Chapter 2

Everyone was abuzz with talk of the victory ceremony and Allen, but one person was an exception. It was Princess Eveline, who was called an idiot, a fool, or a halfwit by not only her family but everyone working in the palace.

She had only just come of age and was the youngest of the King’s four children. But her circumstances were completely different from those of her siblings. Her mother, the daughter of a Baronet with no territory, had entered the royal palace as a maid in order to make money. Because of her humble family compared with the other maids, Eveline’s mother had been saddled with all the hard work, and at a royal ball she caught the King’s eye and became pregnant.

The King moved her to different quarters and visited her a few times, but that shallow favor only became poison. The Queen and Countess Miller did not leave alone any existence that seemed likely to become an obstacle to their ambitions.

In truth, besides those four, the King had many more children, but most of them had lost their lives to palace intrigue. Eveline and her mother could not escape that storm. The two of them ate poisoned cookies. Eveline’s mother died on the spot, but Eveline somehow survived.

However, perhaps because of the aftereffects of the poison, after her illness she became half-witted, unable to even properly recognize people. She had been 9 years old at the time.

For a while, the King sent royal physicians to treat Eveline, but she showed no sign of improvement whatsoever. Perhaps having a foolish daughter was shameful to him; the King simply acted as though he had no such daughter at all and completely stopped coming. After that, he no longer asked after Eveline.

Having fallen outside the King’s interest, Eveline was clearly someone who existed, yet was treated as though she did not exist.

Since she spent most of her time in her room, it was not particularly new for her to occasionally wander the castle in a daze.

No one paid any attention to her going about however she pleased, her hair hanging in disarray. Even the newly assigned maid gave up and left her to it.

The only ones who blocked her way were the children of Henry and Cecile. After mocking and tormenting Eveline to their hearts’ content, they went off to their lessons.

And left alone, Eveline wandered about freely without further interference. Unless she caused some major trouble, the people in the palace were far too busy to pay her any mind.

Without arousing any suspicion, Eveline made her way all the way to the kitchen. Even when the kitchen staff saw her, they simply took it in stride. The kitchen was bustling with the work of preparing dinner, leaving no time to mind her.

“Princess, would you like some cookies?”

One boy doing odd jobs was the only person who spoke to her, but Eveline merely fiddled with a sack of sugar.

“She won’t understand it anyway, so why bother talking to her?”

The senior worker directly above the boy who had been peeling eggs gave him a reproachful remark.

“She might have come down because she was hungry.”

“If she were capable of deliberately coming all the way to the kitchen, would people be calling her a halfwit?”

“But still….”

“Tom! Come over here and trim the vegetables.”

The boy, who had been about to make an excuse, hurried over to the head cook’s call. After the boy left, the kitchen servant who had been peeling eggs stopped paying attention to Eveline and went back to his own work.

There were countless people in the kitchen, but no one saw the dried leaves from Eveline’s sleeve go into the stock pot.

When the boy happened to raise his head while trimming vegetables, Eveline had vanished without a trace.

‘Was she really just passing by, like Senior said?’

He scratched his head and then went back to concentrating on trimming the vegetables.

When Eveline still had not returned even after mealtime had passed, the maid in charge of her, Julie, came out looking for her with an irritated huff. The instructions she had received when she was assigned to Eveline were simple. Bathe her, take care of her meals, and clean her room. It was not especially difficult work compared to the pay, but Julie, who had applied to the palace in hopes of rising in status after coming from a fallen family, had run into an obstacle.

If she was assigned to Eveline, the work was easy, but it also took her far from any chance of advancement. It had been the head maid who sent her to Eveline, but her resentment was directed at the wrong target, at Eveline.

“At home, I was already sick to death of looking after one younger sibling after another, and now even after entering the palace, I’m still stuck taking care of a child. What kind of life is this?”

Muttering in self-pity as she searched for Eveline, she discovered her sitting down on the stairs, idly playing with her hands.

“Princess! What on earth are you doing here? I’ve been looking for you forever.”

The moment she saw her, Julie burst out in pent-up irritation and then yanked Eveline to her feet with a rough hand. Eveline stared blankly at her, and that meaningless gaze only made Julie even more furious. Julie practically dragged Eveline back to the room.

“You idiot, making other people suffer.”

