Please Die, Your Highness - Chapter 16

“What are you looking for?”

“Where’s Sir Craig?”

“He’s probably making rounds nearby with Fionechta.”

“Yeah?” Maeve responded absentmindedly, pulling out other bundles from the corner. Then, she found a sack emitting a strangely distinct scent.

It was a medium-sized sack, reaching up to her shin, and though the opening was tightly tied shut, the smell was overpowering.

It was the same scent as the one coming from the medicine bottle in her hand.

Without a word, Maeve untied the sack.

“What’s that?”

Rory, standing behind her, asked. Maeve looked again into the sack to confirm what was inside.

Purple flowers.

“Flowers,” Maeve answered calmly.

It was Phenycia—the very flower that the old woman Morrigan had sternly warned her never to inhale if she ever came across it.

Phenycia was both a medicinal herb and a poisonous plant that grew only in certain forests of the Kingdom of Lutea. Its beautiful appearance bewitched those who saw it, and its sweet fragrance enchanted those who smelled it again. It wasn’t the sort of poison that killed through prolonged exposure.

However, the longer it stayed near, the more it eroded the mind, making people see what wasn’t there and hear what couldn’t be heard, until they eventually went mad.

It was used only for those who were on the verge of death—to grant them a final moment of peace.

Those with only days left to live would die before showing any signs of poisoning. It was truly a sedative herb and poison meant to let the dying forget their pain.

“Smells nice,” Rory said, suddenly right beside her.

Before he could reach out, Maeve quickly retied the sack’s opening tightly.

“Ah, why? Is it expensive?”

“Yeah.”

Instead of pressing further, Rory merely rolled his eyes in amusement. Maeve ignored him, pushed the sack back into the corner where it had been, and stacked other boxes in front of it.

“If you try to steal that, you’ll get kicked out,” Maeve said, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Rory snorted.

“I don’t bother with petty thieving, Maeve.”

“Yeah? Then are you saying you do things even more dangerous than that?”

Rory didn’t answer Maeve right away and simply laughed.

“I’ve done some pretty terrifying things. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell you.”

“……”

“Want to hear them?”

Maeve was already walking past him, heading back toward the carriage.

Whether Rory called after her or not, Maeve went straight to the carriage and opened the door. She briefly thought that maybe she should have knocked—but the prince didn’t seem to be in any state to hear it anyway.

Rory was the type with a mean streak, and if he saw the prince like this, he’d pretend not to care while secretly enjoying it. Maeve stepped inside the carriage and shut the door behind her to keep him out.

She reached up to find the lamp hanging from the ceiling—it was the only item among their supplies imbued with magical power.

Well, it wasn’t strange. He was a prince, after all; having something like this wasn’t unexpected. The lamp, drained of fuel, began to glow red the moment her fingertips brushed against it, absorbing a nail’s worth of mana.

Under the light, the prince’s feverish and weakened form came into view.

“I looked for medicine, but I couldn’t find any fever remedy.”

She spoke as she placed the bottle filled with the purple liquid—something she didn’t even want to call medicine—back where it had been.

“Do you know where the fever medicine is?”

Prince Declan opened his eyes with difficulty to look at Maeve. His fever had worsened in such a short time that he was now hovering on the edge of death. He could no longer even recognize who the figure before him was.

Even so, Declan wanted to scold this incompetent maid and clawed weakly at the floor with his nails. With great effort, he opened his mouth.

“…Gi.”

There. As soon as he spoke, Maeve cut in sharply.

“That’s not a fever remedy.”

A grinding sound came from between his pale lips as his teeth clenched.

This foolish maid was clearly pretending to know something she didn’t. Declan tried to lift himself with a rough, ragged breath, but the moment he raised his head, a searing headache and dizziness overwhelmed him. With a dull thud, he fell back down again.

“…Just give it.”

Just give it. No more words.

Give it to me.

In the depths of pain, he had no room left for composure, much less reason. Declan clawed feebly at the air with trembling fingers. Maeve, who had already set the bottle back in its place, simply looked down at him.

“But, Your Highness,”

the silhouette of the maid said as she gazed down at him,

“That’s not medicine—it’s poison. Even if it might let you endure a little longer, Your Highness would forget how to speak like a human before we reach the west.”

“……”

Declan could only shed tears of agony. Her words didn’t even reach his ears.

At last, the maid spoke again, as if realizing something.

“Perhaps this journey wasn’t meant for that purpose from the start?”

That this might have been a journey premised on the fact that he would die before even reaching the west.

It was a sudden realization. If that were truly the case, then the strange combination of his attendants and their vaguely disloyal demeanor now made perfect sense.

Declan couldn’t even hear what the damned maid was muttering about anymore. It was infuriating—how she just stood there watching him die. If her intent was to kill him here and now, he wouldn’t let her. With all his remaining strength, he reached out, grabbed hold, and yanked her down.

Maeve looked down at the prince’s hand clutching the hem of her skirt. It was a pitifully weak grip. But still, she did as he wanted and knelt.

Her red curls spilled forward, cascading like a curtain over his face.

Yellow eyes, wild and beastlike, and blue eyes, damp with fever, met squarely in the space between them.