts to no more than this…”

She deliberately trailed off as though deeply disappointed.

The maids immediately dropped to their knees.

“Your Highness, we will serve you with utmost devotion and make up for every act of disloyalty we have committed against you. Please forgive us and calm your anger.”

“Please, Your Highness! Forgive us!”

After all the years I spent being mistreated, and now they think they can get off this easily?

“Don’t act as though doing what you should have done in the first place is some great favor. If you want forgiveness, you should show me genuine sincerity.”

“What… what do you mean by that?”

“I mean you should return everything you’ve stolen from my palace.”

“W-What? How could we possibly dare to take the possessions of the Princess’s residence for ourselves?”

“That’s right! Please withdraw such a misunderstanding!”

They lied without even blinking.

Why else would her residence be so empty?

The budget allocated to Viola Palace was absurdly small to begin with, but anything remotely valuable had been stolen by these women.

She felt it would be unfair to simply leave without doing anything.

Before she went, she intended to make them cough up everything they had taken.

“I’ll take two of the three of you with me. Which of you receives my mercy will depend entirely on how hard you each try to earn it.”

With that, Lumiere turned away decisively, making it clear that she would accept no objections.

Despair spread across the maids’ faces.

A group of men riding powerful warhorses entered the city while escorting a rugged carriage.

Their clothing was as varied as that of wandering mercenaries, but their disciplined movements were closer to those of soldiers.

Rattle.

Moving slowly along the wide road, they eventually stopped in front of a relatively large building.

A broad-shouldered blond man opened the carriage door.

“Your Highness, they have rooms available. Shall we unpack our luggage and head straight to the tailor afterward?”

Brian van Walton.

On the battlefield, he guarded Axcid’s side.

At the castle, he assisted him with administrative affairs.

He was one of the most capable men in the North—a knight commander who also served as the Grand Duke’s adviser.

“…We’re going to bring back a Grand Duchess. I suppose I should at least make an effort to look presentable.”

Axcid rubbed the cross-shaped scar on his right temple.

His appearance was already intimidating enough.

If he visited the Princess dressed carelessly as well, he would surely leave her with an unfavorable first impression.

“You’re absolutely right. First impressions tend to last.”

At that moment, a red-haired man interrupted in a sharp, prickly voice.

“Your Highness, whether you dress up or not, we’re barbarians in the eyes of those imperial bastards. Do you think the Princess will be any different?”

“Kaiden. What kind of way is that to speak before His Highness?”

“I’m not saying anything wrong.”

Lumiere von Wizer.

The half-sister of the young Emperor and the disgrace of the Wizer Imperial Family.

She was said to be unimaginably foolish and so ugly that she was difficult to look at.

As if that weren’t enough, her loud and desperate unrequited love had supposedly thrown high society into an uproar.

Eventually, she had even attempted suicide over a man and become the laughingstock of society.

For the Grand Duchy, which had defended the continent against monster invasions for generations, a marriage proposal involving such a Princess was no different from an insult.

“Anyway, I can’t accept this. Of all people, you’re supposed to take a Princess as the Grand Duchess? Does that make any sense?”

Axcid, who had been silently listening, asked,

“Why doesn’t it?”

“Well, that’s—!”

“Even the women of the Grand Duchy don’t want to become Grand Duchess. Compared to that, a Princess is more than I deserve.”

“……!”

Since ancient times, the daughters of families offered a marriage proposal with the Grand Ducal House had either run away in the middle of the night or rushed into another marriage simply to refuse the proposal.

Every woman who gave birth to an heir died within a year, as though it were an unbreakable rule.

What woman would willingly want to become Grand Duchess?

And so, generation after generation, the Grand Duke’s marriages could only be arranged when families hungry for power or drowning in debt offered up their daughters.

Axcid’s mother had married under exactly those circumstances.

And after giving birth to him, she too had died—as expected.

There were all kinds of horrifying rumors.

That an heir would be murdered once born.

That carrying the bloodline of the Grand Ducal House brought a curse.

No one wanted to become the protagonist of those sinister stories, even if they were only half true.

“Your Highness, any woman who believes such ridiculous superstitions is unfit to become Grand Duchess in the first place. If we look properly, there must surely be a woman somewhere who doesn’t believe such nonsense—”

“Enough. I don’t wish to hear any more.”

Axcid cut him off in a cold voice.

The horrifying stories circulating among the people were not baseless nonsense.

His subordinates dismissed them as unfortunate coincidences because every previous Grand Duchess had died for a different reason—illness, accidents, and so on.

But…

the deaths suffered by the Grand Duchesses after producing an heir—

Those were the inevitable consequences of giving birth to the bloodline cursed with death.

And every year, there was that filthy instinct that came upon him, an impulse he could no more control than a beast.

That alone was proof enough that the curse truly existed.

“Then just send the Princess back and let her deal with it herself.”

“Going personally to welcome the future Grand Duchess is a tradition of the Grand Ducal House and the duty of its lord. It is not your place to interfere.”

“She isn’t even from the Grand Duchy. Do you really need to go that far?”

As the two men began arguing again, a chilling aura flowed from Axcid.

“Quiet.”

Silence fell over the surroundings.

A bone-chilling cold swept through the air, enough to make the backs of their necks tingle.

Even knights who lived their lives fighting on the edge of death instinctively shrank back from that presence.

Faced with the heavy warning, Kaiden finally closed his mouth with a sullen expression.

Axcid withdrew his gaze.

The imperial family’s attitude.

The objections of his own subordinates.

Just as he had expected, this marriage was going to be an exhausting affair with far too many things to worry about.

And yet—

perhaps because it was the first time in his life that he was about to be married—

his heart felt strangely unsettled.

But at this very moment, the Princess was probably trembling in fear and despair.

“……”

Axcid smiled bitterly and pushed down the complicated emotions stirring within him.

The position of Grand Duchess had remained vacant for a long time.

The longer it remained empty, the more ominous rumors spread throughout the North, and the more persistently the nobles pressured him to marry.

To silence them, he needed a marriage—even if it existed only in name.

But there was nothing for the Princess to worry about either.

He had no intention of producing an heir.

And the Princess was in the miserable position of having to use marriage as a means of escaping the imperial palace.

If they simply discussed and agreed upon the details of their married life, then this marriage could become a transaction that satisfied both parties.