The scream was sudden, leaving Lucrezia no time to pull back. Instinctively, she brought the ivory pen holder down again.
— *Whish!*
Gaining momentum, Lucrezia’s arm sliced through the air with terrifying speed. Just as the tenth strike was about to land on Sancha, Ariadne threw herself forward, shielding the maid with her own body.
The blow landed on Ariadne’s shoulder instead.
— *Thwack!*
A sharp, lightning-bolt pain tore through her. A stinging, piercing heat radiated from her left shoulder, flooding her senses and snapping her into total, agonizing clarity.
Lucrezia’s arm rose again, trembling with demonic fury. As Ariadne braced for the eleventh blow, a voice—one she detested, yet welcomed with profound relief—rang through the parlor.
“Goodness, what is this chaos!”
Cardinal Del Mare had returned.
He strode into the parlor, his white cardinal robes fluttering behind him like a funeral shroud.
“What has become of this house?”
Lucrezia, who had been vibrating with rage, burst into tears the moment she saw him.
“You! Why are you only just now returning? Do you have any idea what happened to me today?”
She appealed to him, sobbing as she recounted every humiliating detail: how Queen Marguerite had called her ‘Miss De Rossi,’ the crushing social slight, the sheer wickedness of the Queen.
Cardinal Del Mare listened with practiced patience before interrupting.
“Then, pray tell, why is this maid being beaten? And why is Ariadne blocking the blows?”
“It’s all because of these wretches!”
“If Queen Marguerite went through the trouble of inviting you, why would she suddenly call you ‘Miss De Rossi’? Even if the maid were at fault, would the Queen really berate you over a common servant?”
Lucrezia froze, her face turning a violent shade of beet-red.
“It’s all because of you!”
“What?”
“I could have married anyone! I could have been a conventional noblewoman! But because I loved you, I ended up trapped in this life. You prevented me from becoming a legitimate wife… You ruined me!”
Lucrezia was neither a beauty who could topple kingdoms nor a lady of illustrious lineage. Among the men she associated with, there was no candidate who surpassed Cardinal Del Mare.
In reality, she would have been lucky to settle as the wife of a rural baron, or perhaps a commoner—a knight, a lawyer, or a doctor.
Yet, Lucrezia’s one true talent was manipulating Cardinal Del Mare into believing she could have done much better.
“Lucrezia, must we do this again?”
“I could have done so much better—who are you to look down on me…”
The pattern of their marital discord was as predictable as the tides. Though Cardinal Del Mare acted the part of a man whose veins ran with ice water, he always crumbled under this specific assault. It was as if they were perpetually locked in their youth, clinging to the phantom of infinite possibilities.
As the protagonists took their places in this familiar, wretched play, the supporting cast needed to make their exit. Ariadne pulled Sancha close and crept backward, eager to leave the parlor to the two cockroaches performing their melodrama.
She reached for Arabella, who remained huddled on the floor, and pressed a finger to her lips to signal silence before guiding her out. Isabella, quick-witted as ever, had already vanished.
The retreat—lowering her center of gravity, inching through the hallway, and navigating toward the entrance—felt like walking a thousand miles.
Once they reached the foyer, Arabella scattered toward her room without meeting their eyes. It was only after Ariadne hurried Sancha up to the attic on the third floor that her tension finally snapped, and she collapsed to the floor.
“Sancha…!”
The freckled girl’s clear, light-green eyes turned toward Ariadne, marred by the marks of a brutal beating. Beneath the layers of blue ink smeared across her skin, purple bruises were beginning to surface.
Seeing Sancha in such a battered state, Ariadne could not stop the tears from gushing out.
“Sancha, Sancha, why didn’t you tell them the truth! It’s all my fault!”
Ariadne hugged her 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 lifesaver. I will repay you for everything. I am on your side forever.”
Ariadne’s decision to bring Sancha along had not been born from a pure desire to save her.
It had been a calculated move to exert influence over Maletta. She had begged Lucrezia to let her take Sancha, thinking that if it worked, she would gain a pawn to keep Maletta in check and a useful maid—and if it failed, it wouldn’t matter. She had never cherished Sancha for her own sake, not with the desperation that the girl’s current affection deserved.
However, receiving such overflowing goodwill, love, and blind faith made her feel deeply ashamed of her own coldness.
Ariadne gazed steadily at Sancha. Sancha’s clear eyes met hers, and in that moment, Ariadne felt a resolve to return at least as much as she had received, in full.
“Sancha, I’m sorry…!”
Ariadne hugged her tightly once more.
“From now on, I will be the one to protect you. I won’t let Maletta be. I will get rid of her so she can never threaten us again.”
Ariadne felt emotions welling up from the depths of her chest. Along with a sense of responsibility, she felt, strangely, a sense of omnipotence. It was the feeling that she was not alone; that she was connected to another, and that she had to muster the strength of two people—the strength to protect them both.
It felt less like simple friendship and more like a blind, familial love, the likes of which she hadn’t received since her mother, a faint memory, had passed away.
