CH 147

When the banquet hall could be seen from a distance, Bea stopped walking. “I think I should get going,” she noted.

Her bitter expression caught my eye. I could roughly guess why she had such a look on her face—it was probably because she didn’t want to go back to her family. She had a bad relationship with them, after all. Perhaps it was because we were in the same boat, but I wanted to cheer her up by mentioning something positive. “Okay, take care and see you in two weeks,” I said with a bright voice.

She nodded with a slightly blushed face and breathed out, “I’ll see you then.” Her fingers that were interlocked with mine soon slipped away and fell slowly.

“Goodbye, Bea.” I watched her turn around and leave for a moment, then turned back towards the crown prince. He was still holding my hand and was staring straight ahead in silence. “We were in a pinch because we’d gotten lost. Thank you so much for escorting us to the banquet hall like this.”

Instead of answering, he simply nodded in return. It seemed that the crown prince was a better person than I thought, but I decided to remain vigilant. There was a chance that he was just trying to trick me by showing me his good side. It made sense, since even the royal princess thought of him as a psychopath. Resolving to remain careful around him so he couldn’t find any fault with me, I looked straight ahead and started walking. It was then I felt the front of my shoe collide with something.

“Ahhh!” I had almost fallen, but was lucky enough to be caught by the crown prince. The only problem was that his arms were now around my waist, supporting me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The same thing had happened with my father, and Max as well. Why did I fall so often? I started to berate myself, but quickly realized that showing my embarrassment was only going to make the situation more awkward. Pretending to be calm, I looked at the crown prince. I had no idea what was going through his head because his face was covered with a mask. “Thanks to your help, I’m fine, Your Highness,” I replied.

I was worried that he was going to say something else, but what he said as he removed his hands from my waist was unexpected. “I’ll be going.”

I didn’t think he was going to end our encounter so cleanly like that. I had even thought about returning to the banquet hall together with him, ready to endure what people might say about us including any mentions of a scandal. It felt weird to think that he was considerate towards me, but I hid my emotions and answered,  “Thank you again, Your Highness.” I had only lowered my head slightly before looking back up, but he had already disappeared from my sight. It felt as if I had become bewitched and had witnessed the crown prince’s ghost or something. I let out a hollow laugh when I realized my experience of reading too many novels was affecting my thinking process. Shaking away useless thoughts, I made my way back to the banquet hall.

* * *

Max watched Jubelian who was now far away from him. He reached out his hand and pretended to hold her. Like the story of a dragon kidnapping the princess, he wanted to take her away and put her in a safe place where he could see her every day. ‘But if I do that, she’ll be scared of me.’

When he held Jubelian in his arms just now, Max felt like he was going to lose his sense of reason. He wanted to pull her close to him by the waist, wrap her up inside his arms, press his body close to hers, and devour her cherry-colored lips mercilessly. However, when he met her uncomfortable gaze, he felt something.

“Thanks to your help, I’m fine. Thank you, Your Highness,” she had said.

‘I’m nothing but the scary crown prince to you.’ He knew that she would be mentally scarred if he followed his instincts.

Max recalled Jubelian’s words from before. “Then I must run away.”

There was also a chance that this might end with her being more than just frightened of the crown prince if he were to do that. For this reason, Max had held on to the little amount of patience he had left and managed to pull his hands away from her waist. However, removing his hands didn’t mean that the heat that flooded through his whole body was going to subside. Because of this, Max hurriedly left and hid from Jubelian. He ended up quietly following her as he suppressed his ever-increasing urges.

When Jubelian disappeared from his sight, his impulses finally dissipated. ‘She finally went in.’ Reason seemed to return to him when he was able to confirm that Jubelian safely made it back to the banquet hall. Max recalled what had happened earlier. ‘In the end, I didn’t get to clear up any misunderstandings because of Beatrice.’ Other things might have been acceptable, but Max couldn’t stand the fact that she had taken Jubelian to such a dangerous place like the Room of Shadows. He thought of how to get his revenge for a moment, but soon calmed his anger towards his stepsister.

‘If I do that, she might say something unnecessary to Jubelian.’ Jubelian seemed to be unaware of his stepsister’s true identity, but had definitely said she was her friend.

“Please be generous with your forgiveness as we ended up here without knowing so, since there were no guards out front,” she had said.