Chapter 67

The woman helped me up from where I sat slumped in front of the mirror and dressed me in the plain white clothes she had been holding.

Then she carried me on her back and started walking toward the room the Crown Prince had mentioned.

“…Can’t I… not go?”

“No, you can’t. For us, thinking or making judgments isn’t necessary. When His Highness speaks, we must bow our heads and obey everything he says. That’s what we were born to do.”

Even as she said this, the woman’s face betrayed no belief in her own words.

While the rest of her expression seemed calm, the corners of her eyes were twisted in a bizarrely pained manner.

Carrying me on her back, she walked for a while before stopping in front of a door and whispering softly.

“Still, child, don’t let yourself break. I’ve already been broken. The people who might have saved me have all gone to heaven or hell. So, if even one person still cares for you, don’t let yourself break, for their sake. His Highness is an unusual man. He always seeks consent before acting. Though I can’t say what he might do if he’s in a bad mood.”

Her final words, muttered under her breath as though speaking to herself, were chilling.

She opened the door and entered.

The room was simple except for two large bookshelves, three drawers, a bed, and several rings hanging from the ceiling.

Well, without all the misfortune surrounding me, I would have been just another ordinary noblewoman, so there’s little meaning in pointing out exceptions.

The Crown Prince leaned against the wall in a school uniform, smoking a cigarette.

“Tionem, lay her on the bed and return to the garden.”

The woman nodded silently, placed me on the bed, and left the room.

“You must be a little hungry, considering you haven’t eaten anything for days.”

I didn’t respond.

The Crown Prince didn’t seem to expect an answer anyway, as he grabbed a hose hanging from the ceiling and walked toward me.

What he did next was pure madness.

As though he thought I was some damned goose for making foie gras, he shoved the hose down my throat and began pumping an unknown substance into my stomach.

“This feed is so nutritious that your emaciated body will return to normal in just four days. Be grateful as you eat.”

The volume was so overwhelming that I wondered if my stomach might burst.

A sharp pain started in my stomach, as though it really had ruptured.

The Crown Prince gave me no time to rest. He yanked out the hose and then forced water into me.

It was unbearable.

“This always feels like a hassle, no matter how many times I do it. Tomorrow, I’ll find someone else to handle this.”

“Urgh!”

“Disgusting.”

Having taken in nothing but cold water and strange feed after days of starvation, my stomach reacted violently. I started vomiting blood.

Even though my body was so broken, it healed almost instantly. It was maddening.

Though there was no escape, I desperately wanted to get out of this place. I tried to get up and run to the door I had just come through.

The Crown Prince grabbed me by the hair and slammed me to the floor.

As I lay there, twitching my fingers, he tied me up with a rope.

Like a piece of meat hung in a butcher’s shop, he bound me with my limbs drawn together and suspended me from the ceiling, my head facing downward.

If I leaned forward, the collar around my neck choked me; if I let my weight fall backward, my arms felt like they were being torn off.

“Who was it again? Evan. Yes, Evan of the Strelitz family. I don’t know how he hid his strength, but after you disappeared, he’s been running around like a dog, desperately searching for you.”

As he spoke, the Crown Prince drew a pistol from his waistband.

The golden decorations on its ivory grip gleamed—it was the gun my father had given me.

Seeing the weapon I had considered my soul’s companion in the hands of the person I despised most made a flame flicker in my mind.

I tried to lunge at him, but reality hit me: I was hanging from the ceiling like livestock, awaiting my fate.

“In the academy, just a student—a mere student—killed four teachers and twenty-nine students, offering them as sacrifices. Over two hundred were injured. Just a mere student.”

Bang!

A bullet burrowed into my thigh.

The pain made me want to vomit again, but the Crown Prince came over and shoved a large ball into my mouth—similar to the one used when I was locked in the white room.

I didn’t know what kind of enchantments were inscribed on it, but it shrank to fit my mouth as it went in.

“If I had locked you in the room of contemplation with minimal food for half a year, things would have gone much more smoothly…”

Suddenly, his hands began trembling violently.

