The Regressed Princess - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Wager

Why was there a bald patch in the Sky Garden?

Eva frowned and pulled back the reins. “Hee…” The high-spirited steed immediately became obedient and came to a halt.

The steps of the Sky Garden spiraled upward, the outer walls wrapped in thick layers of vines. Generally speaking, no matter how much digging happened inside, it wouldn’t be visible from the outside. However, someone had bundled the climbing plants into tufts with ropes and tossed them over the trellises, looking for all the world like rows of pickled cucumbers drying out.

Forget the rest, where are my roses?

Eva’s gaze sharpened. She first scanned the small shrubs on the outermost edge. They seemed undamaged. Just as she felt a bit relieved, she saw large, thick clumps of mud plastered all over the exterior.

“Who did this?!” the King sneered. Not expecting an answer from those behind her, she kicked the horse’s belly and leaped toward the gap in the garden.

Whoosh.

While the others wanted to take the long way around, the King had already jumped from the slope through the vines. Whether it was the skilled Imperial Guards in the front or the sighing ministers in the back, everyone had to abandon their original mountain-climbing plans and either stay put or follow obediently.

Eva controlled the reins to guide the horse around the lovely roses, then used her sword to slash open a muddy vine.

Shasha, shashasha.

As the large clumps of mud and vines rolled down, she finally saw the person blinking in the slush—the little Princess?

Eva didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and her soaring anger stalled.

“Lily?” Her emerald eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Eleanor, who was stuck in the mud, with a scrutinizing gaze.

“Mother!”

The girl crawled out of the muck. Her hands and feet were trapped in the soft, squishy pit, yet her lovely face remained clean. Small flecks of mud at the edge of her smile looked like dabs of eye shadow.

“What are you doing here?” Eva’s smile was gentle, but her hand remained resting on the hilt of her sword.

Eleanor seemed not to notice, looking at Eva with innocent eyes. When her mother didn’t reach out to pull her and Eleanor didn’t continue to act spoiled, she simply rolled twice like a small animal to get out, casually patting her skirt—patting mud onto mud, making a pipi-papa sound.

The King is still angry… fortunately, I have a backup plan.

Eleanor tilted her face up, intentionally keeping a distance of a few steps from Eva. She opened her arms and said with great energy: “It’s a gift! Do you want to see it now, Mother?”

A gift?

Eva’s train of thought was interrupted. She followed Eleanor’s lead and thought for a moment: Could it be a birthday gift? Her birthday was indeed coming up, but it wasn’t today.

“I was originally going to save this as a birthday gift for Mother.”

Eleanor went to the front of the slush and began digging vigorously with her delicate hands.

A big clump of mud? Eva’s cold gaze slowly changed as part of the mud fell away from the “mud ball.” No, it was a cluster of roses wrapped in sludge. Perhaps because the little Princess had dug too deep a hole and poured in too much water when transplanting, a part of it was soaked inside. Now that the small drainage trench had been dug out, the flowers within were revealed.

This cluster of roses had not yet bloomed, but the buds were round and lovely. Particularly precious was the fact that the flower shape was not that of an ordinary rose—it was rounder and cuter. Looking closely, the outermost edge seemed to have another color!

Eva instinctively let go of her sword hilt. She nimbly flipped off her horse and plucked a flower bud, scrutinizing it from top to bottom.

“How did you grow this?”

Heh heh~ how else? Grafting, of course. Eleanor laughed inwardly.

Fortunately, while she was ordering Shanhu to investigate Heidi, she had specifically asked about this. When she was young, she prepared birthday gifts for her mother every year; that was how she had obtained this pot of roses. Favorability is hard to achieve all at once. She didn’t have the time in this life that she had in her last to use slow, grinding methods, so she had to find another way and take some risks.

This pot of roses was something the previous life’s Eleanor had prepared while enduring headaches. She vaguely remembered the methods for cuttings and grafting, which she used to cultivate a pot of bi-colored roses to make her mother smile. Since she hadn’t fully understood the details of flower cultivation in her previous life, she had Shanhu and her family help with the breeding.

It took two or three years to successfully produce this one pot of two-colored Yueji not a true Chinese Rose, but a hybrid of roses and other flowers that simply looked like a Yueji.

But that was enough.

Eleanor tilted her head up and saw the flicker of light in Eva’s eyes as she had hoped: this King of Nolanna, who was cold toward everyone, was only helpless against things that were interesting and novel.

“Heh…” Eva laughed and tore off a flower bud, peeling the petals back one by one with her fingers, guessing what the flower would look like in full bloom. After she finished tearing the petals, she tossed the stem aside, and the smile on her face became more carefree.

Eva reached out and rubbed the little Princess’s mud-caked hair. “Well done. Did you dig this place up like this today just waiting for me to come by?”

What a dangerous way of putting it. She couldn’t admit to that.

Eleanor tilted her head innocently and then shook it vigorously: “I… I was thinking that many things could be grown here!”

