Everyone Was Obsessed With Me After I Became the Youngest Princess Favourite - Chapter 10

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“It’s alright. Dana—are you hurt anywhere? You must have been so frightened.”
As Lia, her exhaustion etched plainly across her features, tenderly stroked Diana’s cheek, the girl nuzzled against her palm like a kitten seeking comfort.
The members of House Elrad who had been watching this exchange forgot entirely about the gravity of the situation, their faces registering pure astonishment.
‘The young lady, usually so temperamental, displaying such docility!’
Lia, bewildered by their reactions, tilted her head in confusion—and then her gaze collided with Duke Elrad’s, his expression utterly impassive as he regarded her.
It was then that the Duke spoke in an unexpectedly tender voice.
“Diana, come here now. We must return home.”
At those words, Diana bounded forward with delight, and the Duke caught her in one arm, lifting her effortlessly.
“I had intended to scold you severely, but since you’ve conducted yourself with such courage and without tears, I shall overlook it this once. In exchange, you’ll obey me from now on, won’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Diana rolled her eyes mischievously, feigning innocence, then broke into a charming smile.
Though her hair was matted with grime and her face streaked with filth, she remained utterly endearing.
“You’ll look like a crow, sister. No one will recognize you.”
The Duke, recognizing his daughter at a glance yet deliberately teasing her, drew knowing chuckles from the knights standing witness.
“Indeed, my lord.”
“The lady and young masters would be quite startled to see her in such a state.”
Young Diana, oblivious to their jesting, puffed out her cheeks indignantly.
Charmed by her expression, the Duke gently pinched her nose and wiggled it playfully, laughing.
Smiles bloomed across the knights’ faces as well.
The exhaustion from their frantic search and desperate efforts to find the young lady seemed to dissolve entirely in that moment.
Lia stood beside them, watching in a daze, when her eyes met the Duke’s once more.
Her heart lurched uncomfortably—as though she’d been caught committing some transgression.
The tenderness that had filled his gaze when he looked at Diana was gone now, replaced by an indifferent coldness, as if he were observing something inanimate. It felt as though he had glimpsed some secret she harbored within.
Fortunately, the Duke turned his attention back to Diana without further comment.
“If we return as she is now, she’ll be the subject of ridicule for years to come. I cannot abide such complaints later. We shall stop at an inn on the way back. Have a carriage prepared at once.”
The moment to part with Diana was finally at hand.
Though I had known it was coming, an unexpected pang of reluctance washed over me, and I lowered my gaze.
It was then.
“Father, what about sister?”
“If you wish it, she may accompany us as well.”
At those words, I lifted my head abruptly, my eyes darting about in alarm.
The Duke, observing me with narrowed eyes, spoke again.
“Regarding that child we were searching for—you need not worry. Once she regains her senses, she will be sent to the Orphanage with the other children.”
I realized my mistake at once.
“Will you come with us?”
“It’s not me—Jack needs to come with you!”
“Hmm?”
“Jack was injured because he was rescuing Dana.”
“….”
When the Duke’s expression remained unchanged at my words, anxiety seized me.
In my previous life, when Duke Elrad found Jack trapped in the attic with Diana and rescued him, he brought the boy to House Elrad without hesitation.
So I thought that if I told him Jack had thrown himself forward to save Diana, he would accept him this time as well.
Then the Duke’s lips parted again.
“Very well. We’ll talk once that child awakens. But you—don’t you wish to come with us?”
“I… I…”
As Lia hesitated, uncertain how to answer, the adults around us wore expressions of pity, as though she were too young to understand the ways of the world.
But Lia understood.
Without question, following Duke Elrad was a far better choice than remaining at the Orphanage.
‘By my station, I couldn’t even enter an ordinary noble household. But if I could be employed by House Elrad…’
For a worthless orphan, it was an opportunity far too generous.
Yet Lia still found herself reluctant to answer eagerly.
She had only ever imagined leaving with the other orphans; the choice to follow Duke Elrad had never truly crossed her mind.
“Lia, aren’t you coming?”
Diana looked at me then with the expression of an abandoned puppy.
With her seeming ready to burst into tears at any moment, tension rippled through those gathered around us.
Lia, who had kept her lips pressed shut, hesitated before finally nodding her head.
‘First, I’ll soothe Diana and make sure Jack’s position is properly restored.’
I could worry about my own matters afterward.
* * *
While Duke Elrad issued orders regarding the Orphanage’s disposition, I waited in one corner of the Orphanage Courtyard with Diana for the carriage.
Having just wolfed down the bread and soup the knights distributed, drowsiness threatened to overwhelm me.
Then a knight suddenly approached.
Without the slightest hesitation, he knelt on one knee, placed his hand solemnly over his heart, and bowed his head.
“Young lady, I am truly grateful you are safe. And you, child—I wish to thank you for caring for the young lady so well.”
The man spoke with earnest eyes and bowed once more.
