Chapter 8…
Why on earth did they skip over this important story!
If she could meet the author of the book, she would want to press them for answers.
Since the book described everything around Princess Ellia, many incidents were brushed over and only explained later with a casual, “Actually, this happened too…”.
She never imagined that something this enormous had been hidden in such a skipped-over part.
She could understand, though, why it had been omitted.
It wasn’t something Princess Ellia herself did, but something tied to the previous generation. After that, the Berndt Ducal House never appeared again.
Besides, that was also the time when Princess Ellia had just lost her own parents. Of course she had no energy left to care about someone else’s tragedy.
And Ellie too—she had barely possessed Ellia’s body when she was immediately faced with her parents’ death and their funeral. She had been just as overwhelmed.
Still, it helped that this was “a world inside a book.”
Because she already knew some events and had seen them once before, she could watch everything unfold with a step’s worth of distance.
She was relieved—relieved that she hadn’t simply overlooked Clarius’s tragedy.
“What did the late King and Queen do?”
“They summoned them to the palace suddenly in the middle of the night. And it was raining that night…”
“And then?”
“On such a dangerous night, both of them rode on horseback together to the palace in a hurry, and met with an accident. They were killed.”
It wasn’t the absolute worst scenario—like the late King and Queen personally executing them—but it was still a tragedy that would never have happened if they hadn’t been summoned.
At last Ellie could understand Clarius’s cold stare.
He had suddenly lost his parents in an accident that never would have happened if not for the King and Queen. How shocked and devastated he must have been.
But the ones he wanted to blame were already dead. So his resentment had, in part, shifted onto Ellie, who had nothing to do with it. She could understand why.
“How old is the Duke of Berndt?”
“Eight years old.”
Just a year older than herself.
It must have been far too heavy a burden for him to endure alone.
Ellie too felt crushed by suddenly having to be Queen someday, but the young duke must have felt something similar. Neither of them were at an age to shoulder such positions.
Princess Ellia was pitiful, and Clarius was pitiful too.
“He’s so young, yet only terrible things keep happening to him…”
“I am not young!”
Clarius shouted, teeth clenched.
“No, we are young. They say children should be allowed to act like children.”
If you don’t act like a child while you’re young, you can never properly grow up into an adult.
“The Duke of Berndt cannot afford to be young.”
“I’m about to become Queen, and I’m still young.”
“But Your Highness is one year younger than me.”
“Then why don’t you understand that children should be allowed to act like children? You’re older than me by a whole year and still don’t get it!”
In a world under the age of twenty, a one-year difference was enormous.
Ellie grew so frustrated that she broke the unspoken rule.
Even Clarius, who had been trying so hard to act grown-up, couldn’t keep his composure when faced with her ignoring their age difference.
“How can you say that to someone a whole year older than you!”
“Seven or eight—it’s the same! When we’re a hundred, what’s the difference between a hundred and a hundred and one!”
Ellie yelled back.
“Ninety-nine and a hundred are completely different!”
Clarius didn’t back down.
The two children glared at each other furiously.
Then Clarius suddenly remembered—he couldn’t behave like this to the future Queen. He clamped his mouth shut, but his anger still burned.
She was younger than him by a whole year, yet had the nerve to treat him, a duke who had to act like a grown man, as nothing but a child. It infuriated him.
Inside, his rage boiled over. But as a duke, he pressed his lips tightly shut and endured. It wasn’t difficult—he’d done it many times before.
But to Ellie, that only made her feel more defeated.
She had wanted to comfort and sympathize with him, but everything had gone terribly wrong.
“…So…”
Clarius, still scowling, waited for her words. His sharp gaze seemed to say that if she made one more mistake, he’d throw everything aside and storm out.
That look made Ellie shrink even more.
The harder she tried, the more it felt like stepping on a floor slick with spilled oil—slipping again and again in the wrong direction.
This isn’t it. This isn’t how I wanted this to go…
On the verge of tears, Ellie whispered:
“It must have been really hard for you…”
That wasn’t what Clarius had expected.
Caught off guard, he froze, as if struck from behind.
When he said nothing, Ellie misunderstood, thinking she had only provoked him further. Her voice trembled as tears welled up.
