Chapter 2

I shook my hand desperately to get out of there. But whenever I struggled, the pressure on my body became stronger.

‘Ah, you’re going to die like this? In an absurd way, just because you were misunderstood as the Demon King.’

With such thoughts, my body sank down and down.

‘No, I can’t die like this!’

I’m in my twenties with a bright future ahead of me.

It’s an age where I could see more than I’ve ever done, so how can I die like this in vain?

I will survive, no matter what. I must survive and first…

‘I’ll kick your ass, Pamel Asinov! I’ll make you shed tears from both of your eyes!’

The moment I grind my teeth and shook my arms vigorously.

“Miss!”

Someone’s urgent touch grabbed my arm.

“Cough!”

I kept coughing and spewed water out of my mouth. I wondered where this water came from, but because of the dizziness I didn’t even have time to think about it properly.

“Are you all right? Miss!”

The young man who seemed to have pulled me up shook my body in a bewildered voice. As a matter of fact, my stomach, which used to feel nauseous, turned upside down even more, and now I was about to cough up gastric juice, not water.

‘Oh, hey, thanks for saving me, but stop shaking my hand……’

However, I was exhausted and had no power to stop him.

Meanwhile, the touch of the young man shaking me became bolder.

“My lady! Get a hold of yourself!”

‘No, so don’t shake me… don’t shake…!’

I screamed out of frustration and blacked out.

*:✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

“……Now… get ready…”

“Who….. kill…”

“Situation…….understand…”

Through my dim mind, I heard the voices of strangers.

Three different voices.

I wanted to open my eyes to see the situation, but my body dropped like a wet cotton ball and couldn’t move at all.

Meanwhile, the sound became clearer and more precise.

“That b*stard must be a quack. Why can’t a normal kid still come to her senses?”

“Shh. Keep your voice down. There’s a patient in front of us. Don’t you even know manners?”

“…and you, don’t you even feel anxious? He said there’s no problem but she still hasn’t opened her eyes! The old man would go crazy if he knew this…”

The gruff man’s voice dropped a little.

It was still loud enough to resonate in my ears, but he seemed to have made efforts in his own way.

“Theon. Cisse. “

At that time, a man who remained silent stepped up and stopped the two who were quarrelling.

“The first thing to do is to find out who raided the wagon.”

“Well, it must be one of Asinov’s tricks.”

The one who was a little bit more self-confident among the two men who were quarrelling threw a conclusion.

“How upset will you get? I always had thought if the Grand Duke died, you would take over the family, but I was told later that the Grand Duke’s granddaughter was the heir.”

“Well, that’s what we’ll find out when we interrogate the guy we captured. Because he’s the only saved one.”

Asinov? Grand Duke’s granddaughter? Successor?

‘What are these guys talking about?’

It was not easy to grasp the situation because I was only listening to the men’s conversations.

‘I think they were talking about me, but I can’t be Grand Duke’s granddaughter.’

In addition, Asinov is the wizard who misunderstood me as the Demon King.

The fragmented information was not properly connected and wandered in my head.

Struggling with frustration, somehow I tried to open my eyes.

‘It’s- it’s working!’

The high ceiling filled my field of view as soon as I managed to lift up my heavy shivering eyelids.

Instead of caring about my heavy body, I rolled my eyes and looked around.

The spacious room, which is unknown where it is, was filled with elegant and luxurious decorations wherever I looked, which made me admire it.

I felt like I could make a living for the rest of my life by taking off and selling just one ornament here.

But what stood out more than the expensive-looking ornaments were the three men standing tall with serious facial expressions.

A twin with blonde hair and a man with black hair.

‘Wow…’

It was like an appearance that makes you forget about reality for a moment.

Even though amid chaos, they were handsome enough for me to stare intently.

One of them turned to me as if he felt my gaze staring at them.

“Oh… She? Do you know she opened her eyes again?”

And the moment I made eye contact with him,

Familiar memories rushed into my head with a tremendous headache.

*:✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Danae, who was thirteen, was a girl working at a small inn in the countryside. It was her job to fetch water, wipe the floor, or do the laundry. The husband and wife of the inn took her as a daughter, who lost her parents as a child and became an orphan.

But she was the daughter only in name since they treated her like a slave. They gave the girl dried bread or food left by the guests.

Her accommodation was a small warehouse next to the stable. Thanks to that, the smell of horse poop was always ingrained in the girl’s body.

Every time she fell asleep in a small bed made of straws, the girl dreamed.

It was a dream where her deceased parents showed up in front of her and said ‘Danae, we’re here to pick you up. We’re living together from today on.’

But when she opened her eyes, she couldn’t find her parents again.

Then one day, a group of neat-looking men came to visit the girl. They said they were the knights from a high family.

“Knights?”

For her, they looked like the knights she had seen in old fairy tales that the owner’s daughter abandoned. Of the countless guests passing by the inn, the knight was the first.

The girl secretly observed them, pretending to go to the mineral spring to get water. The knights in white uniforms were much more shiny than described in the fairy tale book.

The hostess couple of the inn, who had always been high-handed to the girl, greeted them, groveling as if they were overwhelmed by the momentum.

“How can such a precious guest be in such a country! How many days will you be staying?”

“We’re not here to stay. We came looking for a person.”

“A person?”

“Yes. There’s a girl named Danae here, isn’t she? I heard she’s thirteen this year.”

“What? The knights, why would Danae…??”

What they were looking for was Danae. When Danae, surprised by her name, dropped the large bucket of water, the knights talking to the host couple looked at her.

“That girl…”

“Yes, that girl is Danae. What can we do for you?”

A red-haired Knight who received a definite answer from the host couple walked up and stood in front of the girl. The little girl couldn’t look at the man in front of her properly and bowed her head.

But it wasn’t long before she knew it was a mistake. It was her old shoe that came into her sight.

‘It’s so dirty.’

I never thought of torn and stained shoes as something embarrassing, because this is what all the kids in this alley looked like anyway.

But standing in front of a shiny man, she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed about her dirty shoes. A man like this will wear very nice shoes too.

As she rolled her eyes around and looked at the man’s feet, she noticed his fine clothing and shoes as neat as his handsome face.

When she saw those shoes and looked at them again, she wondered why they were here.

The girl forced her short skirt to cover her dirty shoes.

From the beginning, the hemlines were dangling on Danae’s ankles because she wore the clothes that her adoptive parents’ real daughter Josephine wore.

Josephine was ten years old, and Danae was thirteen.

But it was always Danae who was wearing old clothes.

No matter how small Danae was from her peers, she did not fit in the clothes of Josephine, who was three years younger than her.

No matter how hard she tried to pull it, nothing magical happened that stretched the hem of the skirt.

‘There’s no way such a good thing could happen to me.’

Danae sighed inwardly and took her hand off the hem of her skirt.

‘My clothes are as lousy as my shoes anyway.’

You can only see the dirt if you cover the dirt with something dirty.

Besides, her shoes and clothes weren’t the only dirty things. She didn’t take a bath for several days, so she was in awful shape.

When Danae realized it, she thought she didn’t have to be ashamed of her shoes.

“You’re Danae?”

The man, who had been watching Danae for a long time trying to cover her shoes, managed to open his mouth.

Danae raised her head to answer the question, but the answer came from the mouth of her stepfather Robin, not her.

“Yes, it is her. This is Danae, Elder. Did you hear the rumour about this girl?” blabbed Robin, with a mean smile.