The Cursed Prince's Strange Bride

Susan swallowed nervously. Why was he always so intimidating? "Yes. Why? No one has ever scolded you before?" She asked, trying to act tough.

"Don't do that. I will get angry." He warned, but before she could respond he returned to the main topic.

"So a maid claimed to have seen Princess Amber kill Beth and stab Princess Tyra, but Princess Amber doesn't remember doing that and she is having similar symptoms with Lance who was your first suspect, and he claimed Princess Amber had given him a biscuit she had been eating?" he asked, summarizing everything she had said thus far, and Susan gave him a nod.

"Exactly. I already asked Williams to find out whatever he can about any herbs or potions that could have such effects on our kind and humans," Susan assured him.

Alvin seemed to be lost in his thoughts, so she remembered something vital and decided to tell him about it.

"I think you should know this. But the maid who is missing works in the kitchen. I have no idea why she was serving Princess Tyra that night, and I cannot ask the head of the kitchen either, because I do not want to be suspected. But I think you can do that yourself."

"Are you looking for an opportunity to get me out of here so your aunt can hurt Prince Harold?" He asked suspiciously.

"Goodness! Can you stop being so suspicious of me?" She asked in frustration. "I don't have time for this! My mother wants us to leave this place after the assembly today. If I end up leaving, you should be able to continue with these clues." She said, frustrated.

Her angry eyes glared at Alvin, who seemed to have recovered from his suspicion and sighed deeply.

"A kitchen maid." He muttered. He had his suspicions now. "Who is she?" He asked her curiously.

"I'm not sure you would know her..."

"Can you at least tell me what she looks like?" Alvin asked, and Susan gave him a nod as she tried to describe the maid.

Alvin's brows pulled together once she was done. That was the same maid Harold had asked him to keep his eyes on.

"It's her." He muttered to himself again.

"What? You know her?"

"She probably fed the biscuits to Princess Amber secretly." He said to himself, while Susan watched him with confusion.

If he could find the person who had directed her to watch over Princess Tyra, he would be able to find the person responsible for everything.

He needed to find her. Or at least, her twin who was outside the palace.

With that goal in mind, he returned to the bed where Harold lay and covered him properly with the quilt.

"Wake up soon." He said quietly before adding in a threatening tone, "I am warning you, Harold."

Susan watched him carefully until he turned to look at her, and with the same warning tone, he said, "Do whatever you can to stay back."

At that moment, it occurred to her that she was truly going to try her best to stay back.

*******

"I didn't do it. I am innocent," Alicia kept insisting as they tied both her and Paulina to two chairs.

She wasn't sure what the nature of torture was, but seeing who was in charge of it sent shivers down her spine.

How could they have put Beth's father in charge of torturing her? The man had a murderous glint in his eyes, and she knew he would stop at nothing until she was dead.

"I didn't do any of it. I didn't. I have no reason to kill Beth or hurt Tyra or Harold. You have to believe me," Alicia begged weakly, while Paulina continued to cry beside her.

"My mistress is innocent," Paulina cried in a cracked voice.

Instead of listening to her as she had hoped, her statement seemed to add fuel to the fire because most of the aristocrats frowned at how she had addressed her husband so casually. If she could call him by his name like that, it meant she had the audacity to kill him.

Alicia raised her head when she noticed two men walking toward them with their hands lifted above their heads as they carried a body wrapped in a mat, and her eyes widened in surprise when they dropped it in front of her and unfolded the mat to reveal the body.

Her heart skipped a beat, and a gasp escaped from her lips when she looked down at the body and realized that it was indeed Beth's corpse.

Although she had been brutally wounded and there were stab wounds all over her body and so many bruises on her face, the body was unmistakably Beth's.

Somewhere deep inside her, she had been nursing some sort of hope that Beth was probably still alive and all this was just a set up, but seeing Beth's corpse in this manner, she felt both torn and devastated. She would have vomited if she had had anything left in her stomach.

Maybe if it had been a single stab wound, she would still have been suspicious of herself, but seeing all the wounds on Beth, she shook her head. Neither Princess Amber nor Queen Anne were beasts. She knew they would never do something like this to another human being.

Even though she had never been fond of Beth, and they were not even on good terms, seeing the corpse of someone she once knew that way, someone who had served her howbeit grudgingly... She broke into an uncontrollable sob.

Although Beth was a bitch, she didn't deserve to die this way. She didn't deserve to be so brutally murdered. Without a doubt, Alicia knew that she wasn't responsible for this. And it was so unfair that the perpetrator was out there. Seeing the pained look on Beth's father's face made her feel even worse.

"No! No! No! I didn't do this. I could never do this," Alicia cried out as she shook her head and tears dropped from her eyes.

Beth's father looked at her, immune to her tears, as all the instruments he needed to torture her were set on a table in front of him.

"It is a good thing that you didn't easily admit to your crime. Beheading you would have been too easy. I'd rather torture you and make you beg for death," he said as he stepped forward.

"You slaughtered my daughter like an animal. I'm going to make you experience every single pain she felt in tenfolds," he promised.