Sister, I'm the Queen This Life (330 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 15
For an instant, a scream erupted, and Lucrezia—without even time to react—instinctively brought the ivory pen down again.
– Whoosh!
Lucrezia’s right arm, accelerating with terrifying speed, cleaved through the air. Just as Sancha was about to receive her tenth strike, Ariadne threw herself forward and blocked Sancha’s path.
That tenth blow landed not on Sancha, but on Ariadne’s shoulder.
– Thud!
It stung like a bolt of lightning—sharp, shocking pain that jolted her fully awake, radiating from her left shoulder throughout her entire body.
As Lucrezia’s furious arm rose once more into the air, bracing for an eleventh strike, a voice she utterly detested—but which at this very moment felt tearfully welcome—echoed through the drawing room.
“What on earth is going on here!”
Cardinal de Mare had returned home.
Cardinal de Mare strode into the drawing room, his white cardinal’s robes billowing behind him.
“What has become of this household!”
Lucrezia, who had been trembling with demonic fury, instantly burst into tears at the sight of Cardinal de Mare.
“You! Why are you only coming in now! Do you even have any idea what I went through today?”
Through her tears, Lucrezia passionately recounted how Queen Marguerite had addressed her as “Miss Rossi” today, how deeply humiliating it had been, and just how vile a woman Queen Marguerite truly was.
Cardinal de Mare listened patiently to her entire tale before finally asking,
“Why exactly is this maidservant being beaten, and why are you hitting Ariadne as well?”
“It’s all because of these wretches!”
“Why would Queen Marguerite go to the trouble of inviting you, only to suddenly address you as ‘Miss Rossi’? Even if the maidservant did something wrong, could the Queen really have treated you like that over just a servant?”
Lucrezia fell momentarily silent as if struck dumb, then flushed crimson again and shouted,
“It’s all your fault!”
“What do you mean?”
“I could have married anyone I wanted! I could have lived a normal life as a noblewoman! But because I loved you, I ended up living like this—with you! Because of you, I couldn’t become a legitimate wife… You’ve ruined me!”
Lucrezia was neither a beauty capable of toppling nations nor a noblewoman of exalted bloodline, and among the surrounding nobles she associated with, there certainly wasn’t any suitor superior to Cardinal de Mare.
At best, a fair estimation would place her future as the wife of some provincial baron—or more likely, a low-ranking knight, lawyer, or physician.
Yet Lucrezia possessed one singular talent: she made Cardinal de Mare believe she could have done far better.
“Lucrezia, why are you acting like this again?”
“I could have done so much better! Who do you think you are to ignore me like this…?”
The pattern of their marital quarrels was always the same.
Though Cardinal de Mare seemed the type from whom not even a drop of blood would flow if pricked with a needle, he invariably crumbled under this particular assault from Lucrezia. It was as if they were trapped in the boundless possibilities of their youth.
In any case, with the protagonist of the drama now changed, it was time for the previous characters to exit. Ariadne quietly took Sancha by the hand and began backing away slowly, surrendering the drawing room entirely to that theatrical pair of cockroaches.
She also gently touched Arabella’s lips—still huddled on the floor—to signal silence before ushering her out. The perceptive Isabella had already vanished.
Retreating backward with her weight low, Ariadne’s journey from the drawing room through the hallway to the front entrance felt like a thousand-mile march.
Upon reaching the entrance, Arabella immediately scurried off to her room without even making eye contact, while Ariadne hurriedly dragged Sancha all the way up to the attic on the third floor before finally collapsing, her tension abruptly released.
“Sancha…!”
The freckled girl’s clear green eyes, now covered in bruises from head to toe, looked up at Ariadne. Beneath the splattered blue ink, purple contusions were already blooming.
Seeing Sancha’s rainbow-colored state, Ariadne couldn’t stop the flood of tears bursting from her eyes.
“Sancha, Sancha, why didn’t you just tell the truth! It’s all my fault!”
Ariadne embraced Sancha tightly and sobbed loudly.
“You didn’t do anything wrong!”
Sancha licked her parched lips and managed to force out a single sentence.
“You saved my life, Miss.”
“What…?”
“You’re my savior. I’ll repay you fully. I’ll always be on your side.”
Ariadne hadn’t brought Sancha to the household out of some pure-hearted resolve to rescue her.
It had merely been an unintended consequence of her attempts to exert influence over Maleta.
Though she had borrowed Sancha from Lucrezia, her reasoning had been purely practical: if it worked out, she’d gain leverage over Maleta and a useful servant; if not, so be it. She had never earnestly cared for Sancha herself—not in the way Sancha now showed her overwhelming goodwill, love, and blind devotion.
Faced with such unreserved kindness, Ariadne felt deeply ashamed of her own motives.
She stared blankly at Sancha, who met her gaze with clear, trusting eyes. In that moment, Ariadne resolved that she would at least return, fully and completely, everything she had received.
“Sancha, I’m so sorry…!”
Ariadne pulled Sancha into another fierce embrace.
“From now on, I’ll protect you forever instead. I won’t let Maleta get away with this. I’ll eliminate her so she can never threaten us again.”
Ariadne felt a surge of emotion welling up from deep within her chest.
Alongside a profound sense of responsibility, she experienced an almost supernatural feeling of empowerment—as if she were no longer alone, but connected to another; as if she now carried the strength of two, and could protect them both.
It felt less like friendship and more like the blind, familial love she hadn’t felt since her mother passed away, buried somewhere in faint childhood memories.
