Give and Take
It made sense, really. An uneducated child whose self-worth had been smashed to pieces hadn't known any better than to fixate blindly on her sole fiancé, unable to look anywhere past him. Still, internally, a ceaseless loop of apologies echoed in my head: I'm sorry. Truly, my apologies. I couldn't help it either—unless she'd bashed her head against the floor at an even younger age, maybe. You're just a kid, sure, but so was she... Wait, damn it, that's completely shifting the blame.
They say it is dreadfully difficult for anyone to view themselves objectively. Perhaps having reincarnated with the memories of an adult from a past life—and already possessing full knowledge of Titania's tragic circumstances in the novel—made the difference. To me, the "me" up until yesterday felt like a complete stranger, a pitiful soul. If no one else would take my side, at the very least, I had to take my own.
"And yet, given what you've just said..." The Young Duke's long eyelashes fluttered slowly. Concealing tangled emotions, his pale golden eyes regarded me with a deceitful smile. "...it makes me wonder if the Princess I have known all this time was nothing more than an illusion."
No matter how I looked at it, his real meaning was screamingly clear:
I took you for a brainless fool, so how the hell did you dig up my family's secrets and blindside me?
"Might I ask... who precisely persuaded Your Highness to have such a change of heart?"
Far too blatant. His true thoughts—There's no way you figured this out on your own. Whose puppet are you?—practically shone through him with seventy percent opacity.
I gave a light shrug. "You can start by going to the garden near the second-floor balcony of the Rose Palace and watering the tallest yew tree."
"...Pardon?"
"After slamming my head and body into that very tree, my perspective simply shifted a little."
When I essentially conceded that nearly dying had scrambled my brains, Young Duke Raymon couldn't hide his bewilderment.
Naturally. If Princess Titania were in her right mind, this was the last thing she would ever do.
Besides, even if Raymon went and interrogated the Rose Palace servants until he shook them dry, he wouldn't turn up a shred of evidence. What else could explain it? I truly had died and woken up a different person. Had there been even one person genuinely close to her, I wouldn't have been able to hide the anomaly. A lady-in-waiting who cared for her like kin, a loyal maid, a wet nurse, a friend...
Titania had none of those.
So whatever hand I had left to play—whether they ended up confining me in the future, breaking off the engagement and casting me out, or doing something worse—depended for now on capitalizing on this "fiancé in name only's" whims, curiosity, and a few careful bargains brokered with future knowledge.
"...Your Highness mentioned wanting a 'deal,' if I recall." Realizing I had no intention of giving him a straight answer, Raymon eased the tension from his shoulders and cast a probing gaze my way. "Claiming you prepared a 'gift' for me while simultaneously speaking of a 'deal.' That seems rather contradictory."
His gaze was sharp enough to pierce straight through me.
I offered him a gentle smile. "Well, that is simply how the world works, isn't it? Give and take. Naturally, if I offer something, Young Duke Raymon ought to provide a fitting reward in return."
"To say that, after you have already disclosed the location of Gloriana's Insignia?"
"It's called placing faith in my fiancé. A steadfast belief that the formidable House Castrein wouldn't possibly pocket a gift prepared with utmost sincerity by a foolish fiancée and casually look the other way."
"I wonder how many people in this realm would dare refer to Your Imperial Highness as a 'foolish fiancée.'"
Do you really need to ask? Pretty much every citizen in the empire...
The corner of my mouth twitched. Excuse me? No matter what, hadn't he at least maintained basic courtly courtesy in front of his fiancée in the past? No matter how I sliced it, he was definitely taking subtle jabs at me.
Raymon slowly reached for his teacup. Without taking a sip, he lightly tapped the handle, making the tea ripple within, before parting his lips. "...Then, what does Her Imperial Highness—having suddenly developed such a keen interest in House Castrein—desire in exchange for 'secretly' handing over what my family desperately requires?"
Eyes swirling with a storm of calculating thoughts fixed upon me, relentless as a predator sizing up its prey. I had spent a great deal of time deliberating this exact moment.
What could I possibly ask from a fiancé who harbored zero trust in me and was all but guaranteed to stand as my enemy in the future? Something trivial to them, yet desperately vital to me. Something I could request without posing a threat or cementing myself as an outright foe in their eyes.
"The servants of the Rose Palace are sorely lacking in discipline," I began. "Even after their mistress suffered an injury and fell gravely ill, not a single one among them felt the weight of responsibility."
