The Maid of the Cursed Princess

“Arachne… you say?”

Matthieu couldn’t help but lament at the Crown Prince’s words.

“You sent such a dangerous person to the Princess? How could you…”

Matthieu had also heard rumors about Arachne, for the incident of Prime Minister Colbert’s beloved daughter being kidnapped occurred during the current King’s coronation period when he served as chamberlain.

From Colbert’s public display of anguish to secretly sending someone to retrieve his daughter while inflicting great humiliation upon his political rival – the figure who came to be known as Arachne played a crucial role in that entire process, though Matthieu didn’t entirely believe the increasingly outrageous rumors.

However, he thought there must be some reason behind such uncanny rumors spreading in the first place, as the saying goes – where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

“She is not so dangerous, merely a common slum dweller surviving day-to-day on alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.”

“Which is precisely why she must not be allowed to attend the Princess…”

Whether addicted to alcohol or gambling, such wretches are equally unfit for close company.

Let alone someone addicted to both vices – where could one find a more hopeless case?

“Had I known her true nature from the start, I would never have permitted her to attend the Princess.”

“Which is why I kept it secret, lest you risk your life to stop it.”

Anticipating Matthieu’s objections, the Crown Prince had secretly hired Arachne, utilizing the false identity of Count Villefort created to conceal the royal family’s intentions.

“Is she truly so valuable? Do you truly believe she can properly attend the Princess?”

The aged chamberlain couldn’t hide his unease. How could he expect such loyalty and ability from someone of such poor quality as to be addicted to alcohol and gambling?

“She will get it done. Undoubtedly.”

Dismissing Matthieu’s concerns, the Crown Prince affirmed it.

“For when it comes to loyalty to her master, there is none in this nation who can match that spider.”

A fanatical, borderline suicidal level of loyalty that would unhesitatingly follow if her master ordered her to slit her own throat.

As long as that loyalty was directed toward the Princess, the Princess’s life wouldn’t be in danger.

“So you can set your mind at ease. Sibylla will not die.”

“Chamberlain. Your Highness. Something has arrived from the High Tower.”

Just as Matthieu was about to ask how the Crown Prince could be so certain, a maid entered carrying a wooden box.

“What is that, Miss Corde?”

“I… I’m not sure. The coachman who brought it strictly instructed me not to open it, to deliver it directly to the chamberlain…”

As if entranced, the maid didn’t dare defy the coachman’s stern warnings, though she was curious about the box’s contents. But it had come from that accursed High Tower, so she didn’t wish to risk opening it carelessly.

“I see. You may leave.”

After dismissing the maid, Matthieu set the wooden box she had brought on the table for the Crown Prince to examine the contents.

“…”

Silence hung between the Crown Prince and chamberlain.

Without a word, they could surmise what was inside that box.

“…What a foul stench.”

“A stench we are quite familiar with, having experienced all manner of palace intrigues and battlefields.”

The putrid reek of decaying corpses.

“‘The Princess is safe. From Dorothy Gale’…”

The note on the lid, that stench, and the box’s size easily large enough to contain a human head.

Was there any doubt left as to its contents?

“Did I not say Sibylla wouldn’t die?”

The corners of the Crown Prince’s mouth, utterly unmoved until entering the chamberlain’s office, curved into a faint smile.

* * *

It didn’t take long to dispose of the corpses, or rather unidentifiable chunks of flesh, strewn across the courtyard.

Since they were meant to be buried in the ground from the start, all Dorothy had to do was shovel them up, flesh and soil together, and rebury them.

Finely minced beyond recognition into a meat paste of bone, tendon, and flesh, they were easy to scoop up. The single remaining torso minus a head was a bit unsightly, but no different from the other corpses and easy enough to render similarly.

The only issue was the absurdly small quantity being insufficient to spread across the entire courtyard, but Dorothy had not intended to plant flowers over the whole area from the start. She could start by cultivating flowers around the tower perimeter first, then gradually expand outward.

“It really won’t come off…”

The problem was the blood left behind by the assassin who had tried to kill the Princess.

In her excitement over receiving the Princess’s permission, Dorothy had unconsciously used excessive force, cleanly severing his head.

