When the Villainess is in Love

Chapter 10

The reason Eugene didn’t like Princess Libertia was because their personalities clashed. However, I liked his free-spirited nature.

“I’m telling you this because I would hate to see you go,” I told him, smiling softly. “But think nothing of it, Sir Volton. It was just a passing thought after I released so many others.”

His silver eyes seemed emotionless, but they had become a modicum less wary of me.

Eugene de Volton was currently serving at the princess’s palace as a free knight, but he was technically currently on sabbatical. And the fact that he was such a powerful knight meant that no one could order him to return. According to the novel, he would return to his service under Princess Libertia for Ariel’s sake once the story had begun, and the princess’s torment of Ariel commenced.

“Do you wish for me to return to my post here?” he asked in a neutral tone.

I shook my head, at which he tilted his head in question.

“Why did you come to the palace in the first place, Sir Volton?”

He frowned at my seemingly unrelated question but answered me anyway, “Because the empire is full of powerful people.”

His answer was vague. The specific “powerful person” he was looking for was Duke Kain de Eirik. In the novel, the crown prince leveraged Eugene and Kain’s opposing personalities to cause a rift between them. He had also weaponized Ariel in this way, not hesitating to lie and manipulate. Then, the crown prince forced the two men to duel each other. There was no victor. One lost his arm and the reputation he had maintained all his life, and the other lost his life altogether.

“Powerful people… I see.”

“What will you do if you meet such a person?”

“Duel them,” Eugene replied simply.

“To the death?”

“This isn’t some sort of street fight.”

A street fight, huh? “I see.” I nodded and rose to my feet. It had gotten quite late. “I don’t expect your return to service. I just thought I would like to see you free of any obligations one day. You always seemed inhibited in some way, Sir Volton.”

I was belatedly answering the question he had asked earlier.

“You are quite observant,” Eugene commented with an amused huff.

I let out a laugh as well, noting that there was no longer any trace of spite in his attitude.

“I hope you are able to meet a satisfyingly strong opponent someday soon, Sir Volton.” I then carefully picked up the handkerchief I had been sitting on. “I’ll return this once I clean it.”

He stared at me. There was an odd moment of silence. Eugene then suddenly burst into laughter.

“What?” I asked as he continued to laugh.

He cackled anew. “You? Cleaning a handkerchief?”

“I can’t just give it back like this,” I explained, my eyebrows pinched.

“No, that’s not… Ahem…”

Finally managing to restrain himself, Eugene smiled widely, showing a different side of him, and held out his hand. It was a polite yet playfully exaggerated gesture.

Geez, he’s way too handsome for my heart to handle! I returned to my room in a daze, smiling from ear to ear at the dreamy way he had escorted me by hand.

And for the next three days, I spent more time with Eugene on similar outings. It was a wonderful experience. The anecdotes he regaled me with were surprisingly entertaining, and none had been noted in the book.

“Oh, that’s right. Sir Volton? The powerful people you talked about before.”

Now that we had built up a rapport, I decided to cut to the chase. I sensed that he wouldn’t misunderstand a gesture of goodwill at this point.

“Oh. Yes, Your Highness?”

He had burst out laughing again at my consistent pattern of having his handkerchief cleaned and ironed after every outing before returning it to him. He turned to me, a smile still lingering on his face.

“Are you familiar with Duke Eirik?”

Suddenly, his face hardened slightly. Then he gave me an appraising look before his demeanor softened again, and he replied, “I’ve heard the name, yes. They call him the ‘Shadow Knight.’”

Don’t you play coy with me. You came here because you heard he was the empire’s strongest knight.

Realizing he would pretend to know nothing else, I explained, “He tends to remain in places that only members of the imperial family or those recognized by the emperor can enter, you see. You won’t come across him unless he leaves those places of his own accord. What do you think?”

“About what?”

Though he still feigned ignorance, Eugene’s eyes were glinting now. Wow… That’s really cute, but he still somehow looks more radiant than anything else.

“About dueling him. He is strong enough that you would no longer be tied down to the palace… Because he would be a wonderful opponent, don’t you think so?”

The more I spoke, the more his eyes sparkled.

“I do believe he would be a superb opponent, yes.”

I held back a laugh. His answer was almost instant, and his eyes were still mirthful.

