Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel-Chapter 137: The Witches’ Butterfly

Cassian stirred slightly within the softness he felt beneath his back.

As he woke from his slumber, the first sound he heard was the peaceful melody of a nearby fire crackling the wood.

When he opened his eyelids, his eyes fixed on the wooden ceiling. For a while, he just watched those wood patterns.

The freezing cold of the North... The bloodstains on the snow... General Hareth’s desperate cry... And that white-haired woman.

That witch who stood like a dark reflection of himself, who froze his soul when she held his hand.

"Ah..." a groan escaped his lips. "Was I really kidnapped!"

He slowly sat up in the bed.

There was a slight ache in his head, but he didn’t feel any scars or magical damage on his body.

When he looked at himself, he realized his own clothes were gone.

Instead, there was a white fabric, as soft as silk, draped over his skin.

A strange, loose, and comfortable outfit resembling the tunics on Ancient Greek statues, leaving one shoulder exposed.

He tried to analyze the situation.

He was a prisoner. He was in enemy territory.

But there were no chains on his wrists, no collar on his neck, nor a guard watching him in the corner of the room.

Even a magical seal couldn’t be felt on the door of the room.

This situation increased the uneasiness inside Cassian even more.

Chains showed that the prisoner’s power was feared.

Freedom meant two things: Either they had taken him to a place too far away to be rescued, isolated from civilization, or they saw Cassian as a being too weak and helpless to even attempt escape.

Both possibilities hurt his pride.

He slowly brought his hand to his face, rubbed his eyes with his fingers, and let out a deep, tired sigh.

"Why..." he whispered to the empty room. "Why can’t things go as I planned for once?"

Just then, with a sudden thought coming to his mind, his hand went to his chest. With the need to feel that cold metal over his heart, his fingers slipped under the white fabric.

It was there.

The elegant butterfly necklace Cecilia had given him was resting on his skin. They hadn’t taken it.

His fingers wandered over the cold surface of the necklace, and the tension in his shoulders eased.

He got up from the bed completely.

When his bare feet pressed on the wooden floor, he realized the floor was warm; it must be an underfloor heating system or a spell. He advanced towards the door of the room with cautious steps.

When he grabbed the door handle, he expected a magical resistance or the sound of a lock. However, the handle turned smoothly like butter, and the door opened silently.

It wasn’t locked.

This situation further strengthened Cassian’s "seen as weak" theory.

Gritting his teeth, he opened the door completely and stepped outside.

The scene he encountered was the last thing he would expect from a witch’s den.

Neither boiling cauldrons, nor skulls, nor dark rituals... Before him stood a warm and modest living room, where soft daylight filtered through the window and a fire roared in the fireplace.

Two girls were sitting on the small, worn but comfortable-looking sofa in the middle of the room.

One had messy green hair that held the most vibrant shades of nature.

Instead of sitting, she was practically sprawled over the sofa; she had thrown her legs recklessly onto the other girl’s lap and was hanging upside down, watching the ceiling.

The other one was a stark contrast, with straight brown hair falling over her shoulders and glasses that had slipped down to the tip of her nose.

Without minding the legs of the green-haired girl in her lap, she was reading the thick hardcover book in her hand with great seriousness.

At the edge of the table, on a chair hit by sunlight, sat another girl whose golden blonde hair was carefully combed.

Her red eyes were in harmony with the rhythmic movement of the knife in her hand; she was peeling and chopping the pile of potatoes in front of her with the precision of a surgeon.

At the other end of the room, standing at the kitchen counter, a short, black-haired girl was stirring the pot on the stove.

The smell of fresh herbs and boiled meat caused Cassian’s stomach to rumble.

All of them were in simple, daily clothes, as if they were a family preparing an ordinary Sunday morning breakfast. They had neither armor nor weapons.

Cassian froze in the doorway. Is... Is this a joke? Or a very advanced illusion spell?

When the girls noticed Cassian opening the door and entering the room, they didn’t give the expected "prisoner awake" alarm.

They just cast ordinary glances, accepting his presence.

As soon as the green-haired girl saw Cassian, she sprang from the sofa she was lying on like a spring.

Or rather, she did a perfect backflip from where she sat and glided through the air, landing almost soundlessly right in front of Cassian, right under his nose.

In the back, the brown-haired girl, whose book shook in her hand, adjusted her glasses and spoke in a calm but sarcastic tone:

"Ivy... Would you stop using the sofa like a trampoline? I can’t read my book."

The green-haired girl, Ivy, shrugged without even turning back. "Who cares about books, Four-Eyes! Look, our sleeping prince has awakened!" she said, sticking out her tongue.

Then she turned back to Cassian.

Her eyes were emerald green and lively; she had the gaze of a curious child.

She reached into her pocket and took out a brightly wrapped candy.

"Say ahhh," she said, holding the candy towards Cassian’s mouth.

Cassian didn’t know how to react to this absurd situation.

His brows furrowed.

"Why?" he asked, his voice coming out hoarser than he expected.

Ivy giggled. "Eh, don’t you like candy? Pity." Without hesitating, the girl popped the candy into her own mouth and swallowed it with a smack. "Hmm, strawberry. My favorite."

The blonde, red-eyed girl at the head of the table took a short break from her work with the knife and turned to them.

Her voice had a mature and gentle timbre that balanced the chaos in the environment.

"Please don’t mind Ivy," she said, smiling slightly. "She hasn’t been able to sit still since yesterday because she was going to meet you. She needs to discharge her energy."

Then, she called out to the girl on the sofa. "Roxy, can you brew us some tea? From our fresh herbs."

