Chapter 15

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 15
Chapter Title: A Noble Bond
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It was such a sudden scream that Lucrezia didn't even have time to react, bringing the ivory pen holder down again out of sheer momentum. Lucrezia's right arm sliced through the air with terrifying speed. Just before the tenth blow could land on Sancha, Ariadne threw herself in front of her. The tenth strike hit Ariadne's shoulder instead of Sancha's. Thwack! The pain was sharp, like being struck by lightning. A stinging shock spread from her left shoulder through her entire body, jolting her senses. As Lucrezia's enraged arm rose high into the air once more, and Ariadne braced for the eleventh blow, a voice she normally despised but was now tearfully glad to hear echoed through the drawing room.

“Good heavens, what is all this chaos!”

Cardinal de Mare had returned home. His white cardinal robes fluttering, he strode into the drawing room.

“What is the meaning of this mess!”

Lucrezia, who had been trembling with demonic fury, burst into tears the moment she saw Cardinal de Mare.

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

Through her tears, Lucrezia recounted how Queen Marguerite had called her 'Miss de Rossi,' how humiliating it was, and what a wretched woman the queen was. Cardinal de Mare listened patiently before asking a question.

“Why in God's name is this maid being thrashed, and why is Ariadne being struck?”

“It's all because of these wenches!”

“Why would Queen Marguerite go to the trouble of inviting you, only to call you 'Miss de Rossi' out of the blue? Even if the maid did something wrong, do you really think the queen would humiliate you like that over a mere servant?”

Lucrezia was speechless for a moment, then her face flushed crimson as she erupted in anger again.

“This is all your fault!”

“What?”

“I could have married anyone I chose! I could have been an ordinary nobleman's wife! But I fell in love with you, and this is the life I have. It's because of you I couldn't be a proper wife... You've ruined me!”

Lucrezia was not a beauty capable of ruining a kingdom, nor was she a noble lady of exceptionally high birth. Nor were there any suitors among the nobles she associated with who could surpass Cardinal de Mare. A fair assessment would be that, at best, Lucrezia might have become the wife of a country baron; more likely, she would have ended up married to a man of the middling class, like a knight bachelor, a lawyer, or a doctor. But Lucrezia's one true talent was making Cardinal de Mare believe that she could have done so much better.

“Lucrezia, why are you acting 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 arguments was predictable. Though the Cardinal seemed so stoic that not a drop of blood would emerge if you pricked him with a needle, he always crumbled under this particular attack from Lucrezia. It was as if they were trapped in their youth, a time of infinite possibilities. In any case, the protagonists of the play had changed, so it was time for the supporting cast to make their exit. Ariadne decided to leave the drawing room entirely to the pair of cockroaches acting out their melodrama, cautiously backing away with Sancha still in her arms. She also gestured for Arabella, who was huddled on the floor, to be quiet by putting a finger to her lips, and ushered her out as well. The ever-perceptive Isabella had already slipped away. The journey—backing out of the drawing room with a low center of gravity, down the corridor, and to the entrance hall—felt like a thousand miles. Once in the entrance hall, Arabella scurried off to her room without making eye contact. Ariadne hurried Sancha up to the third-floor attic, where she finally collapsed, the tension draining from her body.

“Sancha...!”

The freckled girl, her body covered in bruises, turned her clear, light green eyes toward Ariadne. Purple bruises were beginning to form beneath the splotches of blue ink. Seeing Sancha in all her technicolor state, Ariadne couldn't stop the tears from bursting forth.

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

Ariadne hugged Sancha and sobbed.

“You didn't do anything wrong!”

Sancha licked her dry lips and managed to utter a single sentence.

“You saved my life, my lady.”

“What...?”

“You are my savior. I will repay you for everything. I will forever be on your side.”

Ariadne hadn't brought Sancha here out of a pure-hearted desire to save her. It was merely an accidental outcome of her attempt to gain leverage over Maletta. She had pleaded with Lucrezia to take Sancha in, but she had thought of it as a win-win: if it worked, she'd have a pawn to keep Maletta in check and a maid to use; if not, so be it. She had never cared for Sancha herself with the same earnestness as the goodwill and love Sancha was now showing her. But receiving such overflowing goodwill, love, and blind faith made her deeply ashamed of her own actions. Ariadne gazed at Sancha. Sancha's clear eyes met hers. In that moment, she resolved to, at the very least, return in full what she had received.

“Sancha, I'm so sorry...!”

Ariadne hugged Sancha tightly once more.

“From now on, I will be the one to protect you forever. I won't let Maletta get away with this, either. I'll get rid of her so she can never threaten us again.”

