Chapter 14

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 14
Chapter Title: Maletta's Betrayal
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Befriending the prince and returning home in new clothes provided by the Queen had been wonderful, but the aftermath was the problem. Just as she had expected, the Cardinal de Mare’s residence was in absolute pandemonium, thanks to Lucrezia’s furious rampage.

“Miss de Rossi? Miss de Rossi?! Queen Marguerite must be mad! How could she treat me with such contempt?!”

*Crash!* The vase Lucrezia threw shot across the drawing room.

“That filthy woman from the Kingdom of Gallico! How dare a foreigner say such a thing to an Etruscan?!”

This time, she wildly threw a letter opener, which flew and embedded itself in the fireplace. Arabella was trembling in a corner of the drawing room with her ears covered, while Isabella stood beside her, diligently fanning the flames of their mother’s anger.

“That’s right. Does being the Queen make her so special? It’s been nearly twenty years since she married, and she still can’t fix her accent? I was shocked by how provincial she sounded when she opened her mouth!”

“That’s why her husband doesn’t love her—she makes no effort to adapt! She can’t even hold on to the King’s affection. She’s lucky if she sees his face five times a year!”

“What’s the point of a legal marriage? If she’s going to live like a neglected scarecrow without love as the official wife, it would be better to be a concubine!”

“The incompetent woman is just projecting her own failures by badmouthing women who actually know how to capture a man’s heart!”

Their tirade grew more and more outrageous.

“Countess Rubina is the one with the real power. Rumor has it that the fastest way to petition His Majesty at court is to go through her.”

“You’re better than your mother. I have no ladies to socialize with. Oh, my wretched fate!”

“And Countess Rubina is so resourceful. There’s talk that Count Cesare, her son, will be granted a fief in the marches.”

“It’s all over if the concubine’s son, Count Cesare, is older than the prince born to the official wife. How does Queen Marguerite expect to win over the King now when she couldn’t even do it in her youth! Alfonso hasn’t even been named Crown Prince! It’s all because his mother is incompetent!”

“That’s why she’s taking it out on you, Mother! She’s a nasty person! Vile! Despicable!”

‘Thanks for introducing yourselves.’

Ariadne had no intention of getting involved in that mess. To step in now would be to throw herself like a piece of meat before a pack of starving hyenas. The enraged Lucrezia and the fire-stoking Isabella would surely tear her to shreds.

‘I should just go quietly up to my room.’

To reach the third-floor attic from the main entrance, she had to use the central staircase, and the first-floor drawing room was unfortunately located right at the foot of it. Ariadne decided to hide in the first-floor hallway and wait until they calmed down and returned to their rooms. It wasn’t as if they were the kind of mother and daughters who would lovingly check what time she came home, so they wouldn’t even notice if she was late.

“Why isn’t that girl home yet!”

‘Ah…’

It seemed they weren’t waiting to check on her, but for a target for their anger. As Maletta told Lucrezia she would ask the butler and exited the drawing room, she came face to face with Ariadne, who was hiding in the hallway.

“Ah… Miss Ariadne has returned.”

‘So inflexible!’

Ariadne shot Maletta a fierce glare and cursed inwardly as she dragged her heavy feet toward the drawing room, where the furniture was being destroyed in real time. *Swoosh!* The moment she entered, a white porcelain vase flew past her face. *Crash!* The vase shattered against the wall, and feeling the fragments catch in her hair and dress, Ariadne expressionlessly lowered her head.

“I have returned, Mother.”

“Mother? Mother? As if you think of me as your mother, after embarrassing me so horribly at the Queen’s mass!”

One was not supposed to talk back when Lucrezia was angry. But Ariadne had always had a habit of forgetting that, even as a child. She answered back instinctively.

“I did nothing, Mother.”

“That mouth! If only you couldn’t speak! You wouldn’t be so detestable!”

Lucrezia grabbed a fire poker and hurled it at Ariadne. As the poker spun through the air, she narrowly dodged it by turning her head to the left. It flew toward Arabella, who was cowering behind her, and struck her on the leg.

“Aaaack!”

The ten-year-old shrieked like a wild animal, but no one paid the unfortunate Arabella any mind. Consumed by rage, Lucrezia didn't even care that her own child had been hit by the poker she had thrown. There was only the sound of Arabella’s sobbing. Ariadne frowned, took a step back, and crouched down to pull Arabella into her arms. It was doubtful that the frail, skinny limbs of a fifteen-year-old could offer much comfort, but Arabella seemed grateful for even that, scrambling into her embrace. The human warmth comforted not only Arabella but Ariadne as well. But the encroaching threat was too great for her to find any peace. Lucrezia stood menacingly before Ariadne, who was stroking Arabella’s back. Her legs were spread wide, her eyes flashing as she leaned in.

“You! That chemise… you did it on purpose, didn’t you?”

‘For a fool, her intuition is uncanny.’

Though it was merely a baseless, aggressive assertion, Ariadne was impressed that Lucrezia had hit upon the truth so precisely. She meekly shook her head from side to side.

“Of course not. Absolutely not, Mother.”

Ariadne bowed her head deeper, feigning innocence, while pointedly straightening her posture. Everything she wore—the dress, the accessories—aside from the new chemise Queen Marguerite had sent her home in, were the cheap things Lucrezia had given her.

“That was truly the only one I had.”

It was a blatant lie. The moment the words left her mouth, Ariadne felt a throbbing pain in the last joint of her left ring finger. It was the new finger that had returned with her regression, the one that had rotted away from the disease she had contracted in Cesare’s place. Lucrezia’s eyes flashed as she scanned the room.

