Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 277: Knight In Shinning Armor

Zane gathered the men he would need for the journey and took everything he thought the princess might need, as he wouldn’t want to be slowed down on their way back. He didn’t want to go on this journey, but the thought of her being in the arms and life of an old man, the minister of the southeast, made him feel a tightening, nameless feeling in his chest.

She deserved better than that old fool. He had seen the minister at the imperial palace on important occasions and knew he was old enough to be her grandfather. He was an arrogant man who had once made Zane clean his shoes and carriage when there were servants all around the palace to do the work.

Zane hadn’t been able to refuse because the Emperor was present when the minister called for him and ordered him to do those tasks. He had even waited on the man as he smoked with his friends on the balcony, discarding the ashes of his pipe.

Zane had secretly despised the man then and wished he had the authority to beat the hell out of his old bones. If not for anything else, he would gladly go on this journey to personally deal with the minister under the excuse of taking back the princess he had married without her brother’s consent.

Though, in a deep corner of his heart, Zane was going on this journey for the sake of the princess, he refused to acknowledge that part of his heart or accept the fact that he felt anything for her other than resentment for the way she had come to him on that balcony that night to get him into trouble. He could still remember how she had held on to him, knowing her fiancee was on the way there. He didn’t like women who plotted so cunningly and then pretended to be innocent later on.

Many of these female royals were the same. They tortured people lower than them for the amusement of it all. Zane reminded himself of this before the small part of his heart that looked forward to seeing the princess could overcome his common sense.

He was going on this journey to get revenge on the minister and not because he cared about this princess. He didn’t care, and he most definitely didn’t remember a time in their childhood when she had purposely dropped a bag of snacks from her balcony to fall on his lap when he kneeled below the balcony serving punishment in the hot summer afternoon for fighting a guest who had dared insult Lucian.

He had been hungry that afternoon and forgotten in the sun by the parents of the nobles whose son he had punched. That snack had been like heaven to his younger self, who had been starved.

He had looked up to see her smiling at him before she walked away. She was the first after Lucian and Lyria to show him kindness after he was brought to Pendragon. That memory had stuck with him until his resentment for Alden mounted through the years he had suffered at the first prince’s hands.

Zane dismissed all those thoughts from his mind when he realized he was giving his heart another reason to want to bring her back safe and sound. She meant nothing to him, he thought sternly, and dismissed all of those thoughts before snapping his horse’s rein after ordering instructions to the soldiers.

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Far away from the Pendragon palace in the south, the mansion of the minister of the southeast stood tall amidst the noble town city where the gloomy weather made everyone remain cozy in their residences.

It was morning, but the weather made it look like a gloomy evening with snowflakes descending softly from the heavens and covering the earth in a white blanket of snow. The mansion was a three-story stone building with many of its windows shut tightly except for one on the third floor.

From above the floor, one could see the lone figure standing before the open window, staring lifelessly into nothingness, her gray eyes holding no emotion as she wondered, for the thousandth time since she had been brought to this city and mansion where she knew no one, if anyone even missed her.

Those thoughts would always bring tears to her face in the first few weeks she was brought here, but now no emotions came with the thoughts. She felt nothing but emptiness. She had come to accept her fate and the fact that she was now married to a disgusting old man.

Though disgusting and old as he was, he cared about her more than those she called family. He gave her everything she ever wanted and bought her different sets of jewelries every day. Apart from the first few days he had hit her whenever she was caught trying to escape, he had not hit her again after she had accepted the fact that this would be her home.

A bitter smile came upon Thalia’s lips as she recalled how she had fought with everything in her to escape and go back home. But then, when she realized even home didn’t feel like home anymore, she had decided to stay here until she died from loneliness.

This big mansion was hers alone as the minister made sure to get a separate home for her away from his other family, and the servants never even attempted to talk to her even when she tried to be friendly.

She had nowhere to go to when the Empress had taken over everything, and even the only brother who would have protected her was as good as dead in his state. She recalled how she would go to him every day, crying for him to wake up. He had never ignored her cries, but he had this time because he couldn’t hear her. He was her only family, and she had lost him.

She had thought her siblings cared about her, and she had thought Selene considered her a friend. But when it came down to escaping the empire, they had forgotten about her and left. At first, she hadn’t thought about it that way, but the Empress had called her one day to tell her how the others had left her to suffer because they never really cared about her and her elder brother.

Perhaps everything she had gone through in the past month had shaped her thinking and made her believe no one really did care. Only Alden had ever truly cared, and even him she had lost. So what was the use of fighting to leave here when there was nothing to run back to? This was her home now, and she had an old man as her husband. If he died, she would be a lonely widow forever, rotting within the walls of the house with no hobbies or friends.

She no longer found joy in reading or doing the things she once loved. Even if she picked up a book to read, she only read words and saw nothing. Her imagination had died with her soul. Reading had made her a fool, and now she realized how right her brother had been when he would burn her books to make her a realistic woman. He wanted her to let go of those foolish, unrealistic expectations in life.

If she had listened to him soon enough, she wouldn’t have been this depressed and disappointed in everything in life. In books, the women always had a knight in shining armor to come to their rescue. But the thought of that now was even laughable to her because nothing like that existed. No knight in shining armor could bring her out of this misery and give her back her life.

A tear rolled down her frozen face, but before she could move to wipe it off and close the window, she stopped as she thought she heard commotions downstairs. Usually, the mansion was always quiet, with only the sounds of the servants moving around doing their work until the minister returned to visit her and bring her whatever he thought would amuse her. And even then, there had never been this loud of a commotion.

Not thinking too much about what the noise was about, Thalia left the window and turned to the door. She made her way downstairs to see what the noise was all about, but stopped in her tracks when she almost reached the last step and finally had a clear view of what was going on.

Right in the middle of the foyer, her so-called husband was pushed to his knees with a sword held to his throat and every other guard of the palace subdued.

That wasn’t the only thing that brought an expression of disbelief to her emotionless face; It was the man holding the sword to the minister’s throat that made her breath momentarily hitch and caused the heart she had thought was frozen to suddenly skip a beat.

He stood there firm and tall, wearing a thick cloak and a cape over his head that moved way back to reveal his face and the front of his head. His legs were apart as he held the sword to the old man’s throat while his hazel eyes searched around the mansion as if he was looking for someone among the crowd of panicked servants.

When he finally noticed her, it was like time had stopped and it was only the two of them in the building. He looked as handsome as she’d recalled, except for his exhausted eyes that seemed to rake her body as if to see if she had been hurt.

She’d thought her emotions were dead and she would never be able to feel anything but misery and pain for how she had been abandoned and forgotten. But seeing him here in this lonely mansion almost brought her to tears. He had come for her, she thought, as an overwhelming feeling pressed down on her chest. Her knight in shining armor had come to take her back. The man she had wanted with everything in her was here.