The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Gingerbread House - Chapter 10

“My baking pastries and feeding them to people around me is the great purpose?”

“But why does it have to be that?”
The small yellow chick worked its beak in a peculiar way, as if it wanted to say something but someone were pressing down on its beak to keep it from speaking.

“So other people can talk to their Spirits too?”

“……So you want to help them all get along…… something like that?”
Asha looked at Pibi with a skeptical expression. Pibi squawked indignantly.

“Why can’t you just speak clearly?”

“For me?”

“That’s your third rule? Fine, I can do that.”
The Emperor said he’d give her something, so a gift from the Emperor wouldn’t be worthless.
‘At least it should be enough to buy a birdcage or two.’
The thought warmed her heart. Since her Spirit was known throughout the Imperial Palace as a chick Spirit, there was no reason for her to stay. She’d just spend a few days waiting for the Emperor’s gift, then happily return home as if she’d been dismissed.
‘I’ll grab some butter and sugar on the way out. A few sacks of flour too.’
But Asha’s dreams, filled with anticipation and hope for the days ahead, were neatly dismantled not long after. Just as spring comes without a trace of winter snow remaining.

* * *

When the morning sun rose lazily over the horizon, the door swung wide open and Lis appeared. Her face was almost trembling with joy and delight.
‘Ah…….’
The moment she saw that face, Asha thought she must have developed a superpower. The ability to sense that her plans had fallen apart just by looking at someone’s expression.
“Your Highness! Princess Asha!”
‘Don’t tell me……’
“His Majesty the Emperor…….”
‘There’s no way that’s possible, right?’
“Now…….”
‘Tell them I’m going home now! Tell them to let me go home! Home!’
“His Majesty has instructed you to remain at the Imperial Palace and study until you reach Adulthood. You’ll be moving to the chamber adjacent to the Imperial Prince’s quarters starting today!”
Despair and frustration wrapped around Asha in a suffocating embrace. She sagged into Lis’s arms like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her expression vacant.
‘Can’t fate—no, can’t the original story be changed?’
“My……my room? Why, why?”
“Well, naturally it’s because His Majesty holds you in such high regard.”
Around Lis, bright green and pink particles burst forth like fireworks. The sight made her dizzy.
Lis set her down and immediately dressed her in fresh clothes, arranged her hair, hurried through breakfast, then dashed off to prepare her new chamber.
Left behind, Asha could only gape in bewilderment.
‘Really? Truly?’
And right next to the Imperial Prince Alexei’s quarters, no less?
‘At least I won’t have to worry about cooling in the summer.’
There’d be a chilling wind blowing from the adjacent room—that glacial coldness Alexei radiated whenever he looked at her.
The servants came to collect Asha’s meager belongings as the other chamber neared completion. Lis returned to help carry them, her face radiant as a newly bloomed flower. Though they hadn’t been together long, Asha had never seen her so joyful.
“The Imperial Prince personally prepared the room for you!”
Those words didn’t reach her heart. In the Imperial Palace, Alexei was regarded as a living saint and angel. Everyone seemed to believe he would naturally welcome even a rival to the throne with grace.
Asha watched her emptying chamber, but unable to bear the frustration any longer, she slipped outside. Lis was occupied with the new room, and the remaining servants didn’t stop her.
‘Study at the Imperial Palace until Adulthood? What if I die before then……. No, wait. Nothing’s gone wrong yet, has it? Right? Nothing’s…… actually…… gone wrong, has it? No one hates me either. At least for now…… at least for now…….’
She had reached this thought when——
“Why? Why! Why not me instead of this worthless beast and its contracted wretch!”
Her cousins, unable to accept that she alone had been permitted to remain at the Imperial Palace, were gathered right before her eyes. Lost in confusion, she’d wandered without direction until she found herself before the palace where her other cousins lodged.
Several carriages stood in the courtyard ahead—a chaos of departure. Her cousins’ faces were smeared with grievance, malice, fury, frustration, despair. A dark, undulating wave of emotion reached her even from this distance. It was Dmitri, son of Prince Maxim, who called her out loudly.
“Look again! Tell our grandmother, tell her again! My spirit, the Spirit of Rain, is of a far different rank than such a common flying beast——”
Just then, a small chick-shaped button on her coat trembled. A yellow bird appeared unseen by others and nuzzled beneath Asha’s chin.
“No, Pibi. I’m fine. I don’t care about that sort of——”

Pibi chirped insistently.
Asha took a sharp breath, then pried Pibi away from her collarbone and pressed the spirit firmly back into the button. Pibi reluctantly squeezed inside.
“Look, Pibi. For ordinary humans, if you do that, they’ll never speak again.”

Asha couldn’t bring herself to respond, only managing to open and close her mouth soundlessly. Part of her understood the frustration of an adolescent denied what they most wanted. And only recently, at the Spirit Ceremony, had she learned that Dmitri’s father was Maxim, who had often aided Yuri.
Besides, her own mind was an adult’s. She couldn’t justify striking a child’s carotid artery——
“How long I prepared for this day! How dare ——! How could you cloud His Majesty’s judgment!”
To be gracious……
It seemed Dmitri’s outburst until now hadn’t been his full strength. The half-understood words were likely crude language she’d never been taught.
His eyes flashed crimson as he shoved aside the attendants and lunged at her. Asha was shoved backward; his hand grazed her cheek. He nearly landed the blow, but a servant who’d managed to catch up blocked it just in time.
What followed was chaos incarnate. Panicked guards and attendants tangled with one another, some cousins burst into tears, dust clouds rose thick, screams and shouts echoed everywhere. When the brawl ended, her cousins looked wretched. Those who hadn’t tumbled about were simply weeping.

Ignoring Pibi’s cry from within the button, Asha reached into the small pocket sewn inside her skirts.
“Forgetting the dignity of the imperial family, contracting with such a ——thing, and yet——”
Half of what spilled from Dmitri’s mouth as he was held by the servants were words she was hearing for the first time in her life. As he drew breath, as if to spit, Asha hesitated no longer and shoved what she’d been holding directly into his mouth.
Since the servants had Dmitri held with his body bent slightly forward, she needed only to stand on her toes.
“Glark!”
“Your Highness?!”
“Your Highness!”
Everyone made sounds that were neither screams nor breaths. Asha kept her hand there until Dmitri swallowed.
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
Only after Dmitri gulped did Asha clap her hands together to brush away the crumbs that clung to them. Dark brown crumbs, nearly black—pieces of the Brownie she’d made.
“Was it good?”
“What, what did you feed me!”
Dmitri tried to spit out what was in his mouth, but it was already swallowed, so nothing came out. Asha watched him gag and merely shrugged.
“A confection I made.”
“This…… this garbage——”
“His Majesty called me in specially to praise how delicious it was. He said he’d send down a reward in a few days.”
To be precise, the reward was for a different confection.
“…….”
And then Dmitri fell suddenly silent, as though someone had sealed his lips with wax. Asha rubbed the raw scrape on her cheek against her shoulder, a flicker of confusion crossing her face.

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