Chapter 53
What should she do? He already seemed certain, and denying it would be useless.
“So, you were here. Haa…”
Then what was he planning to do now? Was he going to kill her on the spot?
But he couldn’t. He still couldn’t even move.
If she told Hunter the knight had regained consciousness, he could take him back and leave him somewhere… but hadn’t the knight already discovered this mansion’s existence?
Even if he didn’t know the exact location, he would still remember that there was a mansion in the forest. What if Hunter ended up in danger too? Prina’s head felt like it would burst from the tangled thoughts.
For now, she should calm the knight down and then talk with Hunter. This was too important to decide on her own.
“I’m only treating you because you’re injured. So…”
“…I’m just glad you’re alive and safe.”
“Glad… that I’m alive and safe?”
Hadn’t she been told that the royal family wanted her dead?
Prina’s gaze wavered at the knight’s unexpected words. The chaotic stream of thoughts in her mind was cut off in an instant.
“Everyone has been desperately searching for you, Your Highness.”
Everyone had been desperately searching for her?
She was confused.
Could this be a lie? Was he trying to lure her in to kill her, like Sir Arthur had? Maybe that was why they were looking for her in the first place. After all, she had been told there were knights everywhere.
Thinking back, even Sir Arthur hadn’t revealed his true colors at first.
No, that doesn’t make sense.
Prina tried to think as rationally as she could.
Given the circumstances, it didn’t add up. This knight had been found in the forest after falling from his horse. Whether he had been aiming for this mansion was unclear, but no knight had ever made it this close before. And right now, he was so injured he couldn’t even move.
No matter how powerless she might be, it would be hard for someone in his state to harm her.
And above all, those eyes…
When she looked into them, they didn’t seem like the eyes of someone lying.
Prina wasn’t capable of detecting every lie told to her, but when it came to the sick and injured, she knew them well. She had seen them every day.
When people are in pain, they become honest. The healthy might try to hide their emotions, but the sick cannot hide sorrow, fear, or dread. She had tended to plenty of patients who called her cursed for her black hair, hurling insults and spitting at her.
And relief and joy were even harder to hide. For someone in pain, even the smallest such feeling was precious and hopeful.
It seemed better to listen a little longer to what he had to say.
“Sir Arthur from the palace… tried to kill me. So what do you mean by saying everyone’s looking for me?”
“Sir Arthur tried to kill you?”
“Yes. I was told the royal family wanted me dead…”
“Ah…”
The knight fell silent, as if lost in thought at her question, before slowly opening his mouth again.
“…If that was Sir Arthur, and he tried to harm you, then he must have been sent from the Queen’s side.”
“The… Queen’s side?”
“Yes. His Majesty the King has been doing everything in his power to find you.”
Prina repeated his words in shock. She had only ever been told ‘the royal family’, so she hadn’t known if the one sending people after her was her stepmother the Queen or her birth father the King.
She had simply assumed, with a familiar sense of resignation, that the entire royal family denied her existence. She had never considered another possibility.
“When people were sent to the convent to bring you back, they were told you had already been taken by the palace. So they searched the area… and found the body of a knight who had been shot in the forest.”
Putting the knight’s account together, it meant her stepmother the Queen had intercepted her on her way back to the palace, intending to have her killed. And Sir Arthur was the one who carried it out.
At present, her birth father the King had dispatched knights to search desperately for her, and this knight was among those forces.
The knight didn’t seem to be lying, but the situation made it hard for her to trust him easily.
Either way, she was still in hiding to avoid danger…
And Hunter was involved in all this too.
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