Chapter 98
The man who had lightly lifted Yulia’s unconscious body onto his shoulder muttered to himself.
“I didn’t expect knights to be following us. This is becoming a bit troublesome, isn’t it?”
Bringing Yulia into the mansion and successfully making her lose consciousness was the first part of the plan. However, the presence of knights outside the mansion was an unexpected development. It seemed they had been waiting for Yulia to emerge, with knights hiding in all directions.
As she looked at this scene through the window, the Marchioness responded coldly.
“We just need to present this girl in front of the Emperor. The merchants don’t seem to know the situation here, so if a few of them act as bait, we should be able to lure them out.”
The Marchioness stared quietly at Yulia, who was unconscious, still under the effects of the sleeping pills.
Poor and foolish, Yulia had been deceived by the lie that her mother was dying, which made her rush here without hesitation. She hadn’t expected to be followed by knights, but at least it was fortunate that the Duke hadn’t come along. After all, if her illegitimate status were discovered, it wouldn’t be good for her either. It seemed the girl, despite her naive head, had some sense in her actions.
Thanks to this, everything was progressing smoothly.
“You, and you, the rest will lure the knights outside. In the meantime, we will head to the Imperial Palace.”
The Marchioness pointed her finger towards the few men and maids standing in the room, skillfully issuing orders.
She believed that by disguising one of the maids as Yulia, they could buy time. Once Yulia was safely delivered to the Emperor, the Marchioness would have completed her task.
A cruel smile crept onto the Marchioness’s wrinkled lips. Soon, her servants scattered in all directions, following her commands.
Meanwhile, one of the men who had stayed behind with her placed Yulia into a large sack.
With a soft thud, Yulia was dropped onto a bed.
Only then did she regain some of her senses and realize that she was surrounded by cloth, as though she were trapped in a bag.
Struggling to breathe, Yulia instinctively grabbed her throat.
“Ugh…”
After a few muffled groans, a faint voice whispered nearby.
“Ah, I see.”
Soon, someone skillfully untied the strings of the sack she had been trapped in.
As soon as the air rushed in, her vision suddenly cleared.
“There was no need to bring you here so roughly, Lady Elodie really has no compassion.”
A strange voice rang in her ears. Gasping for breath, Yulia slowly lifted her head.
She found herself in a large, unfamiliar room, facing a familiar man.
Yulia knew exactly who this man was, standing above her.
“…Crown Prince?”
It was undoubtedly the Crown Prince. But why was he here in front of her? Yulia couldn’t immediately grasp the situation.
She continued to struggle to catch her breath, trying to make sense of it all.
She had come to a mansion, thinking it was her mother’s, only to find that it wasn’t her mother there but the Marchioness. Before Yulia could even ask anything, the Marchioness had knocked her out, and now, she had no recollection of how she had ended up in this situation.
Naturally, she had no idea why she was here, either.
With trembling hands, Yulia tightly gripped her dress.
The Crown Prince, who had been watching her intently, smiled slightly.
“You don’t have to be so frightened. I have no intention of harming you.”
His crescent-shaped eyes shone innocently, but the way his gaze slowly roamed over her body was unsettling.
Yulia, who had been too frightened to speak, slowly found her voice.
“Why did you bring me here, Your Highness? Why go so far as to kidnap me…?”
She tried to remain calm, but her voice trembled despite her best efforts.
The Crown Prince didn’t seem to be interested in answering her question just yet. Instead, he smiled and spoke as if he was enjoying himself.
“Well, I brought you here because you’re useful.”
The Crown Prince slowly lifted her chin with one long finger, his gaze examining her as if she were prey.
Yulia instinctively slapped his hand away.
She felt deep discomfort at his touch, and she pulled her body back, biting her lip.
The Crown Prince, without resistance, removed his hand and straightened himself, maintaining his smile.
“Well, we’ll talk more about your usefulness later.”
He sat down casually in a chair near the bed, crossing his legs and continuing to watch her intently.
Before speaking again, the Crown Prince tilted his head slightly.
“I’ve been curious about something, Lady Duke.”
The Crown Prince lazily swung his foot up and down as he leaned back in his chair.
“Have you been living at the Duke’s estate?”
Yulia didn’t understand the intent behind the question, so she remained silent.
The Crown Prince, seemingly uninterested in her response, continued muttering to himself.
“I can’t understand it. Why did the Duke hide you so carefully…?”
He mentioned hiding her…?
Yulia flinched at his words, not understanding what the Crown Prince was implying.
“If you were found and brought back, you could have just returned to your rightful place as the Duke’s wife.”
“…”
“Ah, perhaps you didn’t want that?”
Yulia didn’t say a word, but the Crown Prince nodded to himself, as if he had come to an understanding.
“Well, if you ran away and were brought back, I doubt you’d want to go back to that position.”
Yulia couldn’t make sense of anything the Crown Prince was saying. He was speaking as if she had escaped and was brought back to the Duke’s estate by someone named Fernan.
As she quietly processed his words, her forehead suddenly throbbed with pain.
It felt as though a sharp pain had pierced her head, and her vision blurred as fragmented memories came rushing back, mingling with her current thoughts.
“Ah, there are still many things I want to ask, but I can’t do so from this distance.”
The Crown Prince murmured as he saw Yulia clutching her forehead with trembling hands.
He stood up and headed towards the door.
With a click, he inserted a key into the door’s lock and opened it.
“Bring the maid. Oh, and the physician.”
After issuing a short command, the Crown Prince closed the door.
Yulia watched helplessly as he left and then lowered her head. Her mind was a mess.
Memories she didn’t know when they started spilled out, blending randomly with her current thoughts.
