What Your Majesty Desires - Chapter 3.5

But as soon as she entered the castle, what she saw was, “Ah!” Blood and corpses scattered on the floor.

Marilyn, shocked by the gruesome sight, recoiled in horror. Well, a few of the corpses had their heads separated, which was unsightly, but Curtis was the one who felt awkward at her being so horrified by so little.

“Oh, dear.” He was told to clean everything up before His Highness returned.

Fearing that he might be lumped together with the brutal bunch, Curtis cleared his throat for no reason.

“They haven’t cleaned up yet.”

Kids these days are so lazy. Muttering to himself, Curtis shook his head as if to emphasize that he had nothing to do with this carnage. Then, he subtly stood beside her.

“You won’t be able to see if you do this. Just look straight ahead and walk.”

“I don’t need you to.” Although she said she didn’t need him to shield her, Marilyn couldn’t bring herself to lift her head, afraid of seeing more piles of corpses. Having witnessed the fall of the empire, which she had only vaguely understood, she felt a pang in her heart and a surge of emotion.

She was acutely realizing that the downfall of a nation meant more than just the disappearance of its name. She had been too busy making a living to care about the rise and fall of the Dextin Empire, but she still hated to see innocent people die so tragically. “This way.”

Curtis carefully pointed the way to Marilyn, whose eyes were already moist. She followed Curtis silently, completely intimidated.

“Ah!”

“Be careful.” No matter how much she looked at the ground, there were red bloodstains everywhere on the path through the castle.

How long had she walked, repeating the process of stopping and starting several times?

“We’re here.” The place where Curtis stopped was the entrance to the underground prison, thick with the smell of moss. The gatekeepers guarding the prison had been completely replaced by soldiers of the Gler Empire. Curtis simply exchanged glances with the gatekeepers before leading Marilyn inside the bars.

However, Marilyn, who had been following well all along, couldn’t take a single step at the entrance to the prison.

“Um…” It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go, but going from the bright place to the underground made the inside look like a pitch-black cliff of night. It was her first time going down to a place like this. She couldn’t imagine what kind of scary things were waiting for her. Noticing that there was no one following him, Curtis, who had already gone down a few steps, came back up. “The trial is tomorrow, so you’ll be fine today.” He would have preferred it if she were worried about the grand future of the empire and the trial that would be held tomorrow.

To think that the princess was unable to move because she was afraid of going underground.

Her pathetic heart.

“The stairs are a bit steep.”

Curtis sugarcoated it again.

“There’s no handrail, so hold onto this as you go down.”

Then, he drew the sword from his waist, laid it horizontally, and offered it to her as if presenting a gift. Unable to delay any longer, Marilyn hesitantly stepped down one stair and grabbed the hilt of the sword that Curtis had offered. With each step down, her weight was placed on the sword’s hilt.

“It’s alright.”

Curtis perfectly balanced the hilt even as he went down ahead. Thanks to him, she made it safely to the underground floor, but… ‘It’s too dark.’ The dim underground was filled with a deadly silence mixed with murderous intent. It couldn’t be that there was no one here, so why couldn’t she hear any sound? With anxious eyes, Marilyn looked around. All she could see were stone walls and iron bars divided into compartments.

Two soldiers holding torches walked towards her with heavy steps. Their arrogant gait changed only after the soldiers recognized Curtis’s face.

The soldiers, realizing that Curtis was the one who had brought the new prisoner, hurriedly quickened their pace and ran to Curtis. Then, with extremely apologetic faces, they bowed their heads.

“Sir Knight, you’ve arrived. You could have just left her with the gatekeeper, why did you come all the way here?”

You could have just left her. Treating her as nothing more than an object, the soldiers only looked at Curtis.

“You must be busy, go ahead. We’ll take care of this…”

“Escort her to the best place to stay.” “Huh?” “Yes?” This was a prison. There was no such thing as the best place to stay. The soldiers, who rarely heard the words “escort her,” bowed their heads as if to do their best to fulfill Curtis’s orders, but their eyes scanned Marilyn’s old dress from top to bottom. She seemed to be of high status, but also not.

“How should we escort her? There are so many nobles gathered for the engagement ceremony that there are hardly any vacancies. If she’s a member of the imperial family, there is one room with a bed…”

“Take her there.” “Yes, I understand.”

The soldiers soon turned around and led Marilyn, or rather Curtis, the way. As the soldiers holding torches moved their feet deeper into the cave-like dark prison, the next set of bars invariably appeared on both sides of the walls, which seemed to have nothing on them. Inside the bars, the nobles of the Dextin Empire, who had come to the imperial palace to attend the engagement ceremony, were haphazardly crammed in.

The nobles, who were dressed in splendid attire for the empire’s grand event, were sitting on the stone floor in a resigned manner, startled and averting their eyes as the torches approached.

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