“Dad, how many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a child anymore? I resolved the issue safely, and if you had just waited a bit longer, I would have returned soon. Why did you come all the way here?”

“Soon? You call this soon? You were gone without a word for three days! I was worried sick. And look at the state you’re in.”

“What? Three days?”

I had no idea so much time had passed. If it had really been three days, the imperial family must be in chaos.

“Your Highness!”

Sure enough, a small commotion erupted around the unconscious Crown Prince. Among the crowd, a familiar face rushed over to me. It was Nerva, the commander of the Crown Prince’s personal guard.

“Lady! What on earth happened?”

“His Highness was kidnapped by fairies. Sir Roengreen and I barely managed to deal with them.”

At the mention of fairies, his eyes widened in shock, and he quickly called over the mages to administer emergency treatment. It seemed to work as the Crown Prince slowly opened his eyes. However, his gaze remained unfocused, as if he hadn’t fully woken from the dream.

“Sigh.”

I clicked my tongue in annoyance at his pitiful state, but he must have heard me because he immediately looked at me.

“Lou…?”

“Your Highness, you shouldn’t get up yet.”

Ignoring everyone’s advice, the Crown Prince brushed off the hands trying to hold him back and rushed over to me, almost hugging me as he grabbed my shoulders.

“Is it really you?”

“Who else would it be?”

Even after hearing my answer, he couldn’t stop touching my cheeks and hair, as if to confirm I was real.

“Ow, that hurts. Go get treated.”

When I winced from the pain of him touching my wounds, he finally noticed my injuries and shouted in alarm.

“What? You’re hurt?”

“Of course, I’m hurt. Do you know how much Sir Roengreen and I suffered to find you?”

The Crown Prince immediately turned to Gined, who bowed slightly in his direction. The Crown Prince’s purple eyes scrutinized Gined’s handsome face.

“But why is Sir Roengreen perfectly fine? Did he just stand by while you got hurt?”

“Why are you blaming the wrong person? If it weren’t for Sir Roengreen, I’d still be lost in the mist, and you’d be the fairy queen’s husband by now.”

“Fairy queen?”

The Crown Prince tilted his head in confusion, clearly not remembering anything.

“A lot happened while you were blissfully asleep. So, please step back now. Someone, take His Highness away.”

I waved to the attendants who were anxiously hovering behind the Crown Prince.

“Your Highness, please come this way. I’ll assist you.”

“No need.”

My father, who had been quietly listening to our conversation, couldn’t hold back any longer and intervened.

“Your Highness, you’re a strong man and probably don’t need treatment. Moreover, from what I’ve heard, it seems you were sleeping soundly while my daughter was struggling. Unfortunately, my daughter isn’t as robust as you and didn’t get proper rest, so please consider her condition.”

Caught off guard by my father’s factual criticism, the Crown Prince hesitated. While he was at a loss for words, the family doctor approached. I received some basic treatment and was carried down the mountain on a stretcher.

Of course, the Crown Prince walked on his own. He seemed full of energy, having slept through the ordeal while Gined and I struggled. In fact, he had so much energy that it was a problem.

He insisted on carrying my stretcher himself.

Even my usually supportive father didn’t help this time. He clearly didn’t want to miss the chance to make the Crown Prince do something. The Crown Prince, proudly taking one side of the stretcher, asked me quietly.

“Your injuries, they’re from that priest, aren’t they?”

‘What a sharp guy.’

“So what?”

Pinion’s eyes turned icy.

“Did he ask you to heal him?”

“Do you think Sir Roengreen would do that? And anyway, it’s none of your business.”

“How is it not my business? Do you even realize your position as the heir to the duchy? You’re also the protagonist of the prophecy and the owner of this mountain. You shouldn’t be taking on the pain of a mere holy knight.”

“Transferring injuries is an ability that works regardless of my will. Once I touch someone, it’s automatic.”

“Then you should have stayed away from him in the first place. Do you like him so much that you’d take on his pain?”

