Chapter 2
“The Grand Prince fell!!”
tl-n: He’s called Grand Prince because he’s the son of the Grand Duke, and he’s royalty.
It was me who fell, but Michael ran to Theodor. He moved faster than the Principal answering the Chairman’s call.
“Are you all right?”
“Theodor is alright!”
Theodor raised his left hand to stop Michael. And looked at me,
“Stepmother, where does it hurt?”
He kindly asked.
Flustered, I shook my head and tried to tell him I wasn’t hurt, but no voice came out.
“Are you too cold?”
“N-no.”
I couldn’t hear my voice, so I squeezed my vocal cords to answer.
“Umm… but why are you shaking like that?”
Only then I looked down. My whole body was trembling.
“May-be you’re sca-red?”
Theodor’s red eyes sparkled sharply.
‘Heeuk!’
Even a five-year-old can feel it!
It was a bad sign. Besides, isn’t this a situation where I have to survive somehow?
I said ‘kimchi!’ to myself and tried to raise the corners of my mouth.
Michael intervened, perhaps frustrated by my reaction.
“What do you mean by that? Your Highness. That’s not possible! What are you doing without taking care of the prospective Grand Duchess properly?”
At Michael’s words, the maids hurriedly helped me sit in the chair again.
Theodor, frowning, approached me slowly.
“Stepmother! Even if Shlezen Castle was built on top of the demon realm, there’s absolutely nothing for you to fear.”
‘Terrifying.’
The thought made me freeze on the spot. I unconsciously leaned back.
But he was faster.
Theodor loomed suddenly, like a creepy ghost in a horror movie, and grabbed my hand.
‘Kyaaaa!’
I screamed internally and winced.
Then I opened my eyes and saw his hand.
Maybe it was due to the backward fall, but the bottom of my pinky was scratched, and red spots were forming.
“Sowwy. Theodor hurt you.”
My heart, which was beating terribly, slowly subsided at the friendly Theodor’s reaction.
“S-sorry. Thank you for worrying.”
Finding composure, I apologized for being a bother.
Theodor shook his head and looked concernedly at my hands.
“Treatment!”
When Theodor gave the quiet order, some maids quickly approached us.
“Your hand pwease!”
I reached out to Theodor feeling contrite.
Yeah, he might be a devil who kills his stepmother when he’s ten, and even his father Gerard at 16, but now he was just a cute little boy, right?
Unsurprisingly, the hand was small and warm.
“Oh?”
Theodor frowned, then lowered his head to look closely at my hands. Then Michael grabbed my hand and yanked my arm.
“I think you misunderstood. Her hands are fine!”
“…?”
I looked at my hand as Michael dropped it unceremoniously. The wounds were gone.
‘Oh, apparently it wasn’t hurt?’
Theodor stared at my hand with a puzzled expression. I spread out my palms to show my smooth hands.
“You must have seen it wrong.”
Theodor’s eyes widened.
I shrugged.
‘What is this?’
I was rather happy though. Because I discovered that Theodor was still a kind-hearted child who worried about others’ pain.
I suddenly wondered how many days I had left to live.
“How old is Theodor?”
As I glanced from the corner of my eyes and asked the innocuous question, Michael reacted furiously, clenching his jaw.
“I told you to memorize it!”
His mouth twitched as he shouted like the principal who pressured us during the teachers’ meeting. How can such a handsome George Clooney-like face be so distorted!
His upset expression made my heart pound and my hands tremble.
Wow! Michael must have routinely used violence against Sinclair!
As I endured the swearing, worse than the stench of a dead fish, I rolled up the corners of my mouth.
Then.
“Sir Owen, shtop talkin’! Theodor’s ears sting!”
Pfft! The five-year-old’s words made me feel better.
“Theodor will teach you! Listen carefully. Theodor is fibe years old!”
Theodor spread his palms wide and shouted loudly.
‘There are still five years left until the original.’
As soon as the original story begins, Sinclair is torn to death by a spire.
As a fan of the Crown Prince tale, no matter how much I read it there was no information about her beyond her death in the first pages.
Therefore, it was hopeless to glean anything about her from the book.
Her memories didn’t even come to mind.
Damn it. I had to buy some time.
“Father, the dress is dirty, so I’ll have to change.”
“What?”
Michael’s face hardened.
“Theodor thinks so, too! I want my stepmother to be the prettiest in the Empire!”
Theodor’s cheeks reddened as he moved his hands and smiled cutely, his eyes squeezed into a half-moon.
I asked, looking haughtily at the maid who had been pressing me down with force.
“You can do it, right? Fix it so that His Grace the Grand Prince won’t be disappointed.”
In the instant silence following my words, the maids looked at Michael. He nodded.
Awesome!
Sinclair in the mirror was more beautiful than I imagined.
Her chest-length hair was a tangled mess, but it was an alluring purple and voluminous like a layered perm.
Her eyes were fluorescent pink, and she looked unexpectedly calm thanks to her long taupe eyelashes.
When I turned my face to the side, I could see the sharply raised nose bridge and the nostrils that were neither thick nor thin.
The lips were red with orange tints, and even the lip line was clear.
The feast of slightly bouncing colors harmonized with her clean, white skin tone. She was a gorgeous and bright woman.
“Please turn around for a moment.”
I turned and looked in the mirror at the maid’s instructions, and I was shocked. The back was covered with brutal wounds.
