The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Gingerbread House - Chapter 80

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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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The Villainess Princess Wants to Live in a Pastry Shop
Chapter 80

“You can ride a horse well enough to take a leisurely walk through the city…… You’re skilled with horses?”
“If a vice-commander falls off a horse, he can’t lead soldiers either. ……Have you ever ridden before?”
“No. Actually, I’d never even seen a horse until I came to Jedo. Can I touch it?”
Asha asked in a slightly nervous voice. Kalno, who had been gazing down at her, suddenly posed a question of his own.
“Are you cold?”
Asha clapped her hands together lightly and spoke with a dawning expression.
“Now I understand just how strong Kalno is.”
“What?”
“If you can just blurt out whatever you want to say like this and no one’s hit you yet, it means Kalno is really, truly strong.”
“…….”
“Isn’t it?”
Kalno wore a flustered expression as he merely smoothed the ends of his bangs, then drew one sharp breath and gently averted his gaze from Asha.
“If you’re not cold…… if it wouldn’t displease you, I was meaning to suggest that you ride a horse back to the Imperial Palace rather than travel by carriage, Your Highness.”
Asha had been silently delighted at having succeeded in deflating Kalno, but that remark forced an awkward expression onto her face.
“Well, um. Perhaps…… perhaps I’m a little warm?”
At Asha’s clumsy reply, Kalno finally met her eyes and let out a soft laugh.
After the Imperial Heir said she would step away for a moment and left, Kalno soon knocked on the carriage door and requested her outer coat. Lis was flustered but managed to hand over Asha’s overgarment without excessive surprise. The Knights, however, could not do the same.
The Imperial Heir intended to ride on horseback, and there was no way the Knights could travel by carriage. So even though the Imperial Heir discouraged them, they followed along anyway—and what they witnessed was this:
“Step on my hand and climb up.”
“But I’ve been wandering through the forest and got dirt all over my shoe soles?”
“Didn’t you attend the Duchess’s tea party? What on earth were you doing wandering through the forest?”
“Natalya said she’d show me the cabin…….”
“Natalya? Ah, Natalya Bagration. Never mind—step on my hand and climb up.”
The Young Princess placed her foot in Kalno’s hand and carefully hoisted herself onto the horse. Her soles were indeed caked with dirt, but Kalno seemed entirely unbothered.
With his clean hands gripping the reins, Kalno vaulted onto the horse in one fluid motion, then gathered the Young Princess into his arms. As she was distracted by the horse, he drew out a handkerchief, wiped the dirt from her hands, and discarded it.
“Hold the reins and lean your body back.”
“What? There’s Kar behind me.”
“Yes. I mean for you to lean back against me, Your Highness.”
“That’s what I just said, Kalno.”
Kalno flicked the Young Princess’s ribbon teasingly, then used his fingertip to gently push her forehead, drawing her back into his arms. The horse began walking at an even pace, neither fast nor slow, and the Young Princess, delighted at riding for the first time, kept her eyes wide open as she looked around eagerly.
Not far behind, Anne, who was riding to follow, murmured to herself:
“I’m not sure what I’m looking at.”
“…….”
Bedelnik had no response to Anne’s words.
“Something feels strange. Kalno Neuschtettor almost looks like he’s just fifteen years old.”
“……Indeed…….”
The war had been long, and the Knight Order, whose duty was to guard the Imperial Palace and the Imperial Household, had even been dispatched to the North for brief campaigns. Anne and Bedelnik were among those who had gone to the North and returned.
There, Kalno Neuschtettor had been like a god of war. No—he had been the god of darkness and night and hell and silence and death. They could never have imagined seeing such a man cradling a girl younger than himself in his arms, fretting anxiously that she might be frightened.
“I was genuinely curious. When the Emperor ordered the Imperial Heir to bring a Knight, and she brought that Kalno Neuschtettor instead—I wondered if that was actually true.”
“Ha ha.”
“What kind of thing is that to say? I half-thought someone had found a junior reporter’s notebook from the Weekly Vicegda.”
The Weekly Vicegda was a gossip magazine that imitated Jedo’s most prestigious publication, the Monthly Vicegda, and had earned notoriety for indiscriminately publishing outlandish rumors about celebrities.
“Now this will truly end up in the Weekly Vicegda, won’t it?”
“Indeed…….”

