The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 58

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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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Episode 58.

***

“Number Twelve’s signal has gone dark. ……He appears to be dead.”
A damp darkness clung to the back alley on the Outskirts of Capital.
In the deepest chamber of the Bellum Guild Hideout, in the Guild Master’s office where candlelight itself could not reach, a heavy silence had settled.
The Guild Master, seated behind his desk, remained motionless for a long time.
After a moment, he slowly opened his eyes.
The man making his report then spoke in a low voice.
“Did I not tell you? His temperament is hasty and his emotional control is immature—Number Twelve was never suited for this task.”
…………
The Guild Master did not answer. He merely tapped his fingertips lightly against the desk surface.
“Silienne should have been sent. As the superiors ordered.”
“Silienne cannot go.”
The Guild Master’s sharp voice cut the man’s words short. It was a resolute refusal, absolute and unyielding.
“But Guild Master—”
“Send Number Twenty instead.”
…………
“Through those we have placed in the Duchy, find out precisely how Number Twelve died.”
The Guild Master did not yield. His eyes, sunken and still under the lamplight, flickered with an odd gleam.
The man bit his lip and lowered his head.
“Yes, Guild Master.”
Number Seven, who left the office, closed the heavy door and stood still for a moment.
…………
The child sent to the Duchy this time—dead now—had been Number Twelve.
“Why do you stay under the Guild Master, Seven? If it were me, I’d go out and start my own guild. Your talent’s wasted here!”
The boy had been hot-tempered and shallow in patience, thoughtlessly loud regardless of time or place—yet not entirely unlikeable.
“Seven. If I make a new guild, take me with you. I think the Guild Master’s starting to hate me anyway?”
That laughing voice seemed to echo in his ears.
An inborn temperament was not something training could easily correct, and Number Seven had opposed the Guild Master’s decision to send Number Twelve on this mission.
But in the end, instead of Silienne—who had trained to play the false princess—it was Number Twelve who had departed for the Duchy.
Number Seven turned to look at the closed door.
‘Is that truly what this is, Guild Master.’
You, who treated us as mere tools and deemed names too precious, calling us only by numbers—could you actually harbor feelings for Silienne, one of those tools?
In truth, the name Silienne itself had been given to her by the Guild Master when he brought her in.
Silienne alone was a person to him.
Number Seven’s jaw clenched until his teeth ached as he walked down the dark corridor.
Just then, a slender figure emerged from the shadowed end of the passage, and their eyes met.
“……Silienne.”
“Number Seven.”
Her silver hair caught the candlelight and gleamed with an eerie luster.
Her clear, transparent blue eyes held a holiness wholly at odds with this dark, tainted world.
Yet within them lay a cold, hollow emptiness—the void of a doll from which all feeling had been stripped.
Silienne inclined her head slightly, then passed Number Seven and walked slowly toward the Guild Master’s office.
Number Seven called to her as she moved past.
“Have you heard about Number Twelve?”
Silienne’s footsteps stopped.
“Yes.”
She turned back.
“I heard he is dead.”
In Silienne’s reply, there was not the slightest tremor in her voice. It was calm and indifferent—the way one might speak of learning of a livestock’s death on another’s estate.
Watching her thus, Number Seven’s hands clenched into fists.
“It should have been you.”
“That was also what I wished. However.”
Silienne turned slowly to face Number Seven. Delicate silver brows shadowing her darkened face trembled almost imperceptibly.
“That was not a matter for me to decide. Was it?”
Her voice was as cold and parched as a winter frost.
“…….”
Number Seven fell silent, struggling for words, and Silienne’s blue eyes lowered gravely.
“You instructors were the ones who said not to harbor feeling in a tool.”
Her cold gaze swept across Number Seven’s reddened eyes without a trace of warmth.
“How contradictory.”
With that, Silienne turned without hesitation and walked into the Guild Master’s office.
As the door closed, her white silhouette vanished completely from Number Seven’s view.
A long exhale escaped Number Seven as he stared into the empty space where Silienne had stood.
A chill crept down his spine.
And in that moment, he understood.
Silienne was no longer a creature that instructors like himself could keep beneath their feet and control.

