Chapter 3 – Lost Princess (1)

The man took his mask off and looked around the dilapidated room. Inside were a bed and a table big enough for two people. The window was covered with a wooden slate, so the only source of light was a tiny candle lit on the table.

As if not wanting to stay in such a doghole, the man only half on the chair. Gris flinched and glimpsed at him.

He was a man with brown hair, eyebrows straight and eyes slanted downwards. His friendly countenance seemed harmless enough, but Gris knew better. His eyes told a different story. He didn’t look much like an aristocrat who had lived a gentle and fulfilling life. Gris thought he looked more of a hungry wolf, and kept her guard when he let out a warm smile.

“Now, you finally start to look like a human being.”

His sweet voice filled the room. Gris stood as stiff as a wooden doll, her nerves on edge as she had never dealt with a grown man before.

The man stared at Gris oddly, as if seeing an animal for the first time. Minutes passed, and he finally opened his mouth. “Is your hair gray? What about your eyes?”

Gris had heard stories from Adrian and Marie, about men ruthlessly charging into them and ending up with bruises on their bodies. Or about times when they were told to lay still like a corpse.

But she had never heard stories about men asking about the color of their eyes and hair. Her fear started to grow when he asked another bizarre query.

“When did you end up here?”

Gris seized to answer but saw the man’s unpleasantness on his face when he realized she was ignoring him. She grasped the idea that the man did not have much patience. If you were born an aristocrat, no one will keep you waiting for an answer, Gris thought. She straightened her mind and finally answered.

“When… I was nine.”

The man finally loosened his face when he heard her voice.

“So, you know how to speak. What a relief.”

Gris was confused. No aristocrat would come here just to make conversation with a lady, no matter how pretty they were.

She assumed that he was here for something else. But the man continued to talk with his deep, mellow voice.

“And where did you live before you came here?”

No one has asked her this before. They were only curious if she was ill or was on her period. In that way, this man was highly unusual. Gris’s eyes shook as she opened her mouth to answer.

“I, I…”

Although Gris was locked in the whorehouse at the tender age of nine doing chores for a living, she once lived as the princess of Grandia. As the second oldest princess, Gris was adored by her parents and even by the public. She would spend her days in her detached palace with her grandmother.

But due to false accusations, her parents were driven as heathens and were executed. Her older sister and younger brother were prisoned in a tower and starved to death, while her grandparents, relatives, and cousins were also murdered in various kind of inhumane ways.

Young Gris was also confined in a tower but was sentenced to beheadal and returned to the Grandia palace.

For several days she was locked up in prison and was carried away somewhere in a coach. The destination then and is still a mystery, for the coach was attacked by a group of mobs and burned down to ashes.

Gris managed to escape the scene. But she was soon caught by a mob, by their leader who was missing an eye. He promised to keep her alive if she didn’t cry, and he kept his promise by selling her to a whorehouse. From this, Gris learned that promises needed specifics, or the cost out be unbearable.

Fortunately, the former owner of the whorehouse was looking for a hand to keep the place neat and tidy. Young Gris was given a meal every other day, spending her days as a maid, cleaning and washing the house.

She also nursed the former owner whenever he was sick, which kept her busy enough to not deal with customers. But a year later, when the owner changed to Billton, Gris longed for those petty days as a cleaner.

“I….”

Gris closed her lips as she reminisced the past eleven years of life. She couldn’t reveal she was once the princess of Grandia.

Now, Grandia was ruled by the Talilluchis who had led the revolution. If they heard the princess of Grandia was alive, they would inspect the whole nation to find her only so they could kill her brutally. Gris was afraid that she would lose her head, which she had narrowly kept attached to her body all these years.