The Poisonous Princess Who Successfully Infiltrated the Enemy as an Employee - Chapter 7

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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 7.

***

The Grand Duke’s Office, which I was entering for the first time, was the Northern Territory itself.
Cold, rigid, and austere.
The blood-red wooden bookshelves lining the walls, the ash-grey carpet, the desk piled high with documents, and a fireplace crackling with flames.
Aside from the guest sofa where I now sat and the table before me, there was scarcely any other furniture to speak of.
I had put back on the dress I’d worn when I first arrived at the Grand Duke’s Residence. After growing accustomed to the comfort of a maid’s uniform, the constraints were decidedly unbearable.
And opposite me.
Sat the Grand Duke Barkan Escar, a man rarer to behold than any luxury.
‘At last I see your face, Grand Duke.’
My first impression of him—this man who filled my entire field of vision—seemed to be the very embodiment of the Northern winter’s harshest cruelty, carefully sculpted into form.
Hair black as pitch, beneath which his eyes were long and cold. And above all, those dark pupils that seemed to pierce right through me.
The mere glint of his gaze was sufficiently ominous and oppressive to make anyone quail.
He was not even the protagonist of the original work—merely a secondary male lead—yet his presence was overwhelming, and what was more:
‘Damnably handsome.’
Everything about him—his features, his build, and that dangerous aura he exuded.
Unfortunately, they aligned far too well with my taste.
Of course, the aide standing behind the Grand Duke and the Knight Order commander were hardly lacking in appearance either.
‘But they’re not my type.’
And yet.
I met Barkan’s gaze directly, tilting my head with puzzlement.
‘Those eyes… I feel like I’ve seen them before—.’
Just as that strange sensation was washing over me.
Barkan, who had been studying me intently for some time, abruptly opened his mouth.
“It seems the work of a maid suits your constitution quite well, Princess.”
At those words, my eyebrow twitched.
His first greeting was whether I enjoyed the maid’s work?
‘You’re the one who ordered it.’
Strictly speaking, it was this Grand Duke who had commanded me to work as a maid. I’d simply done as instructed, so why was he looking at me with that expression?
Though internally baffled, I instead offered a bright, innocent smile and replied.
“Yes, it’s all thanks to the Grand Duke’s thoughtful consideration. Since the Grand Duke’s Residence is such an old mansion, there was quite a bit of accumulated grime, you know? As this is the home where I’ll be living from now on, I cleaned it away with a joyful heart.”
“…….”
How’s that? Hehe. At my calm, brazen retort, the Grand Duke’s smooth brow flinched ever so slightly.
He remained silent for a moment, then crossed his arms over his muscular chest and spoke again.
“I’ve heard the story. There was an incident in the Bustling Market District of the Grand Duke’s territory just now.”
I answered quickly.
“It wasn’t an incident—it was more like an act of nature.”
“Only the Princess would call it that. It was a failure and dereliction of duty on the part of the knights who were supposed to protect you.”
“My goodness.”
I pressed both hands to my lips and lowered the corners of my eyes.
“How bleak.”
“…….”
At my words, the Grand Duke’s eyes narrowed. The Knight Order commander and aide standing behind him widened theirs.
“You truly have not an iota of flexibility, do you?”
“……Flexibility.”
Barkan rolled the word on the tip of his tongue, then let out a cold scoff.
“It seems you don’t grasp how hollow an excuse flexibility truly is. On a battlefield where a single small mistake leads directly to death, people lose their lives to such nonsense all the time.”
I raised my shoulders slightly and spoke.
“But this isn’t a battlefield.”
“Is there a separate battlefield? Wherever people live and die, that place is a battlefield, Princess.”
“…….”
Wow.
I felt genuinely impressed.
That iron wall—as if nothing could pierce it.
‘This is hopeless. We’re speaking completely different languages.’
So, he’s going to discipline the knights, then? Returning after just a week to punish the very knights who protected me?!
I narrowed my eyes sharply as I spoke.
“Life must be terribly hard on you. You have no friends, do you?”
……
At that, Barkan Escar’s gaze grew even colder.
“That is hardly befitting language for a princess.”
I answered with a grumble.
“There’s no law dictating how a princess should speak, is there?”
I leaned back comfortably against the sofa’s armrest and shrugged, whereupon Barkan Escar’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“I begin to understand why the rumors about you have spread in such a manner.”
“Such a manner?”
I tilted my head, asking back.
“What manner exactly?”
Barkan Escar fell silent for a moment, studying me intently.
“I suspect you know well enough.”
At his loaded gaze, I blinked rapidly before clapping my hands together with a sudden, “Ah!”
“That I’m mad?”
The Knight Order commander standing behind him cleared his throat awkwardly, while the advisor turned his head away, adjusting the bridge of his glasses.
Barkan Escar pressed his lips firmly shut before opening them a beat too late.
“……I would not have phrased it quite so bluntly.”
“Of course, of course. Do go on maintaining your dignity and living in such refined elegance, Your Grace. I’ll keep living as I please, just as I have been.”
……
In that instant, the air in the office froze solid.
Whether or not he approved.
I rose from my seat with a triumphant smile, gathering up the cumbersome folds of my dress that billowed about me.
“And I’ll say it once more — if those knights who protected me are punished, I will find a way to receive the very same penalty myself.”
At my ominous threat, Barkan Escar’s eyebrows rose very slowly indeed.
“Do as you wish.”
At his curt reply, I let out a short, derisive laugh. “Hmph.”
‘You think I can’t do it if you tell me to?’
I tilted my chin up slightly and turned my back to the Grand Duke as I spoke.
“Remember those words.”

