Please Leave The Sickly Villainess Alone

Someone muttered.

It was their first time seeing the Crown Prince smile so gently.

The same was true for Senia.

The final stage of the throne succession test, commonly known as the ‘Monarch of the Battlefield’.

Throughout history, Emperors had left such a knight’s vow to their lovers before facing this life-threatening test.

However, it was unprecedented to make such a public proposal, as if imprinting it in everyone’s eyes.

It was almost an illusion that possessiveness was overflowing from his crimson eyes.

“The Crown Prince has fallen deeply in love.”

“It doesn’t seem to be a light emotion…”

As both the Crown Prince and recently Lady Rayes were considered top marriage prospects, some let out regretful sighs.

Meanwhile, Senia, who had been standing like a wooden statue, was already heated up because of Ria earlier, so she became even more enraged, feeling her vision darken.

‘Why on earth! Why is His Highness to such a lowly thing…’

It felt like her insides were in a jumble.

“Senia, what’s wrong? Your face is as white as a sheet…!”

She was even feeling dizzy, so she left her seat and exited the banquet hall, ignoring the voice of the Count’s daughter calling her.

‘Sweet scent…’

A sweet scent lingered in Senia’s nose.

Even now, as she clutched the wall of the corridor after leaving the banquet hall, that intense afterscent hadn’t disappeared.

“A fake, how dare a fake…!”

Aaaargh-!

Her insides had already screamed hundreds of times, becoming numb.

Finally, her true colors showed through the distorted mask.

* * *

Senia Fren Kablos was born with a frail body, unfitting for her family’s notorious reputation.

The Duke, who was said to be without blood or tears, was so cold that he never once visited Senia when she was a newborn.

Only the Duchess Kablos, Senia’s mother, was by her side.

“Only two years old… Yet already facing such a crisis!”

The Duchess couldn’t hide her tears day after day, blaming herself for the tragic fate of her youngest daughter who wasn’t expected to live past five.

One day, the Duchess, who was virtually Senia’s only guardian, had a carriage accident.

The Duchess Kablos, who only knew how to fulfill her duties as a wife, left her last request to Duke Kablos with difficulty before breathing her last.

That request was none other than to somehow make Senia healthy.

Although such a request didn’t have much force for Duke Kablos, who remained indifferent even in the face of his wife’s death, the method she proposed before dying was tempting.

“If you use, huff, the daughter of Rayes, you can save our daughter…”

She meant to take the power that Duke Rayes’s daughter, said to be born once in 500 years, would have and put it into Senia, who was born as a ‘non-magic user’.

A non-magic user refers to someone who has no magic power in their body at all, like Drehan. In normal cases, it doesn’t cause much hindrance to living, but Senia’s case was special.

Because she was born physically weak, she could only live with the help of magic power.

Not with others’ magic, but with self-healing magic from her own body.

During her lifetime, the Duchess had sought numerous treatments with the obsession to save her daughter, and among them, she proposed this as the final method.

Throughout history, Duke Rayes’s daughters were all born with powerful healing magic, and because of that, they died young around the age of twenty.

“Since it’s a life that will die anyway, if we take Duke Rayes’s daughter’s healing magic and put it into our child, her frail body will recover.”

The Duchess knew that among the black magic passed down through generations in the Kablos family, there was a secret technique that could extract others’ magic power, and she emphasized again that this was the only way before breathing her last.

‘What’s the use of such a lump of flesh…’

In the Kablos family, where only the strong survived, she was an utterly useless existence.

“Your Excellency, we’ve brought Duke Rayes’s daughter.”

“Lay her down over there.”

The Duke glanced at the small, wriggling being his subordinate had brought as if looking down on it.

Certainly, placing Duke Rayes’s daughter next to Senia made him realize that his daughter was indeed premature.

Unlike Senia, who looked like she might stop breathing at any moment, Duke Rayes’s daughter looked up at him with shining light emerald eyes.

“What are those Rayes fools doing?”

“Grenne says they’ve left the mansion as it’s the third anniversary of Duchess Rayes’s death.”

Grenne, who was the nanny of Duchess Rayes and now the current Duke Rayes’s daughter, was someone who had been taken in by Duke Kablos in the past.

As Duke Kablos was passing through a slum, he sensed black magic energy from the daughter Grenne was carrying while starving to death, so he took in the pregnant woman.

“I didn’t know she would be useful like this.”