She mimicked a real child, speaking with a slight lisp but struggling to get the words out: “Look, Mother, in order to transplant this flower from the pot to here, I specifically—dug so much, uh, actually it wasn’t all me…”

Eleanor “accidentally” waved her arm, drawing everyone’s attention to Andra, who was squatting at the edge of the field. Andra timely revealed a bashful smile, looking for all the world like a poor little loser dragged along by a willful princess to plow the land.

When a little Princess does something strange alone, her behavior is easily suspicious. But if two people with special identities are doing the same thing seriously at the same time, the focus of attraction becomes “the two of them” rather than the internal logic of the act. For example, if one person in strange clothing walks down the street, everyone will wonder what they are doing and if they have a mental problem.

But when two people in strange clothing walk toward a certain direction without looking aside, people subconsciously assume they are going to attend some kind of event.

Eleanor was not afraid of Eva directly rejecting her request; she was afraid of Eva starting to think. One cannot control another person’s thoughts; who knows if the King, after repeated reflection, might choose to kill the Princess? Once Eva became a variable “likely to take action,” all her deductions regarding the mastermind would have to start over. During the investigation, she might also consume many more rollback opportunities due to strategic errors the cost was too high.

“Transplanting?” Eva circled the little mud-child with great interest, laughing loudly: “Hahaha, you don’t need to dig such a big pit for transplanting speak, what do you want to do with this pile of dirt?”

Eleanor peeked at Eva’s expression from the corner of her eye; intuitively, it wasn’t dangerous. This time, she was likely being viewed as a clever or perhaps “smart-alecky” child.

The little Princess stuck out her tongue and obediently brought her toes together. She looked left and right as if trying to pull someone over to take the blame, but finally lowered her head resignedly and nodded. “Because I thought… if I dug this all up, you would be willing to let me keep birds, Mother.”

“Birds?” Even Eva couldn’t keep up with her daughter’s jumping thoughts.

Eleanor explained breezily: “Because I want a veeeery big garden, to grow lots and lots of beautiful flowers, and keep lots and lots of beautiful birds!”

Eva looked at the self-satisfied little Princess and shook her head with a laugh: “No, this is my garden.”

If she had pursued the demand for the Sky Garden, the child would have been in for a good beating at the very least. Eleanor wasn’t going to be that “disobedient”; she tilted her small face up, her eyes curving into crescent moons: “I know, so I didn’t dare hurt your flowers, Mother. I avoided them all.”

So that was it. Eva thought of the bundled vines and the roses covered with mud-cakes she had seen earlier. This child really did have the intention to protect her property and had put it into action. Should I give her some gold or gems then?

Eva was about to speak when she saw Eleanor open her arms wanting a hug but the good child noticed the mud on her and quickly lowered her arms. The little Princess clasped her fingers constrainedly and said in a small voice: “Then… then can I have a piece of the back mountain? Just a tiny piece is fine.”

Her right hand let go of her skirt and traced a very, very small circle: “I can raise birds and grow flowers on the mountain.”

The courtiers listening on the hillside couldn’t help but smile; the little Princess was truly too cute. They waited for Eva’s response, ready to join in with good-natured cheering when the King agreed to make her mood even better.

“Ha.” Eva indeed laughed. She leaned down and poked the little Princess’s forehead. “This request is not excessive.”

“Hehe~” Eleanor laughed cunningly, lowering her head to hide her excitement. The point was never “how much” land on the back mountain! As long as she had the King’s approval, she could use the excuse of raising chickens and flowers to hire craftsmen and “request” the assistance of some tutors. When that time came…

“But I refuse.”

“Than eh?”

Eva looked down at the little Princess, a dangerous intoxication flickering in her eyes. “Did you think I would definitely agree? Hmm? A tiny request.”

The little Princess looked ready to burst into tears. She piteously clutched her golden pendant and said with a trembling voice: “I-I’m sorry, I just… really wanted to keep birds… sob.” Even her crying was thin and weak, not sharp enough to pierce one’s eardrums.

Seeing the Princess cry so piteously, some ministers couldn’t sit still mainly the family members of those in the Princess Guard. They didn’t quite dare to advise, but they let out low sighs, as if saying “forget it, forget it.”

“Alright, I’m just joking with you.” Eva snorted a laugh. She pinned the rose to her chest and picked up Eleanor with one arm to coax her.

“Then… the chicken garden~?” The little Princess wiped her tears and turned her sob into a smile.

A garden? Of course. Eva’s expression was open, looking as if she were about to promise just that in the next second. But she looked into Eleanor’s shining eyes and said gently: “The rose is a birthday gift. What are you going to use to trade for the manor?”

A manor? I didn’t say manor…

Eleanor bit her lip. She and Eva both knew the manor was not the point. She asked probingley: “Can I send an even better gift on your birthday?”

“No.” The King refused calmly, but the intoxication gave her a brand-new idea. She suddenly sat the little Princess on her horse and asked with a smile: “Do you want to make a wager with me?”

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