TBRFC 09

The servant’s expression hardened.

“Do you even know who this person is? This is His Highness the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince of the Empire!”

The servant looked back and forth between me and Crown Prince Tian with a dumbfounded face.

I pulled him away from the Crown Prince with all my strength and continued speaking.

“You can’t treat him carelessly like that! Your head will get chopped off on the guillotine!”

“W-what…?”

The servant stammered.

Leaving him behind, I turned back toward Crown Prince Tian.

“Right, Your Highness? This grandpa did something really bad just now, didn’t he?”

When I tightly held his icy hand, the Crown Prince—who had been pale as a corpse—stared blankly at me.

“Right? Isn’t that true?”

Only after I asked several more times did he finally nod.

A tiny movement. Just the slightest dip of his head.

But that alone was enough.

The moment I saw it, I whipped back toward the servant.

“Grandpa, you’re really in huge trouble now!”

The servant froze stiff.

I could feel Tian staring at me too.

I shook my head and raised my brows.

“Using physical violence against the Crown Prince is a terrible crime of treason.”

“What nonsense!”

At the word “treason,” the servant shouted furiously.

He seemed so flustered that he didn’t even notice I had used difficult words like “physical violence.”

“That’s not it! I came under the orders of Her Majesty Empress Karin to escort His Highness! What would a child like you even know—!”

I widened my eyes innocently and looked at the servant.

“But you’re still just a servant, aren’t you? Servants aren’t allowed to grab or yank the Crown Prince around no matter what. They said that’s insulting the imperial family.”

When I mentioned “insulting the imperial family,” my conscience pricked a little.

After all, I had accidentally called him the “Deposed Crown Prince” earlier myself.

But by now the servant’s face had already turned deathly pale.

“T-that…!”

“And who said that just because the Empress ordered it, you can grab and drag around His Highness the Crown Prince? His rank is higher.”

I slowly turned my gaze away from the servant.

“That’s so strange. Grandpa servant doesn’t even know something that I, a four-year-old, know…”

Then I glanced at him and muttered quietly,

“Maybe he’s kinda stupid too….”

The servant, Zack, huffed and fumed for quite a while, his face turning red and blue.

But in the end, he couldn’t say anything else and left the room.

At last, only the two of them remained.

As Tian sat there with his shoulders hunched in tension, a small voice reached his ears.

“Your Highness. That grandpa is scary, right?”

Tian turned his stiff face.

The silver-haired girl he had met for the first time only moments ago was staring straight at him.

Then she hurriedly added,

“Uh, um! But it makes sense that you’d be scared! What kind of grandpa acts so mean like that?”

Tian’s expression darkened even further.

There wasn’t a single lie in her words.

Tian was afraid of Zack.

Everything had started on the day his mother died.

Even now, Tian remembered perfectly the words Empress Karin had spoken that day.

“His Majesty is deeply disappointed in Your Highness.”

He had never been particularly close with the Empress before.

They had merely coexisted in the palace—he as the Crown Prince, and Karin as the Empress Consort.

“His Majesty believes that Your Highness is practically responsible for Her Majesty the Empress’s death.”

But Tian still remembered Karin’s pitch-black eyes that day.

Her pale hand gently stroking the sleeping Emperor’s back.

“You are aware that Her Majesty’s health rapidly deteriorated after giving birth to you, aren’t you?”

Tian had been born a prince and raised within the imperial palace.

There was no way he wouldn’t know the rumors whispered about him and his mother within those walls.

That his mother’s health had worsened after giving birth to him.

That because of it, she had become unable to conceive another child.

Even the petty rumors claiming the Emperor no longer visited the Empress as often because of that.

“His Majesty lost the woman he loved because of you. If I were His Majesty, I would have thrown you out of the palace immediately.”

Karin spoke quietly as she gazed down at the Emperor.

At that moment, for the first time in his life, Tian felt his mind go completely blank.