Even if it was chalked up to a simple accident rather than poison, a member of the imperial family had nearly died. At the very least, ordering repairs on the spot from which I fell should have been standard procedure. Yet no one cared. It simply meant that since I had woken up in one piece, that was the end of it.
Why had young Titania Sol Kite Hamastion plummeted from the second-floor balcony of the Rose Palace out of nowhere, crossing to the brink of death? Not a single soul bothered to ask.
The reason had been painfully simple.
She had wanted the attention of her biological mother, who never once spared her a glance. She simply wanted to see her mother's face. And she knew that seeking her out for an ordinary reason would only result in being turned away at the door.
So, if I fall from about the second floor and get hurt just enough, maybe... maybe Mother will pay attention to me. Maybe she'll pity me and worry about me.
Even though her mother had shown no concern when she had been frail and sickly throughout her childhood. Even so. Whenever her older brothers—the First and Second Princes—fell ill, the Empress and Imperial Consort would turn the entire palace upside down.
A passing maid had once grumbled, "No matter how much of a troublemaker a child is, a parent’s heart softens the moment they get sick. No parent can win against a suffering child."
Overhearing that complaint was all it took for young Titania to hatch her desperate plan.
If she were caught faking an illness, she might earn only deeper contempt. So.
This is the Imperial Palace. It's only the second floor. Surely I won't die...
Having steeled her resolve, she had still been paralyzed with fear, pacing the terrace for hours. How terribly that poor child must have trembled as she peered down over the edge. Terrified and miserable, yet unable to walk away; unable to confide in a single soul.
Terrified that someone might say, "Your birth mother truly hates you, so even if you throw yourself down and get hurt, she won't care in the slightest."
Frozen, incapable of stepping forward or back, she had stood there until a passing maid threw open the firmly shut door without warning. Startled by the abrupt sound, Titania lost her footing and plunged straight off the balcony.
She was a timid girl. Perhaps, at the very last moment, she would have given up. She might have talked herself out of it, terrified of scarring her face or losing her life. Perhaps, instead of jumping from a second-floor balcony, she would have settled for tumbling down the short flight of stairs leading to the first floor, settling for minor scrapes and bruises on her arms and legs.
Yet in the end, Titania fell.
The careless action of an insolent servant who didn't bother showing basic courtesy to her mistress—bursting open the closed door without knocking—had shoved the child over the edge. The culprit may not have considered it murder, but murder it was.
The frightened, desperate, selfish little Titania had died forever the moment the memories of my past life awakened within me.
Titania had yearned to be loved.
And I knew that was something that would never, ever come to pass.
"I need a loyal escort knight. And a maid."
And so, in front of the fiancé who regarded me with such hostility, I hurled my empty teacup across the room.
Smash! Porcelain shattered violently, the shards clattering across the carpet. In the fragmented pieces lying on the floor, my face was reflected back at me—wearing a sharp, crooked smile like broken glass.
"People capable of ending a life—or saving one."
"Is the Princess truly out of her mind?"
It was on their way back from the private audience. Raymon remained silent in the face of Cassian's stunned disbelief. The moment he heard the terms of the deal, Cassian had grabbed handfuls of his own hair, looking as if his head were about to split open.
Small wonder. Even now, the lingering image of the Princess from moments ago refused to fade from Raymon's mind.
"She fell from the second floor... and crashed into a tree? Was that tree some legendary World Tree or something? Can a person really change that drastically just from hitting a tree? Wow... I mean... damn..."
"The servants of the Rose Palace are sorely lacking in discipline. Even after their mistress suffered an injury and fell gravely ill, not a single one among them felt the weight of responsibility."
An imperial princess had teetered on the brink of death before barely waking up, yet the Imperial Palace had remained eerily quiet. Even when she had granted a private audience to her fiancé while her injuries had yet to heal, not a single maid had stepped in to advise against overexerting herself—not even out of empty courtesy.
Granted, Titania had always loathed underlings meddling in her meetings with her fiancé, but still...
Those chilling green eyes condemning her own servants. The faint, painted-on smile curving her lips.
"I need a loyal escort knight. And a maid."
Princess Titania had never possessed an escort knight. After all, she was a princess who rarely ventured outside the Imperial Palace—or rather, was never permitted to venture outside. No one in the palace had ever wished for her to make an official social debut, forge political connections, or grow into someone of distinction.