She couldn’t tell what was real and what was just a dream.
While she was lost in thought, the Crown Prince, who had returned to the room, stood silently, staring at her as she lowered her head.
Buried under the fragments of her memories, Yulia slowly lifted her head.
The Crown Prince locked eyes with her and spoke in a voice that was unnervingly gentle.
“There’s just one thing you need to know. You just need to stay here quietly for a few days.”
“…”
“If everything goes well, you’ll be greatly rewarded.”
Yulia, still struggling to clear her mind, managed to look into the Crown Prince’s eyes.
The look in his eyes was all too familiar to her: greedy and sinister.
Unable to say a word, she clenched her trembling hands tightly.
She still couldn’t make sense of the situation, but instinctively, she knew she had to stay alert.
With her eyes lowered, she tried her best to appear calm. The Crown Prince, who had been watching her closely, subtly asked,
“Are you feeling calmer now?”
Yulia, facing him once more, asked in a quiet voice.
“How does my being here benefit you, Your Highness?”
The Crown Prince raised an eyebrow as he casually stroked his chin.
“Well…”
He smirked and continued, his tone leisurely but with a hint of something more sinister.
“The size of the benefit depends on how valuable you are to the Duke.”
The Duke…?
Yulia was taken aback by the unexpected mention of the Duke. She quickly asked again.
“Are you planning to use me to harm the Duke? Why…?”
The Crown Prince’s intentions became crystal clear. He was using her as leverage to demand something from Fernan.
Fernan was a cousin of the Crown Prince. Yulia wondered why the Crown Prince harbored such hostility toward him.
Before she could ask, the Crown Prince cut in with a tone full of venom.
“Why, you ask? Well, because I don’t like that bastard.”
The Crown Prince’s enmity toward Fernan wasn’t as simple as it seemed. He had been overshadowed by Fernan for as long as he could remember.
A long time ago, it was rumored that if the Duke’s father hadn’t died in an accident, the royal family would have been far stronger than it was now.
Many said that Fernan, rather than the Crown Prince, was better suited for the throne.
The comparisons from people around him grew harsher over the years, and as they did, the Crown Prince’s hatred for Fernan grew more intense.
A brief cynicism crossed the Crown Prince’s face as he looked at Yulia.
“You too, aren’t you the same? I’ve heard how cruel the late Duke was to you.”
“…”
“That’s why you ran away. Because you hated him, didn’t you?”
Yulia remained silent, her thoughts swirling as the Crown Prince’s words echoed in her mind.
She couldn’t deny the truth in his words.
She had run away because of the cruelty of her past, but the feeling of betrayal still lingered deeply in her heart.
The Crown Prince’s smile grew slightly, his eyes glinting with a mix of amusement and something darker.
He seemed to relish the tension in the air as if his every word was slowly chiseling away at Yulia’s resolve.
“You can’t hide your emotions so easily,” the Crown Prince remarked, observing her closely.
“I know the feeling of being trapped under someone else’s shadow. The Duke wasn’t kind to you, was he? But neither was your mother, was she? Hiding you away like a secret, an inconvenient truth. But the world has a way of exposing all its secrets, and now you’re caught in the middle of it.”
Yulia flinched at his words, though she didn’t let herself show it.
She had heard enough of this cruel truth before, yet hearing it from someone else only made it feel more real.
The weight of everything pressing down on her chest was overwhelming.
The Crown Prince noticed her reaction and leaned forward slightly.
“I wonder,” he mused, his tone taking on a sharper edge,
“if you had known what awaited you, would you have still come to that mansion? Would you have still trusted the Marchioness? Would you have still believed that your mother was the one waiting for you?”
Yulia’s breath hitched, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped her dress tighter.
The question was like a knife twisting in her heart, and for a moment, she couldn’t find the words to respond.
She had been so sure that her mother would be there, waiting for her, and that everything would be okay.
But the reality was far crueler, and now she was trapped in a web she couldn’t escape.
The Crown Prince smirked, clearly enjoying the effect his words were having on her.
He leaned back in his chair, casually crossing his arms.
“I see that I’ve made my point,” he said, his voice now softer, almost playful.
“You’re not the only one who’s been deceived by people you trusted, Yulia. We all have our battles to fight, our lies to untangle. But the important thing is… what will you do now?”
Yulia’s gaze lifted, meeting his eyes for the first time since their conversation had begun.
There was a hardness to her expression now, a glint of defiance.
She had been brought to the brink, but she wasn’t going to let herself crumble.
“I’ll do what I must,” she said quietly, her voice steady despite the turmoil raging inside her.
“I will survive this. I won’t let you or anyone else control me.”
The Crown Prince regarded her for a long moment, his eyes narrowing as if weighing her resolve.
A flash of something unreadable passed over his face, but then he smiled again, his usual air of arrogance returning.
“Survive?” he repeated, as though the word amused him.
“I have no doubt you will. But surviving is one thing. Winning is another.”
He stood up, his posture relaxed but commanding.
“Let’s see how you fare, Yulia. Let’s see how much you can endure before you break.”
Before she could respond, he turned and walked toward the door.
As he reached it, he glanced back at her one last time, his smile widening in that same cruel way.
“Don’t worry. I won’t harm you… yet.”
With that, he exited the room, leaving Yulia alone with her thoughts.
The door clicked shut behind him, and the silence that followed was suffocating.
Yulia sat there for a long moment, her hands still clenched tightly at her sides, her mind racing with a thousand thoughts.
She didn’t know what the future held, but she knew one thing for sure: she wasn’t going to let the Crown Prince or anyone else break her.
She would survive, no matter what it took.
