“Tsk, you reckless woman…”
The little blonde princess ground her teeth and raised her arm. The habit she had built up over the years as a sheep for expressing anger clearly wasn’t going to disappear that fast. Sophie clenched her tiny fist, about to bring it down hard on the shepherd girl’s backside.
Her small fist was caught in midair.
Sophie twisted her head around in annoyance, and the instant she saw who it was, her body gave an involuntary shiver. After changing back from a herbivore, she had lost that almost instinctive terror of higher predators, but at such close range she still couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat.
She opened her mouth, as if wanting to say something, but the lady-in-waiting never gave her the chance.
“Your Majesty, what are you doing?”
Natiaveda clamped down hard on her wrist. The grip was so strong that, while it might not actually break a bone, there was no way Sophie could wrench free.
For some reason the lady-in-waiting was thoroughly angered, yet she deliberately put on a face of deep concern. Before Sophie could even get the word “no” out, Natiaveda simply lifted her up from Leif’s side like a chick, half-concerned and half-scolding.
“Oh, how can you be so careless with your own body! Running around all over the place—
and you’re not even wearing shoes! If you keep ruining your health like this, just think how sad your husband, His Majesty the King, and the people of Aeseya will be!”
“H-hey… hey… stop that…”
Sophie was perfectly healthy to begin with—healthy enough that she could run ten laps barefoot around the royal walls without blinking—but if Natiaveda kept manhandling her like this, she really would end up some delicate invalid confined to bed.
Her arms and legs flailed uselessly in the air. The little blonde princess glared at the shepherd girl, who had already quietly inched very, very far away.
“Leif, you hateful…
Get that butt up here…
Natiaveda, stop… put me down already…”
“You’re so tiny and fragile. What if I let you go and you fall and hurt yourself?”
Natiaveda reeled Princess Sophie back in just as she tried to break free and pounce at Leif again, and sighed helplessly.
“Even if you don’t get hurt, what if you scrape your delicate skin while punishing the young knight? And even if your delicate skin somehow doesn’t get hurt, what if she crushes a strand of your beautiful hair? That would be terrible…”
Princess Sophie let out an impatient shout.
Leif finally exhaled in relief, feeling as if she had just snatched back half her life.
Faced with this entire farce in front of her, the Divine Envoy frowned, clearly displeased. Matters of the mortal royal houses were not something the Temple’s core was supposed to get too deeply involved in.
She glanced down at the shepherd girl on the floor, and only then did a faint trace of satisfaction flicker across her face.
“Little girl, your name is Leif, isn’t it?”
She had not intended to stop in Gino City at all, but on the road she had heard the rumor of a young girl here who had slaughtered a prophetic beast. Without exceptional talent and a firm will, a girl born in a tiny place like this could never have achieved such a feat so quickly. Finding it rather interesting, she had diverted her route to come here—and while she was at it, dealt with the evil witch as well.
Leif paused, then straightened up and replied in a properly formal tone.
“Yes, Lady Envoy. My name is Leif White. I’m from Ede Village, Serlong County, in the Kingdom of Leopold.”
“Leif White…”
The Divine Envoy nodded. Her gaze on the girl was so intense it felt like she wanted to pierce straight through her back and count each rib one by one. Only when Leif’s face turned red from the sheer pressure did the Envoy finally speak again, with a hint of a smile.
“I think we’ll be seeing each other again quite soon.”
As the Divine Envoy passed by Natiaveda, she could not help but halt for a moment.
The flaxen-haired lady-in-waiting had never imagined that the solemn white-robed Envoy would suddenly appear without warning—and because she had been so focused on the Queen just now, she had only just noticed the Envoy’s presence.
However, Natiaveda only froze for a brief instant. She quickly bent at the waist and gave the Divine Envoy a respectful curtsy—flawless etiquette, neither servile nor arrogant.
The King had only just told Natiaveda that the sheep had turned into the Princess, intending to enjoy the show when the lady-in-waiting made a fool of herself. Only then had Natiaveda finally set the furious, indignant Princess Sophie back on her feet.
But to the King’s dissatisfaction, although storms were raging in Natiaveda’s heart, she concealed them very well for propriety’s sake in front of the Divine Envoy. She showed only a touch of perfectly measured surprise.
