It was good that she had built a friendship with the prince and returned home wearing the new clothes given by the queen, but the aftermath was the problem. As expected, Cardinal De Mare’s residence was in chaos due to Lucrezia’s angry rampage.

“Miss De Rossi? Miss De Rossi?! Queen Marguerite must be crazy, how could she treat me like this?!”

– Crash!

The vase thrown by Lucrezia shattered across the reception room.

“That filthy Gallic kingdom bitch! How dare a foreigner speak to an Etruscan like that?!”

This time, a letter opener she grabbed and threw flew into the fireplace. Arabella was trembling and covering her ears in the corner of the reception room, while Isabella was busy egging on her mother.

“That’s right. Is being queen everything? She’s been married for nearly 20 years and still can’t fix her accent? I was shocked at how provincial she sounded when she opened her mouth!”

“She doesn’t try to adapt, so she doesn’t receive her husband’s love! She can’t even hold onto the king’s affection, so she barely sees her husband’s face five times a year!”

“Is a legal marriage anything special? If you’re going to live as the official wife without receiving love like a borrowed sack of barley, it would be better to just be a concubine!”

“An incompetent woman who’s insecure about her own lack of ability is just badmouthing women who understand men’s hearts!”

Their condemnation was getting worse and worse.

“Countess Rubina is actually the real power. There’s a rumor that if you want to petition His Majesty the King at court, going through Countess Rubina is the fastest way.”

“You’re better than your mother. I don’t have any ladies to associate with, oh, my miserable fate!”

“Countess Rubina is so capable. There’s talk that Count Cesare, who was born to Countess Rubina this time, will be granted a fief on the border.”

“If Count Cesare, born to a concubine, is older than the prince born to the queen who is the official wife, it’s all over. How does Queen Marguerite think she can control the king now when she couldn’t even when she was young! Alfonso hasn’t even been named crown prince yet! It’s all because his mother is incompetent!”

“So she’s just taking it out on Mom! She’s awful! Low! Vile!”

‘I’ve heard your self-introduction loud and clear.’

Ariadne had no intention of joining that chaos.

If she went in now, she would just be a piece of meat thrown before starving hyenas. The enraged Lucrezia and Isabella looking for kindling would surely tear her to pieces.

‘I should quietly go up to my room.’

To go from the main entrance to the attic room on the third floor, she had to climb the central staircase, but the first-floor reception room was right next to the bottom of the central stairs.

Ariadne decided to hide in the first-floor hallway and wait until they calmed down and left the reception room for their rooms.

After all, their mother-daughter relationship wasn’t close enough to care about what time the second daughter came home, so they probably wouldn’t even notice if she came home late.

“Why isn’t this girl coming in!”

‘Ah…’

It seemed they weren’t checking her arrival time out of concern, but waiting for her as a target to vent their anger.

As soon as Maletta came out of the reception room, telling Lucrezia she would ask the butler, she ran right into Ariadne hiding in the hallway.

“Ah… Miss Ariadne has arrived.”

‘So inflexible!’

Ariadne glared fiercely at Maletta and, while inwardly cursing, moved her heavy steps towards the reception room where household items were being destroyed in real-time.

– Whoosh!

As soon as she entered the reception room, a porcelain vase flew past Ariadne’s face.

– Crash!

Feeling the shards of the vase that shattered against the wall sticking to her hair and dress hem, Ariadne expressionlessly bowed her head.

“I’m back, Mother.”

“Mother? Mother? As if you really thought of me as your mother when you embarrassed me like that at the queen’s mass!”

When Lucrezia was angry, one shouldn’t talk back. But Ariadne always forgot that part since she was young. She instinctively talked back.

“I didn’t do anything, Mother.”

“If you can’t! Speak! At least don’t be! Hateful!”

Lucrezia picked up a poker and threw it at Ariadne.

She barely dodged it by turning her head to the left as the poker spun through the air, but it flew towards Arabella who was crouching behind her and hit Arabella’s leg.

