The Villain Princess Rewrites Her Fate

The Minstrel Behind the Chair

One day remained before the New Year holiday ended and work resumed. Lovf stood at the door of Chester's audience parlor, every fiber of her being refusing to go in.

No... no way. Have the power-wielder bigshots been urging Chester to have another child too? Are they... are they really staring at his crotch?

I was wrong. I jinxed it. I shouldn't have enjoyed myself so much. As the saying goes, joy at its peak breeds sorrow. This wouldn't be Chester serving me my last supper of the year before the execution, would it...

Am I going to walk in and be informed that he's getting me a little brother or sister? Or, more tactfully, be asked whether I'd like a little brother or sister? No... Chester is not that gentle a person. I don't think he's even capable of talking like a human being. Maybe the moment I step in he'll notify me that my noble-lady education is being reinstated...

Laila coughed softly and patted Lovf on the back: "Your Highness, it's time."

Lovf: Q... QAQ?

Laila glanced at that door. She really wanted to tell the little girl that a Divine Tier's mental sense was more than sufficient to perceive everything happening at the front door. But remembering the King's hopeless, utterly hopeless behavioral pattern, she decided to wait until they were back to tell the little princess about that.

After a long session of psyching herself up, Lovf took a deep breath and pushed the door open, trembling.

Chester sat in his usual seat, face cold, ferociously grim. The sight of him reminded Lovf of the terrifying look in his eyes the day her test showed she could not resonate, and her legs went a little weak.

Fortunately she could still just about walk.

Gene stood behind Chester. Seeing Lovf come in, he smiled warmly and winked at her.

Seeing Gene's cheerful smile, with no trace of pity to be found anywhere in it, Lovf finally steadied a little. Gene was Chester's guard captain and personal attendant besides, probably one of the people in this world who understood Chester best. He showed no sign of pitying Lovf, and that gave her a bit of courage.

Lovf bent at the waist before Chester in an audience bow drilled by Melica until it could not possibly be more standard: "Your humble daughter, Lovfrida de Lognias, greets the honored King. Your wisdom guides the lasting prosperity and flourishing of Radiance."

Chester looked Lovfrida over coldly: "Rise. Sit. You look somewhat presentable now. It seems Melica taught you rather well."

Lovf was screaming on the inside, yet her body, honest and obedient, walked toward the chair beside him exactly as Melica required.

"In a few more months you will be six. It is time you reined in that heart of yours." As Lovf walked toward the chair, Chester's emotionless voice said coldly, "Since you did not care for Melica, I will engage a new etiquette tutor for you. The things a princess ought to know, poetry, art, literature, you must grasp at least a little. Internal affairs and geopolitics, regional and world history, you should also have some understanding of. As for the rest..."

"Father!" Lovf gathered her courage and cut him off.

She felt that if she let Chester keep talking, getting him to take back the command afterward would be basically hopeless.

"Father, through my studies these past weeks I have discovered that the scholar is a fascinating profession." Lovf squeezed out a super sincere smile for Chester, brimming with childlike adoration. "I would like to first study a scholar's knowledge. You are still so young, and Radiance stands so firm at home and abroad; you must labor terribly hard every day. Your daughter wants to learn some knowledge to ease your burden. Besides, your daughter gets along very well with my current teacher, Mr. Gwen, and wishes to learn more knowledge and more of how to conduct myself from him. As for the things a princess ought to know, your daughter will study those diligently too, and will never shame you, Father, so please..."

She blinked at Chester pitifully. "Please allow your daughter to continue studying with Mr. Gwen."

Say yes! Lovf wept up a storm inside. My asking price is already this low. Just let me keep the old scholar. Just don't raise me into a complete and total waste, QAQ!

Chester stared coldly into her eyes, looking as though he might at any moment order her dragged out and executed.

Under his gaze of a man who had killed thousands, Lovf held her perfectly pitched, beseeching smile, and suddenly felt she had wronged Lady Melica. Worn properly, this mask of expressions really was pretty useful.

The air in the room all but froze, father and daughter at daggers drawn.

From behind Chester came a soft, gentle laugh.

"Wow, Chester, aren't you way too harsh on your little girl? Is it really this terrifying?"

To Lovf's astonishment, a beautiful young man emerged from behind Chester's chair. He was gotten up like a folk performer, in a glittering, gaudy golden robe hung all over with cumbersome trinkets, long golden hair draped lazily loose, and a pair of Persian-cat eyes, one green and one blue, watching her with amusement and appraisal.

Lovf was quite certain that a moment ago there had been no one behind Chester.

Lovf did not quite believe anyone had been hiding behind the chair just now.

Lovf absolutely did not believe any minister of Radiance would dare speak to Chester like that.

The man of suspicious identity patted Chester lightly on the shoulder: "I know you have great hopes for this child, but that attitude of yours is going to scare her out of her wits. Little children are very sensitive and very fragile."

