A Stormy Night (1)
“Hiyah! Hiyah!”
“Neiiigh.”
I am a horse.
A four-legged beast. A horse.
“Neiche, go right!”
“Neiiigh.”
A peerless steed that would gallop off a cliff without hesitation if its master commanded it.
“Now turn! Spin around!”
“Neiiigh.”
Right now I am not a person. I am a horse.
“N-Nanny?”
Catherine stared in horror at me crawling on all fours with the princess on my back.
“Catherine, hello! Say hi to my horse.”
“Ah… hello, Nanny. Or rather, Mister Horse?”
She actually greeted it just because I told her to. That woman really isn’t ordinary either.
Who in the world actually says hello to a horse?
“Neiche, you have to greet her back when someone says hello!”
How is a horse supposed to return a human greeting?
I nearly snapped out of character for a second and hurriedly cleared my throat.
“Neiiigh.”
“Nanny…”
Catherine gazed at me with pity in her eyes.
Damn it. To think I’d receive sympathy for something like this.
That annoyed me in its own way.
“Puhahahahaha—!”
The prince cackling with glee annoyed me too.
After laughing for a good while, Edwin smirked as if a fun idea had just occurred to him.
“Ria!”
“What, brother?”
“I heard your horse knows how to do tricks. Is that true?”
“Tricks?”
“Yeah, you know, standing on two legs and shaking them around.”
“Of course she can!”
Emilia grabbed both sides of my head and tugged.
“Neiche, do a trick! Trick time!”
A trick?
You dare order the former leader of an assassination squad to perform tricks?
“Neiche! If you don’t listen, I’m going to spank you—!”
Still, even an assassination squad leader has no desire to be spanked by a child in front of witnesses.
I reminded myself of my current role and thrust both arms toward the ceiling.
“Neiiigh!”
“Nanny…”
My face burned under Catherine’s sympathetic stare.
But the trials I had to endure as the prince’s nanny were far from over.
As expected, childcare really is brutal labor.
Anyone who claims raising children is easier than regular work deserves to be hung upside down and dunked in a mountain stream.
I’d rather spend two weeks lying in ambush in a swamp.
After the horseback riding game ended, I entered the grand bath to wash Emilia.
“Your Highness, please raise your arms.”
“No! Ria, it tickles!”
We needed to finish the bath in time for dinner.
Whether she understood her nanny’s anxiety about missing mealtime or not, Emilia simply pressed her arms tightly against her sides and shook her head.
“No! I don’t want to! Ria just wants to play in the water!”
No choice, then.
I’d have to deploy my secret weapon.
“Your Highness.”
“Hm?”
“Look over here.”
I pulled a small piece of candy from my pocket and waved it above her head.
The moment she saw the candy wrapper, Emilia’s eyes sparkled.
“Candy!”
She shot both arms upward to grab it.
I didn’t miss the opening and scrubbed the sponge into her armpits.
“Kyaaaah! It tickles—!”
Splash—
The princess flailed so wildly from the tickling that I ended up soaked like a drowned rat.
“Oh, Neiche took a bath too! When did you do that?”
“…Just a little while ago.”
I wrung out my wet hair, then thoroughly dried every inch of Emilia’s body.
After the exhausting bath came study time.
Edwin attended lessons with a tutor who visited once a week, but Emilia did not.
It was customary in the imperial family for the young princess’s education to be handled entirely by her nanny.
Only when she reached about twelve would she begin learning the proper virtues and academics befitting a noble lady from the wife of a prestigious family.
Which meant Emilia’s education was my responsibility.
“Neiche, what does this say?”
Luckily, the previous nanny had done a good job teaching her the imperial script.
Emilia would read fairy tales by herself and then ask me about any words she didn’t know.
“Which word?”
“This one!”
The Emperor of the Night
“……”
“Ria’s daddy is the emperor, so what’s the emperor of the night? Are there two emperors?”
The problem was that she occasionally brought strange books and asked about them, which left me in an awkward position.
I sighed as I looked at the title on the cover: The Night When Bones and Flesh Burn.
“Did you bring another one of the books the maids in the annex were reading?”
“Yeah! Catherine was reading it and it looked pretty, so I took it!”
Emilia proudly held up the ornate cover.
“Your Highness, this book is still too difficult for you. I’ll find you something else.”
“Huh? Why? This one is pretty.”
“Let’s go choose a different book.”
Of all things, why did she have to pick an adult romance novel?
I couldn’t exactly lecture Catherine—an adult—about changing her reading preferences.
“Neiiigh.”
Meanwhile, Emilia pouted as I carried her like a sack under my arm.
“Then when can Ria read this book?”
“Much, much later.”
“Then what is the emperor of the night? Ria’s curious!”
