Chapter 13
The knight beside Great-Aunt Eonel shouted.
“By order of Her Highness the Crown Princess! Recall those who went hunting! Sound the emergency horn!”
A deep, resonant blare of the horn soon followed.
Woooooo—
Woooooo—
“Knights capable of wielding aura, engage the wyverns! The rest, assist in evacuating the dignitaries!” Great-Aunt commanded again.
Her guard knight echoed her orders loudly. “By order of Her Highness the Crown Princess! Knights capable of wielding aura, engage the wyverns! The rest, assist in evacuating the dignitaries!”
The knights, previously moving chaotically, began to organize under her command.
“Argh!”
Kreeek!
The shouts of knights, the screams of people, and the cries of wyverns mingled. Yet Great-Aunt didn’t flinch.
“Nanny, take the child and flee!”
At her order, the maids and Nanny hesitated, flustered.
“What about Your Highness?”
“I cannot leave until all the dignitaries are safely evacuated.”
Her words carried the full weight of imperial authority.
“But…”
“Hurry, take the child and follow His Majesty!”
Before Great-Aunt could finish, a wyvern swooped over our heads.
“Kyaa!”
The maids screamed.
I looked up to see the wyvern’s neck pierced by the sword of Great-Aunt’s guard knight.
“It’s dangerous! Leave this to us and evacuate, Your Highness!”
Hot, sticky blood sprayed from the wyvern’s neck, drenching the knight from head to toe in crimson. I squeezed my eyes shut. At the same moment, Nanny’s soft palm covered them.
“You, carry the child and run,” Grandpapa ordered.
A young, sturdy attendant hoisted me onto his back. Clinging tightly to him, I was surrounded by Nanny and the maids as we ran toward the palace. Grandpapa and Great-Aunt ran alongside.
Several wyverns pursued us, but our escorting knights swung their swords at the pack.
Skreee!
An aura from a knight’s blade sliced through a wyvern’s belly, spilling its entrails. I turned my head and shut my eyes before I could take it all in, but the attendants and maids, running on their own feet, couldn’t even close their eyes and screamed. Some retched audibly.
“Urk! Blech!”
Even my fleeting glance left the grotesque scene seared into my mind, likely to haunt my dreams. How much worse for the attendants and maids?
The clatter of hooves signaled the return of the hunting party. The sounds of people, horses, and wyverns pierced through, even as I covered my ears, making my eardrums throb.
The wind from the wyverns’ wings brushed my back. Even with my eyes closed and head bowed, I could vividly picture them soaring above.
The wind grew stronger, closer.
“Argh!”
The attendant carrying me screamed, stumbling forward. I tumbled off his back, rolling to the side. Immediately after, a wyvern snatched him by the scruff of his neck.
“Aaagh!”
He flailed in the air, screaming, as I rolled across the ground. Nanny reached for me, but her fingers brushed my arm and missed.
Thud!
I stopped rolling and lay sprawled on the ground. Lifting my head slightly, I saw the sky blotted out by dark leather—the wings of the wyvern clutching the attendant, preparing to take flight.
Then a long sword pierced through its leathery wing. Startled, I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again.
One of our escort knights had climbed onto the wyvern’s back. Seizing the moment as it dove for the attendant, he’d mounted it and thrust his sword into the wing joint, tearing it apart.
Biting my lip, I gripped the ground beside my shoulders and pushed myself up.
“Ugh!”
I had to stand and run. In this chaos, all I could do was struggle desperately to get up. But my ankle throbbed painfully from the fall.
Another wyvern swooped toward me.
“Your Highness!”
“Kyaa! Your Highness!”
I’m going to die again.
Curling up and squeezing my eyes shut, frustration hit me harder than fear.
To die so pointlessly again…! I haven’t even had my proper revenge.
Then it happened.
The menacing presence over my back vanished. Raising my head, still shielding it with my arms, I saw sunlight where a dark shadow had been.
“Huh…?”
A heavy thud sounded behind me.
Thump!
The ground trembled faintly, like a small earthquake.
I turned around.
It was a knight in the imperial guard’s uniform. More precisely, an apprentice knight.
His sweat-soaked black hair glinted blue under the sunlight.
…Who?
Ironically, his silhouette felt both unfamiliar and familiar.
When our eyes met as he turned, my breath caught.
Ar…
My throat tightened, choking my voice.
Is it okay to meet him now? How old is he? Thirteen? Wasn’t I supposed to meet him two years from now?
