Vanessa used the divine word on other patients in the ward as well, including the old man who had called her a demon.

When all the patients, including the old man, looked at her with completely changed eyes, Vanessa inevitably felt bitter.

If I didn’t have God’s blessing, I might have been accused of being a witch who brought the plague. I’m truly grateful to Vinea for giving me this blessing to prevent such a thing from happening, but…

‘I can’t help feeling gloomy.’

Vanessa swallowed a sigh and silently carried on with her role. After all, helping people and hearing their words of gratitude was meaningful and rewarding.

It seemed that if she continued to help people like this, the bad rumors about her would soon disappear.

In fact, as the frequency of misfortunes appearing in daily life was decreasing, now was the only chance to make a good impression on the people of this domain.

‘Since I don’t have to worry about catching the plague, I should just stay here and help people, eating and sleeping here.’

It might be a bit uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t be a big problem. Vanessa wasn’t a delicate lady who couldn’t do anything on her own without a maid to attend to her.

Having made that decision, Vanessa stopped Jurgen as she was leaving the last ward. Then, with a rather serious attitude, she expressed her intention.

“Duke, you all should return to the castle first. I want to stay here and help people.”

“What?”

Jurgen, who immediately asked back, was clearly dumbfounded. Vanessa quickly filled in the parts he might object to.

“This city isn’t that dangerous anyway, so there’s no particular need to assign me a guard.”

As she said this, she glanced at Garcia. He too was blinking with a bewildered expression.

“I’m not a flower in a greenhouse who can’t do anything on her own without someone to attend to me.”

As she said this, she looked at Renee. She rarely showed a disturbed composure.

“And… there’s even less need to keep me under surveillance now. As you said you’d take me if you couldn’t leave me alone… I too have decided that if I can’t run away from you, I might as well make you my ally.”

At this, Jurgen’s eyebrow twitched, and soon after, his face turned as fierce as a beast’s. The last words she added must have upset him.

However, Vanessa maintained a brazen attitude, pretending not to notice. Her stubborn personality of pushing through with a decision once made was in full display.

After glaring at her silently for a long time, Jurgen spat out, grinding his teeth.

“Make me your ally? What nonsense you’re spouting.”

“…If you become my ally, I’ll become completely your ally too.”

It was just a casual suggestion, but for some reason, Jurgen visibly flinched and showed agitation.

His gaze wavered precariously like a candle in the face of a cold wind. Vanessa blinked her eyes in bewilderment and stared at him intently.

After a long silence, he suddenly changed his expression and came close to her. Startled, Vanessa instinctively stepped back, but she couldn’t retreat at all as Jurgen wrapped one hand around her lower back and pulled her.

At that close distance where their breaths could touch, Jurgen brought his lips to her ear and whispered in a rather fierce voice.

“Every time you do this, I get so annoyed I want to kill you.”

Faced with this sudden hostility, Vanessa felt more bewildered than scared. He was always like this. Trapped in a past she didn’t know, he would spout incomprehensible things.

“You say you don’t remember, yet you keep scratching at me at every opportunity.”

Unable to grasp the context from which this conversation arose, Vanessa clicked her tongue, dumbfounded.

Her heart pounded as she belatedly felt fear, but she had a groundless conviction that he wouldn’t be able to kill her anyway.

‘If he was going to kill me, he would have done it long ago.’

He hates me enough to want to kill me.

But he really can’t kill me.

The emotion underlying this contradiction might be…

“Do as you please. I won’t care anymore whether you die messing around or not.”

Jurgen glared at Vanessa, looking very upset, then strode past her.

Renee and Garcia alternated looking at the two, not knowing what to do, then Renee first gave Vanessa an apologetic look before following Jurgen.

However, Garcia, for some reason, remained rooted to the spot and just let out a deep sigh like a lump of coal.

He muttered while ruffling his hair vigorously with one hand.

“Ah, damn it…”

Vanessa stared at him blankly for a while, then casually asked.

“Sir, why aren’t you following Jurgen?”

The answer came back in a slightly annoyed voice.

“Ugh, I’m not going.”

“Why? I said I don’t need a guard. The same goes for surveillance.”

“Your Highness, I know you’re down-to-earth and more tenacious than you look for a royal, but it’s still too much to stay alone in a place like this. You don’t even have clothes to change into right now! Who’s going to fetch bath water for you?”

“I can wear the clothes given to the nurses, and I can fetch the bath water myself. And I could go ask Jenelly for a spare room. If there’s no spare room, I can share lodgings with others.”

“This is really unbelievable… Who in the world would see you as a princess? Just how have you been living?”

“From a young age, I often went camping with my father and learned how to live with limited resources in harsh environments. And when I was in Terevron, I was often confined to solitary rooms or locked in underground prisons. It’s no big deal.”

“……”

Garcia, glancing at her, had an expression of truly being at a loss for words. After a long while, when he finally opened his mouth, he seemed somewhat deflated.

