Chapter 42

❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅• •❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

As she glared at Owen, who was blocking her way, Owen smirked and pointed his finger at the book she had hidden from Duke Alberton’s study.

Grace, thinking he might snatch it, quickly wrapped her hands around the book and said, grinding her teeth at Owen.

“……What the hell do you want from me, Your Highness?”

“I’ve been saying this for a while. Have a conversation with me. That’s all I need.”

“Your Highness, what do you have to say to me? Now, Your Highness should have more conversations with Lady Marianne, the main character of today’s party, than I do.”

When Marianne’s name came out of Grace’s mouth, Owen’s forehead was wrinkled. Owen glared at Grace as if he was displeased.

“Why do you refuse now when you say I’ll hide everything if you give me just 30 minutes? To you, my proposal is quite beneficial, isn’t it?”

“……!”

“And no matter how much you are a Duchess, don’t you think your attitude is too rude to me, the Crown Prince? Do you think it’s okay for me to rebuke Duke Felix for this matter?”

Seeing Grace’s stubborn look, Owen lowered his words and said sarcastically to her.

Grace stared at Owen with resentful eyes, unable to speak. Then Owen burst into a low laugh. It meant that he won this gruesome battle of power.

Eventually, Grace sighed and spoke to him with a complicated look on her face.

“I don’t know what the hell you want to talk about with me, but it’s good. Okay, Your Highness. Grace Felix, I will obey your order.”

However, the smile disappeared from Owen’s face when he saw Grace’s treatment of him as a Crown Prince with the respect he wanted.

Owen looked down at Grace for a while with a strangely stiff face, and soon sighed and pointed to a nearby bench.

“Then let’s sit there for a bit.”

Now, as Owen completely threw away the polite way and ordered Grace with an arrogant attitude, Grace followed him with an expressionless face.

After that, Grace leaned on the edge of the bench to avoid him, who was sitting in the center of the bench, as much as possible, said to Owen, who looked at her with strange eyes.

“Okay, now, I’ve done what Your Highness wanted me to do. So it’s your turn now, Your Highness. …… What kind of conversation do you want to have with me like this?”

Owen just stared at her without answering her words as if he wanted to end the conversation quickly.

For a few minutes, Grace urged him again with a slightly irritated voice as Owen kept looking at her with a strange look.

“Why are you taking so much time? What the hell are you trying to say…!”

“Do you really love that monster, Duke Arthur Felix?”

But at that moment Owen, who had been staring at her with a strange silence until now, asked her that.

The question was completely unexpected for Grace, so she looked at him with a bewildered expression and said.

“Why is your highness curious about that?”

“Why? Is it difficult to answer?”

Grace answered him with a pretty cheeky false smile at Prince Owen, who asked graciously.

“Ha, yes. I’m in love with him.”

Grace’s answer was a declaration to Owen and an affirmation of her feelings that were still a bit confused.

They haven’t been able to reveal all the secrets they have to each other yet, but they dare to be sure that for each one of them the other person will be the only one in this world whom they can call “love.”

[T/N: So…. Emotional… *sniff* *sniff*]

Owen, who had his eyes darkened even more strangely at her like that, asked Grace again.

“Even if you die because of your love for that monster?”

Grace, who was confident in her words, paused for a moment.

Death, well. Will she be able to affirm that she loves him even in the face of death? Grace thought hesitatingly and soon replied to Owen.

“I don’t know why you’re so curious about my feelings, but I’ll be honest with you because you keep threatening me with talking about a price. Your Highness.”

“Okay.”

“Honestly, I don’t know yet. My love for the Duke and my desire in my heart of not dying are half and half. Wouldn’t it be like that for everyone? In any case, I have to be alive to love. But when I’m with the Duke, I’m always exposed to the fear of dying or going crazy. …… So.”

“So what?”

To Owen, who asked back, Grace replied, swallowing her dry saliva.

“After much consideration, my conclusion is that I will somehow find a way to break his curse.”

“……!”

“I don’t want the Duke, no, Arthur, to be heartbroken by the curse, and….. I don’t want him to have a wife other than me.”

Upon hearing Grace’s answer, Owen was speechless and had a blank expression on his face.