“I should have restrained myself…”

If she had simply strangled him or snapped his neck, he would have died all the same without this messy aftermath, but she had needlessly made cleanup difficult for herself.

Lamenting her past self’s mistake, Dorothy wiped the blood-stained stairs.

“How much more is left…?”

Simply wiping the blood from the study would not be the end of it, as she had dragged the corpse along, leaving a trail of blood on the stairs as well.

Moreover, the study was on the fourth floor, meaning the gory path extended from the fourth floor all the way down to the first.

In other words, she had to clean that entire lengthy stretch.

“Haah…”

Bloodstains didn’t come off easily – she had to scrub vigorously just for a faint chance of erasing each mark as she climbed up and down the tower, such a troublesome task.

But who was there to blame but herself, as it was all her own doing?

“It might have been easier if I’d arrived as a Royal Guard instead of a maid… no, nevermind.”

Then instead of a maid’s uniform, she would be wearing a stifling formal uniform just looking at it.

Marveling at her own limited experience in various ways, the failure of a maid busied herself cleaning up the aftermath of her own actions once more today.

“…Ah, right, the Princess needs her breakfast.”

Simultaneously realizing she had committed the grave error of making the Princess skip yet another meal.

* * *

“…”

While Dorothy was outside scrubbing away her past mistakes, the Princess remained in her bedchamber, gazing out the window.

It wasn’t hunger pains that had woken her from slumber, for she hadn’t slept a wink in the first place.

How could she sleep after witnessing someone’s head cleanly sliced off, spraying blood before her very eyes?

Moreover, the Princess had never seen such a horrific sight in her life. Even professional executioners who routinely carried out executions would lament the suffering each time, so how much more for the Princess unaccustomed to such brutality?

-…He’s dead, right?

It was her first time witnessing death.

Even if the one who perished was a nameless assassin attempting to take her life, the fact remained that he had died, suffering an exceedingly cruel demise no less.

The Princess dwelled on that assassin’s death, on the very moment he died.

His rolling eyes, mouth agape struggling for breath with tongue lolling out, face drenched in tears, mucus, and saliva – every bodily fluid.

The Princess witnessed the entire process of a human being’s passage into death and the myriad emotions experienced therein.

Despite being the assassin sent to kill her, by the end the Princess even felt pity as he died a wretched death engulfed in agony and terror.

And the one who had delivered such an agonizing demise to that assassin was the Princess’s sole maid, Dorothy Gale.

“…Dorothy Gale.”

From the start, the Princess had not trusted that maid.

From her name to her conduct, there was nothing to her liking.

But that was undoubtedly a lack of trust in her qualities as a maid, not personal distrust toward Dorothy herself – it was the same distrust she harbored toward the royal family and her elder brothers.

Her ambiguous origins and character were of no concern, for even nobly born maids didn’t necessarily have better personalities.

Rather, it was toward Dorothy, who had allowed the Princess to open her heart to some degree, that she harbored complex feelings.

While she was still a dismal failure as a maid deserving outright rejection, her attitude toward the Princess herself was kinder than any previous maid.

Certainly inadequate as a maid, but the Princess couldn’t bring herself to entirely dislike or disregard Dorothy, who strove without a hint of aversion shown by other maids toward their cursed mistress.

Not quite affection nor hatred, an ambiguous feeling difficult to define.

But if pressed which it leaned closer to, the Princess’s feelings were undoubtedly nearer to affection. They would have been.

“…Just who are you?”

But the Princess’s scale tilted slightly to the other side – not hatred, but fear.

The maid who had casually taken a life, callously casting aside the corpse like trash – that inhumanity instilled fear in the Princess for the first time.

“…Were you truly acting to protect me?”

And yet, it was undoubtedly the Princess who had commanded her to do so. Dorothy had merely obeyed that order.

The Princess couldn’t bring herself to be utterly terrified of the maid who had dirtied her own hands to protect her.

“Princess, I’ve prepared your breakfast, albeit late-“

“There is no need, leave me.”

Thus, the Princess needed time.

Time to collect her thoughts and consider how to deal with Dorothy.