* * *

“Why did you go to the tea party anyway? You said you didn’t like those things.”
“I never told Kalno I didn’t like them.”
“You told Alexei.”
“……I don’t dislike them anymore.”
So saying, Asha felt the crisp but pleasant spring breeze. But not long after beginning to enjoy the cool wind, Kalno pulled the hood attached to Asha’s coat up over her head.
“Kalno, was this why you recommended a coat with a hood from the start? Did you plan all along for us to ride horses together?”
“Well, so was the tea party fun?”
“Yes. I made friends with Natalya, and made peace with Dmitri.”
“Dmitri the Imperial Heir? You two were fighting?”
“No. I just beat him senseless one-sidedly.”
…….
“But he got over it when I gave him something delicious. He said next time he’ll invite me to a tea party he’s hosting with Ilya.”
Asha spoke with a bright smile, even elaborating on the part Dmitri hadn’t confirmed. Kalno chuckled softly at the name Ilya and tilted his head slightly.
“Hmm. Are you planning to beat up Marquis Shapirokin this time?”
He had already heard from Alexei about Zoya, the opera singer who had tried to cause trouble in front of the shop.
“Uncle may have been troublesome, but I wouldn’t do something like that.”
Asha said it archly, but she was smiling.
“Even so, wouldn’t your uncle be inclined to comfort his niece?”
“What if he isn’t inclined?”
“The rule is that Grandfather disciplines any uncle who makes his niece cry.”
“That’s impressive.”
Asha leaned her back against Kalno’s chest and looked up at him with a sidelong glance. His jawline grazed her line of sight.
“The Spirit… how is it? Are you all right? Have you gotten used to it?”
Kalno tilted his head at Asha’s quiet question.
“Quite a bit. That’s how I was able to understand something.”
“What?”
“That yellow chick—it’s your Spirit.”
Asha nearly choked. Kalno continued speaking with unflappable calm.
“Your Spirit told mine about you as well, didn’t it?”
…!
“Your Spirit isn’t just the Spirit of some small bird, is it?”
…!

While Fifi rambled, Asha’s body trembled noticeably.
“K-Kalno. Let’s just… stay calm.”
“I am calm.”
“About your Spirit, I…”
What could she possibly say to navigate through this crisis? But Asha’s urgent deliberation didn’t last long.
From behind came a soft aura, like cotton candy dissolving—a pale apricot glow. Those particles without a single sharp edge wrapped around her gently.
“Why didn’t you reveal your Spirit to anyone? Were you afraid that if it became known, it would threaten Alexei’s position?”
At Kalno’s successive, blunt words, Asha’s heart sank—yet she quickly regained her composure. Though Kalno’s tone was one of quiet interrogation, what flowed from him carried no threat.
Amethyst-hued currents of aura seeping through the warm apricot particles. Kalno had been someone who could barely perceive even the stirrings of emotion at first, but now…
“…To be precise, I was worried you’d hate me because of it.”
“Why would I.”
“From the moment we first met, who was glaring at me like that? You hurt me back then.”
…….
Kalno’s aura surged again. Asha brushed her fingertips through the particles that drifted gently around her—beautiful amethyst flecks scattering like crushed gems carried on the wind.
“…Kalno, since I’m keeping your Spirit a secret, you keep mine secret too.”
“Hmm… so we trade secrets, one for one?”
“Exactly!”
Asha lifted her head with determination. Kalno, gazing down at her, exhaled softly.
“Since it’s the Imperial Heir’s command, I have no choice. I can only obey.”
“No, why call it a command? It’s more like… a warm agreement between us.”
Asha bickered back and forth with Kalno, and when a natural silence had settled between them, she tapped the hand he was using to hold the reins.
“Kalno, want me to tell you another secret?”
“…Do as you like.”
“Actually, since I came to the Imperial Palace, I’ve only done what I wanted, you know? I even pestered Grandfather—His Majesty—to say I didn’t want to study with Alexei. But there’s exactly one thing I was forced to do.”
“…What was that?”
“Going out to see your Triumphal Procession~!”
Asha burst into laughter at her own words.
…….
“Wow, I really didn’t want to go back then. I only went because of Alexei. Wait, I was wrong. There wasn’t just one thing I was forced to do—there were two.”
“Surely you don’t mean the vic…”
“Going to your victory celebration~!”
Asha broke into an uncontrollable cascade of laughter, heedless of Kalno’s rumbling protest from above her head. And after laughing for quite some time, with her giggles finally subsiding, she spoke in a voice barely free of amusement.
“Aside from those two, there’s nothing I was forced to do. Nothing I wanted to do but held back either.”
“Don’t go reading people’s hearts on a whim.”
“Kalno’s just fretting over nothing.”
The moment Kalno pressed Asha about her secret, the wisp of pale amethyst aura that had mingled with his own revealed itself—worry and concern, nothing more.
The anxiety that she’d decided to hide her Spirit and its power from him, and was only pretending to busy herself with something pointless like baking Pastries to distract herself. The worry that she was forcing herself to do something she didn’t want to do…….
“Since I told you one more secret, I want you to do me a favor too.”
“Sigh. What favor now?”
“I managed to collect some incredibly sweet fruit from the Marquess Tataritsa’s garden the other day. It’s called Shaslling. I want to make spirits from it.”
“I don’t know anything about spirits-making recipes.”
“You fool. I mean put it in an Oak Barrel and ask you to speed up time for me. Then I could make thirty-year-old fruit spirits in just one night, right?”
“…….”
“I’d use it in pastry-making and the flavor would be incredible……. Kalno? Why do you keep sighing over my head like that?”
“…….”
“Kalno?”
“…….”

* * *

Maxim dragged his timid nephew Ilya to a corner of the Garden and watched Dmitri, who seemed to be hatching some scheme, with clouded eyes. Something had clearly happened at the tea party he’d reluctantly sent the boy to at the Marquess Tataritsa’s residence last time.
Maxim turned his gaze from his son and nephew and looked back at his brother Valery, who sat across from him.
“My son attended the Marquess Tataritsa’s tea party this time and seemed to have enjoyed himself so much that he’s asking to play with Ilya.”

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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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