“Haha, all right then. Shall we go?” I asked.

“With pleasure.”

Eugene held out his hand. I let out another laugh as I accepted his hand and let him escort me to my room.

But before I could meet him again later that day, I found myself regaining Libertia’s fourth memory.

“I got the date wrong!”

Today was the fourth day since the last instance. Ugh, I was too distracted by his good looks. I thought I had kept a handle on things, but no—I had been completely and utterly distracted. I looked down at my bloodied palm before sighing and wiping it clean with a wet cloth. Thankfully, no one had been around to witness this.

“There’s more blood this time…”

There were still two hours left until the time I had agreed to meet Eugene. I had meant to take him straight to the duke, but we had decided that I should rest in my room for a while first, considering my weak constitution.

After cleaning the blood from my hand, I began preparing to leave for the second time that day, reminiscing over the memory I had just regained. The scene of Libertia as a four-year-old had once again been a quiet one. The young Libertia had been listlessly staring out the window at the blue sky, looking slightly downtrodden. She was a soft-spoken child, so I had rarely heard her voice in the past four memories.

“What a shame,” I muttered and collapsed onto the bed.

I was essentially ready to leave, so I thought I might take a short nap until it was time. I managed to wake up just in time to finish getting ready and walk out the door, but Eugene was standing right outside the princess’s palace.

“Eugene? I didn’t expect you to be waiting here.”

“I was bored with standing around, so I strolled over,” he said.

I let him finish his lame excuse before smiling brightly at him and replying, “Right, of course.”

He let out a small groan. We had definitely grown closer much faster than I had anticipated. I hadn’t even introduced him to the duke yet. Eugene, who looked momentarily flustered, then fixed his gaze on me.

He frowned. “Your Highness.”

Oh, I must still look too pale. Before he could say anything with such a solemn expression, I said, “It’s just my weak constitution.”

He stared at me, his head slightly tilted to the side. “Oh, is that so?” he teased.

His easy smile made it clear that he didn’t believe me, but that was unimportant at the moment. His smile was just so radiant. Deeply moved by this beauty before me, my knees buckled.

“Your Highness, are you sure you are all right?”

Why are you so devastatingly handsome? Feeling put out, I looked up at him before listlessly nodding my head. “I’m fine, so let’s be on our way.”

He didn’t reply and just looked at me suspiciously before clicking his tongue. We walked side by side. The hand that supported me was cold to the touch, but I felt incredibly blessed. As we made our way to Kain, I tried to prepare myself.

Duke Kain de Eirik. Along with Eugene and Herrace, he was one of the three secondary male leads. In other words, he would at least be as handsome as Eugene.

“I’m so pleased.”

“Pardon?”

Wait, why am I suddenly in such a good mood? I shook my head at Eugene, who was looking at me with a questioning gaze. “Never mind. Let’s hurry.”

Eugene looked at me skeptically before he continued to escort me along.

* * *

Meanwhile, Rox, the palace physician, was doing everything in his power to find a means to buy the princess a little more time. He had been summoned by the king just as he had begun to look into the illness on his own. The emperor had listened to the princess’s diagnosis and ordered Rox to continue his research using any means necessary. He was to collaborate with a few carefully selected individuals. Rox and his team worked day and night with very little sleep.

“Do we have any experts on Troyan fruit here?” Rox asked his team.

Troyan fruit was a panacea of legend, and the only glimmer of hope he had found so far. That being said, it was too absurd to really be considered a viable option. He had yet to discover the correlation between rafaelis and mana, so it was the only conclusion he could come up with.

“I don’t know… But he might know something…” a fellow physician said.

“Who might? Spit it out!”

“Well… I was thinking of Ripley,” the man said.

The physicians’ building inside the palace hosted the brightest medical minds in the empire. The emperor had told Rox to choose the wisest physicians available within the palace. And among them, he was to pick those best at keeping secrets to assist him. The emperor’s expression had been cold when he had ordered this. Rox tried to erase the memory from his mind as he urged his fellow physician to speak.

“Well, don’t be so hesitant. Tell me more!”

Feeling the futility of it all, the wise and tight-lipped physicians he had gathered shook their heads. They advised Rox to merely pretend to look into this matter and nothing more.