The current royal family in the kingdom was a clan by the name of the Siegfrieds. They were the lineage with the Dragonslaying Queen as their ancestor.
However, before the Siegfried family, there had been a different royal family.
That royal family was now in ruin. This was due to their bad name: The most inept ruler, called the Dragon King, had been born from that royal family. About one hundred years ago, he had massacred many people. Ever since then, that family had come to be persecuted as the clan of the foolish king. The Dragon King had killed so many because his body had been under the control of an evil dragon, but that was not at all taken into consideration.
This low-ranking knight who called himself Anima was in fact one of that clan. He was seventeen years old.
Anima was not his real name. If he were to reveal his real name, then he wouldn’t be able to stay in this country. Unfortunately, he had been given the same name as the foolish king. His parents, who believed in the innocence of the foolish king, had given him that name. Anima saw it as a real nuisance. The parents who had named him were no longer in this world. They had lost their lives due to persecution. It was outrageous, when they hadn’t even been such close relations to the king.
Anima had wound up all alone, with no living relatives.
The only thing he owned was a single spear.
Anima hated the Siegfried family. The fake royal family, called the Siegfrieds, believed they had banished them, the true royal family. That was what he had been taught, that that teaching was true, in one view.
He resented them. His clan had suffered because of the Siegfried family.
But he didn’t think to do anything about it. Having been persecuted all his life, Anima had his hands full just getting by. Concealing his name, his birth, and his past, he had somehow managed to attain the rank of knight. He figured he would cling to that until he died. Revenge wouldn’t fill his stomach.
That day, Anima was on guard at the dungeon cells at the royal castle.
As he was casually fulfilling his duty, a girl was brought into the dungeon.
It was a girl with white hair and red eyes.
The ones to escort her in were high-ranking knights.
Anima asked, “Is this girl a criminal or something?”
“She’s someone Her Majesty Kriemhild will be personally executing later. Is any further explanation necessary for a low-ranked knight?”
Anima bowed his head. “No, sir. It’s as you say.”
He had no urge to pry further. He would choose toeing the line over actual struggle.
The girl was restrained, then thrown into a cell that was adjoining the guardroom.
Anima watched the girl as she had her hands tied behind her back and was put into the cell.
It bothered him.
She hasn’t been eating much.
The girl’s face was pallid, her body small, her bones apparent. She looked to him as if she were starving.
Starvation largely did not exist in the kingdom these days.
The Miracle of Life, created by the queen, did away with all wounds and sickness. It could even cure starvation. Since it had spread so widely among the people, people fundamentally couldn’t starve anymore.
That was, so long as you were not persecuted and deliberately made unable to acquire the Miracle.
Anima knew the pain of starvation. And he figured if she was starving, then most likely, the girl’s station was low, just as his had once been.
And they had said that this pitiable girl would be executed by the hand of the new queen of the Siegfried family.
It kind of felt as though he was the one who was going to be killed.
…I have a grudge against the Siegfried family.
So it was Anima’s own sort of revenge.
Once it was night, Anima freed the thin girl from her cell, avoiding the eyes of the other guards.
There were various reasons Anima was able to do this. He was certain that even if he let this girl go, he would not be blamed for it. The knight who was his superior was partial to him. Since Anima just wanted to live a peaceful life, his behavior was particularly good. He had never once defied his superiors. The decisive reason was that one of the knights who was on duty at the dungeon that night was a man with extremely bad behavior. If Anima let the girl go, that man would certainly be the one first suspected. If not for that, the timid Anima would never have done something so bold as to let this girl escape.
He brought the girl outside the guardroom and handed her the sword that had been confiscated from her.
“Get out of here.”
But the girl didn’t move.
She said to Anima, “You’re a knight, aren’t you…?”
“So what?”
“If you’re a knight, then your job is to escort me. Don’t toss me out and then go.”
The arrogance of this remark left Anima dumbfounded.
“D-don’t be ridiculous!” Of course he was angry. He’d thought she might thank him for letting her go. Who would imagine she would demand more of him, of all things? “Just who do you think you are?”
“Ha-ha, a princess, perhaps.”
She said something so ridiculous so boldly, Anima was stunned. At the same time, he also found himself thinking that she wasn’t lying. An ordinary person would be too embarrassed to say she was a princess.
But if she was a princess, then it made sense that she was about to be executed by the queen’s hand. Sometimes, the kingdom would be attacked by foreign nations. These invasions targeted the unique technologies the kingdom possessed, as well as the Miracle of Life. The queen, who controlled the Power of God, had repelled everything to resolve all large-scale conflict, but small-scale conflict was ongoing in various areas. It could be this was a foreign princess who had been captured.
It was only natural that Anima would assume this princess was not his own nation’s princess.
Precisely because he had once been of the royal line, he knew the Siegfried family all had black hair and black eyes.
The girl before him had white hair and red eyes.
Well, whoever this girl was, he had no intention of getting himself any deeper in this. He’d just let the girl go as revenge against the Siegfried family.
“Be grateful that I just let you go,” he said, then left the girl in the town at night and made to return to the dungeon.
From behind him, he heard the sound of a wet cough.
When he turned around, the girl was covering her mouth with her hand. She was coughing up blood.
She fell to her knees on the ground. It seemed she had some kind of illness. He could tell she wasn’t strong enough to stand.
“H-hey. Are you okay?” Anima panicked and ran up to the girl.
He had no way of knowing, but the healing sword leaving her hands was the cause of her health deteriorating.
Ah…what am I doing?
Now that he had turned around and run up to her, he could no longer abandon her. He had to take this girl back home and at least give her some of the Miracle…
Anima quickly finished up his work and took the girl back to his house, where he had her drink the Miracle. The girl resisted weakly, saying she would not drink it, but he forced her to take it. Her life might be in danger, so he had to do whatever it took. But for some reason, the Miracle that was supposed to heal all illnesses didn’t work. Regarding this, the girl explained only that “it’s due to my constitution.”
So Anima had the girl drink a medicine that he had compounded himself. He had some knowledge of medicine. Mysteriously, it seemed this worked a little. The girl’s condition improved, and she was able to fall asleep.
While watching the girl’s face as she slept holding her sword, Anima muttered, “I never wanted to get involved with some princess, though.”
The foolish king who had caused the downfall of their clan had died protecting a lady, after all.
Anima’s dream was to achieve a normal sort of happiness. He would become a normal knight, earn a normal living, marry a normal wife, have normal children, age normally, and die normally.
Having a princess here seemed like it was enough to destroy his dream, all on its own.
But he couldn’t abandon her. Seeing how thin the arms that stuck out from underneath the blanket were, he just couldn’t do it. Her arms were not healthy ones. They were arms that hadn’t been seen in this kingdom for a long time—his own arms, long ago.
He wound up wondering just what kind of horrible fate she had met in this kingdom.
“…Damn it!”
After tucking those thin arms under the blanket, Anima decided to sleep on the floor.
The next morning, even after Anima awoke, the princess was still asleep.
So he began to make a breakfast for two.