From thick-cut wounds to fine thread-like wounds.
‘What the–? Are these surgical scars? These are pretty deep and sharp wounds, aren’t they?’
The maids were busily rearranging the dress and putting it on as if my wounds were familiar.
‘Phew, there’s a lot of mysterious things, huh?’
Fortunately, there was information in the book about Archduke Gerard Vonzeyer and the devil Theodor Vonzeyer.
Wouldn’t it be better for survival to remember information about them first?
Grand Duke Gerard Vonzeyer, who was he?
My head was pounding.
‘Hey, you! Headache! Are you really going to do this?’
I scolded my brain. Still, it was the same brain that never missed the academic scholarship in the chemistry department for four years in succession.
I tried to recollect something by biting inside my mouth and enduring the pain.
To search through the memory engrams that store traces of memory, my brain secreted the stress hormone norepinephrine.
Tss, tsss, tsss. Neurotransmitters ignited sparks, demonstrating superhuman skills.
Kuang!
One figure came to mind.
Archduke Gerard Vonzeyer.
He was a cousin of Emperor Herace of the Viatria Empire. Strictly speaking, Gerard was next in line and should have become Emperor.
But sadly he was born too late.
After Emperor Julius relinquished the throne to his younger brother, Gillard. Five years later, Herace, Gillard’s ten-year-old son, was crowned Crown Prince, and Emperor Julius fathered twins, a daughter, and a son.
Although Julius had children, he did not ask his younger brother to return the throne. He loved the Viatria Empire more than anyone else, and the welfare of the Empire was more important than anything else.
Respecting his father’s will, Gerard also didn’t fight Herace.
According to the book, after his sister’s death due to a curse, Gerard was the first in the line of succession to the throne, but he remained far from power as chief staff of the Viatria Empire Academy, devoting his efforts only to nurturing his juniors.
And his nephew and now son, Theodor Vonzeyer, second in line of succession to the throne, enrolled in the family register after the death of his sister.
Theodor was cursed since his first birthday.
Jandia Bonque, the treasonous Imperial Wizard, cursed the Empire and Gerard’s family as Gerard sealed him for his plotting.
[The moment the tenacious old man cast a curse and pointed at Gerard with the tip of his finger, Gerard’s sister, Jeremiah, threw herself before him and embraced Gerard.
Jeremiah hardened like a stone statue in the magic light and disappeared in the wind like grains of sand.
Jandia, furious at not being able to get rid of Gerard, issued a new curse. Gerard would be slaughtered by his nephew, and the entire Empire would be ruined at Theodor’s hands.]
Gerard didn’t want to lose his son to the curse. He had to save his son from the curse.
Theodor was his sister’s son, but he was registered as Gerard’s own son. He would risk his life for the nephew born of his sister and brother-in-law who had sacrificed for him and the Empire.
He felt it was the least he could do for those who gave their lives.
So, shrouded under the title of Head Chief of the Imperial Academy of Viatria, he focused on finding a way to break the curse by delving into the history and culture of the Empire.
However, in the end, he failed to lift the curse.
‘Ah, I can’t believe I fell into this cursed world…’
Did all the kids die? So, as punishment, I fell into this hellish place full of destruction?
My heart sank. The bright laughter of the children who were experimenting suddenly turned into grim ghostly cackling in my head.
I closed my eyes tightly.
It was too painful to think that the children were dead.
And just at that moment.
Bang!
Suddenly the door opened roughly.
“Sinclair!”
Shouting my name, a golden-uniformed man burst in rudely without knocking.
“Kyaaa!”
I covered my naked body with both hands.
‘What the hell—!’
Ignoring my surprise, the maids continued to busy themselves with arranging my clothes.
‘The person you serve is in this kind of situation, am I to gather this occurs frequently??’
I started to address this vile and unpleasant situation myself, and I was going to give a blow to the thug who shouted my name.
At that moment, a bit of a familiar noisy video-like image came to mind.
[“Take it off! I have to check! What’s the difference between a human body and one with a demon blood mix?”
“Come on, jump! Quickly! Let’s see if you die or not!”
“Does it hurt? Hahahah! You’re bleeding, aren’t you?”]
Ugh. My younger brother, another crazy bastard.
TL/N: she says ‘another’ in English.
My body was trembling.
[The younger brother grabbed and dragged Sinclair by her hair to the top of the mansion, then opened the door and pushed her. The plunge broke ribs and her leg, but she didn’t die as she recovered quickly, as if it never happened, every time.
One time he gave her a wooden sword as his practice partner, then he stabbed her all over with a real sword!
Blood flowed, but the wound healed quickly.
Sinclair did everything her brother told her to do.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t painful.
The cold feeling from torn flesh, the sound of crushing bones, the fishy smell when blood vessels burst, and the dizziness before losing consciousness due to lack of oxygen.
Sinclair’s five senses felt the pain entirely, and she suffered terrible psychological trauma.
Sinclair was born out of wedlock. An illegitimate child born to Michael and a witch called “the Descendant of Devildom”.
A secret that no one knew outside the immediate family.]
My half-numb body burned hotly in the rush of the shocking memories.
“Huuu… uuuuh…”
I couldn’t breathe. Ceilings and walls were closing in. Her ribs were broken, and then he stabbed her in the lungs as blood gushed from her mouth.
I, I… was a descendant of a witch.