Chapter 3
Eva respectfully clasped her hands and spoke in a low voice.
“Her Majesty the Empress’s childbirth must serve as a precedent to break such primitive prejudice.”
“So you want to parade me and the children out into the world as a spectacle?”
“Then allow me to take the princess to the Torun Kingdom.”
Aldisha hesitated for a moment at those words but soon shook her head. It was only reassuring to hide her existence nearby, and if anything happened to the crown prince, it could be dangerous.
“You’re an eyesore. Stay at your family’s estate until the birth.”
Thanks to that order, Eva was not present during the bloody aftermath of Emperor Kazan’s response to the birth. That was how she survived.
Only the empress, the emperor, and Eva knew that Patricia was a twin.
The knights and maids guarding the separate palace only realized she was the shadow princess when they saw her walking in the tower’s garden.
They whispered among themselves that she was afflicted by a terrible disease, that her beautiful face turned into a monster’s at night, or that she wasn’t even the emperor’s daughter. But whenever they recalled the strict decree that revealing anything about the west tower would cost them their lives, they recoiled in fear.
The emperor received reports about the separate palace from the knights twice a year. He had never once visited.
The only ones who knew of the girl’s existence were the empress, the emperor, and a handful of knights and maids stationed at the separate palace.
*
Patricia learned Patrick’s reading preferences, his favorite foods, and his habits. In contrast, Patrick didn’t even know she existed.
When Patrick turned thirteen, he went up to the west tower with his squire, Ethan, and found Patricia swinging a sword.
Patricia recognized Patrick immediately. A longing for blood kin, a tender affection she had nurtured for an imagined sibling.
Jealousy over the love and concern he alone received from their mother, and guilt for his frail body. All kinds of emotions were mixed together.
She tried to hide her joy and keep her distance, but Patrick kept coming back to the tower.
Like watercolors blending into one, they were naturally drawn to each other and forged a special bond. Afterward, the three of them secretly met away from the tower’s guards, ran through the woods, and went on picnics by the lake.
Patrick and Ethan came and went from the tower as freely as the wind.
But even wind, though invisible, cannot be perfectly hidden when it flutters. One of Consort Pamilla’s spies followed the careless Patrick.
One day, in the west tower’s garden, as Patricia was practicing with her sword, a woman with long, wavy red hair that reached her waist appeared before her. With her arms crossed, the woman bent her slim waist slightly and slowly looked Patricia up and down with a smirk.
“Oh my, dear, why don’t you tell me your name?”
Behind Pamilla’s smile, a chilling coldness seeped through.
She clenched her fists and ground her teeth. Seeing with her own eyes what her subordinate had reported but she hadn’t believed made her vision go white with fury.
Unlike the feeble crown prince Patrick, here was a girl with radiant golden hair, a lively expression, and a swift, graceful posture as she wielded her sword.
Pamilla twisted her trembling lips into a strange sneer.
“Tell me your full name.”
A cruel malice surged up Patricia’s spine.
Without a word, she swiftly crossed the garden and climbed to the top of the west tower.
“Eva, I met Consort Pamilla.”
Red hair, delicate features, and extravagant attire, the woman was exactly as Eva had described. Patricia recognized her at once.
The crown princess. Pamilla ground her teeth.
Even at a glance, it was obvious she was the emperor’s daughter. She looked just like Patrick, as if reflected in a mirror.
Pamilla had believed that once Patrick was eliminated, her son Chris would become crown prince. But after seeing Patricia, her hair gleaming gold like a crown, she revised her plan.
She had her subordinates investigate the reason the shadow princess was locked away in the tower and the truth behind the killings following Aldisha’s childbirth.
They uncovered that a Hun priestess named Amir, who had delivered the prophecy, had escaped, tongue and eyes torn out.
Pamilla ordered that Amir be found, even if it meant searching the depths of the empire’s remotest mountains and underground.
She changed the order of her schemes.
Using the pretext of paying respects to the empress, Pamilla visited the separate palace.
Not long after Pamilla began coming and going, Aldisha’s complexion turned greenish. She died on a stormy, rainy day after suffering a high fever and heavy bleeding.
Even after the empress’s passing, Emperor Kazan ordered the crown prince to be dispatched to war.
When thirteen-year-old Patricia first observed the battlefield, Ethan immediately realized the person in the silver armor was not Patrick.