She thought it was the end of the conversation. So she stood up from the bench without regret and spoke to Owen, chasing her with his eyes.

“………Then you don’t seem to have any more questions for me, so I’ll step back now. Have a good night.”

Grace, who had greeted her with the utmost respect, staggered and quickly moved away from the bench.

However, Owen’s murmuring, which subsided quietly, came to her ears as she was moving away.

“…. As expected, my eyes are not wrong. You’re different from other women.”

“……..!”

At the same time, Grace was caught in Owen’s tough hand, which grabbed her hand from behind. Grace freaked out and shouted, waving her hand to shake it off.

“What the hell are you doing, Your Highness? Let me go right away!”

“I have a crush on you.”

“…What did you say?”

“I think it was from the first time I saw you.”

“Don’t say nonsense! It’s something that I don’t even remember!”

Grace did all she could to shake Owen’s hand away from her.

She still couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about all of a sudden and why the situation is going like this. In her head, which turned white, there was only a warning to constantly run away.

Grace shouted at Owen, who was about to reach out to her again with the hand she had thrown away.

“Please, I hope you regain your reason. Your Highness! Why the hell are you doing this to me? I don’t know what side of me you fell for, but that’s an illusion!”

“It’s not an illusion.”

“No, you’re mistaken! Even if it’s not an illusion, it has to be an illusion! You are my sister’s future husband, and I already have a husband!”

“My engagement has no reason to be mentioned in this matter. Because I don’t have a single grain of emotion left about Lady Marianne’s infantile love.”

“……Your Highness, please.”

Grace kept stepping back from Owen, who was chasing her with fervent eyes.

She couldn’t figure out why this person was doing this to her. Perhaps he had given him some room, no matter how hard she thought about it, she didn’t remember that she did any special favor to Owen.

So, Grace shouted in frustration.

“Your Highness! I’ve never shown you any special kindness, nor have I ever done anything for you! I don’t know what kind of misleading behaviour I did to Your Highness, but I want to let you know that I did not show any favor to you. So…….”

“No, I didn’t need your favor to win my heart.”

“……Why is that……”

“Because I fell in love with the way you love that monster unconditionally.”

“What!?”

At Owen’s ensuing words, Grace asked back in surprise.

In the meantime, Owen took a step closer to Grace, who stopped running away. Then he whispered, winding Grace’s slightly tangled long silver hair with his fingers.

“As far as I know, you’ve never seen the face under the mask of Duke Felix, have you?”

“……So what……”

“Even if the face under the mask is ugly, you will still love him, right? Unvaryingly?”

“I don’t understand this English, Your Highness. Please speak in a way that I can understand.”

“Okay. I fell in love with you like this. If you, like other women before you, had made a fuss in fear while spreading all kinds of imaginations on your own before he could even talk about the face under the black mask first, you would have escaped.”

Prince Owen’s handsome face, who smiled coldly with the words, seemed to remind her of someone.

Grace listened to Owen and still couldn’t figure out why he was referring to Arthur and the women who went through him. So Grace asked, glaring at Owen, who still has a cool smile.

“So you’re saying that you only liked me just because of that attitude?”

“It’s not just that.”

Owen looked straight into Grace’s eyes as if blocking her counter door. Then he looked at Grace’s beautiful blue eyes in the soft moonlight, as if possessed, and whispered in a sweet voice.

“Right? If you’re a woman who can truly love a monster like that, you’ll love a monster like me.”

“……What?”

The moment she heard those words, Grace’s face was flushed with astonishment.

‘Monsters like me… You mean yourself, right? Why on earth?’

In what sense does Owen say this to himself? She wanted to ask the meaning of the word again.

However, even before Grace could ask him that, when she saw Prince Owen approaching her as if he was about to kiss her, Grace hurriedly raised her hand and covered her mouth.

But Owen’s face touched Grace’s ears, not Grace’s lips. Owen, who pushed his face close to Grace’s ear as if to whisper something, whispered in a confident voice.

[T/N: Arthur would have beheaded him after seeing all this. ㄟ( ▔__▔ )ㄏ]

“You just told me to regain my reason, didn’t you?”

“……!”

“No, you’re wrong. You’re the one who needs to find a reason.”

❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅• •❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•