The Crown Prince’s Fiancée – Episode 48
‘I can’t stand to watch this.’
Marie was a little annoyed by the couple’s behavior.
“Come to think of it, Sister, you have just one older brother too, like me.”
Marie wedged herself between the two and spoke.
Arti was about to say she had no brother, then belatedly remembered Terni.
“Yes. I do.”
“How funny. Gabriel has just one brother too.”
“Oh? Really?”
For once, Adrian chimed in.
“He’s surprisingly decent for a Nevel.”
“I see. I just assumed she was an only child.”
“An only child? That would be Terni.”
“Ah…”
That part was true. He was even said to be the only son going back generations.
Marie glared once at Adrian, who had snatched away the topic she’d gone to the trouble of starting, then turned back to Arti with a smile.
“Sister-in-law, try this. It’s delicious.”
Marie lifted two wine glasses from the tray of a passing servant and handed one to Arti.
It did have alcohol in it, but it was so much like a soft drink that you could hardly taste it.
“It’s really sweet and delicious.”
“Isn’t it?”
Seeing that Arti liked it, Marie picked up another glass and passed it to her.
While Marie was delighting in Arti’s flushed cheeks, thinking that her sister-in-law couldn’t hold her liquor, Adrian swapped out the wine Marie had set aside for something else.
“Oh, this one’s good too.”
Arti’s cuteness had left her feeling generous, but Marie frowned, finding it bizarre that Adrian was attending to Arti so naturally.
With delicious food and exotic music, the mood gradually warmed, and a dance floor was set up at one side of the hall.
On any other occasion Marie would have enjoyed tearing a couple apart, but since these were her brother and sister-in-law, she let it slide.
“Why don’t the two of you dance together?”
Arti shook her head with an awkward look.
But Adrian, as though it were a fine idea, held out his hand to Arti.
“Would you do me the honor of a dance?”
Arti couldn’t tell what on earth Adrian was thinking.
‘Why is he asking me to dance?’
But since, deep down, she didn’t dislike this atmosphere, she gave a small nod.
“Gladly.”
As Arti raised her hand, a faint smile flickered at the corner of Adrian’s mouth.
‘He’s over the moon.’
Arti hadn’t seen it, but Marie had, and she found it simply sickening.
‘So my brother really does like my sister-in-law.’
Marie, who had naturally assumed it was all an act, looked at Adrian with fresh eyes.
Taking her stance to dance with Adrian, Arti became keenly aware of how close he was.
‘We’re too close.’
She couldn’t tell whether her flushed cheeks were from the wine or from something else.
A familiar tune began to play.
Arti, too, knew that Adrian was different from usual today.
And she thought it was all because Essen had come back.
‘Now that Essen is back, it’s really all over, isn’t it?’
Thinking of Essen, Arti suddenly felt her spirits sink.
This whole moment felt like an illusion.
‘It’s just a dance.’
Arti deliberately steeled her heart.
Adrian stared at Arti’s long, graceful lashes, lowered because she couldn’t meet his eyes.
That even a trifle like this looked beautiful made him suspect something was wrong with his eyesight.
Still, the sense of Arti focusing on him gave Adrian an inexplicable swell of pride.
‘Does this mean she doesn’t mind this much?’
Adrian, who in his whole life had neither memory of nor reason for accommodating anyone, was for the first time watching someone’s reactions.
“Ah.”
Arti, dancing along to the melody, misstepped.
The instant her body, unsteady from the wine, was about to fall, Adrian caught her by the waist and pulled her close.
Being caught before she fell was fine, but Arti held her breath at Adrian’s face, suddenly so near.
The moment their eyes met, she could see no one but Adrian.
It didn’t matter where she was.
Everything around them was erased, and only Adrian remained.
“Are you all right?”
“Ah.”
Adrian helped Arti back onto her feet.
‘For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me.’
Arti didn’t know what to do about her reddened cheeks.
The one saving grace was that she was already flushed from the wine, so it didn’t show.
The dance was over.
Adrian wanted to sit Arti down somewhere.
Escorted by Crown Prince Adrian back to where Princess Marie was, Arti suddenly spotted a familiar back disappearing out onto the balcony.
‘Huh? Isn’t that Michael?’
When Arti tilted her head, looking at something, Adrian glanced at her.
“What is it?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
She must have been mistaken.
When Arti shook her head, Adrian grew uneasy, as though she were hiding something from him.
‘It was a man.’
There was no way Adrian would have missed where Arti’s eyes had gone.
‘A man she knows?’
For reasons he couldn’t tell, Adrian’s mood plummeted.
“Sister-in-law, your cheeks are so red.”
“Really?”
Arti touched a hand to her cheek. It was hot. Though she couldn’t tell what the cause was.
Her flushed cheeks and soft smile were lovely beyond measure, but Adrian remembered that Arti was frail.
At the last party, too, hadn’t she lost her footing and fallen, hadn’t she sprained her ankle?
Before, he would have found that irritating and pathetic, but now it only worried him.
“Let’s head back.”
“Oh, then I’ll go too.”
“You stay a while longer.”
Marie pursed her lips in a pout.