So did Emperor Kazan. After briefly observing them both, he scowled.
Having crossed Tane’s western border and set foot in the Kingdom of Turk, Kazan summoned the crown prince and Ethan to his tent and ordered a sparring match.
The emperor glared intensely at Patricia, who wielded her sword in silver armor. Though the match had not ended, he abruptly raised his hand to stop it and issued an expulsion order to the crown prince first.
After Patricia left, the emperor commanded Ethan to come closer.
Ethan knelt on his left knee before the emperor and bowed his head. The emperor reached out and gripped Ethan’s neck tightly.
“Tell me what you know.”
“This is Ethan Patterson, reporting. Last summer, I went to the west tower with His Highness the Crown Prince and met Her Highness the Princess.”
“You went to the west tower… by chance?”
The emperor scoffed at the empress, who had begged him for four more years only to pull such a shallow trick. His chest boiled with hatred and resentment.
He executed all six knights guarding the west tower and hung their corpses along the inner walls of the separate palace for ten days.
It was a brutal warning to those within the palace. When Eva came to retrieve items from the main palace and saw the scene, her eyes went ghostly white with shock.
Eva placed a cot in Patricia’s room and kept watch over her as she slept with unwavering vigilance.
The emperor gave special stipends to the new knights stationed at the west tower. But he also had their tongues cut out to enforce a vow of silence.
In the dark tent, the emperor brooded.
The first sword of Crown Prince Patrick. Even when the emperor’s powerful hand seized the back of his neck, his eyes remained calm, unafraid.
Underneath platinum hair, red eyes concealed intense emotion. He was too valuable a talent to bind with a vow of silence.
The emperor drew a dagger from his waist and handed it to Ethan. It was a rondel dagger, its platinum handle adorned with a green emerald.
“If you’re at risk of being exposed, eliminate that child first.”
“Y-Your Majesty…!”
What does Princess Patricia mean to Your Majesty? Is she merely a substitute for Prince Patrick? A doll made of steel? Do you not hold even a single grain of affection for your own blood?
That was the moment Ethan Patterson sparked the flame of rebellion against Emperor Kazan.
After the empress’s passing, both Eva and Patrick opposed Patricia’s continued participation in war. But Patricia could not abandon the promise she had made to her mother, to support Patrick’s ascension to the throne.
Before meeting Patrick, the empress had been Patricia’s only family. She had always been cold and strict with her.
But one night, the empress entered Patricia’s room, stood silently beside her sleeping daughter, and wept as she looked down at her. Though Patricia had woken up, she couldn’t open her eyes.
I’m sorry, my child, Patricia.
Her mother’s tears, falling on her cheek, were hot like molten wax.
Even though she had been cold, before Patrick, the empress had been all Patricia had.
Whenever Patricia went off to war, Eva would remain inside, gritting her teeth in silence. And when the drums signaled a victorious return, Eva was always there, standing against the west tower wall.
In armor, Patricia would run to her and hug the slender, willow-like Eva.
Consort Pamilla’s death, Patrick’s succession to the throne, those were their shared goals.
“Eva, after that, let’s go to Torun, the seaside kingdom where Mother is buried. Let’s get a small house overlooking the ocean and live together.”
“Yes, Your Highness. I’ll make you sea dishes with deep blue waters dripping from them.”
Eva’s fish dishes would uplift the mouth, the heart, and even the soul.
Fortunately, around that time, peace treaties were signed between the war-crazed Emperor Kazan and the kingdoms of the Arkan continent, including the Karsik Empire.
Patricia no longer had to take part in war. Her hair had grown down to her waist.
Meanwhile, Patrick had formed a close friendship with Harzen, the crown prince of the Karsik Empire, who had come to study at the Tane Academy.
“He’s the best. The most amazing, impressive person I’ve ever met.”
“Better than me?”
“He has a different charm from you… No, out of all the men I’ve met, he’s the best.”
Patricia’s feelings toward the Karsik crown prince began with jealousy.
But after hearing endless praise until it practically oozed from her ears, the jealousy dissolved like salt in water. In its place grew curiosity.
One day, at the Poeni tavern, it felt like she had taken a shot of Atražan, watching Harzen link arms with Patrick, singing loudly with cigars in their mouths.
