Please Die, Your Highness - Chapter 104

Maeve did not bother to answer.

Prince Declan did not pry further.

Inevitably, they trudged back to the village. Barely an hour seemed to have passed, but the atmosphere in the village they returned to had grown restless in the meantime.

Only three or four children ran out excitedly to welcome the returning donkey. Maeve untied the donkey’s lead from the horse’s saddle and let it run toward the children to its heart’s content.

“Must we wait until the water recedes?” Prince Declan asked from behind her. Maeve neither shook her head nor nodded.

“There is one road left, isn’t there?”

“Not there. That is where the red water flows. I heard that not even grass grows there, let alone trees. If you enter such a place, you die. It would be a truly big problem.”

Though he seemed to listen half-heartedly, it appeared he had taken Harold’s stories to heart. Maeve also agreed with his opinion. If possible, it was best not to set foot on such an ominous land.

Furthermore, that young donkey had a habit of thrusting its snout in and nibbling on anything it was curious about—to the point where one couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a donkey.

“If we are forced to go that way, it would be better to leave that donkey here.”

Prince Declan agreed, looking truly reluctant.

Maeve and Prince Declan idly led the horse toward the empty house where they had stayed. Once even the children went off to play in the distance with the donkey, the street became empty. For a village of only about twenty inhabitants, it looked like a ghost town when seen like this.

They were in the middle of stopping in front of the empty house and tying up the horse, Bebe. The door of a nearby house opened, and a woman with a familiar face beckoned them to come inside.

Yes, it was a face she knew. It was the mother of the thug Maeve had struck the day before.

Maeve hesitated for a moment, but Prince Declan was already walking over there excitedly. Maeve had no choice but to follow him into the mother and son’s home.

“That side is completely submerged. Don’t even dream of trying to swim across. You really will die.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Marley. I was just on my way back with that intention anyway,” Prince Declan said, accepting the tea she offered as if he had been affably waiting for it. Maeve also did not refuse and drank the tea provided. It was tea after a very long time. It had been truly a long while since she had drunk boiled fragrant leaves rather than medicinal herbs.

“So, what do you plan to do?”

Behind Mrs. Marley, who asked cautiously, her son Kiaran Marley was looking at them with a sour expression. He had bandages wrapped around his left arm, and he quickly avoided her gaze when he made eye contact with Maeve.

Prince Declan answered Mrs. Marley’s question instead.

“We were just about to try the other way out of necessity. Where that red water is said to appear……”

“Absolutely not!”

Before the words were even finished, Mrs. Marley shook her head and spoke as if shouting.

“I’m sorry. I shouted because I wanted to stop you so badly. Don’t even think about that way. The people sent from the Viscount’s castle went that way saying they would study it, and not a single one of them returned.”

“People were sent from the Viscount’s castle?”

Maeve asked, taking an interest in her story belatedly.

Mrs. Marley nodded her head.

“This area is part of the Viscount’s estate too, after all. Even if it is the outskirts. That is why they sent us here, claiming they would develop it. They sent all of us carpenters here saying that good trees grow here, but they wouldn’t even let us step foot on the land where the good trees actually grow and told us to build a camp here instead. They said they had things to do, like surveying or whatever, according to them.”

As soon as Maeve heard her words, she thought of Eloa, that land which had belonged to the Viscount’s estate in its own right.

It was the land that Prince Declan and Maeve had passed through.

She had wondered why on earth they had migrated to such a land and assumed it must be a greedy superior, and it turned out to be the same person who owned the land they had passed through.

Viscount Quill. It was the land of that nobleman whom Prince Declan had described with a shake of his head as a man blinded by money.