Aiden hurriedly checked the stables, starting with the horses.
“Princess?”
The horses were both still there, and there were signs that someone had tried to saddle them, but failed.
He searched the surrounding area, including the barn and the livestock pen, just in case. There was no sign of Anje anywhere.
“Princess, where are you?”
Aiden felt an ominous sense of foreboding as he searched and searched but could not find her.
“Surely she didn’t walk away… Even if the princess is an idiot, she wouldn’t do that, right?”
This house was surrounded by a dense forest, so the path leading out was rather dangerous. The coachman who had driven them here had grumbled about it several times.
Aiden returned to the front of the stables and knelt down to look for Anje’s footprints. The ground was dry since it hadn’t rained in a while, so it wasn’t easy to find traces.
“Damn it.”
He finally found footprints that were much smaller than his own, with pointed heels. They led from the grass in front of the stables to a specific path.
In the direction of the deep forest.
He cursed himself for underestimating the princess’s foolishness and hurriedly began to follow the trail.
***
Meanwhile, Anje was beginning to regret her choice.
“Hoo, hoo…”
The owls, hooting low and eerily, sent a warning signal to the intruder in the forest.
The faint moonlight from the heavily clouded sky made the dark, large trees look even more gloomy.
Every time the branches shook in the wind, and every time a small animal scurried around in the bushes, she froze in place, unable to scream.
“Oh my God…”
She had renounced religion, but now there was no one else to turn to.
She muttered the prayers she had learned in church under her breath, and held the parasol tightly in both hands as a weapon against ‘something’ that might appear. She cautiously moved forward.
Behind the gloomy old trees and in the shadow of the large rocks, it seemed like a suspicious witch or ghost might pop out at any moment.
‘What if there are bears or wolves?’
Her whole body froze at the sudden realistic worry.
She had heard from the men who participated in the hunting competition that there were larger and more ferocious beasts in the deep forest than those near the capital.
‘Why did I only think of this now? Should I go back… No, don’t be weak.’
Still, there shouldn’t be such fearsome beasts in a place where people live. Let’s just go a little further.
She chose the right path at the fork in the road that appeared before her and tied a ribbon to a branch on the path she had come from.
In order not to get lost if she had to turn back, she had been marking the path like this every time a fork appeared.
To think that she would be using the ribbons she had brought to decorate her hair like this. It was a pity because they were precious, but she could always buy more in the capital.
“Wait, this seems like a dead end?”
Anje muttered as she saw the bushes growing in the middle of the path that appeared after a while. She pushed them with her parasol and found that they were solid thickets that a carriage could never pass through.
‘Then I have to go back again.’
It had been hard enough walking here. A large sigh escaped from Anje’s lips.
If she had known that she would be going on such a rough path, and that walking for an hour would be so tiring, she would have worn more comfortable shoes.
But then again, all the shoes she owned had heels and were not suitable for long-distance walking.
‘I should have asked Sir Aiden to lend me some shoes if I had known this would happen.’
When she checked her heels, she saw that red blood had spread over her stockings. It seemed to have been chapped by the constant wind.
Anje sighed and sat down on a large rock. She hesitated to get her clothes dirty, but she needed a break.
‘Should I take off my shoes?’
It was unladylike, and she was hesitant because she didn’t know what might be on the ground, but it seemed better than continuing to walk in this pain.
She rubbed her tired calves and rummaged through her bag for no reason. Her throat was starting to get dry, too. Why on earth did she leave without packing any food or water?
‘I should have drunk the tea that Aiden gave me earlier.’
He had called it cheap black tea, but she would have killed for it now. Much more than the jewelry, cosmetics, and clothes that filled her bag.
“Ribbit.”
“Huh? …… Kyaaah!”
She heard a strange noise right next to her and turned her head to see a frog the size of a fist clinging to the rock right next to her.
Anje, who hated reptiles, was so startled that she jumped up from her seat.
“Oh, wait……. If it’s a frog…… Water!”
In the fairy tales her nanny used to read to her, frogs lived near water. That meant there must be a spring or something nearby.
“Even frogs can be helpful sometimes.”
“Ribbit.”
In response to Anje’s admiring remark, the frog croaked and disappeared into the trees.
“Are you telling me to go that way to get water, frog?”
She held her breath and strained her ears, and she could hear the faint sound of running water coming from the direction the frog had disappeared.
‘I wonder if it’s connected to the stream that flows around Aiden’s house?’