Since infancy, Patrick had consumed all sorts of medicinal tonics for vitality, animal horns, shark fins, crustacean innards, white snake flesh, rare tree roots and barks, mushrooms.
Though his frame remained slender, by the time he reached adulthood, his organs had grown stronger, and his body radiated heat.
With his naturally passionate nature and tenacity, Patrick would lock himself in a room for three or four days, devouring books, only to show up at the Poeni tavern to smoke and drink all night with Harzen.
At the beginning of the semester, he feigned poor health, often collapsing from dizziness and missing classes, drawing the sympathy and concern of professors.
But before the term had ended, rumors had already spread that the crown princes of both empires were regulars at the Poeni tavern. Professors stopped accepting Patrick’s absences as sick leave.
Whenever he was hungover, Patrick would ask Patricia to attend classes in his place.
One day, she put on his clothes and went to the academy. There, she met Harzen.
Her first impression of him was: arrogant.
*
Patricia cut her long golden hair that had flowed down to her waist.
“No, why did you cut it just like His Highness the Crown Prince? People will get confused, Your Highness, right?”
“Eva, I’m Patrick.”
“Oh, Your Highness the Crown Prince? I thought you were Princess Patrisha.”
“Your Highness the Princess, then… are you not sparring today?”
Ethan chimed in casually. Eva rubbed her eyes with a determined hand and asked again.
“Huh? Aren’t you His Highness the Crown Prince?”
Not just the knights guarding the west tower, even nursemaid Eva sometimes got confused, but Patrick’s squire Ethan could always tell Patrick and Patricia apart like a ghost.
“How have you never once confused us?”
“I just know.”
Ethan said he could tell by instinct, and indeed, he never got it wrong.
Patricia dressed in Patrick’s clothes, gathered his books, notes, and writing tools, and went to the academy.
The academy courtyard looked like a painted scene. The marble-walled buildings were grand, and the garden’s well-tended flowering trees were in perfect harmony.
Students sat reading on the clean lawn, sunlight falling evenly on the tops of their heads.
With shining eyes, Patricia looked around the courtyard and, overwhelmed with emotion, hugged the stack of books in her arms.
Since she was in a different year from Harzen, she avoided him at first. But one day, after a lecture ended, she saw Harzen standing in the hallway.
Ah, that must be the Karsik crown prince.
She recognized him instantly.
He stood tall, like a towering tree.
Beside him, three young ladies stood, hands clasped, gazing up at him.
Patricia lowered her head and walked by, pretending to avoid the sunlight coming through the hallway window.
“We’ll work around Your Highness’s schedule.”
“Why? Didn’t you understand me? Even if I have time, I’m not going.”
“Y-Your Highness, please reconsider—”
Harzen stood in the middle of the hallway with his arms crossed, blocking Patricia’s path.
“Hey, Patrick. You’ve been busy lately, huh?”
Patricia looked up. Even at a second glance, the man with broad, immovable shoulders looked arrogant.
His face was perfect, as though sculpted with a fine chisel on smooth plaster. The bridge of his nose was sharply defined.
Beneath thick brows, his eyes stretched long and narrow, his green irises gleaming. He smirked arrogantly, lifting the corners of his mouth.
“Patrick. Still hungover? Why are you staring like that? I know—I’m ridiculously handsome, right?”
His looks, personality, and attitude, Patrick had praised them to the point of exhaustion. But he’d never mentioned his voice.
His low, rich voice was captivating. It didn’t reach the ears, it struck straight to the chest, making her heart pound.
“Let’s go to the Poeni tavern. I want to hear you recite poetry.”
Without answering, Patricia turned sharply. She was suddenly filled with anger, for no reason.
At first, she had taken his place because he’d drunk too much. Then she’d reluctantly agreed to attend a swordsmanship class, moved by Patrick’s desperate pleas to show off his skill. She had promised it would be the last time.
But near graduation, Patrick’s health deteriorated again.
Sudden, stabbing chest pains became frequent. After the intense pain came dizzy spells. When this happened two or three times, he became completely drained.
The royal physician said a congenital illness had relapsed and that his lungs were failing.
As the semester ended, Patricia had no choice but to take exams and submit assignments on his behalf. When final exams ended, Harzen announced he would graduate and return to his empire.
The Tane Academy graduation celebration lasted three days. Neither Patrick nor Patricia attended.
The final night was a masquerade ball.
