Chapter 67
Someone’s grumbling woke me slowly. I startled at the flash of red hair in front of me and tried to sit up, but he grabbed one of my arms so I couldn’t get out of bed.
“Let go! Where are you trying to take me?” I shouted.
“…….”
“Let me go right now!”
Smack—!
Panicked because I couldn’t break free, I slapped him hard across the face.
Still, he didn’t let go of my arm; he kept speaking to someone. His voice sounded muffled and buzzed as if it were underwater.
You have to get away, I thought, you have to run right now, and I clawed at my chest, preparing to strike with my other hand—then suddenly I heard someone call my name.
“Shanael!”
“Hah, hah… hey, let go!”
“Snap out of it, Shanael! It’s me!”
“Ha…”
“Breathe slowly. Focus on my voice. You’re hallucinating right now.”
When I heard the voice, the crown prince’s face slowly came into focus behind the blur.
“…Jeon-ha?” (Your Highness?)
“Yeah. It’s me.”
As his features became clearer, what I’d mistaken for red hair turned into blond.
I forced myself to breathe evenly and calm down. The crown prince slapped my hand away from my chest and turned to Hassel.
“Summon the guards at once and search the room where Prince Felix is staying.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
I looked around to get my bearings. It was still early morning; aside from the lights being on, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The only unusual thing was that the windows and the balcony door were wide open.
I was still disoriented when Jereon came and sat on the edge of the bed and wiped the cold sweat from my brow. His cool touch took the heat from my skin and steadied me. I noticed his cheeks were slightly flushed.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I thought you were someone else.”
“It’s fine. You must have been seeing things from being poisoned by the Deli herb.”
“Deli… the herb? The one imported from Astelgia, right?”
“Huh? How do you know that?”
“Mr. Philipp told me about it last time, so I knew. But I didn’t smell anything burning…”
“It smells the same as the roses in the garden. Since we smell it every day, it’s easy to mistake it for that. I also thought it odd because I smelled roses on you, but I brushed it off—roses are in bloom lately. Good thing I’d been sneaking in here since last night.”
“Since last night? I thought I was alone in my bedroom…”
“I was actually hiding in the secret passage.”
The crown prince said this and pointed at a place. It was the wall that had been blocked by a decoration earlier in the day, but now a small door in the wall was open.
“I didn’t know there was a passage like that in this bedroom.”
“Of course you didn’t. That’s where the royal family shelters in emergencies. Earlier I was going to ask if I could slip in there unexpectedly, but I didn’t say anything because I was afraid you’d refuse.”
“Wait, so you didn’t tell me before because you were worried I’d say no… and what you couldn’t tell me earlier was… that?” I said incredulously.
“Yeah. I wanted to move without anyone knowing. Why? Is there something else I should’ve said?”
“No. Nothing.”
What I’d misread as a love confession turned out to be talk about a secret passage. For a moment I’d been thrilled, thinking he liked me—how ridiculous and empty that feeling was.
He’d said before that I was “his person,” and I’d jumped to conclusions then too. Stop misreading things; one more mistake like that and I’m an idiot.
Seeing my expression grow cold again, the crown prince asked cautiously, “Does it bother you that I come and go as I please?”
“No.”
“Only for this incident I’ll stop using that passage. So don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried.”
“You don’t look like it. Fine—if you want, I’ll put a heavy statue in front of it. Then I won’t be able to open it and come out.”
“Do whatever you like.”
My indifferent reply seemed to annoy him; he tried to cheer me up, even offering to move rooms for me.
It wasn’t the room-change that bothered me. Jereon hadn’t done anything wrong—my mistaken feelings were my own fault.
Hassel, who had been searching the next room, hurried in.
“Your Highness, we’re searching now but Prince Felix is not here. It looks like he’s already fled.”
“What about Advisor Baltan, who was unaccounted for?”
“He’s still asleep in his room.”
“So he must have used the Deli herb on him, too. Issue a public arrest warrant for Prince Felix for smuggling a prohibited substance.”
“Your Highness, with all due respect, even if we find the prince, there only remains burned ashes right now, and it will be difficult to prove it was the Deli herb. To arrest him, we need an intact leaf as evidence.”
“Search the room more thoroughly. There should be at least one left.”
“Yes, sir.”
