Without any evidence, just accusing, Ariadne quietly shook her head at Lucrezia, who was surprisingly spoton.
“There’s no way. Absolutely not, Mother.”
Ariadne lowered her head deeper in a show of innocence, while straightening her posture in defiance.
Everything Ariadne was wearing, apart from the Schmiz given by Queen Marguerite, were cheap items sent by Lucrezia, from the dress to the accessories.
“That’s all I had for clothes.”
A blatant lie.
Just after Ariadne spit out those words, she thought her left ring finger throbbed. It was a new finger that returned when she reincarnated, which had rotted due to the disease she caught instead of Cesare.
Lucrezia’s eyes darted around the room.
“Who is responsible for this child’s clothes? Who took them?”
The maids in the room turned their heads in unison, avoiding Lucrezia’s gaze.
However, the color of Maleta’s face was unusual. Her behavior of shaking her head and fumbling with her hands seemed like she was considering something.
Ariadne held her breath. She looked as if she was about to make trouble.
‘I should have warned her to keep her mouth shut…!’
Threats? Persuasion? Maleta, who had been seen in her previous life, was the type to risk her life for small gains.
She wasn’t giving the Schmiz to San Cha. If she was to give it to San Cha, she should have hinted at future gains for Maleta. She had been shortsighted.
‘Please, please, let it pass…!’
Whether Maleta knew Ariadne’s anxious and agitated gaze or not, after lowering her head for about 3 seconds, she seemed to make up her mind and pointed at San Cha, who was standing next to her.
“It’s her, her!”
The lifeless green eyes of the freckled girl, San Cha, widened as big as a lantern.
“She’s in charge of Lady Ariadne’s clothes!”
Lucrezia’s high cheekbones twitched nervously. Ariadne, realizing she was off the hook, involuntarily sighed with relief, and San Cha, scared, unknowingly took a step back.
“You must have stolen her underwear.”
“No, ma’am. No, ma’am.”
Ignoring San Cha’s denials, Lucrezia gritted her teeth and commanded Maleta.
“If she wanted the expensive Schmiz that the young lady wears so badly, it must be in this maid’s possessions. Maleta, go check!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Maleta received the order quite enthusiastically. As she quickly ran up to the third floor where the maids stayed, Lucrezia threatened San Cha, who was frozen and shaking.
“You, if her Schmiz comes out of your luggage, be prepared.”
Ariadne was conflicted about whether to tell the truth now.
I was unsure what had passed through Maleta’s little head, but for the moment, Ariadne had escaped the charge of deliberately slandering Lucrezia.
However, it was Ariadne who had proposed the change of clothes, and Sancha was innocent but had been unfairly treated.
Even if Sancha claimed her innocence, Lucrezia would not believe her. Because the clothes Ariadne had were truly from Sancha’s luggage.
If evidence supporting what you already believe appears, the belief becomes unmovable. If things continued this way, there was no doubt that Sancha would become Lucrezia’s scapegoat.
But Ariadne couldn’t muster the courage to face Lucrezia, who was raging like a mad beast, and tell the truth.
Although she thought she had forgotten during her nine years of dominating high society, the growling of Lucrezia awakened the childhood fear engraved deep in Ariadne’s bones.
The sight of her mother being whipped by Lucrezia. The memory of Lucrezia kicking Ariadne’s mother, who was hiding young Ariadne behind her, and grabbing Ariadne’s hair.
The memory of Lucrezia’s eldest son, Epolito, casually slapping Ariadne’s mother’s buttocks as he walked by. And her mother, who was unable to protest despite it all.
On a day when the rain was pouring, she remembered being scared of running into Lucrezia while kneeling and crying in front of her mother’s wooden coffin, and abandoning her mother to hide herself. The memory where she felt the greatest guilt of her life.
“Uhuk, huk, huk.”
Sancha, crouched down, was shivering and sobbing. With wideopen eyes unable to close properly, she was crying silent tears like a chick.
Looking at the pitiful back of Sancha, Ariadne felt as if her heart was being split in two between fear and guilt.
She was too scared to pretend she didn’t know, and she felt too sorry for Sancha. But she was too scared to raise her voice and step forward.
The guilt she felt that day, when she had abandoned her mother’s coffin and run away to the stable alone, was stabbing at her chest.
But staying still like a frozen hunk and letting each second pass was absolutely unbearable.
“Ugh!”
Her left ring finger was burning like it had been scorched by fire. The hot blood that was constructing the new ring finger was spreading through the flesh beneath her skin.
‘…It hurts!’
For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating. That voice was not a human voice, though it used human words.
The Golden Rule.
A voice that was not of this world, a divine voice, whispered. The meaning hammered directly into her head, leaving no room to identify the voice.
Treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. You resented and grieved the betrayal you experienced. But haven’t you truly never betrayed others and profited from it?
The whisper sounded like both a sigh and a reproof.
While everyone gathered in the reception room suffered, Maleta returned like a lightning bolt from the maids’ quarters.
Upon her return, Maleta triumphantly pulled out a clean lady’s shift from the worn cloth bag she was carrying and presented it to Lucrezia.
“This is it. This was in her luggage, ma’am.”
Lucrezia, with a devilish expression as if she had ascended from hell, grabbed the shift and shook it in the air before throwing it on the face of Sancha, who was kneeling down.
“Do you still have something to say, you ratlike thief?”
All Sancha did was keep her mouth shut and her hands tightly clenched while shaking violently.
Enraged, Lucrezia started throwing anything she could get her hands on at Sancha. The first thing that flew through the air was a paperweight, and the second thing she threw was an ink bottle.
“Oof!”
“Thud”
The blue ink bottle flew through the air and hit Sancha square on the forehead. The ink splattered all over the room, filling the reception room with blue spots.
Sancha, now wearing blue ink, had red from her hair, blue from the ink, green from the aggrieved eyes and face drained of blood.
Lucrezia did not stop there, picking up the ivory pen with a nib and started to strike Sancha as her hand went.
“Thwack.”
Sancha took the whip without even a cry. However, she could not hide her whole body shaking each time she was hit.
Each time Sancha was struck, Ariadne shivered with her.
Each time Sancha was beaten, or more precisely, each time Ariadne turned her face from the beaten Sancha, the blood smell from her left ring finger flared up. The red aura was definitely expanding in volume.
“The one who profits from the pain of the virtuous will pay the price. This is the curse of the golden rule.”
However, Ariadne could not tell whether the pain she was feeling now was entirely because of the red aura, or because it felt as if she herself was being hit instead of Sancha.
The moment Lucrezia’s right arm, holding the ivory pen, was raised high in the air, Ariadne could not help but scream out.
“Stop!!”
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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