The girl reading the book, Roxy, sighed deeply.

She closed the cover of the book slowly, as if carrying the world’s heaviest burden.

"I had just gotten to the part where the main character gets betrayed," she grumbled. "Great timing, really."

Reluctantly, she got up and went to the kitchen counter, next to the black-haired girl, and started looking for the teapot.

The blonde girl turned back to Cassian and pointed to an empty armchair with her hand.

"Please don’t just stand in the doorway. You can sit on the armchair or chair. The food will be ready soon."

Cassian hesitated.

His eyes were scanning every detail in the room. He still couldn’t figure out the purpose of these witches.

They had kidnapped him, wounded General Hareth, but now they were treating him like a guest, or even a distant relative. This comfort was the greatest danger.

’What is happening?’ he thought. ’Is this a mind game? Are they going to relax me and get my information?’

While he was lost in those thoughts, Ivy quietly slipped behind him.

She put her hands on Cassian’s shoulders and pushed him towards the armchair gently but with a force that accepted no objection.

"Come on come on, you heard sister Eula. Don’t stand there, you’re blocking the view," she said giggling.

Cassian had to let himself drop into the armchair.

Ivy sat right next to him, disregarding the concept of personal space.

She was watching him with shining eyes. She brought her face so close to Cassian’s that he could smell the strawberry scent on the girl’s breath.

"Hey, hey..." Ivy whispered, as if she was going to tell a big secret. "Can I touch your hair? The color is so beautiful. Like snow but... shinier."

Cassian looked at the girl out of the corner of his eye. "Yes," he said calmly. "You can touch it." For now, he had to play along with them, be a part of this theater. Until he learned their purpose...

As soon as Ivy got permission, she plunged her fingers into Cassian’s white hair.

She fiddled with the strands of hair, wound them around her fingertips, tugged at them. Her touches resembled those of a child discovering a new toy.

"So soft..." the girl whispered with admiration. "Like... like a cloud."

Then, pushing the boundaries a bit more, she brought her head closer to Cassian.

She pressed her nose into Cassian’s hair and took a deep breath, smelling him.

This action gave Cassian goosebumps.

"Hmm, hmm..." said Ivy, closing her eyes. "You have a good scent. You smell of blood, wind, and... a bit of sadness."

Just at that moment, the short black-haired girl at the kitchen counter stopped her work.

She came to them with quick steps and hit Ivy on the head hard with the wooden salt jar in her hand.

"THWACK!"

"Stop bothering him, idiot," said the black-haired girl. Her voice was as dull and hard as the expression on her face. "He isn’t a toy, he’s our prince. And he’s probably thinking of a hundred different ways to kill you right now."

Ivy held her head, groaning. Her eyes had watered, but this was more like an act. "But it hurt! I was just curious, Elina! So what? Is smelling forbidden too?"

"Yes, forbidden," said Elina, taking the salt shaker back to the counter. "You are preventing me from focusing on the food."

A few minutes passed in this strange silence.

The sound of potatoes being peeled, the bubbling of the food on the stove, and Ivy’s furtive, disturbing glances at Cassian...

The brown-haired girl, Roxy, returned with a tray and placed the teacups on the table.

"Tea is ready," she said, her voice still carrying the sadness of the book she couldn’t read.

Turning to Cassian, Roxy said, "You can move to the table. We don’t do personal service here."

Cassian got up silently and sat on the indicated chair.

The steam rising from the cup placed in front of him reminded him of his days in inferna for a moment.

Ivy dropped by the table right after him. Her eyes scanned the cups on the table. One, two, three, four...

"Hey!" shouted Ivy, pouting her lips. "Where is my tea? Did you forget me, Four-Eyes?"

Roxy opened the cover of her book, turned a page, and answered indifferently, fixing her eyes on the lines:

"If you want tea, go pour it yourself. I’m not your maid."

Ivy hit the table angrily. "Ehh! What does that mean now? At least don’t do it while our prince is here!"

Roxy cast a cold glance over the book. "This is the punishment for eating my special chestnut dessert I hid last night. Be grateful I didn’t spit in the teapot."

"You vindictive, sneaky four-eyes!" hissed Ivy. "Leaving your dessert for later was your mistake! I found it and ate it, that’s the law of nature!"

"Then thirst is also a law of nature," said Roxy and continued reading.

The blonde girl, Eula, washed the peeled potatoes and threw them into the boiling cauldron with great calmness, as if she didn’t hear their bickering at all. After drying her hands with a cloth, she moved to the head of the table.

She took an elegant sip from her own tea. When she fixed her red eyes on Cassian, the expression in those eyes surprised Cassian.

These eyes... resembled his own eyes. Not just in color, but in depth as well.

"Don’t mind my sisters," Eula said. Her voice was filled with a big-sisterly affection that softened the tension in the room, but the authority felt underneath screamed that she was the undisputed leader of this group.

"Normally, we were going to arrange a more luxurious, more comfortable, and... less noisy house for you. Our plan was to welcome you more formally. But some things went wrong."

She pointed to those at the table one by one with her hand.

"By the way, we haven’t had the chance to meet yet. My name is Eula. This green-haired, restless rascal is Ivy, she is the youngest of us too, as you can guess. Our bookworm who never compromises on her grumpiness is Roxy. And our precious cook in the kitchen, who speaks little but does much work, Elina."

Eula leaned forward slightly and locked her eyes with Cassian’s.

"What about you? What is your name?"

Cassian took a small sip from his tea.

He placed the cup slowly on its saucer. When his gaze met Eula’s, the air in the room grew heavy for a moment.

"My name is Cassian."