The Annoying Princess Has Arrived

The door opened, and Varkan, who had been sitting on the sofa in the antechamber, turned to look at me with an absolutely magnificent expression on his face.

An unconcealed will was blazing in his pitch-black eyes: I want to collar and cage this uncontrollable princess right now!

In stark contrast to his ominous face, I folded my eyes into a pretty smile and greeted him brightly.

"The troublesome princess has arrived, Your Grace!"

"……."

Perhaps my greeting had caught him off guard, because his brow twitched ever so slightly.

I strode boldly into his antechamber.

"What if you're not even ready yet? It's nearly time for the luncheon. Surely you're not planning to keep His Majesty the Emperor waiting? If you do, the mood at the table is going to be absolutely savage from the first bite to the last!"

He continued to regard me with a crooked glare. The look was rather chilling, but I'm not the type to wilt over something like this.

Smiling even more sweetly, I walked over and sat down on the sofa across from him.

"Isn't that a bit much, glaring at the person who came to invite you to a meal?"

As I said it, I dipped my head in a light bow toward Roan, who was standing beside the sofa, substituting the gesture for a proper greeting.

Roan's gaze flicked between me and Varkan, and then he quietly slipped out into the bedroom corridor.

The moment the door closed, Varkan spoke, slow and deliberate.

"Were we ever on such terms?"

Faced with his icy gaze and frost-cold voice, I nodded as if I'd expected exactly this.

It's strange, really—my heart, still rattled from meeting the Crown Prince, actually settles at the Grand Duke's reaction.

After my encounter with Cain, the thought had struck me that I needed to see Varkan, and I had run straight here to his chambers.

His temper was what it was, but he was the only person in this entire palace I could count as being on my side. My instincts must have quietly acknowledged that fact long ago.

His bristling, nose-wrinkled disgust at my very existence was an ugly thing to witness, but what could I do? The guild bastards held the leash on my life, and Varkan held my lifeline in another way entirely—so endure it I would.

That was what I'd been thinking as I came here after meeting Cain.

Why on earth did Floria choose the Crown Prince when she had a Grand Duke who was far more handsome?

Not that Cain was lacking, of course.

Objectively speaking, Varkan simply outclassed him—in face, in build, in the very aura he carried.

Oh. Maybe that's exactly it?

Either way, it meant one thing: the reason Floria loved and chose Cain was never mere appearance.

Which also meant that Cain possessed some other charm I couldn't perceive, and that charm was what had drawn her to him.

Or is it really because of the Grand Duke's insufferable personality after all?

So even that staggeringly flawless face of his couldn't overcome the fatal flaw of his temperament!

And all the while, that same Varkan had cast aside his family, thrown away his very life, for a woman destined to love another man?

I tilted my head slightly as I watched Varkan shoot his fierce glare my way.

He doesn't strike me as the type to go blind with love and do something so foolish.

So I decided to change the direction of my thinking.

If Cain and Floria were fated to end up together regardless—

Then the Grand Duke has no need to throw his life away for Floria's sake, does he?

What if, instead, I genuinely seduced the Grand Duke?

"Seduce" made it sound rather grand, but I didn't mean I'd steal Varkan from under Floria's nose!

Simply preventing him from falling in love with her might be enough to save his life, couldn't it?

If the Grand Duke lives long, so do I.

Good for her, good for her brother-in-law. Kill two birds with one stone—a win-win through and through.

And who knew? Even if Varkan never loved me, if I could become his friend or ally at the very least—

He might spare my life even if my true identity is ever exposed.

Painting that grand picture in my head, I smiled at him.

"That's true. Honestly, who fetched whom hardly matters."

I gazed at him serenely.

"What matters is that I've decided to like you very, very much from this day forward, Your Grace."

Varkan's eyes crumpled at once.

Like someone who'd failed to dodge a piece of filth hurled at him out of nowhere.

Watching that disgusted expression, a surge of indignation rose hot in my chest.

Excuse me? Hating me is one thing, but isn't that face just too much?

I forcibly smothered the complaint clawing its way out and strained to keep smiling.

Hold it in.

I could not afford to blow up here and lash out at him the way I usually did.

If I wanted free access to the Grand Duke's library to decode the Helbine, and free rein to leave the estate in search of herbs, I needed this man's goodwill!

He crossed his long legs, folded his arms with leisurely insolence, and stared at me coldly.

"Princess."

Varkan continued, frowning as though spending time on my nonsense was still an insult to his patience.

"My patience is not as generous as you seem to expect it to be. So state your business before I drag it out of you myself."

Despite the threatening warning, I kept my smile in place.

"Oh no, Your Grace's patience is exceptional. You've kept me alive, after all, instead of killing me. Even with His Majesty's orders on the line, if you'd truly set your mind to it, you could have arranged for a little thing like me to meet an unfortunate accidental death. I imagine the cleanup would have been tiresome, though."