“Aaaagh!”

The 10-year-old child wailed like an animal, but no one paid attention to the unfortunate Arabella.

Consumed by anger, Lucrezia didn’t care that her own child was hit by the poker she threw. There was only Arabella wailing.

Ariadne frowned, took a step back, squatted down, and hugged Arabella.

It was questionable how much comfort the skinny arms and legs of a 15-year-old could provide, but Arabella hurriedly snuggled into her embrace, grateful even for that.

The warmth of another person was comforting not only to Arabella but also to Ariadne.

But the looming threat was too great for such comfort to bring peace of mind. Lucrezia stood intimidatingly in front of Ariadne, who was stroking Arabella, with her legs spread wide and leaned forward with her eyes bulging.

“You! You did that with the chemise on purpose, didn’t you?”

‘Stupid as you are, your intuition is impressive.’

Although she was just insisting without any evidence, Lucrezia had hit the truth exactly. Admiring this, Ariadne meekly shook her head.

“How could that be? Absolutely not, Mother.”

Ariadne bowed her head even deeper, pretending to be innocent, while at the same time straightening her posture conspicuously.

Apart from the new chemise that Queen Marguerite had dressed her in and sent her home with, everything Ariadne was wearing – the dress, the accessories – were all cheap items that Lucrezia had sent to Ariadne.

“That really was the only clothing I had.”

It was a blatant lie.

Right after uttering those words, Ariadne felt the last joint of her left ring finger throbbing. It was the new finger that had rotted and decayed due to the disease she caught instead of Cesare, and then returned anew with her regression.

Lucrezia’s eyes darted around wildly.

“Who’s responsible for this child’s clothes? Which wench pocketed the money?”

All the maids in the room turned their heads at once, avoiding Lucrezia’s gaze.

But Maletta’s demeanor seemed a bit strange. The way she was turning her head and fidgeting with her hands looked like she was debating whether to do something or not.

Ariadne drew in a breath. It seemed like she was about to do something.

‘I should have silenced her beforehand…!’

Threaten? Persuade? The Maletta she had observed her whole past life was the type to risk everything for small gains.

She shouldn’t have given the chemise to Sancha. If she was going to give it to Sancha, she should have at least hinted at future benefits to Maletta. Her thinking had been short-sighted.

‘Please, please just let this pass quietly…!’

Unaware of Ariadne’s anxious, impatient gaze, Maletta bowed her head deeply, and after about 3 seconds, as if she had made up her mind, she pointed at Sancha standing next to her.

“It’s her, her!”

The freckled girl Sancha’s dull green eyes widened like saucers.

“She’s the one who manages Miss Ariadne’s clothes!”

Lucrezia’s high cheekbones twitched nervously. Ariadne couldn’t help but let out an instinctive sigh of relief at the fact that she had escaped, and Sancha, terrified, unconsciously took a step back.

“You must have stolen that girl’s underwear.”

“No. No, madam.”

Ignoring Sancha’s protests, Lucrezia gritted her teeth and ordered Maletta.

“If she stole the expensive chemise the young lady wears because she wanted it, it should be among this maid girl’s belongings. Maletta, go search and come back!”

“Yes, madam!”

Maletta received the order quite gladly. Watching her swiftly run up to the third floor where the maids stayed, Lucrezia threatened the frozen and trembling Sancha with a growl.

“You, if that girl’s chemise is found in your luggage, be prepared.”

Ariadne struggled with whether she should tell the truth even now.

Whatever thoughts had gone through Maletta’s small mind, at least Ariadne had escaped the charge of deliberately undermining Lucrezia.

But it was Ariadne who had proposed changing into the chemise, and Sancha was about to be brutally punished for no reason.

Even if Sancha claimed her innocence, Lucrezia wouldn’t believe her. Because Ariadne’s chemise would indeed be found in Sancha’s luggage.

When evidence supporting what one already believes appears, that belief becomes unshakable. At this rate, Sancha would undoubtedly become Lucrezia’s scapegoat.