If so, wouldn’t it be a shortcut if she followed the stream all the way?
Pleased with her good idea, she gathered her strength and started to move her feet.
“Oh, I can’t wait to drink some cold water, ugh!”
The undergrowth was even darker than the path, so she hadn’t noticed, but in front of Anje, who thought it was flat ground and stepped forward boldly, was a downhill slope that led all the way to the water’s edge.
Rumble. The princess in her slippery silk dress rolled down like an acorn on a vine, down and down.
* * *
“Where on earth did she disappear to?”
Aiden muttered, stroking his chin.
He had no problem tracking her this far. Anje’s footsteps, wearing shoes, were quite slow and narrow-paced.
Sometimes she must have stopped to rest against a tree, because the smell of her perfume lingered around the bark.
From the middle, there were also traces of her dragging the heavy bag along the ground because it was too difficult to carry.
He used his senses, honed on the battlefield, to follow her trail. If she had been an enemy or prey, she would have been an easy target.
She even tied her belongings to trees so she wouldn’t get lost.
‘She’s smarter than I thought.’
He found himself admiring her, but then he changed his mind when he thought about the situation. If she was really that smart, she wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night.
The problem was that her trail stopped here, at a dead end.
“She didn’t just fly up into the sky or fall into the ground.”
Aiden’s forehead furrowed.
“She couldn’t have been attacked by a bear or kidnapped……. No, that can’t be it.”
If it had been an animal, there would have been traces of blood, and if it had been a kidnapping, there would have been footprints of others or traces of her resisting.
He finally found the rock she had been sitting on and followed her trail from there.
“Let’s see, she slipped out of here and…… she slipped.”
Aiden saw the traces of ‘something’ rolling down the hill and narrowed his eyes. ‘She didn’t fall into the stream below, did she?’
Aiden carefully descended the hill, using a lamp to light his way. He was relieved to find that the stream was shallow and that the princess was nowhere to be seen, unconscious or otherwise.
“Princess?”
He called out her name as he walked along the stream, holding the lamp aloft.
There was little sign of her, but he had a feeling that she couldn’t have gone far and must be nearby somewhere.
“Princess, are you there?”
“Sir…Aiden?”
Aiden nearly dropped the lamp when he saw the woman who emerged from the darkness.
Her ivory dress, dripping wet, was stained with mud in places. Her neatly combed hair was disheveled, and her face was streaked with tears or water, making her look like a ghost who had just emerged from the river.
“Good heavens, what were you thinking, going into the forest by yourself?!”
Before he could finish the first words he had been rehearsing all the way here, she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms.
The branches that Anje was holding fell to the ground with a clatter.
“I-I was scared… I fell, and it hurts… A-and it’s cold…”
Her joy and relief at finally seeing a familiar face outweighed her anger and hatred for Aiden. She buried her face in his warm embrace, sobbing without caring about appearances.
The wind blowing down from the hill made her ache all over, and her wet clothes felt heavy.
She had tried to gather branches to dry her body, chilled by the cold water, but she didn’t even know how to start a fire.
Aiden stood there stiffly for a moment, his arms raised in the air like a scarecrow, then awkwardly lowered one arm and patted her back.
“There, there.”
He wanted to scold her more, but he couldn’t bring himself to get angry with someone who was sobbing so pitifully.
He lost his will and instead tried to comfort her.
“I see, so stop crying. Here, you can wear this.”
He muttered gruffly as he took off his jacket and wrapped it around her. Her body, which had been pressed close to his, was as cold as ice. Even in the spring breeze, she would catch a cold if she stayed like this.
He checked her over for any injuries.
“Your shoes?”
“…They were swept away by the water.”
The shoes that had been shining on her feet were gone, and she was only wearing one stocking.
Embarrassed, she hid her bare feet under the hem of her skirt when she saw where Aiden’s gaze was lingering.
“The mud got on one of my stockings, so it’s dirty…”
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“My ankle hurts a little, I think.”
“Let me take a look.”
“It’s not that bad… Uh!”
“You’ve sprained it.”
It didn’t seem like a serious injury at first glance, but it was clear that she wouldn’t be able to walk back on her own.
It was cold, and it was already dawn. Aiden made a quick decision.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
“Huh? Ah!”
He gently lifted Anje off the ground and made her sit on one of his arms. This way, he could keep her body heat from dissipating as he walked back home, and he could also hold the lamp freely in his other hand.