***

Several days had passed.
Varcan and I arrived in the Capital.
Tomorrow was the day of the Marriage Vow Ceremony.
Following proper protocol, we visited the Imperial Palace to pay our respects to the Emperor.
After the formal greetings were exchanged, the Emperor mentioned he had matters to discuss with Varcan alone and dismissed me.
A Dismissal.
‘Better this way. Anything’s better than enduring his face for long.’
I set out for the Princess Palace to meet Eleanor, accompanied by my newly assigned escort knight.
We were making our way down an endless, pristine white corridor when I turned a corner and my breath caught.
‘Ah, ……damn.’
I cursed silently and repeatedly to myself.
From the opposite corridor, a man with dazzling golden hair was walking toward me, and our eyes met directly.
It was Crown Prince Cain.
Upon seeing me, he stopped in his tracks.
Then he regarded me quietly, his smile tinged with something sorrow-laden and weary.
‘Please, just stop…….’
I felt a quiet exhaustion settle over me and offered a light nod of acknowledgment.
Cain spoke first.
“I heard the Marriage Vow Ceremony is to take place tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“……I suppose I ought to offer my congratulations.”
Cain’s voice carried an edge of bitterness.
In contrast, I smiled brightly and openly at him.
I wanted to appear as the happiest bride-to-be in the world.
“But of course.”
Cain’s smile grew even fainter.
After a moment’s hesitation, he looked at me directly and spoke.
“I am concerned about you, Princess.”
“…….”
“That you should endure lonely days in a place filled with malice.”
“…….”
Cain’s gaze and tone momentarily felt genuinely anxious for my wellbeing.
“It will be difficult for you in such a place where no one can appreciate your true worth.”
“…….”
Cain’s eyes grew sorrowful and dim.
“Princess Evelina. The offer I made before remains valid. Before it is too late, take my hand—”
“That concern is not yours to bear, Your Highness.”
I cut off Cain’s words and offered him a radiant smile.
“I shall endure my own loneliness.”
“…….”
“So I think it would be better if Your Highness first attended to his own.”
A flicker of confusion crossed Cain’s eyes.
“I have never considered myself lonely, Princess.”
“The most dangerous moment is when you finally become aware of a loneliness you never recognized before. Do visit your siblings more often—talk with them, spend time together.”
I couldn’t fathom why he was coming to me with all those brothers and sisters at hand.
“And do see Princess Eleanor often as well. With her, even the Crown Prince would be warmly welcomed.”
“……Your Highness. It’s not that I’m lonely—.”
“Of course not, I’m sure.”
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
How had that righteous Cain, who knew nothing but his heroine, become so stubbornly immovable?
‘He hasn’t met Floria yet, that’s all.’
Without encountering true love, he poured all his devotion into the empire instead—and perhaps that had bent him just slightly out of shape.
I looked at Cain with a pitying gaze and spoke.
“It will come soon.”
Cain furrowed his brow. “What will?”
“What will?”
“True love—the kind that will turn the Crown Prince’s entire life upside down.”
I smiled faintly and added, “And then you’ll find all those things you’ve said to me terribly embarrassing.”
And then you’ll find all those things you’ve said to me terribly embarrassing.”
Cain did not answer.
I quickly bowed my head.
“So I’ll take my leave now.”
“Your Highness.”
“The Crown Princess is waiting for me.”
I added as I hurried past him, “You’ll actually thank me for it later!”
You’ll actually thank me for it later!”
And I meant it sincerely.
After all, I was saving him from one more embarrassing chapter in his history.

***

True love……?
Cain gazed quietly after the princess’s slender retreating figure for a long while.
‘Does the princess truly understand what love is, speaking such words?’
A quiet displeasure rippled through his chest.
To Cain, love was sacrifice.
To willingly offer one’s back to those who had lost their legs.
To become a guide for those who had lost their sight.
To bear someone else’s lack, to fill that emptiness with one’s own body.
That was love.
That was duty.
Not some fleeting romantic sentiment that fades with time.
‘I thought you were like me.’
That night in the banquet hall, Cain had seen her.
A woman who recorded the names of the fallen and understood the suffering of their families.
A slender back that did not bend even before the Emperor.
Though people called her a mad princess, Cain’s eyes had seen otherwise.
That her words were no delirious ravings.
She understood duty.
She was a person of the same resolve as himself.
He had believed this.
Still did.
Still believed it now.
Such conviction was largely something one was born with.
It did not fade with the passage of time.
Though it might be tainted, though it might bend.
‘Does she distance herself because the wedding will succeed tomorrow?’
Even as his proposals were rebuffed one after another, Cain felt no displeasure.
Rather, he was pleased.
For that honest refusal itself proved her unbending, noble resolve.
That uprightness—that very conviction—reaffirmed that she possessed the capacity to discuss duty alongside him, and his heart thrilled at it.
“My son, do not grieve for the branch cut away for the sake of a single bloom.”
The branch does not vanish; it is only reborn anew, together with that lush and beautiful flower it nourished.
Cain held the Emperor’s counsel close in his heart.
‘Not vanishing, but being reborn anew.’
Only then did Cain slowly turn his head and begin to walk.
His black shadow stretched long across the Imperial Palace corridor before dissolving entirely into the darkness.

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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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