Sister, I'm the Queen This Life (330 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 9
Beautiful Isabella would never have taken Maleta’s side if she had known what Maleta had said.
But Maleta, omitting entirely what she herself had done, told Isabella only, “Miss Ariadne hit me,” and Isabella, who could never refuse to play the role of a righteous savior, immediately reported the matter to Lucrezia.
Lucrezia, who had been waiting for an opportunity to strike at Ariadne ever since the previous incident with the governess, seized upon Maleta’s accusation and stormed triumphantly toward Ariadne’s quarters.
The corridor leading to Ariadne’s small attic room on the third floor grew noisy with the thunderous stomping of five or six aggressive footsteps, and then the old oak door burst open.
“How dare a girl carry herself so carelessly and recklessly lay hands on others!”
It was Lucrezia, dressed in her usual scandalously tight-fitting gown, flanked by Isabella, Maleta, and the maids she always kept in tow.
Maleta stood before Lucrezia, showing her swollen cheek and pleading her innocence.
“I was just organizing the garments for Miss Isabella when Miss Ariadne suddenly struck me without warning.”
Lucrezia nodded vigorously at Maleta’s words and barked out a reprimand.
“It is the duty of one’s superiors to govern subordinates with virtue! To strike someone outright like that shows you have a violent temperament—this is truly serious!”
So it had finally come.
Ariadne, unperturbed, bowed her head politely.
“Mother, it is the responsibility of those above to correct the faults of those below. Maleta insulted both Father and you, so I had no choice but to act as I did.”
“What did you say?”
“Maleta claimed that since Father shamelessly raised all his illegitimate children like nobles, there was no need for her to show respect to someone like me, who is merely a bastard.”
Maleta turned deathly pale. She looked at Isabella and pleaded with her eyes for help.
Isabella was utterly bewildered. She had only brought her mother here because Ariadne had supposedly acted violently—but how could she have known Maleta would make such an explosive remark about Cardinal de Mare!
Lucrezia’s face drained of color as she stared at Maleta.
“Is this true?”
“No! It isn’t! On the contrary, I told her that Miss Isabella and Miss Arabella are noble ladies, and Miss Ariadne should not presume to be their equal!”
Ariadne cast another bait.
“More precisely, she said that Father’s blood is base, and only Mother’s blood is noble—so Isabella and Arabella, who inherit Mother’s lineage, are noble, whereas I, whose mother was merely a maidservant like herself, do not deserve her deference.”
Though Lucrezia and Isabella might have secretly felt pleased by those words, they were absolutely not something that could ever be openly acknowledged.
Cardinal de Mare’s origins—as an orphan of unknown parentage, raised by the cathedral and forced into priesthood without any choice—were his deepest, most sensitive wound.
If those words ever reached the Cardinal’s ears, he would certainly be thrown into utter panic.
Before Lucrezia, now ashen-faced, Ariadne played her final, decisive card.
“She also said that since she has caught Father’s eye, any child she bears will be of the same status as me, so she has no need to show me any respect.”
Suddenly, fire blazed in Lucrezia’s eyes. This changed everything.
“What did you say?”
Only then did Maleta realize the gravity of her situation; her limbs trembled violently like an aspen leaf in the wind.
Lucrezia turned her head with the dignified grace of a leopard and fixed Maleta with a piercing stare. Though it lasted only a moment, to Maleta, the slow shift of that gaze felt like an eternity, and she collapsed onto her knees on the floor.
“No, my lady! How could I ever say such a thing! It’s all lies—Miss Ariadne is making it all up!”
Lucrezia scanned Maleta up and down, trying to decide whom to believe—Ariadne or Maleta.
The maid wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she had a plump, sensual figure.
Her most notable feature was her torso—her chest and upper arms were full and curvaceous, her waist deeply nipped in, making her stand out despite her short, thick limbs and ordinary face.
‘What would my husband think if he saw this maid…?’
Maleta herself knew her assets well; she had tailored her maid’s uniform to fit her body snugly. The cut of her bodice somewhat mirrored Lucrezia’s own gown.
Realizing this, Lucrezia’s eyes flashed white-hot with fury, and she roared,
“How dare this lowly wench cast her eyes on another woman’s husband!”
She whipped her head around and barked at the head maid standing behind her,
“Give this insolent girl ten lashes!”
For a slip of the tongue, this was an exceptionally harsh punishment. Twenty lashes often killed older servants.
“Yes, my lady!”
“Aaah! No! It’s all lies! Please spare me, my lady!”
The head maid and two or three of Lucrezia’s personal maids surged forward, seized the thrashing Maleta, and quickly dragged her away down to the servants’ quarters on the inner side of the third floor.
Though Maleta had once been Isabella’s personal maid, Isabella didn’t utter a single word in her defense.
Though the matter seemed settled, Lucrezia couldn’t simply let Ariadne go unpunished. This was a matter of the mistress’s dignity.
“And you! If something like this happened, you should have come to me to handle it—how dare you strike a maid without warning!”
She glared fiercely as she scolded Ariadne.
“Violence is never acceptable, no matter what!”
—‘Violence is never acceptable, no matter the circumstance!’
The words Cesare had spoken to her in her past life after the tea party hair-pulling incident echoed in her ears. Ariadne gave a crooked smile.
It wasn’t that violence was never acceptable—it was that those without the power to justify violence must never use it.
By that logic, were the atrocities committed by the margrave’s soldiers Cesare dragged into the capital not violence? Was Cesare himself, who killed Prince Alfonso and strung him up on the city walls, as pure as freshly fallen snow?
Was this Lucrezia truly pure?
Was there any essential difference between her own fists and the whip wielded by the head maid? From Maleta’s perspective, wouldn’t being slapped a few times by Ariadne be a hundred times better than being tied up in the cellar and whipped ten times?
