A Gilded Cage
The place Aisia arrived at was the mansion of Adolf Kareha, general of the Wurt Empire.
Even from the outside, it radiated an air both elegant and severe. White stone walls, meticulously tended gardens, and imposing crests carved throughout — yet to her, it felt like nothing more than an enemy fortress.
From the moment she set foot inside the building, the guards' stares fixed upon her, and the servants regarded her with nothing but wary eyes.
"Your Highness, this way."
An unnamed servant stepped forward and led her to a room. It looked cozy enough, but the high walls and iron gates visible beyond the window made Aisia's chest tighten with a stifling weight.
It seemed as though she might leave if she simply chose to — yet a closer look revealed soldiers watching every exit, both the door and the windows.
"So this is where I am to live."
Biting her lip, she surveyed the room, struggling to contain the fury boiling up inside her. Compared to her days as a princess it was lacking, yet for a prisoner the living quarters were almost extravagantly fine. To her, denied even freedom, it was nothing more than a prison.
In truth it was little more than a holding cell for a princess, though the interior was quite comfortable and well-appointed.
"I heard the prisoner they brought in is the princess of the Liberia Empire?"
"Why did the general keep her alive? Don't tell me she's a concubine?"
"Come on — no need to take a woman who can't even bear children as a concubine."
The maids' whispers drifting in from beyond the door refused to leave her ears. Aisia clenched her teeth. Feeling the world's mockery of a woman bound by infertility and reduced to a hostage, she could not shake the sensation that something inside her was collapsing.
Soldiers and servants came and went constantly — none of it welcome to Aisia.
"Are they trying to kill me slowly here…?"
She sat on the bed, staring out the window, seized by thoughts that bordered on the absurd.
"I have no idea how long this humiliation will last."
The servants of the Wurt Empire, following Kareha's orders, made a show of ensuring the princess wanted for nothing. Each morning they brought warm water and meals; if the room grew even slightly cool, they fetched extra blankets. But to Aisia's eyes, all of it was nothing but a sneering imitation of care — for the servants who set down her meals carried attitudes laced with wariness and contempt.
"Your Highness, today we have prepared something in the Liberian style."
Outwardly polite, their eyes still revealed the conviction that a woman defeated in war and reduced to a hostage was no longer of any worth. The so-called Liberian cuisine they served was wretched beyond measure.
"They seem to think Liberian food just needs spices thrown in and it's automatically delicious."
After serving her the meal, the maids disparaged Liberian cooking just outside the door. Though mana backlash had left her unable to use magic, her natural physical gifts let her overhear every word of their gossip — and each time, nausea rose at the Liberian food they had brought, her hands trembling as she reached for the utensils.
"Must I endure this humiliation? Wouldn't it be better to simply refuse food and collapse?"
But starving changed nothing, and she knew that falling ill would only harm herself. So she reluctantly brought the food to her lips, little by little.
Several days into her life as a hostage, physicians and mages came to examine Aisia.
"We will analyze Your Highness's condition more thoroughly. We need to confirm whether the cause lies solely in the mana circuits, or whether there is damage elsewhere as well."
To others it might have been a routine medical procedure. To Aisia it was hell. When enemy physicians prodded her body this way and that, when they pressed strange devices against her claiming to measure her mana, it felt as though her pride were being crushed underfoot, root and branch.
She had lived quietly, like a doll — but the pressure built and built until at last it burst.
"I cannot understand how you people propose to heal me. I know my own body extremely well! Get out of my sight!"
"The general hopes there may still be some hope."
"Hope? How loathsome. The hope of a man who took me hostage and subjects me to this disgrace is surely nothing more than a wish that the time he has to humiliate me further will stretch on longer."
Flames of fury flickered in Aisia's eyes. But the physician continued the examination with an impassive face, as though nothing had happened.
Some time after the examination ended, another day arrived. Blessed with the exceptional hearing of the imperial bloodline, the princess could hear the soldiers on guard outside her door murmuring among themselves.
"Why bother treating the princess? What is the general after?"
"Who knows? We can't read the general's mind. Maybe as a political card? Or — her face is rather fine, so it could be that."
Hearing their conversation slip through the crack of the door, Aisia broke out in a cold sweat. If the last soldier's words were true, she was little better than a collectible. At least when she had been a Liberian princess, she had lived within the palace surrounded by the protection and affection of those around her — and so Aisia, who had always had to keep her edge sharp, began to feel the loneliness all the more keenly.
