The scream came out so suddenly that Lucrezia instinctively struck down with the ivory pen handle again before she could even react to it.

– Woosh!

Lucrezia’s accelerated right arm sliced through the air at a terrifying speed. Just before Sancha was about to receive the tenth blow, Ariadne threw herself in front to shield Sancha.

That tenth blow struck Ariadne’s shoulder instead of Sancha.

– Thwack!

It was a stinging pain like being struck by lightning. The sharp impact that made her mind jolt spread from her left shoulder throughout her entire body.

As Lucrezia’s enraged right arm rose high into the air again and she was bracing for the eleventh blow, a voice that she didn’t particularly like but was tearfully grateful for in this moment rang out in the reception room.

“My, what is this commotion!”

Cardinal De Mare had returned home.

Cardinal De Mare strode into the reception room, his white cardinal’s robes fluttering.

“What on earth is going on in this house!”

Lucrezia, who had been trembling with fury like an evil spirit, burst into tears as soon as she saw Cardinal De Mare.

“You! Why are you only coming in now! Do you have any idea what I went through today?”

Lucrezia tearfully appealed, recounting in detail the story of how Queen Marguerite had called her “Miss de Rossi” today, how humiliating it had been, and what an awful woman Queen Marguerite was.

Cardinal De Mare patiently listened to these stories before asking a question.

“Why exactly is this maid being beaten and Ariadne joining in the beating?”

“It’s all because of these wenches!”

“Why would Queen Marguerite, who went so far as to invite you, suddenly call you ‘Miss de Rossi’? Even if the maid did something wrong, would the queen mistreat you like that just because of a mere maid?”

Lucrezia was momentarily struck dumb, then flushed bright red with anger again.

“It’s all because of you!”

“What?”

“I could have chosen anyone to marry! I could have been an ordinary noblewoman! But I came to live like this because I loved you, I couldn’t become a proper wife because of you… You ruined me!”

Lucrezia was neither a beauty capable of ruining a country, nor a noble lady of very high birth, nor was there a husband among the surrounding nobles she associated with who surpassed Cardinal De Mare.

A fair guess was that at best, Lucrezia would have ended up as the wife of a country baron, or in most cases, the wife of a commoner like a knight bachelor, lawyer, or doctor.

But Lucrezia’s one talent was making Cardinal De Mare believe that she could have done much better.

“Lucrezia, why are you being like this again.”

“I could have done so much better, who are you to look down on me…”

The pattern of Cardinal De Mare and Lucrezia’s marital quarrels was predictable.

Though Cardinal De Mare seemed like he wouldn’t bleed a drop even if pricked with a needle, he always crumbled at this attack from Lucrezia. They seemed trapped in their youth, when possibilities had been endless.

In any case, now that the protagonists of the drama had changed, it was time for the existing characters to step back. Ariadne decided to quietly slip out of the reception room with Sancha, whom she was embracing, leaving it entirely to that pair of cockroaches filming their melodrama.

She also took care of Arabella, who had been crouching on the floor, gesturing for her to be quiet by putting a finger to her lips. The sharp-witted Isabella had already slipped away.

The journey from backing out of the reception room with her center of gravity low, through the corridor, and out to the entrance felt like a thousand miles.

Upon reaching the entrance, Arabella dispersed to her room without even making eye contact, while Ariadne hurriedly dragged Sancha up to the attic on the third floor, where she finally collapsed as the tension drained away.

“Sancha…!”

The freckled girl’s clear green eyes, her entire body covered in marks from the beating, turned towards Ariadne. Purple bruises were rising beneath the blue ink splattered all over her.

Seeing the multicolored Sancha, Ariadne couldn’t stop the tears that suddenly poured out.

“Sancha, Sancha, why didn’t you tell the truth! It was all my fault!”

Ariadne hugged Sancha and cried loudly.

“You didn’t do anything wrong!”

Sancha barely managed to utter a word, licking her dried lips.

“You saved my life, young lady.”

“What…?”

“You’re my lifesaver. I’ll repay it all. I’m on your side forever.”

Ariadne’s decision to bring Sancha along hadn’t been out of a pure resolution to save her.

It had just happened that way as she tried to exert influence over Maletta.

Though she had begged Lucrezia to bring Sancha, she had thought it would be good if she gained a card to check Maletta and a maid to use, but if not, so be it. She had never cared for Sancha herself as earnestly as this overflowing goodwill and love from Sancha now.

But receiving such abundant kindness, love, and blind faith made her feel deeply ashamed of her own actions.

Ariadne gazed at Sancha intently. Sancha’s clear eyes gazed back at Ariadne. In that moment, she resolved to return at least as much as she had received, fully and completely.

“Sancha, I’m sorry…!”

Ariadne hugged Sancha tightly once more.

“From now on, I’ll protect you forever in return. I won’t let Maletta off either. I’ll get rid of her so she can never threaten us again.”

Ariadne felt an emotion welling up deep in her chest.

Along with a sense of responsibility, she strangely felt a sense of omnipotence at the same time. It was a feeling that she wasn’t alone, but connected to others, that she had to exert enough strength for two people and could also protect two people.