“Those who fall out of His Majesty’s favor rarely survive long in this palace. In my opinion, Your Highness will soon meet the same fate.”

People flashed through his mind and vanished.

Those who had been hanged for failing to properly serve the Emperor.

Those who had earned the Emperor’s hatred and were expelled from the palace.

Tian’s body trembled.

Now that his mother was dead, and his father hated him—

Tian felt like a beast caught in a trap.

“If you wish to live, remain quiet. Do nothing within this palace. I alone can change His Majesty’s feelings toward you.”

The Emperor, asleep on Karin’s lap, looked utterly peaceful.

He did not look like a man who had just lost his wife.

So how could Tian not nod?

He had been far too young.

Far too frightened.

From the very moment the Empress began wasting away, Karin had already seized control of the palace.

The Emperor sought her out every single day, and with the Emperor’s favor behind her, she had nothing to fear.

Many people around Tian had died over the years.

The servant boy around his own age who brought him meals.

The nanny who had raised him since childhood.

And now, with even his mother gone, Tian realized he was completely alone in the palace.

Everyone around him had already been replaced with people planted by Karin.

The servant Zack was one of them.

The books he read. The food he ate.

Even the hours he slept were all reported back to Karin through Zack.

Once, Tian had wished he could at least become angry someday.

But emotions suppressed since childhood had only ever learned fear.

Especially in front of Empress Karin and her subordinates.

That was why—

When this unfamiliar little girl stepped in front of him for the first time, it truly felt as though the world had stopped.

“Grandpa! What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Do you even know who this person is? This is the Crown Prince!”

“Right, Your Highness? This grandpa did something really bad, didn’t he?”

At those words, his violently pounding heart slowly calmed.

And when the girl turned her head to look at him, his breath caught.

Her shining ivory-colored eyes were filled with determination.

Not the kind meant to hurt him—

But the kind meant to protect him.

It had been so long since he’d seen anything like that that Tian couldn’t say a single word.

“It’s okay now. I told him already. That he can’t treat Your Highness badly.”

As if completely unaware of his tangled emotions, the girl kept chattering beside him.

But was that really true?

Tian swallowed a sigh.

Zack had always behaved like this.

Whenever Tian made mistakes, the servant sometimes even struck him.

But until now, Tian had never once considered resisting him.

Because, just as Karin had said, he believed that staying silent and keeping his head down was the only way to survive in the palace.

His fear of Zack was the only thing he had truly learned amidst all that helplessness.

“Come over here.”

At that moment, the girl walked to the bedside table and picked up a white cloth.

Then, without warning, she pressed it against his forehead.

“W-what… what are you doing?”

Tian jumped in surprise and frowned.

But the girl lightly ignored him and frowned herself.

She kept pressing the cloth firmly against his forehead.

“I’m doing this so you don’t catch a cold from all that cold sweat! Your Highness is reaaally….”

“…”

“…Never mind.”

The strange pause made Tian immediately protest.

“What? What did I do?”

But the girl only stared at him with a look that seemed to say he was hopeless.

Feeling oddly stubborn, Tian pushed her hand away.

“Hurry up and say it. What exactly did I—”

Then he stopped speaking.

Because her face was much closer than he had expected.

Every time she blinked, her ivory eyes sparkled like glass marbles.

“What exactly did I….”

His gaze naturally drifted downward—to her rosy cheeks and her small, soft lips.

The girl was looking at him as though she found him utterly pathetic.

Normally, that expression should have annoyed him at least a little.

But instead, Tian completely lost his voice.

Up close, the girl was incredibly pretty.

So pretty that he had never seen another child like her in all his life.

As his eyes darted around awkwardly, the girl suddenly crossed her arms.

Then she spoke with a serious expression.

“Sigh… this won’t do, Your Highness.”

Then, gesturing toward his upper clothes, she said,

“Take off your top for a second.”

“W-what?!”

Tian’s face instantly turned bright red.