She tried to escape, but he grabbed her left hand roughly and didn’t let go even when she stumbled. He smiled, evidently amused to be tormenting someone weaker than he was.
“Maybe I should just take you right here.”
“…!”
Goose bumps covered her body. She could not believe that a member of the royal family would say such a thing in a dusty storage closet.
“Please stop joking around!”
“How resolute of you. But you’re shaking.”
And that shaking only worsened as he hooked his arms underneath her armpits. She heard him laughing, his face buried in her hair.
Hot breath fell on her neck. Wherever he touched her, the hair on her skin stood on end. She was so terrified that she wanted to scream. But she wouldn’t let the welling tears spill from her eyes. Another figure flashed across her mind.
Yuri…
She thought of that noble young man with blue-black hair and yellow eyes. He was more composed and intellectual than anyone she knew—and more dashing. She drew him in her mind’s eye.
It was strange.
Just thinking of him lit a flame in her trembling heart.
Prince Joseph isn’t the same kind person I used to know…
She refused to give in to anyone who would resort to such a spineless scheme. She didn’t want him to think she was surrendering.
“Stop! Let me go!” she shouted.
“…Noisy girl. Shall I have my spirit shred your clothes?” he hissed.
He was contracted with two spirits, a fire spirit and a wind spirit. Neither of them was particularly aggressive, but they were agile. With wild spirits, there was room to negotiate. But contracted spirits prioritized their masters and were impossible to convince.
“Peep!!”
Peep…!
The little chick jumped out of her hair, which Joseph was still pressing down. Its beady eyes flashing, it flew at his face and attacked with beak and claws.
“Peep! Peep!!”
“What the hell?!” Joseph swatted at the tiny attacker.
Slap!
With an audible noise, Peep was batted away, and its tiny form slammed to the floor.
“Peep!” Brigitte shouted.
In a frenzy, she managed to break free of Joseph’s grasp and crawl to where the spirit lay. She scooped the little bird in her hands—but Peep lay limp, only a faint breath escaping its parted beak.
“Peep…”
This was too much. Hot tears poured down her cheeks, while a wave of heat and pain crashed across her skull. She couldn’t think.
“Why, why?”
She could hear Joseph brushing the dust from his clothes. “I’m only asking one thing of you, Brigitte,” he said flatly, as if his passion had cooled.
She turned around in a daze. His even features were covered in scratches.
He pulled something from his breast pocket.
“Is that…?”
“Of course you would know.”
A branch of the seven-cauldrons tree…
The seven-cauldrons tree was a deciduous tree with red berries. Fairies were said to detest it. In villages where the old ways persisted, young girls often carried branches of the tree to protect themselves.
But what Joseph held was no ordinary branch. It was the color of fresh blood, perhaps from being smeared with crushed berries, and she could see the powerful magic it held. She had never seen one in real life before, but she had read of them.
“A magic breaker…”
It was the only item that could forcibly sever the contract between a human and their spirit. They were kept at shrines to save people who had attracted the unwanted favor of the Unseelie Court—the fairies who did harm to humans. When the pointed tip of the branch touched a person’s body, fairies would keep their distance and eventually stop coming altogether.
However, magic breakers had hardly ever been used in the history of the kingdom. Even the fae of the Unseelie granted people power, and once the bond was broken, a child might never again contract with another spirit.
But how had Joseph gotten his hands on such a special item from the shrine?
He must have read the question on her face. “I got this from a priest who has a liking for me. Shall I prick your arm with this branch, Brigitte?”
“…”
“That spirit is getting in my way.”
Crouching and holding Peep to her breast, she inched backward. She did not take her eyes off Joseph. The moment her vigilance weakened, he would make good on his terrifying words.
But I don’t understand why…
Joseph knew about Peep. Maybe he had known even before the column of light appeared—maybe long before Brigitte herself knew.
“…Your Highness.” The words spilled from her mouth.
“What?”
“Why did you get engaged to me?”
She had been wondering that for a long time. It probably wasn’t the right time to ask. Still, she suspected that if she didn’t ask now, she would never know the real reason.
For a second, his eyes widened in surprise.
“…It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he said, smiling. The smile was the kindest she had ever seen on his face. “Because you’re the stupidest, most miserable person in the world, Red Fairy.”
When exactly had people started calling him the idiot prince behind his back? He couldn’t remember, but it was probably before his earliest memory.
He couldn’t do things that were taken for granted in the royal family. Things that everyone else learned in a snap, he still couldn’t do after endless repetition.
“But your older brothers learned this so quickly…”
That was a favorite line of his private tutor. She had said it so many times, he felt his ears were going to melt off.
When he went to the shrine at the age of five for the contracting ceremony, he had contracted with weak mid-level spirits, only barely above low-level. His reputation declined even more.
The king hadn’t expected anything from him to start with. Joseph’s mother was the Second Queen, but she always complained that the male child she had conceived with so much difficulty was good-for-nothing. For Joseph, though, the worst thing of all was that his two older half brothers, sons of the king by the First Queen, were fine young men.
Joseph was both dull and morally corrupt. His older brothers were always cheerful around him, shining like stars. Each time he saw the smiling, adoring crowds surrounding them, Joseph’s heart filled with black bile.
By copying his brothers, Joseph became skilled at covering his faults with a shallow smile of his own, but everyone still ignored him.
That was when he heard the rumors about the Red Fairy. Her name was Brigitte Meidell, and she was the same age as he was. She came from the famed Fire Clan, yet she was contracted with a no-name. To top it all off, her father had burned her hand and banished her from the house to live alone in a separate cottage.
Joseph was intrigued. One day, he happened to meet her at a tea party held by another noble family. He had smiled at her and said, “Miss Brigitte, tell me what you like.”
She had been staring glumly at the floor, and she seemed surprised that he was talking to her. Although it was a hot day, she wore thick gloves on both hands. They would be concealing hideous scars—how pitiful.
The conversation didn’t go particularly well, but they talked—and that day, he made up his mind.
I’ll make this girl my fiancée.
He felt no sympathy for her, nor was he attracted to her. He had been treated the way he had because he was the dullest of the three princes. But what if?
What if an even greater fool were by my side?
That was his initial thought, and the strategy turned out to garner him unexpected praise.
I heard Joseph reached out to that useless Brigitte.
He must be very kind. His smile is simply stunning.
How fortunate the Red Fairy is to have the pity of a prince.
Nobles who had always ignored him or mocked him were suddenly applauding him. They said he had an excellent character, that he was more virtuous than his brothers. The prince with the kind smile, they called him—each time he heard something like that, his mood soared.
But best of all was his first meeting with his future father-in-law, the Earl of Meidell. Because Joseph was making a personal visit to the Meidell residence, Brigitte was not present. She was forbidden from entering the main house. This was quite unusual, but the earl did not seem embarrassed by it.
“Truly, you have saved us, Your Highness. Thank you for taking our good-for-nothing girl as your fiancée.”
The earl had bowed his head stoically.
These were not words a man typically used to describe his own daughter, but Joseph smiled generously and nodded. What more could he expect from a man who had burned his daughter’s hand in the hearth? His wife was nowhere to be seen, but Joseph guessed she must be a similar creature. He didn’t care either way.