The Crown Prince’s Fiancée, Episode 8
* * *
“Hello, little sister?”
Terni greeted me in the small hall where I had arrived to learn dancing.
“Have you been studying a lot?”
“Well, so-so…”
“If you don’t want to die so-so, you’d better work hard.”
How exactly does one die so-so? I couldn’t tell whether it was a threat or concern.
Right in the middle of talking with Terni, I glanced around the room. Naturally, I was checking whether the Crown Prince was there.
Terni, watching me, smiled meaningfully.
“Unfortunately, His Highness the Crown Prince couldn’t make it.”
I’m not the least bit sorry.
I looked at Terni with a rotten expression.
“But I’ve come in his place!”
That was a little unfortunate.
I wished they would both just vanish from my life…
As I gazed at Terni with a sour look and took a step back, he approached me with a bewildered expression.
“Why are you avoiding me? Little sister. Won’t you come here?”
Shake, shake.
I shook my head.
Terni stared at me with a face that said he couldn’t understand.
“Do I disgust you?”
Nod, nod.
When I nodded a couple of times, Terni put on the face of a tragic heroine and slunk off into a corner.
Then he whined mournfully, as if he were shouldering every misfortune in the world.
“Sob. My one and only sister… Sob. Sob, sob…”
Don’t mind him. Doing my best to ignore Terni, I looked anxiously at the clock.
Fifteen minutes already! There were still plenty of pages left in the book I had to read, and I couldn’t kill time like this.
When I hurried Madam Lucy, who was laughing hohoho without a care in the world, she dragged Terni over and stood him up.
“Sob. Mean Arti…”
Terni kept whining, glaring at me.
“Now then, let’s begin. Ohohohoho!”
With Madam Lucy’s cheerful laughter, the melody of a waltz flowed through the whole room. I took Terni’s hand and began to dance.
“You called me dirty, yet here you are holding my hand.”
Terni kept grumbling with a displeased expression. Wasn’t he holding a grudge a bit too long over a little joke?
“If I’m so dirty, why are you holding my hand?”
“…”
His constant sarcasm was hard to listen to. It was truly difficult playing this man’s little sister. I let Terni’s grumbling go in one ear and out the other.
I, too, had once practiced dancing in preparation for my debut in society.
If we hadn’t fallen, I would have made my debut as well. I didn’t feel any regret.
Anyway, thanks to having learned, I was able to keep in step with Terni well enough.
Terni, in the middle of the waltz, looked down at me with a surprised expression.
“Oh. You’re not bad?”
My chances of survival went up by one percent!
I was savoring my satisfaction with a smile of joy when a high-octave voice rang out behind me and shattered my mood.
“Ohhh! You’re following along better than I expected. Ohoho!”
By now I could tell who it was just from that laugh. Madam Lucy approached us, laughing hoho.
“Have you learned to dance somewhere before?”
“Ah. Briefly, before my family fell…”
“Oh, dear…”
When the subject of my fallen family came up, Madam Lucy looked at me with sympathy.
I really didn’t mind.
I had been quite content with entering the palace as a maid, so if anything, my present situation was the real calamity.
Terni, who had been listening quietly, suddenly cut in.
“It’s all right, little sister. Our house will never fall! You’re not alone!”
I would rather be alone.
In any case, it was a good thing I had learned to dance, because otherwise my life would already have ceased to exist in this world.
I had no time to read, so I was relieved that the time for dance practice was shortened.
“Then shall we leave the dancing at that?”
“What…?”
These people were clearly just being lazy. To call it fine and end things after a single waltz.
Can I really survive?
I was seriously worried about my future again, but no one except me cared in the least.
As expected, the only one I could count on was myself. I wouldn’t end up dead in less than a week, would I?
“Time to go report.”
Terni slipped out of the room with a light step.
He was finally gone. What a persistent man.
“Phew.”
I pressed a hand to my chest and praised myself for holding out to the end.
Drained, I was about to slump down right where I stood when Terni’s face popped out from outside the door.
“What are you doing, little sister! You’re coming with me.”
“What…?”
Couldn’t he just leave me alone?
Terni dragged me, wearing a hollow expression, off somewhere.
Knowing that resistance was futile, I followed limply behind him.
“So why exactly am I dirty? I washed my hands thoroughly!”
The test of my mental limits continued.
* * *
He had been tricked.
Adrian ground his teeth with a grinding crunch. He had thought, surely not, but it had turned out to be exactly that.
The place the Empress had named for tea was the garden beside Grace Palace.
He had naturally assumed the Empress and that woman would be there together, yet the only one at the tea site was Gabriel.
“Your Highness, I missed you so, so much.”
Gabriel, spotting Adrian, greeted him in a coquettish voice.
He immediately scowled and turned away.
He had come against his will on the Empress’s orders, but if the Empress wasn’t here, there was no need for him to stay.