His blue and green eyes glanced at Lovf, all smiles, in a way that made her skin crawl. She noticed that his robe's sash likewise left a length hanging at the front left, and his long sleeves did not cover his wrists.

This man was a power-wielder too.

He seemed to have seen nothing amiss. He came out from behind the chair, crouched down, and patted Lovf on the head: "Still just a little girl. Don't be afraid. Plenty of children have faint resonance and struggle to cultivate, but there has never been a case of complete inability to resonate. Your father worried there might be something hidden behind it, so he asked me to come take a look at you. Nothing to fear."

Lovf: No, if there's a science-side soul stuffed in here, it's entirely possible. Your test isn't going to scoop my soul out, is it?

The young man cared nothing for whatever she was agonizing over. Beaming, he held out a hand to her: "I am one of the four Walkers who serve the Godkin, Lute the Minstrel. Little Highness, a pleasure."

The Godkin. His retinue. The four Walkers. Peak Legend Tier.

Lovf panicked something fierce.

But resistance was not an option.

Before Minstrel Lute could air any more of her embarrassing history, Chester rose and led the way to the mage tower from last time. Laila, uncharacteristically well-behaved, picked Lovf up of her own accord and followed at the rear of the whole party.

Still on holiday, its master away as well, the palace was nearly empty. Snow had fallen over the New Year, and now the bare branches in the garden wore a white, glittering layer; the corridors felt a touch cold and desolate.

Belatedly, Lovf realized that Chester had left the palace over the New Year to attend a power-wielder gathering precisely to invite someone to examine her aptitude, and for a moment her heart warmed. Who would have thought that even after she herself had decided she was beyond saving, this cut-rate dad of hers had not given up on his daughter, and was still running around on her behalf.

She felt both amused and guilty about her earlier baseless worry and despair, and a little nervous too. If this man's reading also came back as unable to resonate, wouldn't her hopes and Chester's simply be dashed all over again for nothing?

Incidentally, Chester had serious problems as a father. Cold-shoulder treatment at the drop of a hat, and the crux of it was that he himself didn't even know.

If this man didn't have some emotional or expressive disorder, then he was genuinely toxic.

Lovfrida died a wretched death indeed.

It was the same mage tower as last time. Familiar recipe, with a flavor that made Lovf slightly panicky.

Chester had returned in a hurry, with nothing prepared in advance. The trinket-draped minstrel produced an ancient lute from somewhere and laid the array on the spot, plucking as he went, tossing materials onto the floor. If the matter hadn't concerned her personally, watching from the side Lovf would have called it pretty solid performance art.

That lute seemed to be his staff. One pluck and several ribbons of light-lines fell to the ground, gathering together and slowly forming an array. Yet he cast without chanting a single incantation, humming a little tune in easy good cheer, and Lovf noticed the tune was precisely the song currently all the rage in Radiance's royal capital.

"Father." Lovf seized the chance to call softly to Chester, who was watching the minstrel lay the array.

Chester spared her a glance.

Lovf dragged an inner hand down her face and swore to heaven that five years ago she had been a pure, adorable, universally liked college girl. But if she let Chester carry on like this, sooner or later she would go so withdrawn she couldn't get a word out. While she could still speak to Chester normally, she adjusted her voice and began: "Lovf has been so scared these past months. I thought Father didn't want me anymore."

"It would seem Aita lacks the competence to manage your palace's staff." Chester said coldly.

Lovf shrank, and let her voice turn small and wronged: "Lovf knows Father cares about me, but... but Father only sees me once every few months. It makes me so afraid that someday you might simply stop liking me..."

Chester: "You are overreaching. Mind your own affairs."

Lovf: Friend, with a mouth this sweet on you, what exactly did your wife see in you back then?

The minstrel laying the array beside them could not listen any longer. He turned and plucked a single note at Chester. Chester tipped backward, frowning and clutching his forehead, apparently having been flicked on the skull from across the room. "Your little girl is asking you to express the care you feel for her. Stop wearing that cold face all day long. A smile and a few kind words won't cost you a pound of flesh. You are the little princess's only family. If you keep treating her badly, how is that any different, in her heart, from having no father and no mother at all?"

Chester's face darkened, and he said nothing.

The minstrel went on laying his array, muttering all the while: "You've been through so much in these two hundred odd years that you're impervious to everything, but you can't assume little children are all equally impervious. We've seen plenty of it. A child deprived of parental love grows up believing they're worthless, and then throws themselves into the flames over the smallest provocation. Are such cases rare? No need to look far, take that dark mage Carlos from a few years back. When we investigated his childhood afterward, sure enough, he lost his mother young, and his father..."

"Does your array require this long to lay?" Chester cut him off icily.

"Almost done. I have some conjectures, and it's best to prepare as thoroughly as possible." the minstrel answered good-naturedly, and said nothing more. After a while, he began humming another tune.