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🕑 Added 2025-08-02 21:16:16 +0000 UTCEP.10 Princess Eliza
Empress Yuria personally guided Eliza around the Empress’s palace, explaining the layout. Yuno accompanied them for a while, but as it got late, he returned to his own palace, leaving Isabella and Marie to continue helping Yuria show Eliza around.
"And finally, this will be your room from now on, Eliza. I’ve already spoken to the maids, so except for the head maid Madeleine, just ask any visible maid if you need something."
"...Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you for your kindness."
"I’d love to talk more with you, Eliza, but you must be tired today, right? So get some good rest and we’ll talk tomorrow, alright?"
"Good night, sis~ See you tomorrow~"
With that, Empress Yuria and Marie left Eliza’s room.
Eliza looked around at the room she would use from now on. Though not luxurious, it felt warm and welcoming, which she liked. She lay down and recalled the day she came to the Empire.
Bang!!
"What are you saying, Your Majesty! This cannot be!!"
"...There’s no choice. For her safety, this is better."
"Still, how can we send the princess, who’s only just turned eleven, alone to the Empire?"
"Maybe she’ll catch the Emperor’s eye? Then he won’t bother our country anymore... Isn’t it said that the Emperor is fond of young girls? If it’s our Eliza..."
"Your Majesty... how could you say such a thing..."
The chancellor of the Leon Kingdom opposed sending Princess Eliza as a hostage, but he had no choice against King Charles IV’s will.
The chancellor at least wanted to assign a strict escort to ensure the princess’s safety, but Charles IV seemed to think it wouldn’t be so bad if she ended up as the Emperor’s concubine.
At the meeting where she was decided as a hostage, Eliza looked at her father with an indifferent expression.
'That man is no longer the father I knew... Father...'
The Charles IV Eliza remembered was always confident and brave a man like a lion. But after losing the war with the Empire last year and returning with one arm lost, her father became a completely different person.
He always seemed chased by something, full of fear. He became petty and violent, lashing out at her mother and sisters whenever things went wrong.
He had never been particularly warm or gentle, but he had never been violent until, drunk and in a nightmare, he killed her mother.
Naturally, the queen’s death was covered up, but Eliza vividly remembered seeing her mother’s body in the coffin.
And now, her father was trying to sell her to the Emperor.
'There was no avoiding going to the Empire... but marrying an eighty-year-old Emperor is just too much... What should I do...?'
Creak
As Eliza sat in her room, crying alone, the door quietly opened and someone entered.
"Eliza~ Are you asleep?"
It was her eldest sister Fiona. Though they had different mothers, Eliza had always followed Fiona around. She ran to Fiona and burst into tears.
"Sob... Sis... I don’t want to go... Sob, I think Father wants to sell me to that old Emperor..."
Being born a princess, a political marriage was her fate, but Fiona had avoided it by studying martial arts and military science from a young age, eventually becoming one of only three swordmasters in the kingdom.
Sending a swordmaster essentially a strategic weapon abroad would drastically weaken the kingdom’s power, so it was unthinkable.
Thus, Fiona felt so sorry for her youngest half-sister, and came to comfort her late at night. As she patted Eliza’s back and comforted her, she shared her thoughts once Eliza had calmed down.
"Eliza, do you want to hear my idea? I saw the Emperor from afar during the war. I think if you play this right, you can avoid becoming his concubine."
"Huh? Sis? Is that possible? I’ll do anything! What should I do?"
Fiona told Eliza to wear a military uniform and to stand her ground, never yielding to the Emperor’s words.
"If you do that, you’ll probably get on the Emperor’s good side, but he won’t see you as a woman. And you have a chest that’s big for your age, right? Hehe, if you do as I say, that lolicon bastard will lose interest in you for sure."
Eliza prepared a uniform as Fiona instructed and practiced her answers to the Emperor’s expected questions every day.
So, when Eliza arrived in the Empire and acted as she’d practiced, the Emperor, just as her sister predicted, lost interest in her and left to seek out his concubines.
Instead, the Empress took an interest in her and introduced her to the second and third princesses and the third prince.
Contrary to her expectations of arrogant, cold, and heartless royals, Eliza found Yuria’s family warm, open, and caring, which surprised her. She felt that life in the Empire might not be as hard as she’d feared, and she fell asleep peacefully.
In fact, the next morning at breakfast, Empress Yuria gathered the prince and princesses and told them to treat Eliza as a daughter while she was in the Empire, and to speak informally in private.
Eliza was very surprised by this, but when Isabella, Yuno, and Marie immediately began speaking to her informally, she felt even more at ease.
