MHHC Chapter 81

Hatred from the Past

Adelheide finally managed to lift her head. The man standing backlit above her looked down at her as though she were something detestable.

"I heard you begged Father to take vows as a priest in the Sanctuary."

She recognized him in an instant. The Crown Prince, Mikhail.

But was this man truly the same Crown Prince she had known? Of course, the face was identical, so logic dictated they were the same person—yet somehow the atmosphere surrounding him felt entirely different.

The smile he would force onto his features whenever they crossed paths had vanished without a trace. His sharp gaze dripped with a vicious ennui, cruel and cutting as winter frost.

'And the clothes he's wearing—they're exactly like something from long ago...'

Long ago? Adelheide blinked slowly, as if waking from a half-sleep that clung to her thoughts like cobwebs.

'Why did I think that?'

Questions coiled upon questions, serpentine and relentless. She didn't know where she was.

Adelheide lowered her gaze blankly to examine her own wretched state. Everything was chaos incarnate.

How had she ended up sprawled on this floor? Why was her entire body drenched in filthy, stinking water? Why was she subjected to this interrogation?

And Valentin—why had he left her alone like this? Where had he gone by himself...?

'Valentin?'

Adelheide blinked in confusion, the name floating strange and foreign on her tongue. Who was that? Whose name had she just thought? Without realizing it, she bit her lip.

She didn't know why, but impatience surged through her veins like fever. Had he been someone close to her? The fact that merely forgetting a name could stir such emotion...

'But who was he, really?'

Adelheide frowned, thoughts racing in anxious circles. His voice, his features, the way he would call her name with such tenderness...

She was on the verge of grasping something in those hazy memories when—

"Ugh."

Mikhail's forceful hand seized her chin and jerked it upward.

"Have your ears failed you now as well?"

"...Your Imperial Highness. You're dirtying your hands."

The one who stopped him was a golden-haired knight standing like a shadow behind him.

The Little Duke of Bathildis, Adelheid's cousin. His face looked exactly like Joachim's...

'That one's name is Joachim, I'm certain. But this Joachim in this memory... who is he?'

"Apologize, Your Highness the Princess."

The thought that had been circling faintly in her mind vanished without a trace beneath the subsequent insults that followed.

Adelheid slowly awakened from those meaningless memories and found herself thrown back into reality. Apologize? For what? For dirtying the Crown Prince's hands?

She wanted to laugh bitterly, but the submission ingrained in her body came first.

She carefully rose from where she had fallen, avoiding her noble half-brother's hand.

"I..."

The moment she managed to speak, the world sharpened into focus and memory returned like breathing.

All the memories that had confused her vanished completely, replaced by clarity—who she was, where this place was.

Her name was Adelheid Désirée Bathildis Nürnbergian. This was the royal palace of Nürnberg, the most powerful of Arian's thirteen kingdoms.

She wiped away the filthy water dripping down her chin and lips with the back of her hand and said:

"I don't understand why Your Highness is angry."

For a moment, even her own voice sounded foreign to her ears.

But the dissonance lasted only an instant, and she soon forgot it. Adelheide continued speaking clearly.

"I have no magic and cannot be of use to the kingdom. This was inevitable once I came of age. It's only proper."

"So," The smile curling at Mikhail's lips turned vicious.

"You truly intend to take lifelong vows as a priest?"

Her half-brother's gaze slowly raked over her from head to toe. Adelheide barely withstood his cutting stare.

"Father has already granted permission."

"Insisting on it, are you?"

The Crown Prince let out a hollow laugh of disbelief before his expression cooled to something glacial.

"Do you even understand what kind of place the Sanctuary is? It's somewhere you'll spend your entire life as if imprisoned. Political criminals and destitute paupers volunteer there for money. Do you have no pride as royalty whatsoever?"

No pride? Adelheide swallowed a bitter laugh. If she'd had such a thing, she never would have survived this long in the palace.

Nürnberg was a nation protected by formidable magic.

The King of Nürnberg, the greatest mage of the age, had nine children by different mothers, and Adelheid was the fifth among them.

Every Nürnberger, from street beggars to commoners' children, used magic as naturally as breathing.

Yet Adelheid, a child of the king himself, had been born without any magical power at all.

From the age of three, when that fact became publicly known, she had been thoroughly isolated.

Her older siblings scorned her with their gazes; her younger siblings used magic to constantly push her into humiliating situations.

Her entire life had been an unbroken chain of contempt and oppression. Even her own mother had abandoned her upon learning her daughter had been born without magic.