Yet Ariadne bowed her head respectfully and knelt on the floor.
“My thoughts were short-sighted. I acted on my own to avoid causing Mother trouble—but I was wrong.”
She bowed her head again and begged forgiveness.
“To show my repentance, I will go to the Lambouyé Orphanage. I will serve there for three days and nights to atone for my mistake.”
The Lambouyé Orphanage had a fearsome reputation. Founded by Queen Marguerite, wife of King Leo III, to aid the poor of San Carlo, its intentions were noble—but the royal budget was woefully insufficient to feed and shelter all of San Carlo’s destitute.
Those who entered the orphanage often left only in coffins.
“Since Maleta’s misconduct also stems from my own failures in guiding her, I wish to take her with me to strengthen her faith.”
Lucrezia looked slightly surprised. The Lambouyé Orphanage? Voluntarily stepping into that hellish pit of blood and pus?
But Isabella interjected from the side,
“Wouldn’t five days be better?”
She wore an angelic smile on her face.
“Saint Asthea of the Imperial Scripture Office, after committing a sin, prayed for five days and nights and received absolution. Wouldn’t following that example strictly yield even better results?”
Ariadne knew better than anyone that Isabella possessed not a drop of genuine piety. The woman who had stained her hands with her own sister’s blood to steal her man—what did she know of the Imperial Scripture Office?
Isabella was doing this purely to torment Ariadne.
But whether it was three days or five made little difference to Ariadne. She was already hardened to filth, cold, and danger.
“Sister is right. I will reflect for five days and return.”
Isabella leaned close to Lucrezia’s ear and whispered, dropping her mask in front of her mother.
—‘Mother! We can just lock her in a small room for a month, claiming she might have caught fleas or scabies at the orphanage.’
—‘But will His Eminence really stay silent if we imprison Ariadne for a whole month?’
—‘We’ll tell Father we’re isolating her until she’s clean, for fear she might have brought back disease from Lambouyé—what could he possibly say to that?’
San Carlo was a place where plague and cholera periodically raged. The Lambouyé Orphanage was where the poorest and sickest of San Carlo ended up.
Isabella added one final remark.
—‘That new girl pretends to be obedient, but something about her just rubs me the wrong way. She needs to be broken in. Let’s use this chance to show her clearly who’s in charge.’
Lucrezia nodded in agreement with her precious eldest daughter’s words.
That very evening, Ariadne packed her belongings and set out for the Lambouyé Orphanage early the next morning.
[This is the timeline separator]The de Mare family carriage heading to the orphanage was a simple, black-painted vehicle.
Although the Cardinal usually rode in a splendid silver carriage, Ariadne never even considered taking it. They wouldn’t have offered it—and even if they had, she would have refused.
Huddled in a corner of the cramped carriage, Maleta sat, her appearance ruined by the whipping, stealing anxious glances at Ariadne.
Ariadne smiled softly and began the conversation. She needed a trusted maid—someone loyal only to her, untouched by Lucrezia’s or Isabella’s influence.
“Maleta. For the next five days, it’ll be just you and me.”
“…”
“During this time, Sister Isabella won’t be able to protect you—what shall we do?”
Maleta’s shoulders began to tremble.
“No—do you really think Sister Isabella would look after you? Didn’t you see her when Mother ordered ten lashes? If she’d spoken just one word, you wouldn’t have been whipped.”
The ancient Latin general Theodosius once said a person could be ruled either by fear or by love. In her past life, Ariadne had failed at both. Those around her had looked down on her, and she had never been loved.
This time, she would start with fear.
“Even at home, you spend most of your days not with Sister Isabella—but with me.”
Ariadne leaned toward Maleta. Her tall frame and perfectly straight shoulders loomed imposingly over the round-faced, plump maid.
“One can make a wrong judgment at first. One can make mistakes. But once you realize your error, you must correct your attitude quickly, shouldn’t you?”
Maleta drew a sharp breath.
“I am a generous mistress. I can forget what happened in the past.”
Just then, the carriage jolted violently.
—Neigh!
“We’ve arrived.”
Fortunately for Maleta, the timing was perfect—the carriage had reached the orphanage just then.
Ariadne clicked her tongue softly and stepped down from the carriage.
The Lambouyé Orphanage was a rarity across the entire continent: a poor relief institution run by the state rather than the Imperial Painting Bureau.
After being shown to a cold room by a royal administrator and unpacking her things, Ariadne reassured the confused officials—who didn’t know how to treat a Cardinal’s illegitimate daughter—that she was merely a noble lady here for volunteer service and asked them to assign her tasks freely.
‘I must go where the poor are gathered. That’s precisely why I brought Maleta all the way here.’
[This is the timeline separator]“Line up! One bowl per person!”
Ariadne was assigned to the soup distribution line. The soup cauldron might be distant, but ladling nearly five hundred bowls a day left her arms aching as if they might fall off.
When no one came looking for her on the first day, nor on the second, Ariadne asked a junior administrator she was working alongside,
“I know there are far more poor people in the orphanage—why are so few coming for meals?”
“Those with severe illness don’t even have the strength to stand in line.”
Since there was no dedicated staff assigned to deliver food to the critically ill, this meant they were simply left to starve.
‘That child must be among them.’
Ariadne resolved to go find her. At that moment, she had no idea she would meet someone far more important than the person she was searching for.
Turns Out He’s Been Secretly in Love with Me
One-line summary: He acts like he doesn’t like her but is actually playing hard to get.
Synopsis:
Xu Muzhou like her. He has liked her for a very long time, and through repeated schemes, he finally closed the distance with her.
But this is still far from enough.
He wants to be the one who stands out among her many suitors, to fight for her attention, and to make her take the initiative to pursue him.
_____
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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