“Who is the wench responsible for this girl’s clothes? Which one of you stole from her?”

The maids in the room all turned their heads, avoiding Lucrezia’s gaze. But Maletta’s demeanor was strange. The way she fidgeted with her hands while looking around suggested she was debating whether to do something. Ariadne held her breath. She had a feeling Maletta was about to cause trouble.

‘I should have silenced her beforehand…!’

A threat? A bribe? The Maletta she had known her entire past life was the type to risk everything for the smallest gain. 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 some future reward for Maletta. It was a shortsighted mistake.

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

Oblivious to Ariadne’s anxious gaze, Maletta lowered her head deeply. After about three seconds, as if she had made up her mind, she pointed a finger at Sancha, who was standing beside her.

“It’s her!”

The lifeless green eyes of the freckled girl, Sancha, widened like saucers.

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

Lucrezia’s high cheekbones twitched with irritation. Ariadne couldn’t help but let out an instinctive sigh of relief at her own escape, while a terrified Sancha took an involuntary step back.

“You must have stolen her undergarments.”

“No. It isn’t true, my lady.”

Ignoring Sancha’s frantic denials, Lucrezia ground her teeth and ordered Maletta.

“If she stole it because she wanted the lady’s expensive chemise, it must be among this maid’s belongings. Maletta, go and search them!”

“Yes, my lady!”

Maletta accepted the order with great pleasure. As Ariadne watched her dash up to the third floor where the maids resided, Lucrezia growled, threatening the trembling, frozen Sancha.

“You’d better be prepared if her chemise is found among your things.”

Ariadne debated whether she should tell the truth. She didn’t know what was going through Maletta’s little mind, but for now, Ariadne herself was cleared of the charge of deliberately maligning Lucrezia. But it had been Ariadne who suggested swapping the chemises, and now Sancha was about to be torn to shreds for a crime she didn’t commit. Lucrezia would never believe Sancha’s claims of innocence. Because Ariadne’s chemise would, in fact, be found among Sancha’s things. When evidence appears to support a preconceived belief, that belief becomes unshakable. At this rate, Sancha would undoubtedly become Lucrezia’s scapegoat. But Ariadne simply couldn’t find the courage to step before the raging, beast-like Lucrezia and confess the truth. She thought she had forgotten after nine years of ruling high society, but Lucrezia’s growls resurrected a childhood terror etched deep in her bones. The image of her mother being whipped by Lucrezia. The memory of Lucrezia kicking her mother, who was hiding little Ariadne behind her body, and then grabbing Ariadne by the hair. The memory of Lucrezia’s eldest son, Ippolito, patting her mother’s backside as he walked past. And her mother, unable to protest at all. The memory of feeling the greatest guilt of her life: kneeling and crying before her mother’s wooden coffin on a day of torrential rain, only to abandon her and run away to hide, terrified of encountering Lucrezia, who was passing near the shed where the coffin was laid out. *Sob, sob, sob.* Sancha’s huddled back trembled as whimpers escaped her lips. She couldn’t even close her eyes properly; they were wide with terror as fat tears rolled down her cheeks, her sobs stifled. Watching Sancha’s pitiful form, Ariadne felt her heart torn in two between fear and guilt. To ignore it out of fear felt too cruel to Sancha, yet she couldn’t bring herself to speak up and step forward. The guilt she felt that day she had abandoned her mother’s coffin and fled to the stables to tremble alone was tearing her chest apart. Yet every second she remained frozen like an icicle, doing nothing, was utterly unbearable. *Throb!*

Her left ring finger felt as hot as if it were on fire. The hot blood that composed the new finger seemed to seethe beneath the skin, its area expanding.

‘…It hurts!’

She faintly heard a voice that wasn't real. The words were human, but the voice was not.

*The Golden Rule.*

A divine voice, not of this world, whispered. The meaning slammed directly into her mind, making it impossible to discern the sound itself.

*Treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. You resented and grieved the betrayals you suffered. But have you truly never betrayed others for your own gain?*

It was both a whisper and a rebuke. While everyone in the drawing room suffered, Maletta returned from the maids’ quarters like a bolt of lightning. She triumphantly pulled a clean lady’s chemise from the old cloth sack in her hand and presented it to Lucrezia.

“It was her. This was in her belongings, my lady.”

With a face like a demon from hell, Lucrezia snatched the chemise, waved it in the air, then threw it onto the face of the kneeling Sancha.

“Do you still have anything to say, you rat-like thief?”

Sancha’s lips were sealed tight, her hands clenched as she trembled uncontrollably. Overcome with rage, Lucrezia began grabbing whatever was at hand and throwing it at the girl. First flew a paperweight, then an inkwell. *Whoosh!* *Thud!* The blue inkwell sailed through the air and struck Sancha squarely on the forehead. Ink splattered everywhere, filling the room with blue stains. Drenched in blue ink, Sancha was a chaotic sight—red from her hair, blue from the ink, and ghastly green from her terrified face and eyes brimming with injustice. Lucrezia didn’t stop there. She picked up an ivory pen with a nib attached and began to beat Sancha with it indiscriminately. *Thwack!* Sancha endured the blows without so much as a groan. But she couldn’t hide the way her entire body trembled with each strike. Every time Sancha was hit, Ariadne trembled with her. Every time Sancha was hit—or more accurately, every time Ariadne averted her eyes from the beating—the bloody heat in her left ring finger flared and burned. The red energy was clearly growing.

*He who profits 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 felt was purely from the red energy, or because it felt as if she herself were being beaten. The moment Lucrezia’s right arm, holding the ivory pen, rose high into the air, Ariadne could no longer bear it and screamed.

“Stop!!”