And through it all, the Crown Prince had stood above them all, watching everything with indifferent eyes.

Normally, he wouldn't have spared her a single glance whether she lay beaten on the ground or had filthy water poured over her head.

But now...

'Why is he angry?'

His unfamiliar rage felt even more disturbing than his usual indifference.

Once she came of age, she had to leave the palace. Since no man would want a wife born without magic, her choices were few.

It so happened that a priest who had long served faithfully in the Sanctuary had died, leaving a position vacant.

Once she entered, she would never be able to leave the Sanctuary again—but the proposal wasn't entirely unwelcome to her.

No, in fact, she welcomed it all the more for that very reason.

"Withdraw your petition, even now."

Adelheide shook her head.

"Father has approved it, and the High Priest has granted permission. It would be shameless to withdraw based on my whim."

"I will speak to Father myself. Your departure from the palace will be through marriage."

"I don't want that."

"Did you think your preferences would influence my decision?"

"...There wouldn't be any nobles who want me in the first place."

"Then we'll start searching from now on. The High Priest will understand."

Her moisture-laden eyes sharpened like blades. Adelheide clenched her skirt tightly in her fists.

"All my life... you've never once paid me any attention. I don't understand why you're suddenly doing this on the very day I've decided my own path."

Adelheide met Mikhail's cold eyes directly. In the nineteen years she'd lived clinging to existence in the palace, she had made eye contact with the Crown Prince perhaps three or four times a year at most. There had even been many years when they passed without exchanging a single word.

"You don't understand?"

He had never tormented her or humiliated her. Only terrible indifference, and occasionally a rage that burned with bizarre intensity.

Today, too, those emotions flickered in his eyes. He reached out and grasped her slender throat as if he might break it. Her breathing grew shallow.

"Trying to flee to the Sanctuary where even the King's hand cannot reach, thinking you could have freedom without my permission, harboring such insolent thoughts all this time without ever showing it."

"..."

"All of it infuriates me."

His thumb slowly traced up her throat. The sensation was like a serpent crawling across her skin...

As Adelheide's trembling eyes twisted in revulsion, Mikhail's gaze clouded for a moment. His head tilted at an angle.

Warmth approached as if his lips might touch hers at any moment. Nausea surged through her immediately, born of pure repulsion.

"Ugh."

"Even if loneliness consumes you, you must be lonely here. Even if you're miserable, you must be miserable here."

So that when your life becomes utterly wretched, only then will I pick you up reluctantly, like salvation.

Between gasping breaths, she thought she heard such words whispered. She shoved Mikhail away with all her strength.

Though he had gripped her with iron force just moments ago, he allowed himself to be pushed back easily at her touch. Perhaps he was stunned at having revealed his true face.

"Right now, Your Highness... What exactly..."

She couldn't even finish her sentence. She didn't dare look at the Crown Prince's face again.

The confusion was overwhelming. What if the feelings her half-brother harbored for her were of that terrible, frightening sort? What if she was forced to confirm it?

By the time she finally lifted her head, the Crown Prince and his knight had vanished.

"We've arrived."

At the announcement, the carriage gradually came to a halt. Adelheide raised her weary eyes to gaze at the forest path stretching before her.

It was a forest dense with foliage in an uncanny way. Frost clung to the entrance, and beyond the iron bars, a white stone path wound toward the forest's heart.

"Please disembark."

Adelheide looked at the knight who opened the carriage door and extended his hand. Mikhail's knight. Her cousin, Joachim, son of Duke Bathildis.

Aside from royalty, he was her only blood relation, which was why he'd been permitted to accompany her. He held out a basket to her.

"Take this."

The basket contained a single dagger, a pouch of various seeds, and a bottle of precious liquor. These were the three items that priests taking vows in the Sanctuary were required to bring. He spoke.

"From here, you must go alone. The forest's perimeter and entrance are heavily guarded by knights day and night, so it's safe. If you follow this path, you'll find a temple."

"..."

"If your mind remains unchanged after spending ten days at the temple, you'll take your lifelong vows. As you know, after that, you can never leave the temple grounds."

Adelheide nodded. She already knew all this.

Once she entered the Sanctuary, she wouldn't be able to go outside—she wouldn't even see another person except on the monthly supply day when necessities were delivered.

She raised her head toward the shadow that loomed closer above her. Her cousin looked down at her with cold eyes and whispered:

"Your Highness must learn shame."