“Why the hell did something like this have to happen while I was still here?!”

With a scream, he started shooting wildly at me.

Five more holes appeared in my side.

“He said if I handed you over, he would stop hiding and feeding sacrifices here and there.”

Hearing this, I instinctively tried to smirk and mock the Crown Prince, but blood gushed from my mouth, silencing me with choking sounds.

Come to think of it, the gag in my mouth would have prevented me from speaking anyway.

“Fine. I’ll hand you over. He never said you had to be intact.”

When his gun clicked empty, he threw it at my head and gestured wildly at a shadow, ordering it to heal me.

Immediately, the bullets embedded in my body were ejected, and the wounds began to close.

“They said I’d go down in history as the worst tyrant. That the empire would collapse under my reign. Damn it, I haven’t even inherited the throne yet, and it’s already on the brink of ruin!”

He approached and removed the ball from my mouth, intending to throw it away in disgust. I bit his finger.

My strength was gone, so I barely tore at his skin, nowhere near enough to sever it.

Instead, he shoved his bitten finger deeper into my mouth, making me gag.

“Hah… I need to calm down. Calm down.”

He stared at me for a long time before turning and leaving the room.

At least this pain, however excruciating, was better than being locked in that soft, suffocating room. There, I was half out of my mind.

***

“Not like this! Noooo!”

Perhaps because I’d eaten yesterday, my voice rang out loud and clear in a scream.

The Crown Prince had said he’d send people to feed me starting the next day, but instead of people, Johannes sent some black-skinned men.

Men who were missing their right arms, only able to use their left.

They weren’t good for anything.

Within a month, they wouldn’t even be able to maintain proper productivity, so killing them as an example would be the most fitting choice.

Yet those wretches looked at my disheveled and pathetic state with pity in their eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, you filthy animals. Before I cut off the last arm you’ve got left.”

The black-skinned men frowned deeply at my words and began muttering among themselves in their own language, mentioning something about Mecklenburg.

They untied me from where I hung from the ceiling and released the ropes binding my hands and feet. My legs trembling, I ran toward the door, but, of course, it wouldn’t open.

It didn’t seem like they planned to stop me.

After all, there was no way for me to escape this room.

I was nothing more than a toy for those lesser beings.

They laughed and snickered as they spoke to one another, amused by how pathetic I looked.

“Come here, Mecklenburg.”

“Don’t you dare use human words, you black-skinned bastards. Squeal like pigs or cows, you vile creatures.”

“She doesn’t understand us.”

With that, the two began exchanging strange cries between themselves before one of them grabbed me.

I resisted and struggled, but one of them struck me across the face with his blunt, stump-like arm. 

The other made a noise of protest, as if to say the blow was too harsh, but when the first muttered something about Mecklenburg, he reluctantly nodded and kicked me.

As I lay sprawled on the ground, they sighed and picked up the hose hanging from the ceiling. 

Without hesitation, they forced my mouth open and began shoving food down my throat.

“The woman who used to look at us like livestock is now living worse than cattle.”

“Shut up. Once I get out of here, I’ll chop you all into pieces and feed you to pigs.
As for Johannes, that lunatic, I’ll burn him alive and throw him to the dogs.”

They laughed at me, mocking me as completely insane, and then left the room.

Soon after, the woman with the lifeless eyes came to find me. She moved me to the bathroom, bathed me, and then locked me back in the room.

This pattern repeated endlessly.

Morning, noon, and night, the black-skinned men would beat me, feed me, and sometimes torment or mock me.

They joked that in their tribe, a chest like mine would get me mistaken for a man, or some nonsense like that. Damn bastards.

If Evan would just come here and rescue me, I’d pull out all their teeth, fill them with the feed they’ve been shoving down my throat, and kill them slowly.

But when will he come?

The Crown Prince hasn’t visited this place in a long time.

The woman said nothing to me, but when she tried to ask the men something, one of them pointed to his crotch as if mocking her.

I punched him in his groin with my fist.

Of course, they beat me up badly after that.

It’s getting harder to endure.

Three months have passed.

Evan, save me.