However, Ariadne couldn’t muster the courage to jump in front of the snarling Lucrezia and confess the truth.

She thought she had forgotten during her 9 years as the ruler of high society, but Lucrezia’s growling voice evoked the deeply ingrained childhood fear in Ariadne’s bones.

The memory of her mother being whipped by Lucrezia. The memory of Lucrezia kicking her mother who had hidden young Ariadne behind her body and grabbing Ariadne’s hair.

The memory of Ippolito, Lucrezia’s eldest son, patting her mother’s bottom as he passed by. And her mother, unable to protest despite it all.

The memory of kneeling and crying in front of her mother’s wooden coffin on a day when rain poured down in torrents, then running away and hiding alone, afraid of encountering Lucrezia as she passed by the barn where the coffin was placed as a makeshift funeral hall, abandoning her mother and feeling the greatest guilt of her life.

– Sob, hic, hic.

Sancha’s back, all curled up, trembled as sobs escaped. Sancha was crying chicken-drop tears, her eyes wide open unable to close properly, trying her best to muffle the sound.

Seeing Sancha’s pitiful back, Ariadne felt as if her heart was being split in two between fear and guilt.

She felt too sorry for Sancha to pretend not to know out of fear, but she couldn’t bring herself to raise her voice and step forward.

The guilt she had felt that day when she ran away to the stable alone, abandoning her mother’s coffin, slashed at her chest.

But every second of doing nothing and standing frozen like an icicle was by no means bearable.

– Throb!

Her left ring finger felt as hot as if it had been burned. The hot blood forming her new ring finger was writhing and expanding under her skin.

‘…It hurts!’

She faintly heard an auditory hallucination. That voice was human speech but not a human voice.

– The Golden Rule.

A divine voice, not of this world, whispered. The meaning came directly into her mind, making it impossible to distinguish what the sound was like.

– Treat your neighbor as you wish to be treated. You resented and grieved over the betrayal you suffered. Have you truly never betrayed others and benefited from it?

This seemed like a whisper, but also like a rebuke.

While everyone gathered in the reception room was suffering, Maletta returned like lightning from the maids’ quarters.

The returned Maletta proudly pulled out a clean lady’s chemise from the worn cloth sack she was carrying and held it out to Lucrezia.

“It’s that girl. This was found in her luggage, madam.”

Lucrezia, with an expression like a demon risen from hell, received the chemise in one hand, waved it in the air, then threw it onto the face of Sancha who was kneeling.

“Do you have anything to say now, you thieving rat?”

Sancha just trembled, her mouth tightly shut and her hands clenched.

Furious, Lucrezia began to grab whatever objects were at hand and throw them at Sancha. The first thing to fly through the air was a paperweight, and the second was an ink bottle.

– Whoosh!

– Thud

The blue ink bottle flew through the air and hit Sancha squarely on the forehead. The ink scattered in the air, filling the reception room with blue stains.

Sancha’s appearance, covered in blue ink, was red with her hair, blue with ink, and green with her eyes full of resentment and her pale, shocked face.

Lucrezia didn’t stop there but started beating Sancha with an ivory pen with the nib attached, swinging wherever her hand went.

– Thwack

Sancha took the beating without even making a sound of pain. But she couldn’t hide the fact that her whole body trembled with each hit.

With each blow Sancha took, Ariadne shuddered along with her.

Each time Sancha was hit, or more precisely, each time Ariadne turned away from Sancha being beaten, the blood scent in her left ring finger burned and flared up. The red energy was clearly increasing in volume.

– One who benefits from the suffering of the righteous shall pay the price. That is the curse of the Golden Rule.

But Ariadne couldn’t tell if the pain she was feeling now was purely because of the red energy, or because Sancha being hit felt like she herself was being hit.

As Lucrezia’s right arm holding the ivory pen handle rose high in the air, Ariadne couldn’t bear it anymore and shouted.

“Stop!!”