“Oh my. Your Highness, where are you going? Are you hiding because seeing me makes you so shy?”
“…”
“There’s no need for that! Because I, Gabriel, feel just as you do. There’s no need to hide our hearts any longer, is there?”
Adrian was seized by the urge to plug his ears.
The somewhat shrill voice behind him kept spouting nonsense, but Adrian cleanly ignored it.
Since he was very young, the Empress had been dying to stick Gabriel to Adrian’s side, and Adrian had loathed Gabriel to the point of shuddering.
When no method could shake her off, after a little more time had passed he had taken to avoiding her as much as possible so as not to run into her.
He had judged that meeting Gabriel alone was worse than meeting her with the Empress present, but to think this mess would unfold.
“Damn it.”
For the next several months, he would never answer a summons from his mother again.
But Adrian could not leave the garden as he had wished.
“If you leave like this, Her Majesty the Empress will be disappointed…”
Gabriel’s words had no effect on Adrian whatsoever.
Let her be disappointed.
But Gabriel’s words kept coming.
“Oh my, Your Highness. Come to think of it, there’s a message Her Majesty asked me to pass on to you.”
A message to pass on? In that instant, a tremendous sense of foreboding swept over him.
Adrian wavered. Whatever might befall him in the future, should he just kick off and leave, or should he at least hear it out first?
Before he could finish deliberating, Gabriel opened her mouth.
“She said that if you aren’t here when she returns, she’ll prepare an even more extraordinary gift!”
“…Hah.”
A gift more extraordinary than Gabriel. It was a disaster.
In the end, the Empress’s threat worked splendidly. Because Adrian sat down across from Gabriel with a rotten expression.
Gabriel was all the more elated and happy that the Crown Prince was seated in front of her.
“It’s been so long, Your Highness. I’m sure you lost sleep at night from missing me? I certainly did.”
Crack. The handle of the teacup Adrian was holding crumbled.
“I didn’t.”
Adrian’s heavily suppressed voice carried an unmistakable murderous intent.
Even in the face of that deadly aura, Gabriel smiled happily, as if nothing could be better.
“Oh, honestly. You missed me too, you say? You don’t have to say it, I know.”
“I said I didn’t.”
“They say a strong denial is a strong affirmation, so you missed me that much? Oh my, Your Highness, really!”
“Hah…”
Clatter, clatter…
Adrian’s hand stroked the hilt of his sword. Several times a second, he was seized by a fierce impulse.
Gabriel did not know. What had saved her life was Adrian’s patience, which exceeded his impulse by a mere one percent.
* * *
The place Terni headed after leaving the hall was the Crown Prince’s office.
Bang! Terni flung open the office door without warning.
The attendant guarding the office, startled by the rude behavior, widened his eyes.
“Adrian! You won’t believe it, our Arti has…! Huh? Where did Adrian go?”
Over Terni’s shoulder, only Diano could be seen in the office.
Terni dragged me over to Diano. Diano stood vacantly, and his complexion was very dark.
“…She showed up.”
“Who did?”
“That woman…”
“What? That woman came?!”
Diano nodded.
“Her Majesty the Empress said she would be having tea with that woman, and summoned His Highness to attend as well.”
“Oh, no!”
Terni let out an exclamation that could have been delight or dismay, then turned to me with a bright smile.
“Arti, it’s time for you to sortie!”
“What?”
Without giving any detailed explanation, Terni dragged me out of the office again. Diano followed, scratching the back of his head with an awkward look.
The place Terni dragged me to was my bedchamber once more.
“Madam Lucy!”
“Goodness, Young Master Terni? Is the report finished already?”
“That’s not the issue right now. That woman has shown up! It’s finally time for our Arti to step forward!”
Why did I have to step forward? I had no idea, but I was in no position to voice an opinion.
Madam Lucy, her eyes wide for a moment, laughed ohohoho.
“I see. If Lady Gabriel has come, then of course Lady Artienne must go too.”
“Gabriel?”
“You don’t know? She is the Chancellor’s cherished daughter.”
“No, I do know, but…”
So ‘that woman’ was the noble lady named Gabriel, after all.
As I trailed off at the belated realization, Madam Lucy, apparently thinking I didn’t know much, added an explanation.
“Lady Gabriel comes from the Nevel family, close friends of the Valario family, the Empress’s maternal relatives. Thanks to that, she enjoys Her Majesty’s favor above all others.”
From her tone, I somehow sensed that Madam Lucy didn’t care much for Gabriel.
Was that just my imagination?
Hearing the name of Gabriel’s family brought back an unpleasant memory.
I had long known that they were an extremely wealthy house. The Nevel family’s extravagance was so famous that even commoners knew of it.
Moreover, nearly all of my family’s treasured possessions at the time of our fall had gone to the Nevel family. So Gabriel was that family’s cherished daughter.