Ariadne felt an emotion welling up from deep within her chest. Along with a sense of responsibility, she felt a strange sense of omnipotence. It was the feeling of not being alone, of being connected to another person—a feeling that she had to muster the strength of two and could protect two. This was more than friendship; it was a more unconditional feeling, like the love of a family she hadn't received since her mother, a faint memory, had passed away. For Sancha, the powerful emotion filling her heart was an 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 viciously betrayed her. The only thing left in Sancha's life was the young lady who had descended from the heavens to save her: Ariadne. She resolved never to let her lady go. The red energy on Ariadne's left ring finger pulsed explosively, as if dissatisfied and about to swallow her white skin, before abruptly subsiding with the girls' embrace. * * * The deepening of the blood-red energy on her left ring finger wasn't just her imagination; it was an objective fact. The last knuckle of her left ring finger, which had previously shown only a faint blush, had darkened to the pink of a mosquito bite after yesterday's chaos. As Ariadne kept stroking her left ring finger with her other hand, Sancha chimed in.

“If you keep touching an insect bite, it'll only get worse, not less itchy!”

Contrary to her initial impression as a stray kitten picked up off the street, Sancha had a surprisingly sharp tongue.

“Doesn't this look like it's gotten bigger?”

“How can a finger get bigger in one day?”

Separate from her affection for Ariadne, she was strict about facts and enjoyed being blunt. The two of them were idling away in the third-floor attic. After selling Sancha out, the maid Maletta had gone over to Isabella's side on her own and hadn't returned. Ariadne didn't bother to go looking for her. Ariadne couldn't understand it at all, but according to a discussion that pooled the collective intelligence of Sancha, who had been observing Maletta since childhood, Maletta was naturally shortsighted.

“It wasn't the result of some serious plot to bury you, my lady. She was just scared of 'Miss Rossi' in the moment and wanted to say anything to save her own skin. And since being with me was inconvenient, she just pinned it on me.”

“Then why hasn't she come back after all that chaos?”

“Because she's quick on the uptake. Stupid people often have animal-like instincts. Otherwise, how would she have survived this long instead of dying ages ago?”

And she was extremely scathing.

"My goodness, you're sisters. How can you be so different?

"She takes after our father."

Sancha wrinkled her nose, thinking of her dead father, a drunkard and a gambler.

“When she blurted it out, she was probably just thinking she could get rid of me and live happily as your only maid, monopolizing all the hand-me-down chemises. But after it was over, she must have sensed something was off, so she's staying away and holding out over there. I'd bet money on it.”

“As if you earn enough to be betting.”

“It's just an expression. Hehe.”

The room Maletta had shared with her naturally became Sancha's alone. Isabella had once admonished Ariadne sternly.

- “I don't like loose ends. Father taught me that it's safest to eliminate all possibilities. Isn't that right, my dear sister?"

It seemed Cardinal de Mare had sat Isabella on his lap and taught her such wisdom. Ariadne had never been taught such things. But though she lacked a parent's guidance, fate had given her time, and Ariadne taught herself through the experience time had granted her. Fate was guiding her. There was plenty of time to learn. This time, she decided to eliminate the loose end cleanly. It had been a mistake to try and win over Maletta, knowing since her past life that she was a bad seed. Now that their relationship had become so awkward, Ariadne resolved to eliminate Maletta for good when the opportunity arose. But there is a time for everything, including revenge, so Ariadne decided to leave Maletta be for now. A disaster befitting her end would soon arrive. With no one to monitor Sancha's whereabouts, the two spent their time stuck together like glue, except when Ariadne had lessons with her two sisters and their governess. After her one satisfying outburst, Lucrezia seemed to have gotten it all out of her system and issued no further punishment for Ariadne and Sancha.

“About 'Miss Rossi.' Do you think she sees herself as someone who doesn't hold grudges?”

Thanks to Queen Marguerite, Lucrezia's new nickname was 'Miss Rossi.'

“Wouldn't she? The type of person who says, 'I say what's on my mind, I'm not petty, I'm just straightforward.'”

Sancha made a gagging motion.

“I wish you could gather up all the people like her and lock them in a tower somewhere. By the end of the week, they'd be trying to tear each other apart with their bare hands.”

- Knock, knock. Startled by the knock from outside while they were gleefully gossiping about the lady of the house, the two fell silent like wild squirrels caught by a human.

“Lady Ariadne. Your governess has arrived.”

The one who had knocked was one of Isabella's maids. It was time for their Latin and Gallic lessons with Isabella and Arabella.

“Sancha, I'll be back!”

Ariadne left Sancha and followed Isabella's maid down to the girls' drawing room on the second floor. Ariadne's room was tucked away on the third floor, so she rarely came down to the second floor where the family lived, except for meals. As she walked along the corridor, Lucrezia's shrill voice drifted from Cardinal de Mare's drawing room.

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