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Chapter 11
‘Is this supposed to be… my last supper?’
Aria looked down at the note that basically told her to get lost once she recovered.
No matter how she thought about it, it felt like a kind of courtesy—letting her try all the desserts she wanted since she wouldn’t even get a taste of them once she was kicked out.
“To enjoy all kinds of dessert, you need to get better quickly.”
Dana suddenly held out a pill.
Aria swallowed it before she even realized.
“You take pills well too. Good girl.”
Dana placed a tiny bottle into Aria’s arms.
‘…What’s this?’
Inside the bottle were tiny, sharp-edged, colorful grains.
They sparkled like jewels—almost like unpolished gemstones.
“Do you like star candy?”
Star candy? This is candy?
Aria peered suspiciously into the bottle, then uncorked it and crunched one between her teeth.
A sweet flavor lingered at the tip of her tongue.
‘I want another.’
It wasn’t sweet to the point of stinging.
It melted away quickly—too quickly—and the lingering sweetness made her crave more.
Aria smacked her lips, then carefully tucked the bottle into the drawer.
It looked too jewel-like to eat casually.
‘I’m like a squirrel hiding acorns…’
The servants gathered there clenched their jaws desperately. It took everything they had not to say how cute she was.
But only the head maid had permission to pat her head.
‘We mustn’t startle the young lady.’
Otherwise, she might pull out her [I’m not a baby] card with that sulky face again.
The servants stole glances at the fairy-like child, each secretly hoping their turn would come someday.
The servants brought armfuls of flowers every time they visited Aria.
“This one is called dahlia.”
“This is primula.”
“This one is muscari. The flower meaning is…”
Before long, the guest room Aria stayed in was filled with vases and pots of flowers.
The scent filled the whole room.
‘I’ve never seen these flowers before.’
So many varieties of spring flowers existed.
Aria stuck her neck out like a meerkat, looking around. Dana hugged a bouquet into her arms.
“Please be satisfied with these for now and stay away from the window for a while.”
Aria nodded obediently.
“And starting today, some knights will be temporarily guarding you.”
The knights took turns greeting her.
They had been assigned after Dana reported that Aria had wandered alone in the rain and fallen ill.
Most were polite, but one knight’s expression was clearly displeased.
‘Sir Ange, was it?’
Maybe he had been dragged from his original duties against his will.
His face was full of resentment.
Aria was studying him carefully when suddenly—
Her nose tickled.
“…Achoo.”
Everyone turned toward the sound with puzzled faces.
“Achoo!”
“…”
“…A-choo!”
Once the sneezing stopped, Aria sniffled. It wasn’t exactly an allergy, but strong scents sometimes did this to her.
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“Oh no—Head Maid!”
Betty hurried over.
She was holding a small booklet titled “Etiquette for Visiting the Sick.”
“Look at this! In the outside world, flowers are a banned item when visiting patients!”
“What? Why?”
“It says it can cause allergies or risk infection!”
“What?!”
Outside?
Aria rubbed her itchy nose on her sleeve as Dana and Betty huddled together.
“But madam herself is from the outside! I change her flowers every morning!”
“Even in the territory, some people are physically weaker and some stronger.”
“Wait—you mean the young lady is even weaker than Madam—?”
“Clear out the flowers. Now.”
Dana’s order fell, and the maids hurried to remove every flower in the room.
As Aria watched her bouquet being taken away, Dana sighed with relief.
“Goodness… that could’ve been terrible. It’s my first time nursing someone from outside the boundary, so I made a mistake.”
[Outside the boundary?]
She’d heard the term before.
This time, she couldn’t help but ask what it meant.
“It means outside the Valentine territory. The boundary refers to the Ingo Mountain Range surrounding Valentine.”
[Am I really that weak?]
Dana laughed kindly and put it gently.
“People from the Grand Duchy are the strong ones. Everyone here prides themselves on being healthy and sturdy.”
It made sense.
Even the wolves she’d seen were monstrous in size.
The humans here were surely not normal either.
‘Their physical abilities must be exceptional.’
They were the opposite of Aria—physically weak, but with heightened senses.
They all looked normal enough though. Aria gazed curiously at Dana.
“Well, even so, no one compares to those of true Valentine bloodline.”
A fleeting reverence passed through Dana’s eyes.
She rubbed the goosebumps on her neck, then looked at Aria worriedly.