But those thoughts faded as I was captivated by his shimmering silhouette in the sunlight. There was no other way to explain the aching fullness in my chest.
His back, sword raised, felt like a shield against the world. Toward the loyal vassal who stayed by my side until the end, I felt overwhelming affection.
Had I ever seen him wield a sword so fully? I hadn’t realized how breathtakingly beautiful he looked, like a painting.
Then it hit me.
I was the one stifling his talent.
I’d heard from other knights that he had immense potential, but I’d never seen him draw his sword properly.
Being the guard of a princess confined in the palace was like that. In my past life, I felt constant threats, but they were political pressures, not assassination attempts.
Simply put, I wasn’t killed by an assassin sent by my uncle. I was killed by politics—forced to drink poison for treason I didn’t commit. There was never a moment for my guard to draw his sword.
What need did a knight serving such a princess have to wield his blade with full force?
In this life, shouldn’t I let him go instead of binding him to me?
I bit my lower lip and closed my eyes.
It was surely the right thing to do, but why were tears falling? My heart felt torn apart. I had to let him go… I couldn’t drag him into the bloody mire of politics out of my own greed.
How could I, who fled death and left him behind, dare exploit his loyalty? Wouldn’t that be too selfish?
Unable to bear looking at him, I turned away.
Soon, imperial knights, nobles, and knights from great houses appeared in the distance. They’d returned to the base camp upon hearing the emergency horn. Their arrival turned the tide, and the ferocious wyverns fell from the sky like autumn leaves.
As I averted my gaze from Ar and searched for something to grab to stand, someone seized my shoulder.
It was Grandpapa.
“Melly! Melly, are you alright? I’m so sorry, your grandpa brought you to this dull event… Are you hurt?”
My ankle ached, and I was still sprawled on the ground. Grandpapa gripped my shoulders, crawling on his knees to shield me.
Seeing the Emperor crawl in front of others, I gasped.
“Your Majesty! Your dignity…! I mean, your honor…”
“Honor? Is that what matters?”
He inspected my body anxiously.
“The princess’s ankle is swollen. Fetch the physician! Melly, did you sprain it? Where’s the physician? Why isn’t he here?”
Grandpapa’s frantic fussing blocked my view, completely obscuring Ar. It was a relief not to see him.
I held back, but when I finally peeked toward where he’d stood, he was gone.
The hunting festival in the capital was thrown into chaos by the wyvern attack. The base camp, set up in an area where monsters rarely ventured, had been used every year without incident. Wyverns, territorial creatures, rarely left their domains, making this an unforeseen disaster.
The reason they strayed so far remains a mystery.
And I was grappling with another layer of confusion.
If things had gone as they should, Grandpapa would’ve been attacked by the wyverns while surveying the hunting grounds’ outskirts with five guards…
So why…
Why did the wyverns attack the base camp instead of Volter’s party on the outskirts?
Could their appearance be not a coincidence but inevitable? If it were mere chance, they would’ve attacked Volter’s group on the outskirts, as in my previous life.
But the exact reason, their precise purpose, eluded me. Thinking further made my head ache, so I set it aside for now. I needed to eat dinner and rest my weary body and mind.
After dinner, before bed, I sat quietly beside Nanny as she knitted, pretending to read a storybook, flipping pages aimlessly. I couldn’t focus on the words; my mind kept wandering. Nanny’s hands moved swiftly before my eyes.
Swish, swish.
“Huh? Nanny?”
“You’re reading, aren’t you, Your Highness?”
“Y-Yes!”
I nodded vigorously.
Even so, Nanny seemed unimpressed, brushing the yarn across the back of her hand with a soft “Hmph…”
“What? I’m really reading!”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Want me to tell you what I’ve read so far? I was getting bored anyway.”
Talking might shake off these distracting thoughts. Ar’s image from earlier lingered, tormenting me. The mix of guilt and gratitude made me desperate to bury this turmoil.
But Nanny, perhaps taking my words as a child’s plea of innocence, smiled kindly and shook her head.
“No need. Just keep reading. You don’t have to prove it.”
I wouldn’t have minded if she’d asked. In fact, I wanted her to.
I’d read these storybooks to death in my past life. I knew every tale in this collection—not just a single volume, but the entire set—by heart. I could even recite the colors of the characters’ clothes in the illustrations.
Recalling those details might help me shake off these thoughts.
But Nanny returned to her knitting, and I reluctantly flipped another page, half-consciously replaying the hunting festival’s events.
