The Reincarnated Princess Is Astonished

Consciousness slowly returned to me.

The first thing I saw in my blurred vision was an unfamiliar ceiling. There were none of the engravings of ivy or frescoes or magnificent stuccos that I was used to seeing in the palace. Instead, it was a flat ceiling, its color faded. The design was simple, with evenly spaced black beams.

Where am I? I tried to think, but my head wasn’t working right. My eyes wandered around the room aimlessly until my jumbled thoughts began to become coherent. Then, I remembered the pale face of my personal guard.

“Klaus...! Ouch?!” I shot upright but immediately felt a throbbing pain. I let out a groan while cradling my head. I know what this is... Rose, it’s the migraine you experience when you’ve slept for too long, or when you’ve fallen asleep at the wrong time. I pressed my fingertips against my temple and waited for the pain to pass, holding my breath. Once the throbbing had subsided, I let my breath out.

A voice called out to me. “Don’t worry. Klaus is doing fine.” It sounded like the owner of the voice had waited for me to calm down before speaking.

I swiveled my head around and examined the room, but I was alone.

“Over here,” the voice said, guiding my eyes beyond an opened window, where I saw a hand waving at me.

I pushed myself off of the sofa I’d been resting on and walked over to the window. When I peered outside, I found a pair of honey-colored eyes looking back at me. A young man was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, watching the sea.

“Wolf,” I said.

“Morning. Looks like you didn’t sleep well.” Wolf laughed. Signs of fatigue were evident on his face as well.

“Did I pass out?” I asked.

“You don’t remember?”

“Um... A little? I think.” My response came out rather jumbled because I’d been organizing my memories while speaking.

After Klaus had regained consciousness, my knees had buckled. With the immediate emergency out of the way, the tension had drained from my body and I’d lost the ability to keep myself upright.

Wolf explained that he’d picked me up and carried me to another room. “You fell asleep on the sofa while I was out fetching you something to drink,” he said. Hearing that made my head ache even more. “We were all worried about you... You were sleeping so deeply that we thought you might’ve died.”

“I’m terribly sorry...” My head sank. Klaus had the most acute injury, so we focused on him, but there were plenty of other wounded people. I can’t believe that I was over here snoozing on my own while everyone else was concentrating on tending to the injured.

If there’s an empty grave nearby, I think I’ll jump in. Scratch that, I’ll even dig one myself. I just need to find someone to bury me...

“Why do you look so down?” Wolf asked.

“How else should I look? I wasn’t around to tend to anyone’s injuries, and I still haven’t thanked anyone for all the help I’ve received.”

The old doctor and Michael saved Klaus; George brought Michael here; Big Sis Bianca, Flora, Mia, the sailors... I’ve gotten help from just about everyone.

“You did remember to thank the sorcerer.”

“Huh?”

“When he ran over to help you up, you held his hand and kept repeating ‘thank you.’ You both started bawling. To be honest, I was at a loss for what to do...”

Wolf’s words prompted a vague resurgence of memory. After my legs had given out, Michael had tried to help me back to my feet in true gentlemanly fashion—but instead of letting him, I’d snatched his hand and repeated my thanks like a broken record. I could remember the sight of his wide-open black eyes glistening and filled with tears.

Yep, that’s right! Go ahead and make the guy who saved our asses cry. Brilliant play by me.

“You kept on thanking a bunch of people even after I picked you up. Every time we passed another person, you cried and said, ‘Thank you, thank you.’”

Back up a second! When did I become the village drunk?! This is too much for me to take in! If it’s all true, then that would mean I really have embarrassed myself...in front of everyone?!

“It gave me a good laugh,” Wolf said. “All these grown men were tripping over themselves, clueless about what to do. If I’d been one of those men, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see me acting that pathetically. Even that lady-killer friend of yours was blushing from ear to ear, I swear.”

“Please stop... You’re actually killing me.” I hid my bright-red cheeks behind my hands, then crouched down and tucked my head beneath my knees. I heard an amused chuckle coming from above my head.

“You aren’t very princessy after all, are you?” Wolf said tenderly. His tone wasn’t at all mocking.

I lifted my head and peered up through my fingers. Wolf was leaning in through the window with one arm on the windowsill, cradling his chin. The look in his eyes was as soft and kind as his voice.

His caring gaze caused my stiff body to relax. My face slowly emerged from beneath my hands and I looked up at him. “Wolf.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you...very much.”

I knelt, sitting on my heels, and sat up straight. Then, I positioned my hands on the floor in front of me, so that my fingers formed the edges of a triangle with my knees as the base. I lowered my head so that it nearly touched the ground, and that was when Wolf grew startled and called out to me.

“Wait, Mary! What are you doing?!”

“Thanking you.”

“Yeah, I’m not blind! What I mean is... You’re a princess! You shouldn’t be bowing your head to some nobody doctor!”

“Being a doctor or a princess doesn’t matter when it comes to expressing gratitude,” I stated. “Besides, we’re not at court. You and I are the only ones here.”

“But still!”

“Khuer, the miraculous tribe.”

Wolf’s eyes shot wide open when I spoke those words.

“I’ve heard that your tribe is one that’s shrouded in mystery. That your people disdain almost all contact with the outside world. Isn’t revealing your identity supposed to be your greatest taboo?”

Despite possessing an inordinate wealth of knowledge and expertise, this tribe recognized no individual as their employer. That was probably far tougher than I could imagine. Preserving the preexisting knowledge of previous generations would take no more than a few people with the right amount of zeal. But, researching and perfecting new techniques and medicines in the hopes of novel discoveries would inevitably need funding. Even so, they’d pledged themselves to neither a specific employer nor a sponsor, and they did not inflate the price of their medicines. I had to take my hat off to their way of living. To the core, they were a stoic people.