Grenne soon received orders from the Duke and entered as a spy into the then-hostile Cheros Marquis family, playing the role of a nanny.

Later, the Marquis’s daughter she had raised became the mistress of House Rayes, and Grenne came to look after her children as well.

However, Grenne didn’t readily accept this order from Duke Kablos.

“Wh-What are you going to do with the young lady…”

“A dog that carries out orders doesn’t ask for reasons.”

“…Surely you’re not going to kill her?”

“Once this is done, you won’t have to look after a child in Rayes anymore.”

Saying the nanny wouldn’t have to look after a child anymore, that answer alone was enough to infer the young lady’s fate.

‘I’m sorry, young lady…’

Spending time together, one unknowingly grows fond of the little one.

However, because her daughter Creya was held hostage as a subordinate of Kablos, she eventually handed over Laveria, whom she had helped kidnap, to the Duke’s hands like this.

Laveria was unlike a child.

A princess who received everyone’s love, being deeply considerate and brilliant as if an adult was inside.

Grenne whispered to Laveria that she would live a life of atonement and disappeared.

“Waaah! No! I don’t want to!”

Laveria twisted her small body this way and that, avoiding Duke Kablos who was reaching out to her.

However, soon her body stiffened as if struck by lightning.

This was because Duke Kablos activated black magic and extracted part of the healing magic from Laveria’s body.

The healing magic, swirling white to the point of dazzling the eyes, was soon absorbed into Senia’s frail body.

“What a monstrous amount of magic power. To think it still overflows this much even after taking this much.”

The Duke expected that Laveria would undoubtedly die much earlier than Rayes princesses recorded in history.

“Your Grace, how do you plan to dispose of Duke Rayes’s daughter?”

Menders asked the Duke, hiding his anxious expression.

The Duke looked down at Laveria, who had fainted from the recent shock, with indifferent eyes and said:

“Dispose of her.”

Laveria seemed to be able to discern things unlike a normal child.

“There’s no need to leave behind future troubles by keeping her alive.”

Duke Kablos picked up Senia, whose complexion had noticeably improved, and left the room.

With the door slamming shut behind him, Menders hurriedly approached Laveria and placed his hand under her nose.

Huff- huff-

Fortunately, she had just fainted for a moment.

Shortly after, the door quietly opened and a boy who looked exactly like Duke Kablos entered the room.

“Young master.”

“The child?”

“She’s still breathing.”

“Father… What did he say?”

“He said to dispose of her.”

The boy’s name was Enoch Kin Kablos, the Duke’s seven-year-old eldest son.

“Even such an innocent young child…”

Enoch, the only one among the master’s family who thought normally, decided to save the child by sending Menders.

“I’ve already sent word to my teacher, so you take the young lady and follow me.”

“Yes, young master.”

Late at night, a carriage secretly left the Kablos Duchy’s mansion shrouded in darkness.

Clop-clop, clop-clop-

Inside the carriage heading east was the missing Duke Rayes’s daughter who was currently causing an uproar throughout the country.

The carriage reached the Troy Orphanage managed by Enoch’s teacher, Viscount Louiscone, only when dawn was breaking.

The cradle containing the child was soon handed over to the orphanage director.

“I heard from the Viscount, young lord.”

“Don’t let this child out until she’s fifteen years old, and after fifteen, contact me separately. I’ll come back for her.”

Having heard about the rule that the Troy Orphanage only raises children until they’re fifteen and then sends them out as slaves afterward, Menders said so.

“Yes, yes. How could there be any issue? Please tell me the child’s name.”

At Layola’s words, Menders hesitated.

What should they call the child who was no longer a Duke’s daughter…

“Ria.”

The answer came from Enoch’s mouth, who was wearing a cloak beside him.

It was a name taken from the last syllable of Laveria.

Enoch told Layola the nickname that the Duke’s daughter might have been called lovingly, even if she couldn’t be called by her original name, and rose from his seat.

Menders hurriedly followed behind Enoch as he left the orphanage.

After the two disappeared, Layola erased her fawning attitude in the remaining director’s office and opened the cradle with an expression of clear annoyance.

It was a girl with unique silver hair.

Layola simply picked up Ria, who was looking up at her with shocked emerald eyes.

For Ria, who had lost all her previous memories due to the shock of black magic, this was the beginning.

“What a bother…”

Layola muttered as she took Ria and left the room.