From Sancha’s perspective, the overwhelming emotion filling her chest was unconditional loyalty toward the one who had saved her life. Her family had died one by one from poverty and hunger, and her own sister Maleta had betrayed her cruelly.
All that remained in Sancha’s life was her young mistress, Ariadne, who had descended from the heavens to rescue her.
She resolved never to let her go.
The crimson glow on Ariadne’s left ring finger pulsed violently, as if dissatisfied—as if eager to swallow her pale skin whole—but rapidly subsided as the girls embraced.
[This is the timeline separator]The deepening crimson hue on her left ring finger was not merely in her imagination—it was an objective fact.
What had previously appeared as only a faint blush on the final segment of that finger had, after yesterday’s commotion, darkened to a noticeable pink, like a mosquito bite.
As Ariadne kept rubbing her left ring finger with her other hand, Sancha piped up,
“If you keep touching a bug bite, it won’t itch less—it’ll just get infected!”
Contrary to her initial impression—like a stray kitten picked up off the street—Sancha turned out to have a surprisingly sharp tongue.
“Doesn’t it look a bit bigger?”
“How can a finger grow bigger in just one day?”
Separate from her devotion to Ariadne, Sancha was strict about factual accuracy and enjoyed speaking bluntly.
The two were chatting idly in the attic on the third floor.
After selling Sancha out so callously, Maleta had simply defected to Isabella’s side and never returned, and Ariadne made no effort to retrieve her.
Though Ariadne couldn’t understand it herself, after pooling insights from Sancha—who had been observing Maleta since childhood—their collective analysis concluded that Maleta was simply born short-sighted.
“It’s not like she seriously plotted to bury you alive. She was just terrified of ‘Miss Rossi’ in that moment and would’ve said anything to save her own skin—and she found it uncomfortable to stay with me, so she dumped the blame on me.”
“Then why hasn’t she come back since all that chaos?”
“She’s quick on her feet. When you’re stupid, you develop animal instincts. Otherwise, she’d have been dead by dinner time—how else would she still be alive?”
She was also fiercely sarcastic.
“How can sisters be so different?”
“She takes after our dad.”
Thinking of their late father—a drunken gambler—Sancha scrunched up her nose.
“At first, she just wanted to get rid of me so she could monopolize you all to herself, live comfortably like someone scraping leftovers, and enjoy herself. But after it was over, she sensed something was off and decided not to come back, just staying put over there. I bet money on it.”
“How much is your salary even worth?”
“Just saying! Hehe.”
Naturally, the room once shared with Maleta now belonged solely to Sancha.
Previously, Isabella had sternly admonished Ariadne:
– “I don’t like loose ends. Father taught me: safety lies in thoroughly eliminating every possibility. Isn’t that right, my dear sister?”
It seemed Cardinal de Mare had imparted such life lessons while doting on Isabella.
Ariadne had never learned any of this. Yet, though she’d received no parental guidance, fate had granted her time—and through experience, she taught herself.
Fate was guiding her. She still had ample time to learn.
This time, she resolved to eliminate every loose end cleanly.
It had been a mistake in her past life to try to recruit Maleta, even though she’d long known how treacherous she was. Now that their relationship had turned irreparably sour, Ariadne decided that, given the chance, she would remove Maleta permanently.
But revenge had its proper timing, so Ariadne chose to leave Maleta alone for now. The perfect disaster for Maleta’s downfall was fast approaching.
With no one left to monitor Sancha’s whereabouts, the two spent nearly every moment glued together—except when Ariadne went for tutoring sessions with her two sisters.
After one explosive outburst, Lucrezia seemed to have vented all her pent-up frustration and imposed no further punishment on Ariadne or Sancha.
“‘Miss Rossi,’ huh? Do you think she considers herself the type with no grudges?”
Thanks to Queen Marguerite, Lucrezia had now acquired the nickname “Miss Rossi.”
“Of course she does! She probably tells herself, ‘I say exactly what’s on my mind—no pettiness, just plain and direct!’”
Sancha mimed gagging.
“I wish they’d just lock all people like her in some tower together. By the seventh day, they’d be tearing each other apart barehanded.”
– Knock knock.
Deep in an animated gossip session about their mistress, the two girls jumped in alarm at the sudden knock from outside, falling silent like wild squirrels caught by humans.
“Miss Ariadne. Your tutor has arrived.”
The knocker was one of Isabella’s maids. It was time for her lesson in Latin and Galico with Isabella and Arabella.
“Sancha, I’ll be right back!”
Leaving Sancha behind, Ariadne followed Isabella’s maid down to the girls’ drawing room on the second floor.
Since Ariadne’s room was tucked away in a corner of the third floor, she rarely came down to the family quarters on the second floor except at mealtimes. As she walked down the corridor, she heard Lucrezia’s sharp voice drifting from Cardinal de Mare’s drawing room:
“Does that child really have to stay here?”
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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Chapter Comments (4)
Inline Comments (8)
“Let’s say you wanted to ask me to dance, Your Highness.”
Wah! Isabella is very cunning. Perfect fit for Cesar.
“My sister and I are so close that she herself insisted we match colors—she aske
Wow! Isabella’s impudence knows no bounds. We’ll pretend to believe you this time.
– “Didn’t that older lady make her cry?”
Every time Isabella amazes me with her cunning. Smart at turning the situation to her advantage. ( ◐ o ◑ )
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Ari realmente é incrível. Cada capítulo mostra o quanto ela é inteligente e sempre um passo à frente de todo mundo. Mal posso esperar para ver até onde esse plano dela vai chegar.
I’m still curious of what Alphonso meant by the last chapter
I’m still curious of what Alphonso meant by the last chapter