The 17th Princess Just Wants to Live

Dozens of thoughts raced through my mind in a short span of time.

I even thought, ‘Could one of the two sons of the duke I met earlier actually be a daughter?’ and gave them another look.

However, no matter how I looked at them, the two people who had turned halfway towards me were undeniably male.

The Young Duke Aschenbach showed no expression, perhaps taking after his father, but the younger one clearly looked flustered.

I was the one truly embarrassed, though.

“It seems there’s been a misunderstanding.”

It was Rudolph’s gentle voice that broke the awkward and tense silence. He patted my shoulder like a caring older brother and spoke to the duke.

“Lucilia is new to social gatherings. She seems to have confused your family with another, but it’s just a child’s mistake, so I hope you can forgive her.”

“I apologize.”

I apologized a beat late, feeling uneasy that Rudolph seemed troubled because of me.

Even after hearing my apology, the duke didn’t respond. He continued to stare at me with a displeased expression before turning away. He left without even a parting gesture.

It was an incredibly arrogant attitude. It was one thing to act that way towards me, but to behave like that even in front of Rudolph showed the true status of the duke’s family.

The Aschenbach family was a powerful house, owning about twenty percent of the empire’s territory. Naturally, their wealth was substantial, and their political influence was unquestionable.

Moreover, the empire’s two ducal families were not created by conferment of titles.

During the continent’s unification, they were forces that Esperusa failed to conquer. It was through negotiation that they were incorporated into the empire—those being the current Aschenbach and Cardina houses.

Though the imperial power had grown stronger, and the position of the nobles was waning over time, the prestige of these two ducal families remained intact.

Thus, the fall of the Aschenbach family was a major event that shook the empire. And the achievement of Imelda, who rebuilt the house and made it her own, was all the more remarkable for it.

But what if Tristan was gone? Would the Aschenbach family just disappear like that? And what about Imelda?

The confusion made my head spin.

“Lucilia, what’s wrong?”

As the duke’s figure faded into the distance, Rudolph asked me.

Well, he must have been confused too. After all, I, who had only been exchanging polite formalities, suddenly asked the duke a very personal, even impolite question.

But right now, I didn’t have the energy to explain what was happening.

“Brother, I need to rest.”

I spoke in a weak voice.

“Alright.”

Seeing my state, Rudolph didn’t ask further and escorted me to the carriage. I stumbled into it like a person whose soul had left their body.

“Rest well. We’ll talk in detail later.”

Rudolph’s kind farewell didn’t reach my ears. I mumbled some suitable response, and once Rudolph closed the door, I was left alone in the carriage.

I slumped against the window, pressing my forehead against the glass.

Quite some time had passed, and night had fallen deeply. As more and more people, like me, left the gathering, the streets grew crowded with numerous carriages. A minor dispute broke out as two carriages in front of me bumped into each other.

The scene outside grew more chaotic, but it was nothing compared to the turmoil in my heart. My eyes were pointed outward, but nothing my gaze landed on registered in my mind.

Until I saw it.

I jerked my head up as if revived from death.

The celebration hall for the emperor’s birthday glowed brightly even in the middle of the night, thanks to the magic stone decorations. While the stables and carriage roads weren’t paved with magic stones, the lights from the hall and the lanterns on the carriages made the area I was in quite bright.

Thus, I could see them clearly. The two sons of Duke Aschenbach, whom I had met earlier, were walking with someone else.

The third person was mostly obscured by the tall frame of Young Duke Aschenbach. All I could tell was that he was shorter than the other two and had black hair.

As soon as I thought the black hair looked similar to the duke’s sons, I threw open the carriage door.

“Your Highness?”

The coachman shouted in surprise, but I ignored him and ran.

Black hair, a much smaller build than the other two. And since he was wearing pants, it was clearly a man.

My heart pounded anxiously.

It was strange. If that person was Tristan, if Tristan Aschenbach truly existed, it should have been a relief, something to be happy about.

After all, if the male protagonist existed, there would be no issue with the original story.

Yet I felt anxious. Despite thinking through all these facts, my chest was filled with an irrational fear that made it hard to breathe.

As I followed the three who were heading toward a secluded part of the emperor’s garden, I recalled the scenes I had witnessed earlier.

The duke’s face, struggling to suppress his anger as he spoke of a nonexistent youngest son.

Rudolph’s demeanor, which suggested he had no knowledge of the duke’s youngest son.

The obvious unease on the face of the duke’s second son, in contrast to his brother.

And the two brothers, taking a child with hair that seemed to blend into the darkness away to a secluded place.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

It was an unfounded intuition. I knew that. And yet, I desperately wished that this feeling was mistaken. So desperately.

The three entered the emperor’s garden, moving away from the bustling party to a quiet, hidden corner.

I hurried my steps back to the garden entrance. The area near the entrance, connected to the carriage boarding point, was crowded with people leaving the party.

It was fortunate that no one recognized me, perhaps because Rudolph was not by my side. However, moving in the opposite direction amidst the crowd leaving the garden was no easy task.