“…It refers to a man who is strong at night.”
Emilia tilted her head, clearly not understanding.
“Then is Ria’s daddy the emperor of the night too?”
“…How did you reach that conclusion?”
“Ria’s daddy is the emperor, so he’s the strongest in the world. That means he’s strong at night too, right?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
Damn it, how was I supposed to know whether the emperor had stamina in the bedroom?
I wasn’t the least bit curious, nor did I want to find out. The thought suddenly made me nauseous.
“Why does Neiche only ever say she doesn’t know? Are you doing that because you think Ria won’t understand? Ria isn’t stupid!”
Emilia puffed out her cheeks, clearly dissatisfied with my answer.
In the end, I had no choice but to toss out something I couldn’t possibly take responsibility for.
“When you meet His Majesty later, you can ask him yourself.”
“Oh! That works! Okay!”
I felt a twinge of guilt for throwing the emperor under the carriage, but it didn’t matter.
By the time he might actually visit, Emilia would have long forgotten the question.
A typical nanny’s day was relentlessly busy.
While the princess napped, I tidied the room and took the dirty clothes to the laundry.
After collecting fresh clothes, I had to wake her and prepare her meal.
Mealtimes were always when Edwin caused trouble.
His picky eating seemed to improve, then immediately got worse again.
Not long ago he had secretly thrown away some precious fresh oysters and earned a scolding from Catherine.
That was the first time I realized that woman could actually get angry.
Catherine, who also served as the palace chef, was extremely strict about food.
When I was little, my family was so poor that food was incredibly precious. That’s why I can’t stand seeing it wasted.
It was a perfectly reasonable reason.
After that, whenever Catherine was nearby, Edwin made sure not to leave any food on his plate.
It was truly remarkable.
Once the chaotic meal ended, it was time to put the children to bed.
Edwin was used to sleeping alone, but Emilia was different.
She couldn’t fall asleep unless someone stayed by her side until she drifted off.
She really was a peculiar child.
If someone watched me while I tried to sleep, the drowsiness would vanish in an instant.
“Neiche, pat pat!”
At that moment, Emilia called me from the bed.
It looked like she had no intention of falling asleep until I left her side today either.
By nightfall the weather had turned ominous.
Thick dark clouds filled the sky, and soon heavy rain began to pour.
The empire’s only princess, Emilia, lay in bed gazing out the window.
She looked strangely anxious.
It was the moment her nanny Rachel was about to extinguish the lantern to end the day.
Emilia grabbed her sleeve.
“Neiche, you know… can you not turn off the light?”
Rachel paused at the princess’s request.
In the imperial palace, lights were to be extinguished during sleep regardless of one’s status.
It was to conserve oil, of course, but also to prevent fires.
If a fire broke out and claimed a member of the imperial family, it would be a catastrophe.
“Very well.”
Rachel must have read the earnestness on the princess’s face; she withdrew her hand from the lantern.
Thanks to that, the lantern continued to cast its warm glow.
Emilia blinked, seemingly surprised her request had been granted.
“Really? You don’t have to turn it off? Emma said the light has to be turned off every single day.”
“That person can be rather rigid about things.”
“Huh? Neiche, what did you say?”
“It was nothing.”
The nanny who had been muttering to herself tucked the blanket around the princess and patted her chest.
The motion was quite mechanical.
But for some reason, the steady rhythm of her patting caused sleepiness to wash over Emilia in an instant.
Just as the princess was slipping into the land of dreams—
“Sleep well, Your Highness.”
The nanny offered a quiet goodnight and withdrew without a sound.
Even so, a small lantern continued to brightly illuminate the princess’s room.
Rumble—
Fierce wind and rain accompanied a blue flash that painted the sky.
It was a night of raging storm.
Ssssssh—
The biting wind brought by the storm slammed into the princess’s room as well.
A single gust slipping through the window gap snuffed out the lantern without resistance.
Then, as if it had been waiting, a tremendous clap of thunder shook the entire room.
“Eek!”
Startled awake by the enormous thunderclap, Emilia’s eyes flew open.
Everything was pitch black.
“It’s… it’s dark.”
The young princess rubbed her eyes and looked around frantically.
The lantern, placed far from the bed, held nothing but a half-burned wick.
“Ria’s scared…”
Emilia whimpered as she climbed down from the bed.
There were exactly two things the lively princess feared most in the world: darkness and the sound of thunder.
“Neiiigh…”
Thunder on a dark night was especially terrifying.
Emilia crouched in the corner of the wall farthest from the window.
“Eek… Ria is scared all alone…”
The terrified princess couldn’t even think to call for someone.
At that moment—
Knock, knock—
“Your Highness, are you still awake?”
A familiar voice came from beyond the door.
It was the nanny, Rachel.