“But why isn’t your fever going down…”
Because it had only been a day.
Aria thought quietly, but the maids all agreed with Dana and argued.
“The book said you need to bundle up in blankets and sweat it out!”
“That’ll make the fever worse! She needs a cold bath!”
“You want to freeze her to death? We should raise the room temperature as much as possible—”
They argued over how to lower the fever of a fragile outsider young lady.
She had already taken medicine; the fever would eventually drop anyway.
“Young lady, I made you ginger tea.”
“What if the spicy kick of ginger upsets her stomach?”
“Oh—I didn’t think of that!”
They really didn’t need to think this much.
Their imagination was impressively wild.
“Hehe, I knew this would happen, so I prepared in advance.”
Betty held out a steaming cup.
In her other hand was a booklet titled “Foods Good for Colds.”
“It’s made by whipping raw egg and honey, then mixing it with milk and butter.”
She proudly said it was a cold remedy from outside the boundary.
But one hesitant maid asked:
“But Head Maid… isn’t raw egg risky for infection?”
“I—Infection?”
“Food poisoning…”
Betty hurried to hide the remedy.
“Then what do we do? Are we supposed to just sit and watch?”
They huddled to whisper out of Aria’s earshot.
Of course, with a siren’s hearing, she heard everything.
“Understand? Outsiders are weak. And the young lady is weaker than even the weak ones. In this place’s standards, she’s basically a newborn baby.”
…She said she wasn’t a baby.
But Aria no longer felt embarrassed or like she wanted to run away.
Because she could tell—they were genuinely worried about her.
‘I don’t hate it.’
The maids treating her as if she might break or blow away with a breeze.
‘It feels… precious.’
Aria was being respected as a person.
Regardless of status, regardless of her siren abilities.
She hadn’t even meant to smile, but the corners of her lips softened upward.
Aria tugged lightly on Dana’s sleeve. Then she pulled out a card she had been fiddling with.
[Thank you. Always.]
A card she had made long ago thinking she’d use it someday.
Now felt like the right time.
“Tch. So weak. This is why outsiders are hopeless…”
Then it came.
A voice that didn’t belong to the touched servants.
Sir Ange.
The knight temporarily assigned to guard her.
None of the other servants seemed to hear him—it had been nearly a mumble.
But Aria, with her fever sharpening her senses to the limit, heard him perfectly.
“Not on the same level, not even close. With that constitution, who knows if she can even produce an heir.”
Aria stared straight at him.
He flinched slightly when their eyes met.
‘No way she heard me…’
No, impossible. No one should hear a mumble from this distance.
The other knights and servants weren’t even glancing his way.
Only Aria was gazing at him with unnervingly sharp focus.
‘…Well, even if she did hear, so what.’
He lifted his chin arrogantly.
He knew he was taking out his irritation on the wrong person, but he hated being dragged to babysit a child.
And a child of unclear background at that.
‘She’s not even the official fiancée.’
She had entered the castle with the qualification of being the future fiancée, but she wasn’t anything yet.
They hadn’t exchanged dowry or gifts, nor even drawn up the marriage documents.
Her father signing parental rights abandonment papers was all.
That alone was why the servants called her “young lady.”
‘The Grand Duke put a sword to her throat, they said.’
He glanced at the bandage around Aria’s neck and smirked.
Even if noble marriages were essentially business deals, consent was necessary.
But the Grand Duke had held a sword to the throat of a frail child who looked like she’d faint at a touch.
She must have annoyed him terribly.
‘She’ll be lucky if she isn’t kicked out.’
Kicked out before they even marry.
That was why he felt bold enough to treat her this way.
‘Level.’
Aria repeated the word internally and let out a soft scoff.
Dividing people by levels?
‘What idiotic judgment.’
If Valentine, or the Emperor, or even the Pope were truly superior beings, immune to harm—
then why did the Valentine Incident happen?
‘Why did Lloyd go mad?’
To Aria, all humans—herself included—were imperfect.
No one was perfect.
Humans were all the same.
‘Is it really that important whether I was born noble, commoner… or sewer slave?’
She felt deeply insulted.
As though the knight had thrown the servants’ heartfelt care into the trash.
Aria took out her fountain pen and wrote on a few cards.
Then she beckoned to the knight. Though annoyed, he approached.
“What would you like to say? Ah—you cannot speak. How rude of me…”
He said, mockingly.