“But I can’t even remember it… and it’s because of Princess Ellia’s mother and father, the King and Queen… so I feel even more sorry…”
“……”
Clarius pressed his lips tightly together, unsure how to respond.
As duke, he ought to reject her apology. If he accepted, the royal family could use that to placate House Berndt, their greatest potential enemy.
But it was clear that Ellie hadn’t thought that far.
She wasn’t calculating anything—she was simply apologizing.
As duke, he ought to refuse. But his heart was already half-forgiving her.
She said she had no memory of it. It wasn’t her fault.
Clarius’s heart wavered like the gap left by the baby tooth he had just lost.
“M-M-I’m so sorryyy!”
The tears that had filled Ellie’s eyes finally spilled over.
She broke down crying.
Startled, Clarius gasped.
“Y-Your Highness…!”
Her tears flowed even harder at his panicked voice.
She hadn’t wanted to anger him, or to make him flustered.
She just felt sorry. She only wanted to comfort him.
But she was living in Princess Ellia’s place now, and that responsibility was hers to bear.
More than anything, what had happened to Clarius’s parents wasn’t an accident. It was a tragedy caused because the King and Queen had summoned them. The only thing she could say in the face of that was an apology.
“Y-Your Highness, you have nothing to apologize for…”
Ellia might have known nothing. But she was still royalty—the only daughter of the King and Queen who had caused the accident.
If anyone was to apologize to House Berndt, it had to be Ellia.
And yet, when Clarius received her apology, his mind went blank.
Ellie’s tear-choked words kept coming.
“But I’m just sorry for everything… for making you remember… and, um, for inviting you out to tea even though you probably hate the whole royal family… ohhh.”
Clarius almost instinctively replied that wasn’t true, but her words struck too close. They were all true.
And for the first time, he realized how it felt when someone else voiced the exact feelings he had inside.
It was like his heart and insides were being pricked, yet at the same time as if a huge warm hand had enveloped his whole body.
His face flushed hot, the skin beneath his eyes prickled, his nose tingled like when he ate something spicy.
Ah.
So this was what it felt like right before crying.
He had always thought he simply didn’t have tears.
Even when he heard of his parents’ deaths, even at their funeral, even when whispers about him swirled on all sides—he had worn a cold mask, without a single tear.
He had never needed to hold tears back. They had never come in the first place.
But now, with Ellia weeping so hard in front of him, he couldn’t help but catch it from her.
“P-Please don’t cry…”
His voice shook.
“How can I not cryyy…”
“B-But still… ugh.”
And then tears began streaming down Clarius’s face as well.
The first drop was the heaviest.
Once it fell, the dam broke, and all the tears he had been holding back burst out at once.
Ellie had been right.
Clarius was just a child too.
“Uuuhhh…”
“Uwaaaahh…!”
The two children cried loudly together for a long, long time.
* * *
Clarius returned home, deeply wounded in his pride.
“Just because I cried doesn’t mean I accepted Your Highness’s apology!”
After their crying fit, he had even gotten angry again.
Ellie herself wasn’t hurt much—she had only cried because she pitied Clarius. But the people around them didn’t stay quiet.
“His Highness wept out of sympathy, and still he dares to stand so stiffly? That’s not a subject’s heart—it’s treason!”
“The grudge of House Berndt will not be easily forgotten. They’re stubborn and rigid to the core. They’ll pass down their resentment for generations.”
“Your Highness, keeping the duke close may be dangerous. Please don’t trouble yourself anymore. The late King already took every measure of compensation.”
Everyone told her not to worry, that time would heal things, that she should forget about it.
Sweet words, meant to comfort her. If she believed them, her heart would probably feel lighter.
But Ellie thought of her brother.
Her brother often made mistakes—sometimes he hurt her feelings without meaning to.
And whenever that happened, he would do everything he could until Ellie smiled again.
“But until your heart feels better, you still feel bad, don’t you?”
Remembering that, Ellie shook her head.
If she let this go, Clarius would be forced to live his whole life weighed down by resentment.
And she knew—because when her brother had upset her, the hardest part wasn’t him, it was herself, sulking with the hurt feelings.
“I’m going to be the Queen. That means I have to take responsibility for the royal family too.”
Ellie had already decided.
She would find a way to heal Clarius’s heart, no matter what.