Varkan let out a short, dry sigh.

"……If that's all you have to say, kindly leave."

I looked at him with eyes gone somewhat serious.

"I told you already. I've decided to like you very much, starting today."

But Varkan was having none of it. As if he refused to believe my shameless declaration, his eyes narrowed to slits.

"So why."

"Because we're going to be married!"

"……."

Keeping my expression pitiful without overdoing it, I deliberately let my gaze fall at a forty-five-degree angle.

"Of course… I know you despise me immensely, Your Grace."

Varkan tilted his head.

"Doesn't the princess feel the same way about me?"

At that, I rounded my eyes in disbelief and shot back.

"What? Me? Absolutely not!"

"……."

"How could I possibly hate the Grand Duke who took in a useless, uncontrollable, positively maddening princess of a hostile nation without a word of complaint! The mere fact that you've treated me with the dignity of my rank and let me live this long is a debt I couldn't repay in a lifetime!"

His eyes narrowed into fine lines at my words, and he gave a contemptuous little snort.

"Princess."

He studied me as he went on.

"If you're flattering me because you fear this marriage might fall through, there's no need."

"I'm sorry?"

He regarded me with an utterly emotionless, frigid stare.

"Blind, mute, missing a limb or two—it changes nothing. I will go through with this marriage regardless."

"……."

"That is how little your circumstances or condition mean to me. So long as you're breathing, that is. Between people like us, what could feelings possibly matter?"

In other words, I needn't like him, and I needn't waste any effort trying.

It was a provocative, cutting thing to say—but to a fake princess like me, it landed no blow at all.

I smiled as if none of it concerned me in the slightest.

"Flattery, hmm. For the record, I wasn't even flattering you properly—but suppose it were flattery. What of it? That, too, is one of the many efforts we make to grow closer to someone."

Freshly self-appointed flatterer that I now was, I met his eyes squarely and continued undeterred.

"And think about it. If a marriage is happening anyway, living with someone you hate is utterly exhausting. You may think this is all pointless posturing right now, but one day it'll dawn on you. Ah, right. I'm glad I listened to that mad princess back then. Because I believe there is no emotion in this world that eats away at a person quite like hatred and loathing."

All the more so when it's between husband and wife, I added.

Having said my piece, I waited for his reaction. Varkan studied me for a moment, then asked abruptly:

"Have you given up on pretending to be mad?"

"……."

At the sudden question, I flinched, my shoulders jerking involuntarily.

What did that mean?

Did he already know I'd been faking madness—or was he testing me?

For a moment I debated how to answer, but then I straightened my back and met his gaze head-on.

"I believe you've misunderstood something."

"Misunderstood?"

I declared with total confidence:

"Yes! I swear on heaven itself—never once, not a single time, have I pretended to be mad!"

"……."

A short echo rang through the bedchamber and faded away.

It was the truth.

Not since the day I'd entered the Grand Duke's estate had I faked madness for even a single instant.

"I have always behaved exactly as I am. Given my station, I shouldn't act this way. I ought not do these things. If crossing that line one must never cross is the dividing line that makes a person 'mad'—then yes, I suppose I am mad, properly speaking."

"……."

One of Varkan's eyebrows rose a fraction.

Riding the momentum, I continued with a wry smile.

"You may find this hard to believe, Your Grace, but this position—the princess. …I never wanted it. Not once. If I could, I'd throw it all away this very moment and vanish somewhere no one knows my name."

That was not the confession of Princess Ivelina. It was the confession of Evelyn, the herb-seller.

Not that Varkan could possibly have noticed.

Wearing the expression of a woman thoroughly unburdened, I flashed him a bright grin.

"Did you know? I'm telling you nothing but the truth, even right now?"

"……."

For a long while, Varkan said nothing, simply staring into my eyes as if searching them.

The gaze of a ravenous beast hunting for a single shard of truth buried in the mountain of sophistry I'd just spewed.

Just as the silence began to stretch too long—

Varkan tossed out his words like a stone.

"Leave. I'll be changing before we go."

"Oh…."

I stared at him with a face of mild surprise.

What? I thought you were going to throw me out and tell me to drop the nonsense.

I had come fully braced to be chased out, and instead Varkan had risen, all cooperation, ready to attend the luncheon with me.

As I stood there blinking at him, he rose from the sofa and, picking at the buttons of his shirt with his fingertips, looked down at me.

"What. Were you planning to watch me change as well? Ah, right—because we're going to be married?"

I bolted out of my seat and dashed for the door.

"N-no! I'm going! I'm going, I said!"

BANG—!

Stumbling out of the bedchamber in a daze, I leaned back against the door to catch my breath—then whirled around furiously at the click of it snapping shut behind me.

That insufferable rake!