Escape marriage with the enemy general - Chapter 1
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- Escape marriage with the enemy general
- Chapter 1 - The princess begins to meet at night due to lack of sleep
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────One week later.
A soirée was held in the royal palace.
It was a soirée to entertain the members of the Benedict Kingdom who were staying.
Including me, the royal family was all present, and then the high-ranking nobles attended the grand event.
Under the chandeliers sparkling in the great hall, I sighed alone.
(…………I wonder why it’s become the norm for evening dresses to reveal the décolletage (cleavage))
The revealing evening dress I didn’t want to wear. The stares from those around me.
Still sleep-deprived and with my head not working, I avoided people’s stares and any men who approached me, and kept moving all over the edge of the venue.
“Hey, look, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince over there! He’s wonderful…!”
“He really is such a beautiful noble! I can’t help but sigh”
“I wonder if he has a fiance?” “Oh, I’d like to talk to him for a moment…!!”
Women’s whispers could be heard here and there.
They were referring to a certain person in the venue.
He was His Royal Highness Kronos, the Crown Prince of the Benedict Kingdom.
Shiny silver hair, ice-blue eyes. He had a fair complexion and a divine beauty that took one’s breath away.
He was an extraordinarily handsome man that anyone would be awed by, and he wore thin-framed glasses.
The aura he had, like that of a divine animal sent from heaven, made the women in the venue stare at him in a daze.
At a prince from a country that was still an enemy.
────Two and a half years ago, the Trinian Kingdom invaded the Benedict Kingdom’s Zelhan Island.
‘It brings in a huge fortune for the Benedict Kingdom as an important trading hub, but there’s no military stationed there and it’s only merchants. We should easily be able to take it.’
…so the military ran riot, and my father also got persuaded and went along with it.
It was a completely unreasonable outrage, and I also tried to stop my father, but it was beyond my power.
The results were terrible.
First, we encountered considerable resistance from the armed merchants.
They bought time until their own military arrived and protected the island’s civilians, escaping by ship.
Then, the Benedict and allied forces rushed in, and the Trinian side was annihilated.
We suffered many casualties and proposed a ceasefire.
Since then, two and a half years have passed…
The Trinian Kingdom’s side (mainly my father, brother, and the vassals) asked to quickly restore diplomatic relations to the way they were before the war, all the while repeatedly haggling over the reparations, despite the fact that they had started the war. What’s more, the military was still deployed in various vassal states.
Negotiations dragged on, and the “ceasefire” never became an “end to the war.”
In order to settle this, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of the Benedict Kingdom and several dignitaries were currently visiting this country.
Elias Clayde Homerus, the general who helped me before, was also one of those in the group.
Apparently, my face was familiar ‘from having seen a portrait’.
It seems that my father and brother were trying to get my sisters close to His Royal Highness Kronos, and if they were lucky, to get them to enter into a political marriage or something, or use them as a honey trap to get them to make concessions and restore diplomatic relations…but it seemed like things weren’t going well (the 3rd Princess, Wilhelmina, made a halfway escape through an engagement).
So, they also told me to get involved in the charm offensive.
I honestly thought it was disrespectful to the people who had come to engage in serious peace negotiations.
As I was thinking such things.
────A woman’s hands reached out from behind me and grabbed hold of my breasts.
“────!!!?” I was horrified.
“Big sister! Your breasts are wonderfully big today!”
(Stop it!!! Stop it, stop it!!)
I couldn’t breathe.
The terror from the past made my body freeze up completely.
Even though I knew the other person was my sister.
“I’m envious! I wish mine would get big like this”
Her innocent words made my spine tingle.
My throat closed up and I couldn’t talk.
Since I was at the edge of the venue, I was only surrounded by Trinian nobles.
They smiled as if to say it was a pleasant sight, or looked down on me with a disgusting leer.
Nobody would stop her.
(Please stop. Please help me…!!!)
“Hey!? I, it hurts!!”
My breasts were released from the rude hands, and my sister screamed.
I looked behind me, fearful, and gasped.
A large man was wringing the arm of my sister────the 16-year-old 4th Princess Elmina.
It was Elias Clayde Homerus again.
My sister was shrieking in a high-pitched voice.
“It hurts, it hurts!! …wh, what! Who do you think I am!? Let go!! It hurts!”
“Even though you are of the same sex, I cannot overlook such impertinent behavior as touching a woman’s breasts without permission”
“Stop it, it hurts! Let go!!”
As if the spell had broken as I heard my sister’s screams, I gasped and inhaled.
My mouth could move. My body could move. My throat, too.
(…………I’m saved…………)
He had helped me again.
Homerus’s large, scarred face showed almost no emotion, exuding a chilling coldness.
But his imposing figure looked reassuring to me now.
“────With all due respect, I cannot help but question the attitudes of those around you as well.
She is the only legitimate princess with a direct claim to the throne in the current royal family.
Should you not be risking your lives to protect her, as her vassals?”
As he, with his stern face, began to rebuke and lecture the gentlemen and ladies around him, I panicked.
“Thank you very much, Vassal Homerus. That will be enough.”
“Are you unharmed?”
“Yes. Thank you very much, really. You were a great help.”
When I said that, Homerus finally let go of my sister’s arm.
Grasping Elmina’s shoulder, who was trying to run away while holding her arm in pain, I uttered in a low voice,
“Didn’t I tell you to stop it?”
She let out a squeak and darted away.
At the same time, the gentlemen and ladies around left the scene with awkward expressions.
For a while, no one stood by me.
“Your complexion seems to be poor. Shall you sit on the chair?”
“That’s right… I’ll rest for a little while.”
I don’t think Elmina meant to be malicious, but I feel sick when she does that.
I have difficulty breathing and become nauseous.
I sat down on the sofa that was placed nearby.
General Homerus left the scene but returned quickly.
In his hand was… a thick shawl?
“I have borrowed this from the castle.”
“Oh, thank you… very much.”
He put it on my shoulder, plonking it on me. It was warm.
I brought the shawl around my chest.
The dress exposed the upper part of my chest —— my brother called it ‘Big Thing’ —— and I sighed in relief as I finished covering it.
(…I am not exposing the top of my chest because I like to, but because of nightgown etiquette.)
As I recalled the curious and disgusted eyes of the men and women around me, I felt slightly irritated.
General Homerus sat down slightly away from me.
I was relieved that he sat down a little away from me. After all, his large body is scary, no, men are scary.
I took another look at him.
Short, dark ash-colored hair with a greenish tint, and light hazel eyes.
The large scar on his well-proportioned face was a combination of burn and cut wounds upon closer look.
I wonder if he got it on the battlefield.
“Pardon me, General Homerus, but thank you for your consideration.”
“You can call me Elias.”
“No, I’ll call you general. As you can see, my countrymen have repeatedly shown you uncomfortable scenes, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. And then,”
Yes, I had been thinking of thanking him about this too.
“My father must have said something to you that time. Since then, the staff has been taking turns, and it has been a great help.”
“Is that so? If so, that is good.”
“Yes. I used to be able to sleep only about 2 hours a day, but recently I have been able to sleep for 4 hours!”
“I’m afraid, Your Highness, that’s still not enough.”
His expression still doesn’t change much, but he talks to me with unwavering eye contact.
I won’t be allowed to leave the party anyway.
And if I stay here, all I’ll end up with is gentlemen who are after my chest.
If that’s the case, it would be better to talk to General Homerus for a while.
“Your Highness, would you like something to drink? Wait, but if you’re not getting much sleep, you’d better refrain from alcohol.”
“That’s… true. I’ll just have one glass of something with a low alcohol content.”
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