I Don’t Want A Prince In My Life - Chapter 8. Misunderstanding

The air in the room froze.

For some reason, I felt a chill in the air.

Their eyes looked at me as if they were looking at a monster.

I wondered what they saw in me. Perhaps, a miserable woman who had lost her way.

I was waiting to see how they would react when I was suddenly startled by Albert’s reaction.

“Why are you crying, ……?”

Yes, he was crying.

He was on his knees looking up at me, tears welling up in his eyes.

I was upset because I had never seen him cry before.

Since I was a child, I had been learning the ways of the emperor from my governess as the next queen.

My tutor had told me time and time again that a person who stands above others must not let them know how he feels.

Specifically, she said, tears are like letting someone catch you by the tail.

A woman’s tears can be used as a weapon in some cases, but a king cannot show his tears to anyone, she said.

So – you cry for him.

The words of the governess came back to my ears.

The king could not cry, so I, the queen, was to cry for him.

I suppose that’s what I was taught.

Lionel and Albert, who had been promised the throne, were also old friends, but they had never cried—not even my father wept when he sent us away.

“Why are you crying?”

I was so upset that I repeated the same words.

“Because you’re crying, Cecilia.”

When he finally spoke back, I realized that I was crying too.

I didn’t know how long I’ve been crying.

But one thing was for sure: Albert was the one who cried first.

“You’re the one who cried first! Don’t you pity me?”

If he was pitying my miserable life, it was even more difficult to forgive him when he was partly to blame for it.

But he did not wipe away his tears.

Serge, too, was stunned by the change in his master’s demeanor.

“No,” he said. “I am sorry that I could do nothing to help you in your time of need. If I could, I would have torn him to pieces for what he did to you.”

As if fighting the urge to do so, Albert clenched his fist around his throat.

“So…”

To be frank, his reaction was beyond my imagination.

I thought that if I pushed him hard enough, he would shut up and stay away from me so as to not bother me anymore.

He was, in a way, the next king.

He was, as they say, rarely moved and never let his emotions get the better of him.

Therefore, I was greatly puzzled by his unexpected reaction.

“Dear Cecilia?”

Serge opened his mouth, as if he had finally come to his senses.

He called out to me, but his eyes were fixed on his master so as not to provoke him.

“Excuse me, but where is this lowly man now?”

My tears stopped at the unexpected question.

“Why are you asking me this?”

Serge looked at me and Albert alternately as if in a panic.

“No…I swear I have no intention of humiliating you, Cecilia, but I want to warn you that my Lord may indeed go and kill him.”

I tilted my head, wanting to find out why he was so upset and whether he really feared that Albert was going to kill that lowly man and not just metaphorically as he had said earlier.

I was not sure if Albert’s hunger for killing was a result of the fact that he killed his challenger in the duel.

“I’m not sure where I was, but I left him when I got here. The contract was originally signed until we reached this country.”

“Oh, a contract ……?”

Serge jolted back in surprise.

On the other hand, Albert glared into space in silence. It was scary, I must say.

I was completely taken back by the way the conversation went.

I was surprised to find that the words I had said, in the hope that I would feel a little remorse for what I had done, had hurt them more than I had imagined.

To use an analogy, it was as if I had just poked him with a quill, and it had turned out to be a fatal blow.

“Yes. It’s reckless for two women to travel together. With the money I got from selling my jewels, I asked for an escort. But they took advantage and extorted a lot of money from us, and then they forced me to become a waiter. The look on their faces was despicable!”

If I wanted to get to Theophilus in one piece, I had to do as they said, and they even made me serve them. I thought it was better than being attacked by bandits, but the fact that I could not even feed us made me want to kill them.

My anger was not well understood by Serge, who stared at me with his mouth wide open, stunned.

“What is it?”

I asked, and Serge spat out the words in a panic.

“So, does ‘at the mercy of men’ really…mean what it says?

“What are you talking about? I’ve been saying that from the beginning.”

There was a different, awkward silence in the room.