‘They’re doing it again, trying to get time alone!’
She was irked by the couple’s transparent scheming, but Arti was so cute that she decided to let it go.
Adrian led Arti out of Florence Palace.
Lily Palace and Poinsettia Palace were close together, so they walked part of the way together, but Poinsettia Palace was closer to Florence Palace.
“I’ll take you back.”
“No, it’s all right. I can go by myself.”
Arti shook her head firmly. Her heartbeat was so loud she was afraid it would give her away.
Her whole body was tense, and she couldn’t say a word. Even now, being right next to Adrian made her nervous.
‘I don’t want him to find out I’m in this state.’
Unlike the desperate Arti, Adrian, who already felt as though he were wandering through hell, sank even deeper into the abyss.
‘Does she hate being with me that much?’
On any other occasion he would have brushed aside anyone else’s wishes without a thought, but now he couldn’t.
Because Arti was no longer just anyone else; she had become Artienne.
“It’s all right. It’s not a long way.”
“…Fine.”
Even as his mood sank from the rejection, his last scrap of pride wouldn’t allow him to show his turmoil.
So Adrian merely gave a curt nod and left.
Only after Adrian had turned and walked far enough away that he was out of sight did Arti let out the breath she’d been holding.
“Aaah…”
Even though Adrian had vanished from view, she could still hear her heart pounding.
‘If this keeps up, he might soon find out that something’s wrong with me.’
“Mm. No, this is no time to be moping.”
Thinking she should hurry back to her palace and rest, Arti set off along the familiar path.
But somehow, the atmosphere of the palace felt different.
“Where did the guards who were standing over there go?”
Why did there seem to be so few people? Was it just her imagination?
Just as Arti was feeling a slight unease, a dark figure appeared at the end of the corridor.
‘…Silver hair?’
As she tilted her head, the dark figure looked at her.
The moon’s shadow hid the face, but she could at least tell that their eyes had met.
“Catch him!”
At a voice from somewhere, as if the figure had been fleeing, the figure moved.
Snatching Arti away, the figure ducked beneath the window of an empty room.
The soft moonlight pouring through the window glittered like shattered diamonds.
As Arti, blinking in bewilderment, tried to say something, the man pressed a forefinger to her lips.
“Shh.”
Chapter 11. My Man’s Ex
Essen was dragged back before he could even get out of the capital.
“Ahaha. Did you really think you could screw me over and slip out of the capital, Essen?”
“What’s with that third-rate villain line?”
“I got hit because you ran away! See?! My face! My handsome face is a wreck!”
“Who’s handsome?”
“Me!”
Without a shred of shame, Terni answered with total confidence. Essen found Terni, sunk in his swamp of delusion, both funny and pitiable.
“Anyway! I have to go to the party, so I’ll be back in a bit. Stay here and be a good prisoner! Got it?”
“Ah, yes.”
“If you wait quietly, this magnificent self shall bring you something delicious you’ve never tasted before!”
“Oh, I can hardly wait.”
Satisfied despite Essen’s lifeless reply, Terni slipped out of the room in the best of moods.
‘I prepared for exactly this.’
Essen took out the small blade he’d hidden in his sleeve and freed his hands from the rope in one go.
“Does he trust me, or does he just underestimate me…?”
Even if they’d put handcuffs on him, he had a lockpick, so he’d have gotten them off somehow.
Rubbing his wrists, red and swollen from the rope marks, Essen undid the ropes around his legs and ankles as well.
“No windows.”
That guy’s learning ability is uselessly good.
This time he made noise from the inside, lured the soldiers over one by one, and struck them on the nape, and so he managed to escape.
Honestly, up until then Essen had been overconfident. But.
‘That bastard…!’
The number of guards at Poinsettia Palace had doubled.
This was surely Terni’s doing!
“There he is!”
“Catch him!”
“Don’t you dare let him go!”
For some reason, everyone lunged at Essen the moment they saw him.
With guards chasing him in an endless stream, a sudden chase began with Poinsettia Palace as its backdrop.
“Ha. He really pulls out all the stops.”
Since this happened to be the imperial palace, the only way to avoid being charged with treason was to knock them out cleanly, without a scratch.
But that was only feasible in a one-against-two situation.
The one mercy for Essen in this situation was that the palace he was fleeing through was one he knew inside and out.
It was the moment he shook off the soldiers and turned into a corridor.
‘Huh?’
A lady in a dress, clearly not a guard, stopped short at the sight of Essen.
‘I’m done for.’
Hidden in the moon’s shadow, she was only a silhouette, but Essen felt there was something familiar about the lady.
That lasted only a moment.
“Catch him!”
At the guards’ voices right behind him, Essen didn’t stop to think twice; he rushed over, snatched the lady up, and hid.
“Shh.”
A sweet scent, one he seemed to have smelled somewhere before, wafted over him.
Maybe it was from all the running, but he could hear his own heartbeat loudly.
Her wide eyes glittered blue in the moonlight, and her flushed cheeks and soft lips filled his vision.
The moment their eyes met, he forgot even to breathe.
In that instant, Essen realized.
That a day would surely come when he would regret this moment.
