En Travesti - I Became a Fake Prince - Chapter 4

***

The carriage, moving rapidly without a moment’s rest, was not particularly good for a young child.

However, the Grand Duke’s party didn’t feel the need to slow down out of consideration for the child, so Leticia ended up half-unconscious inside the carriage.

Leticia didn’t try to stay awake among the party that had little intention of taking care of her.

From the start, apart from Emma, Prince Sion’s nanny, the party consisted of only three or four servants who knew nothing.

As if to show that being a hostage was just a pretext, and in reality, it was a life that would soon end.

“Your Highness, Your Highness!”

Leticia opened her eyes at Emma’s touch, roughly shaking her body.

Emma ordered while wiping her hands with a handkerchief as if she had touched something dirty.

“Get up.”

“Have we arrived……”

“No. The Grand Duke is calling for you.”

Leticia tried to get up but slumped back down. She felt dizzy and the world was spinning. Now, rather than feeling hungry, her stomach hurt as if pierced by thorns.

Still, it was fortunate she hadn’t eaten anything. If she had, she would have vomited.

“Drink this.”

Emma handed Leticia, who was slumped down, a cup.

It was a wooden cup typically used by servants, but it felt warm in her hand. Reflexively putting it to her lips, the coffee in the cup filled her mouth with bitterness.

Realizing Emma’s intention to wake her up somehow, Leticia gulped down the entire cup.

After all, what did Emma care if the stomach of a child who was going to die anyway got a little damaged?

“…Thank you, nanny.”

Leticia moved her body, which had become somewhat manageable and got out of the carriage.

The Grand Duke’s aide was waiting to escort her. He nodded slightly.

“Greetings, Your Highness.”

The Grand Duke’s aide was tall with tanned skin and black hair. Moreover, his clothes were also black, making him look like a crow when standing next to the white Grand Duke.

‘If he were an actor, he’d probably mostly play villain roles.’

Leticia vaguely looked up at the Grand Duke’s aide, forcing random thoughts to push away the headache that had started due to the coffee.

‘Big build, expressionless… No, maybe everyone in the Grand Duke’s party is like that.’

It seemed they had only briefly stopped the carriage, as she could see the Grand Duke’s party bustling about here and there.

All of them wore dark clothes, were large in build, and had few expressions.

The Grand Duke’s aide, seeing Leticia blankly looking around, frowned slightly, almost imperceptibly, and said, “I am Yen Laudi, His Grace’s aide. Please follow me.”

He added to Emma, who was trying to follow, “You were not summoned by His Grace.”

“But due to the hurried travel, His Highness is not feeling well. How can I send him alone……”

Before Emma could finish speaking, Yen swiftly picked up Leticia.

Leticia, suddenly lifted, almost flew away. It was because Yen had misjudged her weight.

However, thanks to his quick response, Leticia managed to safely settle in one of Yen’s arms, albeit with some fluttering.

“I apologize, but His Grace is waiting, so we must go.”

Yen, walking with long strides, was at least a less bumpy mode of transportation than the carriage.

Moving away so quickly that Emma couldn’t even follow, Yen skillfully made his way through the crowd and ascended the castle walls.

‘Are we already in the Grand Duchy?’

Seeing the long stretch of walls like a border, it seemed they had stopped briefly before entering the Grand Duchy.

Suddenly, Leticia had an ‘ah’ moment of realization.

‘Are they going to kill me right away? Because this is the Grand Duchy from here on? But so suddenly?’

Whether it was due to her headache or hunger, she didn’t feel much sense of reality and wasn’t even scared. Rather, she was a bit curious.

‘I thought there would be some kind of grand execution ceremony.’

Beyond the castle walls, the Grand Duchy was a vast, empty plain.

And on top of the wall, the Grand Duke of Basilinte was looking out over that empty plain.

Yen put Leticia down and called out to the Grand Duke.

“I’ve brought the prince, Your Grace.”

He was an incredibly white and beautiful man. Leticia looked up at the Grand Duke and thought absently,

‘If he were an actor, he would have raked in money.’

The Grand Duke was even taller than Yen, whom she had thought was tall. Coincidentally, the sword hanging at his waist was exactly at Leticia’s eye level.

‘I guess they’re going to kill me after all.’

As that thought occurred to her, she looked down at her clothes and removed the brooch Emma had attached, holding it out to the Grand Duke.

The Grand Duke, who had been quietly observing, asked.

“…What are you doing?”

“In case blood splatters……”

While the clothes couldn’t be helped, it seemed unnecessary to soil the jewelry with blood too. It looked expensive, perhaps because it was worn by Prince Sion.

“When a person dies, there’s blood……”

Leticia mumbled that far with her foggy mind, then suddenly came to her senses upon seeing the Grand Duke’s golden eyes looking at her as if seeing something strange.

“Ah.”

Isn’t she dying today? She hurriedly bowed her head.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace. I mean, I… I thought I was going to die now……”

The Grand Duke, still expressionless, stared down at Leticia for a moment before turning away.

“Follow me.”

***

Cursed land.

True to its name, a wasteland stretched out where not a single blade of grass grew despite it being spring.

Ferik was looking at the stakes marking the gradually expanding area of wasteland beyond the castle walls, then turned his head.

The still small and thin prince was following behind him. His body fluttered like a piece of paper.

He suddenly recalled the stuffed doll his second son used to play with.

‘This one looks like it could be picked up with just one finger.’

The prince was so light that even his footsteps were faint. He hadn’t expected powerful footsteps, but he thought there would at least be the pitter-patter of a child’s steps.

‘Swish swish…’

Yen seemed to have the same impression as Ferik, staring intently at the path the prince had walked.

‘Swish swish…’

It was more like a baby scarecrow than a person. And that baby scarecrow called out to him.

“Your Grace?”

Ferik lifted the prince and sat him on top of the castle wall. The weight felt at his fingertips was so light that it seemed the prince might fly away with just a breath.

Surely his own children weren’t like this. Even when they were very young.

Thinking the prince might really fly away, he held the prince’s shoulder and pointed to the Grand Duchy beyond the castle wall.

At the tip of his finger were rows of stakes, grotesquely embedded above the ruins.

“Can you see those?”

The prince nodded.

“Those mark the expanding area of wasteland each year. Starting from the center of the Grand Duchy’s land, it has grown over hundreds of years and now reaches near the Empire’s borders.”

He might have felt anger about this when he was younger, but due to emotions that had dried up with age, he could now state this fact dryly.

“A land where rivers have dried up, where rain doesn’t fall, where everything has withered. That’s this place.”

It was a land where self-sufficiency was completely impossible. Inevitably, food had to be bought from outside.

However, because there weren’t even resources to buy food, the people of this land took up arms.

They raised an army and participated in conflicts on the continent for payment whenever they occurred.

Although they were derided on the continent for a Grand Duke acting like a mercenary captain, there was no choice.

“It wasn’t like this from the beginning. According to old records, there was a large river here, and endless prairies stretched out over there.”

Ferik looked down at the prince and said, “That was until three hundred years ago when the Empire’s first Emperor cursed this land.”