“I shall return and face full punishment for failing to protect the young lady properly.”
Then he precisely split the jeweled ornament hanging from his sword in half.
My eyes widened in an instant.
“Please accept this keepsake my father left behind. Even if I am stripped of my knighthood, I swear with my life to protect the young lady…”
At that moment, Duke Elrad brought his fist down with a sharp crack against the back of the man’s head.
“Fool.”
“Your Grace…”
“Only you, Taize, would make your father’s keepsake a monument to your own failure.”
As I listened to Duke Elrad’s rebuke, telling him to worry instead about his confinement when he returned, I became certain.
Taize Seidian.
The knight who carried the jeweled ornament split in half on his sword.
The man who would later become Jack’s adoptive father and vice-commander of the Lexion Knights.
Regarding the ornament he carried, many knights who admired him had spun countless theories worthy of novels—that it was split during a life-or-death battle, that it was the jewel that saved his life, that it was a token shared with a deceased beloved—but to think there was such a mundane backstory to it all.
Though somewhat anticlimactic, I found myself thinking I might sell this information for a handsome price later.
“The carriage is prepared. Let us depart.”
At the Duke’s words, Diana grasped my hand as though she’d been waiting for this moment.
She looked terrified that I might change my mind and refuse to go with her.
Despite having spent only a few days together, her desperation felt more poignant than that of a family I’d struggled to reunite with, and I felt a little embarrassed. Besides….
“Um, do I ride in this carriage too?”
Though it was clearly procured hastily for the journey to the Mountain Region, the carriage looked remarkably fine.
Since I couldn’t ride a horse like the knights, I’d assumed I would travel in the carriage at the back where the physicians and mages rode.
“Unni, ride with me!”
Diana reached out and took my hand….
“A small child like you will fit easily enough. Stop fussing and get in.”
At the Duke’s indifferent voice, I found myself climbing into the carriage before I could think.
The chairs inside looked plush, and they were so clean that a pleasant fragrance seemed to emanate from them.
By contrast, my hair was dirty and my clothes were grimy, so I wondered if I should even be sitting comfortably here.
But since I couldn’t stand the entire journey, I eventually settled awkwardly into the chair.
Soon I felt the carriage begin to move.
As I gazed blankly out the window at the Orphanage receding into the distance, I spotted the children standing in a line, boarding the other carriages one by one.
‘In my previous life, I watched Jack ride away in a carriage from among those children.’
Riding inside the departing carriage felt surreal.
With the realization that my future had changed, I wondered if I too could live a new life.
My fingers fidgeted nervously as vague fear gripped me, when I suddenly looked up.
Diana, who had been excited when the carriage started moving, had already fallen asleep, nestled in the Duke’s arms.
And at that very moment, my eyes met those of Duke Elrad, who was watching over Diana.
He asked me as though he’d been waiting for this.
“What is your name? How old are you?”
“I’m L-Lia. I don’t have a surname. I’m eight years old, and….”
It was natural for an orphan to have no family name.
Thinking I’d added an unnecessary comment because I was so tense, I inwardly cursed my own foolishness.
I worried my face might be flushed when the Duke spoke again.
“Did you know Diana’s true identity? Do you know who I am?”
“…!”
My eyes widened at the unexpected question.
‘Does he think I’m strange? Could he be suspicious?’
Despite his indifferent tone, his piercing gaze made my heart race uncontrollably.
* * *
Duke Elrad found Lia peculiar and strange.
The child before him was utterly unremarkable.
A pale, unkempt child in shabby clothes like the other children he’d seen at the Orphanage—nothing that would catch the eye.
Had he not witnessed her falling from the Attic, had she been mingled among the other orphans, he would have simply passed her by without a second glance.
But when the child regained consciousness and clung to him with terrified eyes, begging for her life, he felt as though he’d been struck on the back of the head—stunned and hesitant about what to do.
Like a soldier caught off-guard by an unexpected ambush during war, as he stood frozen and uncertain, the child presented evidence she’d hidden away beforehand, as though she’d known someone would come to solve all her problems.
Evidence that could utterly destroy the Director of the Orphanage.
By any reasonable measure, a child from such a modest orphanage would never recognize such an object, and even if she did, it would be no simple feat to smuggle it away.
Only then did the Duke truly see the child before him.
Her body, hidden beneath oversized rags, was skeletal as a dried stick, and her face—marked with bruises and wounds—was so pallid that her veins seemed to show through her skin.
Her brown hair, haphazardly shorn short, was stiff and frayed at the ends, and her cheeks, drawing shallow breaths, bore none of Diana’s plump softness nor her rosy flush.
Perhaps she had sensed his scrutiny.
The child lowered her head and spoke.
“I understand that Dana is a precious child.”
Watching the girl avert her eyes, the Duke felt an inexplicable surge of anger.
His chest tightened with an odd, suffocating sense of unease.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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