Surviving As The Villainess:Rise Of The Reborn Luna Princess のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 50

Chapter 42LUCERIONThe palace courtyard had a particular way of falling silent when something unexpected happened, a ripple of stillness that moved through servants and nobles alike faster than any announcement could travel, and I felt it settle over the assembled staff the moment our procession came to a halt before the main entrance.I had expected some reaction to our return. What I had not entirely anticipated was the sheer, poorly concealed astonishment on every face turned toward the carriage.Word had clearly traveled ahead of us — it always did, in a court this attentive to its king's business — that Zirael had departed for Nightwood Pack territory to inspect potential marriage alliances, that a formal offering had been extended and accepted. What word had apparently failed to convey, in whatever garbled form it had reached the palace ahead of our arrival, was precisely who that offering had turned out to be.I watched the stewar

Chapter 44AVALINEIt took nearly an hour to convince Aida to stop bouncing on the bed long enough to actually sleep in it.She had discovered, in quick succession, that the wardrobe was large enough to hide inside, that the washroom had actual hot water that poured from a spout rather than needing to be hauled and heated over a fire, and that the small balcony attached to our sitting room overlooked not only the fountain but an entire garden beyond it, dotted with lanterns that had begun glowing softly as the evening deepened. Each discovery sent her into fresh peals of delighted laughter, and I found myself simply watching her, unable to muster any real urgency about bedtime when the sight of her joy felt so precious and so fragile, as though examining it too closely might make it disappear."Can we stay here forever?" she asked, finally settling beneath the blankets I had tucked around her, her small face flushed with the particular exhaustion that came

Chapter 46ZIRAELThe council chamber had never been a place I particularly enjoyed spending my mornings, but I had grown accustomed, over the centuries, to the particular rhythm of its arguments, the careful posturing of advisors who had learned to disguise personal ambition as concern for the kingdom's welfare. I had expected, when I called the morning's session, that Avaline's arrival would eventually surface as a topic. I had not expected it to dominate the entire meeting within the first quarter hour."Your Majesty," said Corvain, my eldest advisor, a vampire whose service to the crown predated my own reign by nearly a century, "I mean no disrespect in raising this matter, but the court has been... unsettled, since your return. A human woman, raised within a werewolf pack, brought into the palace under direct royal protection, with no clear political purpose beyond—" He paused, choosing his next words with visible care. "Beyond whatever personal regard

Chapter 48AVALINEThe work they gave me in Hidden Haven felt almost like an insult at first, though not in the way I had grown accustomed to insults feeling.My days now consisted of helping in the palace kitchens during the morning hours, kneading bread alongside a cheerful older cook named Bettina, and spending afternoons in the palace library, where I was tasked with little more than reshelving books and mending torn pages under the patient instruction of an elderly warlock named Fenwick who seemed to have appointed himself my personal tutor in matters of organization and quiet. It was, by any measure I had previously understood, barely work at all."You've gone quite pale," Bettina observed one morning, watching me stare at the modest list of tasks she'd handed me as though it might contain some hidden trap I hadn't yet identified. "Is something wrong with the bread?""No," I said quickly. "The bread's fine. I just—" I hesitated, unsure ho

Chapter 50LUCERIONI had not expected to enjoy the company of a five-year-old child nearly as much as I found myself enjoying it, and the realization sat strangely alongside everything else I thought I understood about my own nature.It began, as most things with Aida seemed to begin, with a simple request that quickly grew into something considerably larger than either of us had anticipated. She had found me in the palace library one afternoon, curled into a window seat with a book Fenwick had selected for her, struggling visibly over a passage that clearly exceeded whatever reading instruction she'd received during her brief, brutal childhood at Nightwood."What does this word mean?" she asked, holding the book up toward me with the particular directness that seemed to characterize everything about her, no hesitation, no careful calculation of whether the question might annoy me.I glanced at the word she indicated, unremarkable enough on its own,