Moreover, even if the Khuer tribe shunned employment from outside benefactors, those with influence would probably keep hounding them. Very occasionally, people with authority from noble families would exhibit a strong desire to preserve their own lives; perhaps some of them would want to hoard the Khuer’s knowledge and expertise for themselves. In other words, the preservation of their traditions wasn’t the only reason why the Khuer tribe hid from the public eye and kept even the location of their village a secret.

“You could have feigned ignorance and kept up your act,” I said. “But instead, you worked tirelessly to save Klaus, even knowing that you risked revealing your true identity. I must express my deepest respect and gratitude for your compassion and sincerity. Thank you for saving my dear friend.” I bowed my head low once more.

Neither of us said a word. There was quiet, and the only noise was the distant bustle of people and the faraway roaring of the waves. The tranquil silence was broken by a very long sigh.

Is he fed up with me? I wondered. I raised my head to check and saw Wolf leaning heavily on the windowsill, burying his head between his crossed arms.

“Wolf?”

“Stop,” Wolf groaned, his voice agonized. He raised his head slightly from his arms. “I don’t deserve your thanks. I’m not the great person that you’re making me out to be.”

I thought that I could see a hint of self-derision in his smile.

“You remember how I foisted all the work onto you?” he asked. “When the maid fainted... When the sailor broke his arm.”

“But you needed to do that to hide your identity. Besides, if I’d said that I couldn’t do it, then you were planning to treat them yourself, weren’t you?”

Wolf did entrust Mia and Kurt’s treatments to me. But if I’d said that I couldn’t handle them, then I’m sure he would’ve taken over. That wasn’t just my guess; it was closer to conviction.

“I was testing you!” he exclaimed. “Do you get it?!”

My jaw dropped. “Testing me?”

A simple question arose in my mind. Why? What could he possibly gain from testing me?

As though he’d plucked that question out of my head, Wolf responded, “I stopped by Nevel so that I could meet the goddess from that rumor.”

Wolf told me that he’d spent some time gathering information in a port. He’d learned that a ship belonging to Julius zu Eigel, the second son of the Eigel family and an acquaintance of the goddess, would be setting sail.

“I needed to return home for a while anyway, so I boarded your ship. Lo and behold, the word on deck was that one of the passengers was the goddess. I couldn’t believe my luck. Although I did rule her out almost immediately.”

Once he’d discounted Flora, Wolf had told himself that he’d have another opportunity to resume his search for the goddess when he next returned to Nevel. However, after running into me in the kitchen, he’d apparently suspected that I might be the real goddess.

“But I didn’t have the right hair color,” I pointed out.

“No. But you caught my eye. Anyway, it didn’t matter whether you were actually the goddess—she wasn’t all that I was searching for.”

He was searching for something else? I shot him a questioning look, but for some reason, he scrunched his face up. He looked as worried as a child about to be told off, which was a big departure from the self-assured expression that he usually sported. As a result, I couldn’t bring myself to press the matter further. Instead, I opted to say something else. “Did I manage to live up to your expectations?” I asked, chuckling and hoping that Wolf would reply with a casual “yeah, as if.”

However, I’d misjudged his reaction—his expression seemed anguished and weak. He pulled on his hair.

“You blew my expectations out of the water. I mean, really, what’s with you? Why did you have to be a princess? It’s great that you have some authority, but couldn’t you have been born into a slightly lower class?”

That statement reminded me of a quote from Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. However, the tone of his voice wasn’t nearly sweet enough to be a profession of love. I felt like he was criticizing me.

“If you had to be a princess, then you should’ve at least acted like a princess should... Much more arrogant. If you’d just been ignorant and petty like a spoiled noble girl... I could’ve looked for someone else. I could’ve convinced myself to look elsewhere, knowing that there are more than enough well-intentioned wealthy people out there for me to find.”

“Wolf...?”

I have no idea what he’s getting at, I thought, confused.

Wolf continued to stare at me. “Tell me something, Mary.” He reached out and grabbed my wrists with his large hands.

I grew ever more confused about what he was trying to do.

“What do you think will happen to you now?” he asked.

“Well...now that I’ve revealed myself to be a princess, I imagine that they’ll cart me off to Flanmer’s royal palace before deporting me back to Nevel.”

“They’ll invite me to a royal reception before escorting me home” would’ve been a more delicate way to put it, but the essentials were the same. And I haven’t even achieved anything yet...

I’d managed to accomplish my primary objective—make contact with one of the Khuer tribe—but I had too little time to negotiate. Taking into account the fact that Wolf’s identity had been exposed, I doubted that there was any way to keep him around for much longer. And so, I would return to Nevel empty-handed.

“Will you ever come back?” he asked.

“Not possible... In fact, I’ll be lucky if I’m ever allowed outside the palace again,” I said with a wry smile.

I couldn’t imagine my father being the sort of person to give his daughter a second chance after she’d already failed once.

Wolf heaved a long sigh and slowly blinked his eyes. When he reopened them, he fixed me with his gaze. The serious look on his face was enough to shock me. “Right... That leaves me no choice then.”

“Huh? What are... Hey?!” My world turned upside down. I’d been looking up at the sky through the window, but now the ground filled my vision.

Wolf had picked me up and flung me over his shoulders. He grabbed some of his things that he’d placed nearby and then forced a hood over my head. Wolf slipped out through a rear entrance and descended a flight of stairs, encountering nobody else along the way. He was sure on his feet.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What are you doing?!”

Why’s he carrying me? And where the hell is he taking me?!

(Continued in the next volume)