“And who are you?”
The Divine Envoy stared at the woman before her, who gave her an oddly familiar sense of discomfort.
“Honored Lady Envoy, my name is Natiaveda, attendant to Her Majesty the Queen.”
Natiaveda’s face had gone bloodless. Though she tried her utmost to hide it, she still looked as if she might faint from shock at any moment.
“I truly have no idea how something like this could happen. Her Majesty clearly…”
Leif was right beside her and immediately reached out to support the lady-in-waiting. Natiaveda leaned obediently into her arms, sighing and “ah-ah”-ing in a string of wordless exclamations. Her eyes rolled back as if she were really about to collapse.
“Enough.”
The Divine Envoy’s brows drew together slightly. She had never had much patience for noble ladies who seemed ready to faint at the drop of a hat.
Yet after she had walked a few steps, she still couldn’t help turning back for another look at Natiaveda.
She did not know why, but there was something faintly unnatural about this woman. A closer inspection revealed only uncommon, but not unheard-of, flaxen hair, uncommon, but not unheard-of, golden eyes, a beauty that surpassed the ordinary but still could not, by itself, be called abnormal. And now the woman’s entire weight was slumped in Leif’s arms, looking as if she could not even remain standing without that support.
—No matter how she looked at her, she was just a normal noblewoman.
The Divine Envoy did not linger any longer and quickly departed.
Once the lady-in-waiting released her, Sophie had wanted to continue clinging to Leif. She was determined to scare that shepherd girl—who had so grievously offended her—into tears. But the occasional glances Natiaveda cast her way were simply too terrifying. Sophie had no choice but to stand up instead.
She straightened the robe the Envoy had draped over her shoulders, then combed through her hair with her fingers to make herself look a bit less disheveled.
The King, for his part, had only just learned that the insolent sheep who had offended him was actually Princess Sophie. A moment of stunned disbelief was immediately followed by a flood of rage and the shame of having been deceived.
After watching the Divine Envoy disappear beyond the hall, Noren finally dropped his smile. His face went cold as he fixed that familiar yet strange visage with a hard stare.
“Your Majesty the Queen—no, Princess Sophie. You owe me an explanation.”
Forced back several steps by his imposing advance, Sophie frowned at this foreign prince with whom she had only met a few times.
“What explanation?”
“I petitioned my royal father, far away in my homeland, to mobilize the power of our entire nation on behalf of the Kingdom of Aeseya—in truth, on your behalf.”
The young Emperor looked down on the princess whose clothes were in disarray, making her appear utterly bedraggled. For no reason at all, this girl gave him a sense that she would not be easy to deal with. He had a vague premonition that if he did not crush her completely right now, she would bring great losses to him and to his country.
“The iron hooves of the Kingdom of Lodmon marched to crush the rebellion in your lands. I personally punished those presumptuous relatives of yours who dared defy their liege. I did all this on a single condition—that I be wed to you. After giving so much for you, what is my reward? At this moment I cannot even be certain who the woman I married actually is.”
Sophie had already been driven back into a corner. From the corner of her eye she saw Leif and Natiaveda taking advantage of the chaos to edge toward the exit, and her annoyance with Noren for blocking her path only grew.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you a few questions for a long time, Prince Noren, yet you’re the one interrogating me first.”
Facing the tall prince closing in step by step, the princess—who had been swallowing her temper for more than a year—finally found a target to vent on. She snapped back without giving an inch.
“Who on earth had the nerve to impersonate me? Not only did she marry you, she even dared take it upon herself to hand over the crown. And you, a man of a foreign line, what right did you have to accept that crown as if it naturally belonged to you?”
—
Leif helped Natiaveda out of the hall and over to a marble pillar outside. As soon as the latter fully regained her senses, she immediately started shrieking in a delicate voice.
“Oh, Miss Knight, do you know what on earth is going on? Why did Her Majesty appear here, and where did that little sheep who went in just now go… Are there really evil witches in this world? And that Divine Envoy, she was so dignified and holy, truly awe-inspiring… But just now, it was Her Majesty who sent me here… Wait, my head is all scrambled… Her Majesty—the Queen I’ve been serving all this time—and this Queen, which one of them is the real one?”
