Rewriting the Trash Ending - Chapter 3

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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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3.

“…Your Highness, surely you don’t mean to take us to the North?”
Unlike the Capital, where refined culture flourished, the North was a place fraught with peril.
She meant to drag them to a region besieged by Monsters nearly every day?
“Surely? I’m quite serious.”
“Your Highness, do you truly believe such a thing is possible?”
“Then are you suggesting His Majesty the Emperor would refuse his departing sister even one final wish?”
It was common enough for a princess leaving for foreign lands through marriage to take her personal attendants with her.
If she threatened to die again, it would become a headache; the Emperor would grant this much.
As the three women’s faces drained of color at this realization, Lumiere swept them with an impassive gaze.
Once she left the imperial palace, she would never see these women again.
She couldn’t remember their names, nor did she wish to.
Having quietly classified them as Attendants One, Two, and Three in her mind, she fixed her attention on the boldest of them—Attendant One.
“Will you come with me?”
“I…beg your pardon?”
“Seeing how brashly you carried yourself just now, I thought you’d adapt quickly to unfamiliar places.”
“…Your Highness, wouldn’t it serve you better to bring someone trustworthy to an unknown land?”
“Well, trustworthy or not, I’m a dead woman walking. A companion for the journey to the afterlife will do—it matters little who it is.”
“Your Highness, a dead woman? How can you speak so dismally!”
“But didn’t I say I’d be dead soon?”
“That is to say…!”
She surveyed the three women, now ashen with dread, and posed her question slowly.
“So, what will it be? Will you follow me?”
The first to surrender was Attendant One.
“Your Highness, please withdraw the order! Such a task seems far too great for me to undertake.”
“Then who will come with me?”
Would anyone truly volunteer to venture to such a frontier, where the threat of Monsters was a daily torment?
……
……
……
As expected.
All three fell silent with ugly grimaces, averting their eyes from her gaze.
“So this is the devotion of my attendants…”
Her voice trailed off, thick with disappointment, and the women dropped to their knees.
“Your Highness, we have been remiss in our duty until now. We shall serve you with all our sincerity henceforth. Please, forgive us.”
“Please, have mercy…!”
After years of being cast aside, and these creatures dared to expect advancement without lifting a finger?
“Don’t take credit for what is merely your duty. Show true sincerity instead.”
“Your Highness, what do you mean…?”
“Return everything you’ve stolen from my quarters. Every last thing.”
“What? We would never dare to take the Princess’s property for ourselves!”
“That’s right! Please, withdraw this suspicion!”
They lied without the slightest hesitation.
Why else would her quarters be so barren?
The budget allocated to her palace was already absurdly meager, but every valuable object had vanished—stolen by these very women.
It would be a shame to leave empty-handed, so she intended to make them disgorge everything they’d taken.
“I’ll take two of you. Which of you receives my mercy is up to your own efforts. Let’s see how hard you’ll work.”
She turned away decisively, brooking no objection.
Despair bloomed across the attendants’ faces.
***

A contingent of sturdy cavalry flanked a crude carriage as they entered the city.
Their ragged assortment of dress resembled that of wandering mercenaries, yet their disciplined movements suggested soldiers.
Creak-creak.
Moving slowly along the broad avenue, they drew to a halt before a comparatively large building.
A broad-shouldered blond man opened the carriage door.
“Your Highness, lodgings have been secured. Shall we see to your belongings first, then proceed to the wardrobe chambers?”
Brian van Walton.
A man who stood at Axid’s side on the battlefield and assisted with his duties in the castle.
He was among the North’s most capable figures—a knight commander who doubled as the Grand Duke’s aide.
“…I’m on my way to fetch the Grand Duchess. I should at least make an effort to look presentable.”
Axid rubbed the Cross Scar on his right temple.
His face was already harsh enough without meaning to be; if he arrived dressed carelessly, he would leave a poor impression on the Imperial Princess.
“That’s true, Your Grace. First impressions tend to linger, after all.”
Just then, the red-haired man interjected with a sharp, clipped tone.
“Sire, whether you dress up or not, we’re barbarians in the eyes of those Empire dogs. What makes you think the Princess is any different?”
“Kaiden, is that how you speak to your sovereign?”
“I’m not saying anything untrue, am I?”
Lumiere von Wijert.
The young Emperor’s half-sister and the shame of the Wijert Imperial Family.
She was infamous for being remarkably stupid and so hideously ugly it was difficult to look at.
As if that weren’t enough, her loud infatuation had caused quite the stir in high society.
Eventually, she had even attempted suicide over a man and become a laughingstock.
The very notion of betrothal to such a princess was an insult to the Grand Duchy, which had long defended against Monster invasions.
“In any case, I cannot accept this. To make the Princess herself the Grand Duchess? Is that even reasonable?”
Axid, who had been listening in silence, asked a question.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Well, that’s…!”
“Even the women of the Grand Duchy do not wish to become Grand Duchess. A princess would be more than I deserve.”
“…!”
From ancient times, the daughters of families with whom the Grand Ducal Family had discussed marriage either fled under cover of night or rejected the proposal through hasty marriages.
When they bore a child, all of them—as if bound by covenant—lost their lives within a year. What woman would wish to become Grand Duchess?
And so, across generations, the Grand Duke’s marriage had only been arranged when families desperate for power or drowning in debt sacrificed their daughters.
Axid’s own mother had married in such fashion and, true to the pattern, passed from the world after bearing him.
They spoke of heirs being murdered upon birth, or of the bloodline being Cursed for harboring a child of the Grand Ducal house.
No one wished to become the subject of such sinister rumors, half-rooted as they were in fact.
“Sire, a woman who believes mere superstition is hardly fit to be Grand Duchess in the first place. If we search carefully, there must surely be women who do not believe such nonsense….”
“Enough. I don’t wish to hear any more.”
Axid silenced him with an icy voice.
The dark tales circulating in society were far from baseless rumors.
His subordinates attributed the deaths of previous Grand Duchesses to different causes—illness, accident—each a tragic misfortune, but….
The deaths that befell Grand Duchesses after they had given birth to an heir.
That was an inevitable result that came from bearing a Cursed bloodline.
The shameless instinct that returned each year, something he could not control like a beast—that was the proof that the Curse was real.
“Then just tell the Princess to leave on her own.”
“Receiving the Grand Duchess is both a tradition of the Grand Ducal Family and my duty as a lord. You have no place in this matter.”
“She’s not even of the Grand Duchy, so there’s no need to go to such lengths, is there?”
As the two fell into argument once more, Axid released a chilling pressure.
“Silence.”
All around fell still.
A cold so severe the nape of the neck prickled.
Even knights who fought always close to death instinctively drew back from such an aura.
As Kaiden finally closed his mouth with a sullen expression at the weighty warning, Axid withdrew his gaze.
The Imperial court’s attitude, his subordinates’ resistance—
This was a troublesome marriage with far more complications than he had anticipated.
Yet perhaps because he had never faced marriage before in his life.
His chest stirred in a way he could not explain.
But by now, the Princess must be trembling in fear and despair.
….
He smiled bitterly and pushed down his uneasy feeling.
The seat of Grand Duchess had long stood empty.
As the absence of a Grand Duchess stretched longer, unsettling whispers spread through the North, and the nobles’ pressure grew more persistent with each passing year.
To silence their tongues, a marriage was necessary, even if only in form.
But the Princess would have no such worries.
He himself had no intention of continuing the line.
A princess in such pitiful circumstances, forced to use marriage as a means to escape the Imperial Palace.
If they merely coordinated the details of their married life, this marriage would be a “transaction” that could satisfy both parties.

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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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