“You’re… to put it nicely, calm and insensitive, and to put it badly, you’re ruthless.”

“What’s wrong with being ruthless? It’s a very suitable virtue for living in this harsh world.”

Vanessa answered with a calm face and headed towards Jenelly’s lab. Garcia, who followed her with quick steps, chattered like a sparrow, seemingly never tiring.

“Still, if I stay by Your Highness’s side, our lord would be relieved, right? Despite appearances, he’s quite worried about Your Highness, you know.”

“Well, I think Jurgen would rather wish I’d die as much as he worries about me.”

“No, how can you say such things? Is it okay to have such a brutal misunderstanding about someone who’s about to become your spouse?”

It didn’t seem necessary to confirm that it wasn’t a misunderstanding but the truth. Vanessa ignored the noisy Garcia and opened the door to the lab.

When she said she would stay here until the plague was resolved, Jenelly was initially very shocked.

However, soon she seemed to be considering the usefulness of Vanessa staying here, and before long, she beamed and offered a handshake.

As Vanessa grasped that hand, Jenelly shook her arm vigorously while smiling brightly.

“If the Duchess consistently uses the divine word on the patients, it will really be a great help.”

“Hmm, yes, and I was thinking of using the divine word on you and the nurses as well. I’m not sure, but it seems like it might prevent infection.”

“Oh my, really? We’d be grateful if you do that!”

Vanessa immediately used the divine word on Jenelly as well. Jenelly closed her eyes quietly for a while, as if savoring the sensation of the blessing’s power seeping into her.

Watching Jenelly like that, Garcia blurted out a remark.

“Are you a pervert?”

“……!”

No sooner had he said that than Jenelly, bristling, opened her eyes wide and growled at Garcia. Regardless, Garcia openly sneered and pressed his fingertip firmly against Jenelly’s forehead.

From Vanessa’s perspective, Garcia often seemed to forget that Jenelly was a mage. Generally, mages are known to play outlandish tricks and often tease people. So Garcia might end up getting a taste of his own medicine at this rate.

“Just you wait, Sir Garcia. Someday I’ll make you completely bald by removing all your hair…!”

“Oh? That’s… a bit… scary…?”

Seeing the two bickering like rivals, Vanessa chuckled and shook her head.

✦ ✦ ✦

[If you become my ally, I’ll become completely yours too.]

That phrase seemed to echo endlessly in his ears. That mature voice mixed with the youthful voice from long ago.

[If you take my side, I’ll completely take your side too.]¹the former is more polite/formal, while this sentence is more casual

It was outrageous. To utter the same words as back then, despite having forgotten everything. Wasn’t this the very definition of deceit?

Jurgen sneered coldly as he emerged from the bath, roughly drying himself with a dry cloth. Suddenly, his lower back ached. It was phantom pain from the scar that ran from his left shoulder down to his right waist.

This deep and large wound that had nearly killed him once still occasionally ached even after many years had passed.

Some wounds never heal completely. Knowing this, Jurgen had chosen revenge.

After lightly shaking off his wet hair, he picked up the robe hanging on the chair and draped it over his body. He tried to shake off the thoughts of Vanessa that kept surfacing in his mind, and stomped down the weak whispers that had begun to take root in a corner of his heart.

No, it can’t be. There’s no forgiveness. Forgiving a traitor who broke their promise is tantamount to betraying his past self who endured all those years.

Jurgen approached the table in the center of the bedroom and roughly tore off the cork of a bottle containing amber-colored liquor. As he poured the bitter alcohol into his empty stomach, his stomach burned as if on fire.

That burning pain reminded him. That the sole direction of his life was nothing but revenge.

Engraving that fact in his heart, Jurgen poured all the remaining alcohol into his mouth.

✦ ✦ ✦

Vanessa helped the nurses with their work until eleven o’clock at night, then went up to her quarters on the 4th floor of the clinic.

Perhaps because she had overexerted herself after a long time, her whole body ached, but she had to wash up and go to bed quickly to get up early tomorrow morning.

‘First, I should prepare clothes to change into…’

“Your Highness? It’s me.”

Garcia knocked loudly on the door from outside. Vanessa put down the spare underwear and nurse’s uniform she had received from Jenelly on the bed and approached the door.

As soon as she opened the door, Garcia met her eyes and grinned. He glanced at the large wooden bathtub placed on the floor and said,

“I chose the cleanest and sturdiest-looking one. Did I do well? I heard you can fetch water from the water tap at the end of the corridor. Fortunately, this building has plumbing facilities.”

Yes, it was indeed fortunate. Otherwise, she would have had to fetch water from the well outside.

“Thank you, Sir Garcia.”

Vanessa smiled brightly and opened the door wider. Then she grabbed the wooden bathtub with both hands and tried to pull it into the room. However, perhaps because it was so heavy, the wooden tub didn’t budge an inch.