In a moment of carelessness, the three people disappeared from my sight.

‘No.’

I barely escaped the crowd, but by then, the three of them had already vanished without a trace. I ran in the direction they had headed last.

But this damned garden was too vast and maze-like. Moreover, the farther I got from the center of the garden, the darker it became, making it nearly impossible to see any movement from a distance.

‘Please.’

I ran until I was out of breath, then finally reached my limit and stopped.

My heart pounded as if it would burst. I clenched my fists so tightly that my nails dug into my palms, yet my hands still trembled slightly.

I knew I was being irrational. But I couldn’t dismiss my feelings as mere intuition and just turned back.

It felt as if someone was sending me a signal, telling me that something was wrong, that I needed to know.

I looked around.

I must have come quite a distance from the entrance, as there was not a single person nearby. Unlike the garden’s center, which was filled with grass and flowers, this area was dense with trees, like a small forest.

The faint noise from the party could still be heard in the distance. Other than that, only the sounds of insects filled the air.

I was alone here.

As soon as that realization hit, I collapsed to the ground. I placed my hands on the grass.

‘Tell me where they are.’

I pressed my hands into the earth, speaking like a prayer.

I intended to use Stella.

Until now, I had never consciously used Stella. It was a power that had already manifested. Even without any effort, I could find my way in the forest and detect poisonous mushrooms.

No one deliberately tried to see with their eyes or hear with their ears; it was something that came naturally. Stella was that kind of power for me.

But now, that wasn’t enough.

‘They must be nearby. Please.’

With a desperate heart, I focused all my strength on my fingertips. Without knowing how, I just tried recklessly. I prayed fervently.

‘Find Tristan for me.’

Suddenly, I felt a chilling sensation throughout my body. But it was only for a moment. My palms, touching the grass, became hot, and the area around them began to glow faintly.

The surprise of that phenomenon only lasted a moment.

Suddenly, an overwhelming flood of information rushed into my mind.

The densely intertwined blades of grass, the temperature of the air felt by each leaf, the texture of the soil, the tiny bugs looking up at the blades of grass from the ground, the moisture felt on the skin of those bugs, the dormant seeds beneath the earth where the bugs stood, and the sensations of all the lifeforms connected to the earth I touched.

“Ack…!”

It felt like my brain was going to explode. It was far too much for one person to process. My mind went hazy. At this rate, I felt I might pass out.

‘No!’

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. The taste of blood pooling in my mouth kept me grounded. I focused on my senses, trying to let the flood of information flow past me without overwhelming me.

‘You can’t take it all in. You can’t try to see everything.’

With time, I started to get the hang of using this power.

I gathered the energy that had spread from my palms and began to extend it, thin and long. If the initial wave of power felt like a tidal wave, now it felt like weaving a fine, long spider’s thread.

My senses expanded.

The farther my power reached, the more information came in. But by then, I had learned how to manage it.

‘Let it flow by until you find what you’re looking for.’

I ignored the unimportant and followed traces when I found them. Any energy that reached out elsewhere returned to me, merging back into the main flow and extending outward again.

Until I finally found what I was looking for.

In a place dense with shrubs and large trees, where shadows overlapped so thickly it was hard to see properly, three figures stood.

The moment I confirmed them, I lifted my hands from the ground and opened my eyes.

My human senses returned. First, my sight, then my hearing. To confirm the last returning sense, touch, I lifted my hands and found them covered in dirt.

I stood up and ran in the direction of what I had seen.

Passing through the dark bushes and shadows of trees, I finally spotted figures in the distance. A voice with a resonant tone sharply pierced through the night air.

“Do you think I’d believe that?”

Slap!

And… a sharp noise followed.

It was unmistakably the sound of a slap.

Though I couldn’t see who had been struck, just hearing it made my heart sink. I rushed between the person who slapped and the one who was slapped without thinking.

“Ugh?!”

“… Princess?”

Only after stepping in did I see their faces. Anton, the short-tempered younger of the two, made a strange sound when he saw me. The elder one, Ludwig, might have been surprised too, but he managed his expression better than his brother.

I glared at the two of them before turning around. Then, I looked down at the person who collapsed on the ground.

Dressed in black, he was small enough to seem more like a boy than a young man. He lay there, unmoving, even after my arrival.

Could he have fainted? Fear gripped me, and I bent down to examine him more closely.

At that moment, the boy lifted his head and looked at me. Our eyes met in the air.

I caught my breath.

Bright golden eyes shone in my direction. Even in the darkness, their vivid color was instantly recognizable.

Yet ironically, those radiant eyes held a deep emptiness within them.

Though I appeared in his vision, he wasn’t truly seeing me. A suffocating void gazed at me from within his eyes before it quietly vanished.

The boy closed his eyes again and lowered his head.

But that was enough. Even in that brief moment, I could tell. A face beautiful enough to steal one’s gaze at a glance, yet eyes soaked in resignation that held nothing of this world.

I called his name with a trembling voice.

“Tristan…”