After Hassel left, a few guards came into the bedroom. They searched the balcony area and my room, checking whether anyone might have hidden Deli herb there.
Then the head maid slipped in through the commotion.
“Your Highness, did you call?”
“We should move Shanael upstairs since she probably can’t sleep with all this searching.”
“Yes, understood. Shanael-nim, please follow me.”
The head maid draped a shawl that had been on a chair over my shoulders and helped me to my feet. As I was about to get off the bed, someone was calling for the crown prince.
“Your Highness! You need to see this for a moment.”
“All right. Shanael, go rest and I’ll stop by later.”
Jereon left the room with the guards and I followed the head maid down the corridor. As we reached the stairwell to go upstairs, I swayed slightly and the shawl slipped off, falling downstairs.
“Oh! My shawl.”
“Stay here. I’ll fetch it.”
The head maid was a dignified middle-aged woman, not quick like Nency, but she moved with propriety and descended the stairs briskly without letting her skirt flare.
I felt dizzy and sat on the corner of the stair to wait. The chill of the early morning wind made the bare shoulder where the shawl had been shiver.
‘So that’s why I hadn’t seen him around—he’d been burning Deli herb in my room… How infuriating,’ I thought, hugging my arms to myself.
As I hunched there, the head maid passed by. At first I thought she was the head maid, dressed the same as the other maids, but it was a different woman.
‘Do they do laundry even at dawn?’ I wondered, since she was carrying a laundry basket and heading downstairs. I leaned my head against the wall, thinking palace staff work in two shifts and some might be on the night shift.
Drowsiness crept in, my mind blurring, when something on the shadowed floor caught a glint of light and fell.
‘What is that? It’s glowing.’
At first I thought it might be a firefly slipping in through the open window, but when I looked closer, the thing on the floor wasn’t moving. I got up quietly and picked it up.
It was a dried leaf, and a phrase Philipp had told me popped into my head.
“The deli leaf, when dried, glows in the dark like a phosphorescent stone.”
‘Ah!!’
No matter where that maid had come from, her laundry basket must’ve had deli leaves in it. I hurried to the stair railing to see—she was already walking toward the staff entrance, laundry basket in hand.
‘That’s not the way to the laundry room.’
I’d watched Nency work often enough to know the routes precisely.
“To arrest the prince, we need an intact leaf as evidence.”
If I could snatch that laundry basket and secure testimony about where it had come from, that would be enough. All my weakness and sickness had been because of that prince! I couldn’t just let it go. I wanted to catch him and make him pay.
As I was going down to the first floor, I saw the head maid returning with my shawl. I grabbed the shawl from her hand and quickly finished the stairs.
“Shanael-nim? Where are you going?” she called.
“Sorry! I’m a bit busy right now.”
I threw the shawl on roughly and ran toward the staff entrance. At the end of the dark corridor I saw a shadow slipping out. I followed quickly, trying to muffle my footsteps.
Creak—.
I opened the door very carefully, just wide enough to slide half my body through, and looked outside. There should have been guards here, but they’d been ordered to search inside, so they’d temporarily left their posts.
Relying on the moonlight, I scanned the area. A little distance away I heard the clatter of horses.
My eyes, now adjusted to the dark, made out the maid loading the laundry basket onto a transport cart.
‘Ah! I can’t lose them!’
Determined to seize that laundry basket, I dashed and climbed onto the back of the transport cart among the piled cargo. I reached in among the bundles for the laundry basket, about to take it down, when I overheard a conversation outside.
“Shall we dispose of the laundry basket?”
“No, there are outstanding dealings; we have to hand it over. The prince needs to use it as an excuse to cross the border safely. Take it there and deliver it well.”
Then the jingle of a heavy coin pouch sounded. The cart owner’s voice was excited despite not even looking at the money.
“Understood.”
‘They’re handing the Deli herb to someone else? That’ll make the evidence even harder to find. Will he just return to his country with no consequences?’
I hesitated—should I give up and get off the cart, or should I follow them to learn where the prince was staying and who he was dealing with?
“He could never be romantically involved with that lowborn woman,” Prince Felix had muttered to me before, the memory flashing unbidden.
Lowborn? Fine. On this chance I’ll shatter his snobbish prejudice!
I tightened my shawl against the cold dawn and squeezed myself among the luggage, determined to see the prince begging at the trial. I will make sure he answers for what he did.