Once there was no one watching, she glared fiercely at Eveline and berated her. But Eveline did not understand at all and only looked elsewhere.

“A freeloader who does nothing but waste food, yet you were lucky enough to be born a Princess and live without a care. It’s really unfair.”

Still not over her anger, Julie kept grumbling and then forcibly seated Eveline in a chair.

“Today, eat properly. If you don’t, I won’t let it slide.”

She threatened her heavily, but Eveline acted as though she did not hear. No matter how much Julie pressed her, it was useless. In the end, when Julie scooped up some soup and brought it toward her mouth, Eveline overturned the entire plate. Julie glared at Eveline with a face burning in fury, then picked up the tray.

“You don’t seem hungry, so go ahead and don’t eat.”

By the time Julie had gone out and the thudding sound of her footsteps had faded completely, Eveline slipped her hand into the opposite sleeve. Out came the apple she had already taken from the kitchen earlier.

She let out a faint scoff, then wiped the smooth, glossy apple clean on the hem of her skirt before taking a large bite.

The victory party was held a month after the victory ceremony. The nobles had already come up to the capital early, and because sightseers had crowded in as well, the market was thriving. The reason was that the war hero’s popularity was still soaring sky-high, and people were flocking in hoping to catch a close look at Allen even once.

The common people were gathering out of the simple reason that they wanted to see Allen’s face at least once, while the nobles wanted to forge ties with Allen, who had now formally inherited the ducal title. In particular, nobles with daughters hoped that their daughters would catch his eye, regardless of whether they were attached to Princes, Princesses, or any particular faction. On the day he entered the palace, even the maids’ makeup was unusually heavy.

While everyone was looking forward to the victory party with their own schemes in mind, there was one person who remained alone, completely apart from that atmosphere.

Thanks to all of people’s attention being wholly focused on the victory party, Eveline was even freer to move about. No one paid any special attention to the fact that she was out in the garden. To anyone passing by, it just looked like she was merely playing with dirt.

Still, from time to time, some people would shake their heads at the sight of a Princess sitting on the bare ground. Matters like losing face were not even the slightest problem to Eveline.

While she was spending time in the garden, she heard Julie’s voice calling for her. Eveline adjusted her sleeve and then picked a flower.

“Princess, why can you never just stay put? This is driving me to death.”

Before she knew it, Julie had come up to Eveline with an expression full of anger. She seized Eveline and pulled her up with rough hands.

“His Majesty ordered that you attend today’s party as well, so how can you be doing this? If we’re going to get you ready starting now, it’ll be tight.”

Even while Julie scolded her to her heart’s content, Eveline only played with the flower. Seeing that, Julie, now practically breathing fire through her eyes, snatched the flower from Eveline and threw it onto the ground.

“You really are a nuisance.”

She glared at Eveline, then soon dragged her back into the palace. Her grip was so harsh that a blade of grass fell from Eveline’s sleeve.

After the two of them disappeared, a man stepped out from behind a garden tree. He was dressed in a pitch-black suit the same color as his hair, and the clothes looked almost like mourning attire. He walked over to the spot where Eveline had been. Without sparing even a glance for the flower the maid had thrown away, he picked up the blade of grass that Eveline had dropped while being dragged off.

“White Fragrance Herb….”

This herb was one of the weeds and was poisonous. Eating a small amount would not produce the effects at once, but if consumed over a long period of time, the poison would accumulate, the nerves would be paralyzed, and the blood would harden, eventually leading to death.

At a glance, White Fragrance Herb looked similar to other weeds, so it was difficult to tell apart and unlikely to be noticed. However, because using White Fragrance Herb to carry out a poisoning took a long time, it required a great deal of patience and was therefore not very effective.

Even if it was not commonly used as a poison herb, because of the symbolism White Fragrance Herb carried, people found it ominous, so even gardeners tended to pull it out whenever they noticed it. Yet because it propagated so strongly, no matter how often it was pulled, it would grow mixed among the other flowers again.

That was why there was White Fragrance Herb even in the royal garden like this. But out of all those many plants, to deliberately choose only White Fragrance Herb to play with… indeed.

After throwing away the White Fragrance Herb, he stared in the direction Eveline had gone. For a moment, an unusual glint passed through his dry gray eyes.