Over breakfast, they talked about many things and Eliza grew much closer to Yuria’s family.
'Maybe I can trust these people, even if not the Emperor, Crown Prince, or Second Prince... Since Mother died, this is the first time I’ve felt this way... Maybe here...'
Not even a day had passed since her arrival, but Eliza already felt like they were family. She even thought she might feel more at home here than in her own palace, where only Fiona could be trusted but that thought was shattered that very morning.
"Huff, huff, huff, huff... Yuno, how... how are you doing this?"
"Hahaha, you’ll get used to it soon! It’s your first day, so don’t overdo it, Eliza."
Following the Emperor’s orders, Eliza joined Yuno’s education schedule, starting with morning training.
After breakfast at 7, Yuno suggested a light run before the 9 o’clock etiquette class. Eliza, who liked exercise, thought it would be nothing and changed into workout clothes the maids prepared, but she soon regretted it.
Eliza was fairly confident in her stamina, but as a normal princess, she couldn’t possibly keep up with Yuno’s training, which even the Royal Guard trainees struggled with. She ended up barely crawling around the training field and finally collapsed on her back.
"Hey~ You can’t just lie down and rest during training, Eliza. When you rest, you jog in place. Take deep breaths, calm your breathing, and when you’re ready, start running again. Come on! Get up!!"
Drawing on his past life as a trainer, Yuno started working Eliza hard from the morning. He tried to go easy, knowing she was a beginner, but Eliza didn’t see it as consideration she started to see Yuno as a devil.
'Ugh, I must have been crazy... Of course not... How could the son of that lolicon Emperor be normal!!'
Eliza cursed Yuno inwardly, but he kept pushing her, and by the end of training she didn’t get a single second’s rest.
"Alright, that’s it for today~ Good job, Eliza! Now you can sit down."
As soon as Yuno finished, Eliza collapsed on the ground. Yuno brought her water and started massaging her legs.
"Pfft!! Wh-what are you doing! My legs!"
Eliza, who had never even held hands with a man, was startled by Yuno’s touch and spat out her water, but Yuno calmly kept massaging her legs.
"If you leave it, you won’t be able to walk tomorrow. I’m loosening them up for you, so you should be grateful."
"I don’t need it! Ugh, you really are the son of the lolicon Emperor... already touching a girl’s legs... gasp!!"
Eliza realized she’d spoken out of turn and clamped her mouth shut, but her words had already reached Yuno’s ears.
"Y-Yuno, Your Highness... I didn’t mean..."
"Hey, it’s fine. Who doesn’t know my dad likes young girls? Hehe. My sister, me, and Marie don’t care, but you should be careful who hears. Got it?"
Yuno forgave Eliza generously and patted her head.
'What... Is he really the Emperor’s son? He’s kind, handsome, and trains hard... He’d be a perfect husband... Wait!! No, he’s the prince of the Empire, our enemy! I can’t get interested! Get it together, Eliza!!'
But Eliza’s cheeks reddened as she looked at Yuno, and whether he noticed or not, Yuno kept massaging her legs and then stood up.
"Alright, now go wash up at the Empress’s palace, then come to my palace, the Third Prince’s palace. You know the way from yesterday, right? If not, just ask the maids."
"Of course I know! It’s right next door!"
"Good! Remember, class starts at 9, so don’t be late, okay?"
"Nine... Hey! It’s 8:20 now, how am I supposed to wash up that fast!"
"Huh? Isn’t ten minutes enough? I finished early today just for you."
"You think girls and boys are the same? Ugh!! Seriously!!"
Eliza cursed Yuno’s lack of consideration and dashed off to the Empress’s palace. Yuno, not understanding why he was being scolded, also headed to his own palace to wash up.
At 9, Eliza arrived at Yuno’s study, hair dripping wet, with maids drying her hair and her dress half-soaked.
"Look at me! From tomorrow, finish a bit earlier! Just ten minutes is fine, I can’t go around like this every day!"
"Hmm... Okay~ From tomorrow, we’ll finish at 8:10. But let’s start ten minutes earlier too. That’s fine, right? Just get up a bit earlier."
Eliza was speechless at Yuno’s obsession with training.
'Why is he making such a big deal out of ten minutes less training? The Emperor’s crazy about kids, and this guy is crazy about training?'
Her opinion of Yuno kept swinging up and down.
But Yuno ignored Eliza and started thinking about how to nap during today’s lesson without getting caught. As soon as Baron Kimberley’s history class began, he quietly closed his eyes.