“Stop it. If you’re so great, you should have dealt with the queen yourself. If I’d known I’d get nothing but nagging after all that trouble, I would have just let you marry the queen. I must have been crazy.”

The Crown Prince clamped his mouth shut. After a long pause, he muttered a weak excuse.

“I-I was about to wake up soon, anyway.”

“Sure you were. Long after Sir Roengreen and I had finished everything.”

“…Next time, I’ll be on time.”

“That’s really reassuring.”

Bickering with him lifted my spirits a bit. But as my tension eased, fatigue hit me hard, and I started to sweat. Shivering, I curled up, and the Crown Prince ordered an attendant to bring a blanket. But even after covering myself, the cold didn’t go away.

“Ugh… I’m cold and dizzy.”

I held back in front of Gined, but with Pinion, I let my complaints out easily. I didn’t even feel embarrassed, having shown him my worst many times since childhood.

“I really hate being sick.”

“We’ll be there soon. Just hang in there a bit longer.”

The Crown Prince’s voice sounded unusually anxious. Even if it was just an act.

Using sleep as an excuse, I pulled the blanket over my head. Not seeing his annoying face made the pain more bearable.

***

The imperial family must have kept a tight lid on the incident because very few people knew about the Crown Prince’s and my disappearance. Officially, the Crown Prince was said to have been dispatched to another region on imperial orders, and I was reported to have gone on a short trip.

Even within our family, only my parents, the head butler, the doctor, and the knights who accompanied us knew the full story.

“How much fun did you have on your trip to end up bedridden like this? Were there any handsome men?”

Seren, unaware of the situation, asked tactlessly while changing my wet cloth.

“Be quiet. I’m going to sleep now, so get out.”

Despite my curt reply, she pouted but left the room obediently. Left alone, I stared at the ceiling, lost in thought.

Gined had said that the dreams and illusions shown by the fairies weren’t complete fabrications. So, the man in my dream definitely wasn’t Enril. Given the conversation, and even if I was crazy about handsome men, I wasn’t shameless enough to cling to someone else’s man.

But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t recall such a memory.

‘What could it be?’

I concluded that it might have been something that happened before I turned back time. Even if time was reversed, if someone retained their memories, it couldn’t be said that those events never happened.

That would mean it was part of the original story.

‘Was there such a development in the original?’

As a minor villain, my appearances in the original were infrequent. I only had lines when I was jealous of Lina, humiliated in front of nobles, or plotting to kill Lina. The scene where Lina strangled me wasn’t even shown; it was simply described through another maid’s dialogue as a miserable death.

‘Wait, could it be…?’

Among all the characters, the only person I would desperately call out to was Pinion. And as I pieced it together, I realized what the situation was. It was my state right before the Crown Prince killed me. The hopelessly love-struck Lou Dronay, who had never considered any other goal in life. She would have pathetically clung to her fiancé, even as he came to kill her.

“Ugh, I’m suddenly so annoyed.”

Despite my pleas, he had eventually beheaded me. He had spewed sweet words, taken all my punches to reassure me, and then killed me. I knew he was a hypocrite, but this was beyond imagination.

Now I understood why I had quickly lost affection for him. Even after returning to the past, the trauma of my death had lingered in my subconscious. I suddenly remembered Pinion’s desperate face as he called out to me after waking up. Judging by his dramatic reaction, his dream must have been similar to mine.

Seeing his pale face, it seemed even he wasn’t completely unaffected by killing his fiancée. Of course, that didn’t comfort me at all. It only made me dislike him more.

Well, it was all meaningless now. With that conclusion, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But perhaps because I had seen the process of my death, my mind was too restless to sleep. After tossing and turning for a long time, I gave up on sleeping and turned to look at Shahar. He was quietly sitting on the nightstand as usual.

At first, he had been so talkative that it was hard to take him anywhere, but lately, he had become so silent that you could mistake him for a common stone.