As time passed, Aisia's appetite declined further still. Each morning a servant would enter, set down food, and say, "You'll ruin your health if you don't eat" — yet the smell alone made her nauseous, and she set down her spoon. In the afternoon, when a physician came claiming he would perform a "mana examination," she curled up on the bed and did not even answer.
If she refused to cooperate with the examination, the soldiers would not force her — but they would promptly report to Adolf that Her Highness had refused again. Then Adolf would come, and in a low voice explain that this was treatment for her own sake — and those moments were the ones she found most unbearable.
"Why should I accept anything like 'care' from you?"
She swallowed her rage and turned her back before the conversation could continue.
"It only sounds like hypocrisy. All this misery began with you."
Around the time she began blaming everything on him, her insomnia grew severe as well. Every night, the moment she tried to sleep, memories piled one upon another: the explosion of mana mid-battle, the mortal wound that followed, the declaration of infertility, and then being cast aside by her own country and dragged away as a hostage.
Mother… Father… Did you truly abandon me?
She shook her head and shed tears, but no one was at her side.
"Truly… no one is coming to save me."
Liberia itself, driven to the brink of collapse by the war, seemed to have no strength left to rescue a single princess.
"I no longer have a single ally left. Not even a wretched one."
With neither the strength to escape on her own nor any attempt at rescue from Liberia, she felt as though she had simply been left alone in a solitary cell.
When her life as a hostage stretched past a month, Adolf's visits grew less frequent — yet each time he came, the conversations grew longer. Whenever he entered the room, Aisia always met him with a fierce expression and pointedly ignored him, but Adolf would linger for some time and speak of this and that.
"It must be hard, staying only in this room. How about taking a walk?"
She did not even want to reply. Rage surged in her heart, but she kept her mouth shut. Adolf Kareha left again that day without any real conversation. His manner tormented her all the more. Had he coldly told her she was a discarded woman and left it at that, she might simply have fed her anger — but this ambiguous display of "mercy" and "consideration" only threw her mind into deeper confusion.
Once the door closed and Adolf's footsteps faded, she would sink to the floor and draw ragged, painful breaths. Little by little, Aisia Lil Shuhain began to break.
"I'm afraid the prisoner — that is, Her Highness the princess — has been skipping meals. There is no progress in her recovery at all."
The physician assigned to Aisia Lil Shuhain reported to Adolf Kareha that she was neither eating nor making any effort to recover on her own. Having returned to the capital, Adolf Kareha was obliged to resume his previously busy life — yet he could not simply set Aisia's problem aside. The fact that she was refusing meals meant he needed a clever way to get her to eat.
That, in turn, meant he needed information on Aisia Lil Shuhain. Forcing food down her throat was hardly an option. In his study, he began using the backs of documents to organize the traits he had observed in Aisia along with what he knew from the novel.
"As a princess she was full of confidence… She seemed to place enormous weight on honor… And her sense of belonging to the Liberia Empire looked unusually strong as well…"
He even noted that she had been destined to become the Hero's mother. Looking over everything he had written, Kareha concluded that she was a woman whose character made her more than plausible as the Hero's mother-to-be.
"Hmm… Yes. This method should work."
Having settled on a plan, Kareha began assigning a maid of Liberian origin to her side.
Several hours later, as dusk was falling, her door opened. This time a stranger entered — a woman whose dress and expression set her apart from the other servants.
"Your Highness…"
The woman offered a low greeting in the distinctive accent of Liberia. When Aisia opened her eyes and looked at her, the woman's gaze held a warmth that felt somehow familiar.
"You… are a subject of the Liberia Empire?"
Her voice sharpened a degree. Yet Aisia had never imagined she would meet someone who spoke the language of her homeland in this place.
"Yes. I have not been long in the Wurt Empire. General Adolf Kareha hired me himself, and I have become Your Highness's personal maid."
The woman bowed with impeccable courtesy. Aisia's heart gave a sudden, heavy lurch.
Why would an imperial general go out of his way to find a Liberian maid? What scheme is he plotting this time?
Her mind filled with wariness. With a humble manner, the maid produced the medicinal herbs and warm tea she had prepared in her basket.
"I heard Your Highness has not been eating well, so I made this myself. It is the sort you used to drink even in Liberia. It has properties that ease both body and mind a little."
Aisia was still suspicious — yet the fragrance that reached her nose was unmistakably familiar. It called up the scent of the tea she had so often drunk in the Liberian palace, and her nose stung.
How long has it been since I smelled this…?
At the long-missed fragrance her nose prickled and a wave of sorrow washed over her — yet it was also true that, just a little, her heart began to ease.