The intense emotion filling Sancha’s chest was an unconditional devotion to the person who had saved her life. Her family had died one by one to poverty and hunger, and her own sister, Maletta, had brutally betrayed her.
All that was left in Sancha’s life was the lady who had descended from the heavens to save her: Ariadne.
She vowed never to let go of her lady.
The red energy on the ring finger of Ariadne’s left hand writhed explosively, as if dissatisfied, threatening to swallow her pale skin, before rapidly settling down in the wake of their embrace.
* * *
It was not just her imagination that the blood-red energy on her left ring finger had deepened; it was an objective fact. The tip of her left ring finger, which had previously shown only a faint flush, had darkened to a pink hue—reminiscent of a mosquito bite—after the chaos of the previous day had passed.
As Ariadne continued to rub the finger, Sancha chimed in.
“Keep rubbing an insect bite like that and all you’ll do is make it infected. It won’t make it itch any less!”
Unlike her first impression, when she had seemed like a stray kitten picked up from the street, Sancha had an unexpectedly sharp tongue.
“Doesn’t this look like it’s gotten a bit bigger?”
“How could a finger grow in a single day?”
Apart from her love for Ariadne, Sancha was strict about facts and enjoyed delivering hard truths.
The two were lounging together in the third-floor attic.
The maid Maletta, after selling Sancha out like that, had naturally gone over to Isabella’s side and did not return. Ariadne did not bother to go looking for her.
Although it was entirely incomprehensible to Ariadne, according to the collective assessment of Sancha, who had tracked and observed Maletta since childhood, the maid was simply short-sighted by nature.
“That wasn’t a calculated move to bury you, my lady. She was just terrified of ‘Miss Rossi’ in that moment and desperate to say anything to escape. Since she’s always felt uncomfortable around me, she probably just pinned it on me by default.”
“Then why hasn’t she returned after all that chaos?”
“She’s quick-witted in a pathetic way. If you’re stupid, you develop sharp, animalistic instincts. If she didn’t have those, she would’ve died ages ago.”
Sancha was nothing if not a scathing critic.
“How can you two sisters be so different?” Ariadne mused.
“She takes after Father.”
Sancha wrinkled her nose at the mention of her late father—a drunkard and a gambler.
“When she lashed out, she just wanted to ditch me so she could reign as your sole maid, hogging all the chemises that come down like offerings. But once the dust settled, she realized things didn’t look right. She’s not coming back because she’s digging in her heels. I’d bet money on it.”
“How much do you even make in wages?”
“It’s just an expression, my lady. Hehe.”
The room she had once shared with Maletta now belonged to Sancha alone.
Some time ago, Isabella had sternly rebuked Ariadne.
“I don’t like leaving behind any aftermath. Father taught me this. It is safest to remove every possibility cleanly. Don’t you agree, my beloved sister?”
Cardinal Del Mare had clearly sat Isabella down to impart such wisdom. Ariadne had never been granted such guidance. However, while she lacked her parents’ lessons, fate had granted her time, and Ariadne had taught herself through the crucible of experience. Fate was guiding her, and there was plenty of time left to learn.
This time, she decided to clear away the aftermath once and for all. It had been a mistake to try to win Maletta over when she knew the girl was rotten to the core. Since they were already on uncomfortable terms, Ariadne resolved to permanently remove Maletta the moment an opportunity arose.
However, revenge required timing, so Ariadne chose to let the matter rest for now. A catastrophe befitting Maletta’s end would return before long.
With no one left to monitor Sancha, the two stuck together like glue, spending every possible moment in each other’s company—except when Ariadne was receiving lessons with her other two sisters.
Lucrezia had enjoyed one good, explosive meltdown, and perhaps feeling her resentment had been purged, she did not impose any further punishment on Ariadne or Sancha.
“About ‘Miss Rossi,’” Ariadne said. “Do you think she considers herself a person without a grudge?”
Thanks to Queen Marguerite, Lucrezia’s nickname had become ‘Miss Rossi.’
“Wouldn’t she? You know the type—people who say, ‘If I have something to say, I say it to your face; I’m not petty, I have a refreshing personality.’”
Sancha mimicked the gesture of vomiting.
“I wish they’d lock people like that in a tower. By the end of the week, they’d be tearing each other to pieces with their bare hands.”
*Knock, knock.*
While they were busy badmouthing their mistress, the sudden sound startled them, and they went silent, like squirrels caught by a predator.
“Lady Ariadne. Your tutor has arrived.”
The person who knocked was one of Isabella’s maids. It was time for lessons in Latin and Galico with Isabella and Arabella.
“Sancha, I’ll be back!”
Ariadne left Sancha behind and followed the maid down to the parlor on the second floor.
Because Ariadne’s room was tucked away in the corner of the third floor, she rarely had reason to descend to the second floor, where the rest of the family resided, except at meal times. As she walked along the corridor, Lucrezia’s sharp voice pierced the air, drifting from Cardinal Del Mare’s parlor.
“Must we really keep that child here?”