***

Thud—. The princess left and the door closed, leaving a brief silence settling over the office.
As Barkan Escar, reclining against the sofa, ran a dry hand over his face and exhaled heavily, his advisor Roan approached and asked.
“Are you unwell, Your Grace?”
“……Unwell?”
Yes, perhaps this feeling was exactly that discomfort.
Barkan Escar stared into empty space and let out a short utterance.
“She’s a strange woman.”
There had been something genuinely surprising about the first time he saw the princess.
That brilliant platinum hair and finely-drawn features with sharp, defined lines. A clarity of color that seemed entirely out of place in this barren Northern Territory — foreign, almost jarring in its vividness.
For a princess who had endured the ravages of war and been dragged here as a hostage, her eyes held far too much vitality.
They had said the war’s shock had caused her to lose her mind.
Yet when he actually spoke with her, it didn’t seem as though she’d lost it at all.
But if he were asked whether that was normal, the answer would be a definitive no.
‘If it’s not normal, then she must be mad.’
There was something deeply discordant about her.
Was she feigning madness, or truly mad, or perhaps mad but with moments when her sanity would suddenly return?
She was a woman utterly impossible to pin down.
Barkan Escar narrowed his brow and asked Roan.
“So. The princess who disappeared in the Bustling Market District came back with what, exactly?”
“Yes, Your Grace. According to reports, she returned carefully cradling several pouches with something tucked inside them.”
“What were the contents?”
“That is……”
For some reason, Roan hesitated.
“Why? Were they dangerous items?”
“No, sir. ……We still do not know ourselves.”
“What?”
Barkan looked at Roan. Roan continued, his expression deeply uncomfortable.
“When the escort knights tried to approach and verify the contents, Her Highness the Princess suddenly bared her white teeth and… woof, woof, …woof-woof.”
Barkan furrowed his brow.
“Woof?”
Roan answered, his face twisted with shame.
“Woof-woof-woof-woof! …Making barking sounds like that, she said if even one step more came closer, she would tear out their throats right then and there, and so… unable to overcome her by force, they gave up verifying the contents.”
……
The Office fell silent once more.
Barkan recalled the Princess who had sat directly across from him moments before, speaking in precise, measured tones.
He felt an overwhelming shame at himself for having been confused, for wondering whether that Princess was perhaps only pretending to be mad.
‘She was definitely mad.’
The conclusion was clear-cut.
Yes, he had found it strange.
A woman who did not avoid his gaze, but rather met it head-on with such confidence, as though she meant to pierce through it.
Others would be seized with fear merely at the brush of his stare, yet that Princess had returned it without hesitation.
Those blue eyes—clear as a winter lake one moment, deep as an unblemished afternoon sky the next—had left a striking impression.
Once he understood that such boldness came not from sanity but from madness, it made a certain kind of sense.
Now that he thought of it, those eyes.
‘I feel as though I’ve seen them somewhere before…’
Where had he seen them?
Just then, Deros, the Knight Order commander, spoke.
“Then, what shall we do about disciplining the knights who were assigned to protect Her Highness the Princess? Given how fiercely she resisted……”
At Deros’s question, Barkan rested his chin on his hand and fell into thought for a moment.
The responsibility for losing sight of the one they were meant to protect in the heart of the Bustling Market District was clear.
It was the rule of the Northern Territory: if a mistake was made, punishment must follow.
Yet now that the Princess had stepped forward to shield the knights, it was equally awkward to simply pretend not to know.
After a brief pause, Barkan’s lips parted slowly.
“…Discipline will be carried out as scheduled. However—.”

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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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