The shepherd girl grabbed the babbling lady-in-waiting, unsure how to comfort her. Her own future was hanging by a thread.
Just moments ago Sophie had hissed a whole list of crimes in her ear. Leif thought back to when Grandma Samantha bought the sheep and had told her:
Sheep’s wool can be made into clothes.
Once a sheep grows up and has lambs, you can drink the milk.
You can ride a sheep.
And if it really comes to it, in the end you can still eat the meat.
Leif remembered every word.
Leif cherished Lily as a friend, but she was, in the end, a poor shepherd girl. She had, indeed, once patted Lily’s little lamb head and calmly described all the various “procedures” she planned to perform on her—things that had to sound absolutely terrifying to a sheep.
Every time the wool grew out, Leif would shear it without missing a single season.
Back in Ede Village, she had picked out many strong, sturdy little rams for Lily—though Lily had kicked every last one of them flat on the ground, she had still gotten quite a scare each time.
Not to mention that after their travels began, Leif had not only skimped on Lily’s feed, but had often, just for the sake of appearances, ridden the dignified princess like a beast of burden.
And now it seemed Sophie hadn’t forgotten any of it.
With such a list of crimes, never mind being granted a knight’s sash—being hanged would hardly be unjust.
—
“Princess Sophie, what is that supposed to mean?”
Noren could not help adopting the same attitude he usually wore with the Queen. The Queen knew full well how formidable he was; whenever he appeared, she would start trembling. Yet Sophie, with the exact same face, now acted completely unconcerned. It unsettled him.
“Are you planning to deny everything?”
“Deny what, exactly?”
Sophie smoothed her hair, her green eyes narrowing with irritation.
“I was framed by villains and ended up like this. As for you, Prince Noren—”
The blonde, green-eyed princess let out a breath.
“To put it nicely, you’re blind. To put it bluntly, once this gets out, every last citizen will think you deliberately colluded with the evil witch to frame me—with the goal of swallowing my country whole.”
Before Noren could refute this groundless charge, Sophie continued.
“Otherwise, what do you expect me to believe? That you’re so madly in love with me that you’d abandon your homeland and even marry into my family? That you would cherish the people of Aeseya the way I do? Hah. I’m afraid you’ve already signed quite a few treaties as King of Aeseya that just happen to benefit ‘your own country.’ After all, Aeseya is rich in warhorses and metals… I’m sure ‘His Majesty’ your royal father is very pleased to have a son who can deliver those things to him.”
Seeing the flicker of guilt in Noren’s eyes, Sophie knew she had hit home.
“Do you expect me to have done all this for nothing?”
Noren bent down with a cold smile. His thick fingers dug into Sophie’s shoulders as if he meant to crush them.
“Do you have any idea what your situation is now, my dear Princess Sophie? In everyone’s eyes, I am your husband. And you dare speak to me like this?”
Sophie glared back at him with her green eyes.
“Let go.”
“Hmph.”
Noren snorted through his nose.
“Do you know, that fake Queen of yours tried to resist me too. But after a few lessons, she’s become as docile as a little lamb…”
—
From Leif’s arms, Natiaveda pricked up her ears at the sounds coming from inside the hall.
The shepherd girl, feeling her own future utterly uncertain, couldn’t help taking out her canteen to drink some water and calm her nerves. The strange metal container held clear steaming liquid, with a few unidentified red berries floating inside.
The white-robed lady-in-waiting asked,
“Miss Knight, what is that?”
“Oh, this… where I come from, we call it ‘liver-guarding, life-preserving water.’ It has miraculous effects—prolonging life, strengthening the body, protecting the liver, and warding off death.”
Leif stared at the goji tea and recited a string of transliterated syllables in a foreign accent that made the lady-in-waiting frown.
“I used to feed it to Lily all the time… She used to be such a weak little lamb she could barely stand, but after drinking this for three days straight, she could kick an adult so hard they’d break a bone. Later, when I set out on my journey, I often couldn’t find water to drink, so I had no choice but to let her drink more of it. And now… tsk…”
A heavy thud sounded from inside the hall, followed by a man’s muffled groan of pain.
“Now that she’s back in human form, her control over that strength should be much better.”
Leif screwed the lid back onto the canteen.
“May the Temple watch over His Majesty the King.”
Natiaveda: “…”