This seemed less like friendship and more like a blind, family love that she hadn’t received since her mother passed away in her dim memories.

On Sancha’s side, the intense emotion filling her chest was unconditional devotion to the person who had saved her life. Her family had died one by one from poverty and starvation, and her own sister Maletta had betrayed her fiercely.

All that was left in Sancha’s life was the young lady, Ariadne, who had come down from heaven to save her.

She resolved never to let go of the young lady.

The red energy on Ariadne’s left ring finger writhed explosively as if dissatisfied, as if about to swallow up Ariadne’s white skin, but it subsided rapidly along with the girls’ embrace.

The deepening of the blood-red energy on her left ring finger wasn’t just her imagination, but an objective fact.

The last joint of her left ring finger, which had seemed to have just a very faint reddish tinge, had darkened to a pinkish color like a mosquito bite after yesterday’s commotion had passed.

As Ariadne kept fidgeting with her left ring finger, Sancha chimed in.

“They say if you keep touching a bug bite, it’ll only get worse, not less itchy!”

Contrary to her first impression of being like a stray kitten picked up off the street, Sancha had an unexpectedly sharp tongue.

“Don’t you think this has gotten bigger?”

“How can a finger grow in just one day?”

Separate from her love for Ariadne, she was strict about facts and enjoyed speaking bluntly.

The two were lounging together in the attic on the third floor.

The maid Maletta, after selling out Sancha like that, had switched over to Isabella’s side on her own and hadn’t returned, and Ariadne didn’t bother to go looking for her.

Though Ariadne couldn’t understand it at all, according to the results of a brainstorming discussion with Sancha, who had been observing Maletta since childhood, Maletta was inherently short-sighted.

“That wasn’t the result of her seriously plotting to bury you, young lady. She was just scared of ‘Miss Rossi’ at that moment and wanted to say anything that could cover for her, and she pinned it on me because she was uncomfortable being with me.”

“Then why hasn’t she come back after all that commotion?”

“She’s quick-witted, you know. Stupid people usually have animal instincts. Otherwise, how could she still be alive instead of dead long ago?”

And she was quite acerbic.

“How can sisters be so different?”

“She takes after our father.”

Sancha wrinkled her nose at the thought of her dead father, who had been a drunkard and gambler.

“When she lashed out, she just wanted to get rid of me and live happily as the only maid under you, monopolizing the chemises that would trickle down in the future, but after it was over, she sensed something was off and is holding out over there without coming back. I could even bet money on it.”

“How much could your wages even amount to?”

“It’s just a figure of speech. Hehe.”

The room she had shared with Maletta naturally became Sancha’s alone.

Previously, Isabella had sternly admonished Ariadne:

– “I don’t like future troubles. Dad taught me. It’s safest to cleanly eliminate all possibilities. Isn’t that right, my dear sister?”

It seemed Cardinal De Mare had sat Isabella down and taught her such life wisdom.

Ariadne hadn’t learned any of those things. But though she lacked parental guidance, fate had given her time, and Ariadne taught herself through the experiences time provided.

Fate was guiding her. There was plenty of time to learn.

This time, she decided to cleanly get rid of future troubles.

It had been a mistake to try to co-opt Maletta when she knew from her past life that she had bad tendencies. Ariadne resolved that since things had become uncomfortable anyway, she should permanently eliminate Maletta when the opportunity arose.

But as there is a time for everything in revenge, Ariadne decided to let Maletta go for now. A calamity fitting to be her demise would come around soon enough.

With no one left to monitor what Sancha was doing and where, the two spent time stuck together like glue, except when Ariadne was being taught by the tutor along with her two other sisters.

After throwing one big fit, Lucrezia seemed to have gotten it all out of her system and didn’t mete out any additional punishments to Ariadne and Sancha.

“‘Miss Rossi’, you know. Do you think she considers herself someone without grudges?”

Thanks to Queen Marguerite, Lucrezia’s nickname had become ‘Miss Rossi’.

“I bet she does. Like those people who say, ‘If I have something to say, I say it to your face. I’m not petty, I have an open personality.'”

Sancha made a retching gesture.

“I wish we could gather just people like her and lock them up in a tower or something. By the seventh day, they’d be trying to tear each other apart with their bare hands.”

– Knock knock.

Startled by the knocking sound from outside while gleefully gossiping about the mistress of the house, the two fell silent like wild squirrels caught by humans.

“Young Lady Ariadne. The tutor has arrived.”

The person who knocked was one of Isabella’s maids. It was time to learn Latin and Gallic with Isabella and Arabella.

“Sancha, I’ll be back!”

Ariadne left Sancha behind and followed Isabella’s maid down to the girls’ reception room on the second floor.

Since Ariadne’s room was in the corner of the third floor, she rarely had occasion to come down to the second floor where the family resided, except for meal times. As she walked along the gallery, Lucrezia’s sharp voice could be heard from Cardinal De Mare’s reception room.

“That child, do we really have to keep her here?”