Count Compagnie, having scanned Yuan’s pale face, urged her to leave. Instead of responding, Yuan slowly turned her head towards her aunt, whose brightly painted lips twitched in disbelief.
“Count Compagnie? How can you be so rude!”
“If only you hadn’t started with lies,” Count Compagnie replied coolly with a smile.
Though his mouth was torn in a grin, his eyes remained unsmiling.
“Didn’t this all get settled a year ago? With requests and permissions?”
“But still, to do it like this…”
“The daughter of the late Count and Countess Peliesse was supposed to be the only one. Had that been true, I would have just overseen the funeral and left. But the situation is different, isn’t it?”
“You can’t take this child away!”
Count Compagnie and Countess Peliesse’s verbal clash intertwined with the Count’s emergence from his room.
As the Count descended the stairs, supported by two servants, Count Compagnie’s gaze sharpened.
Finally reaching the bottom, the Count, gasping for breath, yelled. His voice aimed at the Count but his glaring eyes unmistakably targeted Yuan.
“This child is my niece, my brother’s blood! As precious as my own life!”
“Darling!”
The corpulent Count, swaying heavily, was supported by his wife, who disappeared into his large frame.
“Your Highness was very angry, Count,” Count Compagnie stated.
“I offered my niece, my own flesh and blood! Didn’t you want ‘the daughter of the late Count Peliesse’? I didn’t send some distant relative’s child! What part of this angered His Highness?”
“There was supposed to be only one daughter of the late Count and Countess Peliesse. And that precious person…”
Count Compagnie gestured towards Louise’s coffin, stepping back as if presenting it.
“Died so soon. Even a stray dog brought early to the farm complains. Not to mention…”
He was about to shout but stopped, surveying his surroundings, then whispered sharply to the Count, now nearly collapsing.
“You seem confused. The one who is angry is not His Highness, Prince Clad.”
The Count’s furious red face turned ashen.
“His Highness, Prince Bolonico, is very, very angry.”
At the mention of the First Prince, the mansion fell into a deafening silence.
Count Compagnie smiled softly at the terrified Count and Countess, a clearly forced smile.
“How sensitive His Highness is. Striving to fulfill the Emperor’s tasks without a single error, and yet a subject dares to blemish his efforts? Commanded to deliver the treasure of Peliesse, but instead, you send an invalid?”
“Co-Count Compagnie. I, I…”
“Lucky for you, I found out. So we just need to rectify this mistake.”
The Count, looking like a man facing death, gazed up at Count Compagnie, his earlier bravado gone. He wiped his clammy hands on his wife’s dress and panted heavily.
Yet, desperate not to lose Yuan, he mustered his last ounce of courage and shouted.
“I’ll ask the child. She’s not some common girl, is she? I’m not a cruel uncle to force her into an unwanted marriage!”
“A true gentleman,” Count Compagnie mocked with a snort.
All eyes on the first floor turned towards Yuan.
“Lady of the Deposed Empress, what will you do?”
Ignoring the Count’s voice, Yuan avoided her uncle’s gaze and looked up at her aunt, who immediately raised her heavily painted eyebrows and shook her head, her voice surprisingly soft and tender.
“Yuan. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. Don’t you want to live here with your aunt and cousins, just like now?”
Yuan then looked at her cousins, who were hiding their malicious intentions behind their aunt.
Their faces seemed eager to grab Yuan’s hair the moment everyone left the house.
Since childhood, Yuan Peliesse had only one wish.
A beautiful mansion and a perfect family.
Over the past 10 years, that wish shrank in size and hope, leaving only the essence.
Home. Family.
This hellish mansion was Yuan’s only home, and these rude people were her only family.
So she believed that if she just behaved well, things would improve.
She did her best to assist her uncle’s research, maintaining the Peliesse’s reputation.
She didn’t mind serving the newly arrived aunt and cousins.
It was their wish, and it allowed her to stay in the mansion.
Sometimes, in immense pain, she wanted to ask her uncle, “Are we really a family?”
Swallowing those words, Yuan always waited.
Helping with her uncle’s research, she hoped that once her sister’s illness was cured, her suffering would end.
She believed they would become a real family, recognized and happy in this mansion.
But now…
“Yuan, this uncle will solve it. Just tell me what you want.”
In this strange and scary conversation, Louise was absent.
Erasing Yuan’s existence, sending Louise away from the mansion.
Even now that Louise had returned dead, no one asked about her or mourned her death.
Relatives, Louise, and Yuan.
The price for deceiving herself into believing they were the most perfect form of family under the name Peliesse was horrific.
“Family can’t be separated, can it?”
The uncle, aunt, cousins…
None had ever been Yuan’s family.
When scheming men desperately battle for her favor in the male harem
This one’s also on my reread list! The rivalry, scheming between the men in the imperial harem are just as intense and thrilling as in classic palace drama novels, where concubines fight to the death. Give it a read, girls! I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Synopsis:
“I am not worthy of her… but I still want to be by her side, even if only as a loyal dog…”
Those were the painful whispers of Yue Guanyi – the proud Crown Prince of the Great Qi, who was torn between deep love and a guilty conscience. Despite holding the supreme power of the Imperial Guard, he still could not forget the dark past when he was sold into a brothel.
Fate played a cruel twist when Qiu Shuzhi – a young female official who had just passed the imperial examinations with top honors – stepped into his life. She did not know that she was the one who had saved him from a tragic fate many years ago. And now, her heart was the target of pursuit for both Yue Guanyi and the powerful Empress Dowager Qin Qing.
While Yue Guanyi only dared to silently care for and protect the one he loved from afar, the Empress Dowager Qin Qing openly expressed his feelings and did not hesitate to take advantage of his power to approach Qiu Shuzhi. The covert struggle between the two most powerful forces in the imperial court began…
Trigger warning: All men in this novel are yandere style.
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