Chapter 10
“Your Highness, my heart is beating like crazy.”
At Barret’s words, Xabier laughed loudly.
“Yes. That heart. I’ll keep it beating for you.”
It was a meaningful statement, but it didn’t reach Barret properly. Even if Xabier suddenly ran off and started playing the viol right now, Barret felt like he could even dance to it.
But this was not the time. He needed to quickly get recommendations for knights to join the knight order from his older sister and brother.
He was even planning to study military science and aura theory again, subjects he had once hated.
“Ah, right.”
Busy, busy. Just as Barret tried to step back and leave, Xabier stopped him again.
What if everything he said so far was just a joke? If that was the ending… Barret was already calculating the limits of rebellion in his mind when something absurd came out of Xabier’s mouth.
“I have a daughter.”
“…Yes?”
“I went out this morning to see my daughter.”
“W-what do you mean, a daughter? Are you sure? If you saw her this morning, does that mean she’s in the palace right now?”
Xabier nodded.
Without caring about Barret’s confusion.
“I—no, I know the hair and eye colors of all the palace servants! Wait… don’t tell me…”
Barret stopped himself just in time.
That name was still too painful to say out loud.
When Xabier showed a bitter expression, Barret clutched his chest as if confirming his suspicion.
“Is it true? How… how is that even possible…”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how she deceived me like that…”
“Lydia…”
“Huh? Lydia? Lydia Toston?”
Xabier reached out to stop Barret’s wild imagination, but Barret was already rubbing his face hard with both hands. His eyes were full of disbelief.
“So that’s it! You’re forming a knight order for Lydia Toston? That’s why you asked about Sion Perid—you were suspecting something between him and Lady Lydia!”
“Stop!”
Before Xabier could become a petty jealous man, he covered Barret’s mouth.
But Barret’s mind had already gone blank at the idea of such a relationship between his sister and his close superior.
“You people’s imagination goes too far… It’s not Morrigan. Though I do respect her.”
“Then what is it…?”
Just saying that name made his throat feel tight.
Yes. It was so similar. Her appearance. Her behavior. Even the way she spoke.
“Maggo Peril.”
At that name, Barret’s face gradually cooled, matching Xabier’s expression.
If even my small world, Annabella’s world, could be described as a universe, then I was a satellite orbiting the planet called Maggo Peril.
Caught in her gravity, I kept circling her.
That gravity was her love.
Sometimes she would look at me with a distant expression and mutter like a spell:
“Everything will be fine, right?”
She would open and close her mouth as if she had something to say, but in the end, she usually ended with meaningless words.
I wanted to tell her.
Back then, no matter what she said, I wanted to tell her everything would be okay.
That the two of us could accomplish anything together. Even if I didn’t have memories of my past life.
Even if, in the end, I chose my country over myself, I didn’t hate her.
I wanted to support Maggo Peril’s life, the woman who had so much else to protect besides me.
But there was one thing I resented.
She loved me too much.
By the time my past-life memories slowly returned, I was already a naive child raised with Maggo Peril’s overflowing love. I had become too used to being loved.
I knew I was from another world. I remembered writing, transportation, and communication from that world, but I had no memory of myself there.
And after entering this place as a trainee maid, I began to regain my memories while being met with unexplained hostility.
I was “Jeong Green.”
A time when I lived off others’ judgment.
The hatred without reason was painful, but strangely familiar. Then memories came back—my stepmother who hated me, my father who ignored it, and my younger sibling who fully understood the difference in our positions.
When I finally remembered everything, I could only cry.
Maybe my mother would come to take me back. Maybe things were different from the original story.
And I realized—I hadn’t let go of even a single hope toward my mother.
After letting go of all those expectations, I felt strangely relieved and made a decision.
I would fight back against those who hated me.
But what if suddenly those same people started trying desperately to get on my good side?
“Ah, A-Annabella!”
“Yes?”
Even now, on my way to the annex palace, I must have been stopped at least ten times. It wasn’t like there was a boss on every floor of a tower.
At first I was startled by people suddenly talking to me, but now I could calmly turn around.
“Do you want this? It’s very tasty.”
I nodded and took it. Food is innocent.
It seemed rumors were slowly spreading among the annex maids, and soon the entire palace would know.
I wouldn’t be able to stop it even if I wanted to.
The Second Prince himself had called me “his daughter.”
I had never been the center of attention like this before.
Maybe I was being self-conscious, but it felt like everyone desperately wanted to talk to me.
If I were the heroine of a teen movie, I might have even blown a kiss and enjoyed this reversal.
But I wasn’t the heroine.
I just had to survive.
Let’s go to the strawberry field first.
I still had to find the pocket watch.
Just as I tried to leave, someone grabbed me again.
“Ah, A-Annabella!”
Is my name “A, A, Annabella”?
Why is everyone calling me like that? It sounded like they were still getting used to it.
The one calling me was Susan, wearing the most awkward expression I had ever seen.
“Where are you going at this hour?”
Only then did I notice the sky had grown dark.
“Just somewhere.”
“Oh, are you going to the strawberry field?”
“…Yes.”
Why ask when you already know?
“Should I come with you?”
“No, I’ll go alone.”
“It’s dangerous now that it’s dark. And I heard a beast that was disturbing the ducal territory has appeared even here.”
A beast…
I suddenly grabbed my hair with both hands.
Susan looked startled, but I couldn’t care.
This is around the time Declen starts laying groundwork to destroy Xabier, attacking from the outskirts first.
I was at the lowest and most isolated place in the palace, so I naturally lacked information.
Still, I remembered fragments of the original story.
Soon, a beast would cross Temble territory and even target the imperial palace.
A knight order under the Temble Duke would be dispatched.
And a rookie knight from a conquered nation would defeat it.
What was his name again?
Sion something…
