Chapter 79 - Runaway Princess

His previously strong gaze became less intense.

Are you kidding me?

I smiled and brought my husband’s hand to my cheek.

His head slowly came down and put his forehead against my forehead.

“What if my habit gets worse?”

“You have a lot of strange worries. Is it a big deal for a princess to have a bad habit?”

“But I’m not even a real princess.”

“You are a real princess.”

“That’s just in Romagna, officially I’m just…”

No matter how well-treated, I was just the Pope’s illegitimate child.

That was the same for me, Enzo, and Cesare.

All three of us knew that the moment we were, this fate was one that we could not escape from for the rest of our lives.

In addition, there were suspicions that I was not the biological daughter of the Pope.

“Isn’t “Runaway Princess” the title of a novel in which a girl like you ran away with an obese lizard?”

“…It’s ‘Kidnapped Princess’. It’s about a dragon kidnapping a princess.”

“Is that so? I haven’t read it.”

It would be amusing if he had read such a fairy tale.

I guessed that the incident with the dragon would never leave his mind.

Well, I had nothing to say because I made him angry with my wish.

What I was more concerned about was that Izek was no longer asking the whole story about what I had confessed, so I became a little confused.

Was this enough?

Was he not at all curious about the situation before and after what happened to his old friend, how his loyal servant came out and caused such a commotion?

Then, I thought it was good for me.

I didn’t want to care about this right now.

I wanted to focus only on what he had said to me a while ago and the way he looked at me.

The hope that a miracle could happen to me because he was obsessed with me, was a sweet epilepsy, almost magical.… Even if it was just a fleeting dream.

Long fingers dug into my hair.

With the sharp sense of the fingers sweeping over my scalp, I gulped.

“Iz, should we wash up? Will you wash my hair?”

His eyes fluttered and fell on me. An expression where I didn’t know if he’s smiling or frowning.

“You said you didn’t have time to gain weight because of me earlier.”

“Hey, why are you talking like that?”

I turned pale while my husband raised me up.

Oh god, who would have guessed that a feisty ascetic would turn into such a person?

It was questionable how he had been so firmly aiming for purity.

Furthermore, I wondered if this change was simply because of his first love.

So, even if it was someone other than me…

“If you make a wish like that again, I won’t wash you next time.”

Would he still have been this dreamy?

A boy who fell in love for the first time, like Romeo who met Juliet, like Solomon with the queen of Sheba, would he never change?

I straightened my body, raised my heels, and planted a kiss on his lips.

Looking at me, he soon grabbed my cheek and tangled his tongue with mine.

* * *

Sunny days continued, but the air in the early morning was still chilly and dry.

With a shawl on her shoulders, Ellenia sat on the green, cool balcony and looked at the courtyard at dawn.

A cold, expressionless face like a piece of ice and a rare complex light in her eyes.

Perhaps because she didn’t sleep well, her head was throbbing and she had a headache, but it wasn’t worth paying much attention to.

It had been rare in recent years for her to wake up at dawn, so the quietness of the early morning was unfamiliar.

Why couldn’t she sleep well? It was all because of yesterday’s tea party.

Precisely because of the commotion that took place.

According to Freya, one of the two parties in the case, there seemed to be a misunderstanding while she was telling Rudbeckia about what happened in this castle when they were children.

Only God knew what misunderstanding occurred in which part.

And Rudbeckia only said she didn’t do anything.

She said that without any additional explanation.

When she recalled it again, she felt unpleasant and confused.

Ellenia didn’t like this kind of confused feeling.

It was because she felt like she was going back to her childhood when she didn’t know what to do.

Freya had been a friend who she could talk to about anything since they were very young and played with a doll house filled with mud dolls.

It was natural to believe in such a friend’s explanation.

Nevertheless, why did she feel so uncomfortable?

She didn’t know why the appearance of Rudbeckia, who was like a scared child, kept lurking in her mind.

Why did she look so indignant? What was she so afraid of?

Even if a fight broke out, wouldn’t it be okay to make up and resolve it?

Freya was not the type to hold a grudge for that.

Feeling a headache again, Ellenia rubbed her temple with her finger.

Regardless of whether she should act as a mediator or not, she was not comfortable.

Something had gone wrong, and a sense of incompatibility forcing the broken clock’s needle back rose in her, persistently stuck in her gut, but she felt suffocated because there was no way to know the cause.

She thought of her mother.

Although Ellania’s mother and Rudbeckia were different except for their habits about food.

Would it have been easier to understand the two if they were very similar in many ways?

Her mother was a person who never shed tears.

On the other hand, Rudbeckia cried very well.

Her mother would never sit in the garden, make wreaths or run around with young children to rhyme random words.

They were very different.

She was different from her mother, different from the rumors known to the public, and different from everyone Ellenia had ever seen and experienced.

Nevertheless, it was very difficult to seal her heart firmly.

When she first met her, she didn’t think much about her who fell from the sky and just stepped on the northern lands.

If it weren’t for this marriage, that is, if Izek and Rudbeckia hadn’t married, she would have married the Pope’s son and suffered staying with her in-laws in unfamiliar foreign lands, so she felt a mixture of some relief and compassion.

Anyway, she thought she was going to leave soon.

Her father and she herself thought it wouldn’t last long.

It was a marriage that both parties didn’t want more than anyone else, so it’d end.

Now that she saw it, it was all clear.

She wondered who knew this would happen, but she also questioned whether she really didn’t know at all that her brother and Ruby would be like this.

She couldn’t understand.

She couldn’t understand what had happened to Izek or Ruby.

But the most difficult thing to understand was her brother.

Ellenia had difficulty figuring out her brother just as much as her dead mother.

Perhaps it was because they were all of a similar kind.

The heated wine heated in the glass held, cooled down.

Ellenia slightly frowned and put her silver hair behind her ears.

It was still quiet everywhere.

The heavy silence, which would have been natural in the past, was unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

Then suddenly, she laughed at herself.

The red eyes stared toward the courtyard where the glass greenhouse was located.

Water garden.

A place where some of the bright and warm scenery of the south seemed to have been moved and planted.

In addition, there was a large doll house for the garden owner’s little friends.

It would have been ridiculous if it was in the past.

Her cousin, who was not even interested in them, regularly visited this place, played in the garden with a grown-up woman, chattering voices, giggling laughter, unstoppable talks, and fluttering steps fill the castles….

It was all unimaginable in the past.

What if they could go back to what they used to be? Will she miss all of that?

Ellenia thought it would probably be.

Not just her, but everyone else would.

They would miss the southern sunshine that they had never experienced.

“Lady.”

With that voice, Ellenia awoke from her thoughts and raised her head. Then, as if she was calm, she looked at the butler who had a troubled face.

“Letler? What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, Lady, but the Lord right now…….”

Letler trailed off with a calm face trying to maintain composure.

A strange feeling arose from the agitation that grew up in his eyes.

It was weird to see Letler losing so much composure.

The last time she saw it was the night Izek hugged unconscious Rudbeckia after a four-day search.

The night when several saints disappeared.

Ellenia got up straight and walked along the yard.

Everyone was so foolish that they thought the problem between men and women was easy enough to solve as others expected, and they could point out whether the other was a real partner or not.….

“Brother?”

Izek was down in the hall. It was not uncommon to see him fully dressed, as if he had not slept at all.

However, it was extremely rare to see a maid with her head down, shivering, from dawn itself.

“Martha?”

Martha was a woman of majestic stature.

From the time she stepped in as Ellenia’s nanny a long time ago, to the present when she became a maid, she was a strong enough lady to stun not only the servants but also the stingy guards.

So it was natural for her to challenge the duke as well, sometimes.

And the reason why Duke Omerta gave her the role of head maid was solely because of Ellenia.