“Your Highness, I will wipe your other hand now.”
“Mm.”
Amber and Leni helped Ye Tang wash her arms and massage her hair. Their touches were all very gentle, unlike the savage way the maids who previously came to “serve” Marinfield had acted, so Ye Tang relaxed and thought about what Vincent had told her.
The elven realms were roughly divided into three tendencies. One believed in light and acted as apostles of light. Another believed in darkness and negative power, acting as followers of darkness. The last worshipped only the power of nature: the Tree Elves. The elves who had sworn an alliance with Saint Rubifalist came from the Tree Elves’ homeland: Windforest.
Vincent’s grandmother had come to live in Saint Ruby at the very beginning of the alliance. She married an ordinary man from Saint Ruby and bore four children. Afterward, she returned to Windforest with her first husband to let him enjoy his old age, then came back to Saint Ruby as her own granddaughter and created a romance with her second husband.
Centuries later, the “Hunter Clan” had become a full family. The reason Vincent could go undiscovered for over a century without aging was that everyone in the Hunter Clan generation after generation looked very much alike. And this “generation after generation” was actually three generations taking turns in the roles. Vincent’s previous identity had been the uncle of his current one.
Vincent had confessed his family history because it directly related to why the Hunter Clan were part of the Covenant Faction.
——As time passed, humans who had long ceased dealings with elves began to think elves were fictional beings that existed only in literary works. Nations with firm elven faith like Saint Rubifalist were an extreme rarity among rarities. After all, the people of Saint Ruby truly feared losing the elves’ protection. Even if the nobles and commoners did not believe in the elves’ existence, they would still dutifully follow the traditional calendar, celebrating the festivals and holy days set by the elves. In other words, “better to believe they exist than not.”
The long-lived elves could not understand human forgetfulness. It felt like someone had been calling you brother yesterday, but today they said they had heard your name but never met you and were not close.
The elves of Windforest were disappointed in humans who doubted elves’ existence. Gradually, some elves stood up to oppose Windforest continuing to provide protection to Saint Ruby.
The Hunter Clan’s half-elf bloodline thus became unwelcome mongrels. The Hunter Clan was not allowed to return to Windforest, so the half-elves had no choice but to mingle in human realms.
Protected by Windforest, Saint Ruby’s climate and environment closely resembled Windforest’s. To the Hunter Clan, Saint Ruby was a second homeland. Unwilling to lose their second homeland, the Hunter Clan became staunch members of the Covenant Faction. The entire family continuously worked to maintain the alliance.
But people had different ideas. Among the Hunter Clan were half-elves with particularly strong drive who would do anything to maintain the alliance, and others like Vincent who took a laissez-faire attitude, waiting for the chick to hatch on its own.
In Vincent’s own words: “A monarch can be a wise ruler, an enlightened ruler, or a tyrant, but they must never be an incompetent one. To have ability but not use it, potential but not develop it, and be trapped only by immediate difficulties—such inaction is the same as incompetence.”
And so, until Marinfield proved she could be a ruler, Vincent would absolutely not lend a hand.
“By the way, Amber, I want to know something.”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
Ye Tang said casually: “What was the name of the maid who served me before and yanked out a big handful of my hair? I don’t think I saw her last night.”
Amber swallowed unnaturally: “Y-Your Highness… please forgive Juliana… She is Sir Ravenrot’s niece and not very skilled at these chores…”
“I see.”
This world did not yet seem to have noble ranks like duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron; all nobles were uniformly called “sir.” Castellion was small and did not need to divide territories for nobles or send them to govern their own lands. The nobles were basically concentrated in the capital and the border frontlines.
Marinfield’s memories had no information on “Sir Ravenrot,” but from Amber and Leni’s expressions, Ye Tang could easily imagine what kind of noble he was.
“Since Juliana is a noble, it makes sense that she is not skilled at chores. I don’t blame her. …But that said, Juliana must have quite the connections, right?”
Fresh from the bath, Ye Tang was gentle and quiet. Amber and Leni, who were drying her body, were a bit dazed.
“Could you two fetch Juliana for me? I bought a box of pearls from a merchant at a high price that nourish the complexion. Before, I would crush one every few days and apply it to my body.”
“But as you know, pearl powder is very dry and falls off the face with a single breath. I want Juliana to take my pearls and make them into the Queen’s Face Cream. As for the reward…”
With the water on her body dried, Ye Tang wrapped herself in a soft towel and smiled: “I am willing to let her become His Majesty’s official mistress.”
In this world, a man could have three wives at once. Beyond wives, he could have mistresses. An official mistress acknowledged by the queen would be treated with royal specifications and might one day ascend to the position of consort.
Using the Qing palace hierarchy as an analogy, Juliana now was like a promised consort. An official mistress was like being promoted to imperial consort. For Juliana, this would be a temptation no less than a step to the heavens.
Who let Juliana truly love Osborne I with all her heart?
——The last time Juliana “served” Marinfield, Amber and Leni had not been present. And so they did not know that what Juliana did to Marinfield went far beyond yanking out a handful of her hair while washing it.
The bathwater Juliana brought for Marinfield had been cold water. After Marinfield said it was cold, Juliana splashed boiling water on her. After Marinfield screamed from the scalding and blistered all over, Juliana said Marinfield was too delicate and could not be Castellion’s queen like that.
When tears welled up in Marinfield’s eyes, Juliana splashed cold water right in her face. Marinfield had no time to cry before she was half-drowned.
“Understood, Your Highness. I will pass the message to Juliana shortly.”
Amber and Leni thought Ye Tang wanted to make overtures to Juliana—turning an enemy into a friend would make the queen’s life in the castle much easier. After all, it was Juliana who had instructed the court chef to have a cook with no grudge against the queen make her dinner from rotten meat crawling with live maggots.
Before the court chefs and servants were hanged, they had shouted to the guards that they were only following someone else’s orders, but what use was that? His Majesty could not hear their voices, and even if the queen did, she could do nothing to Juliana as long as Sir Ravenrot was around.
……
After hearing the queen’s overture from Amber and Leni, Juliana knew she had won, that her bet had paid off.
She had bet that the queen did not have the guts to retaliate and, after realizing there was no benefit in opposing her, would choose to win her over. Trying to offer her favors in exchange for a more peaceful foreign life.
“Hehe… heehee, hahahahaha!!”
After Amber and Leni left, Juliana hugged the gold box the queen used to store her pearls and laughed until she was a mess.
Did the queen think that by symbolically asking her to do a favor and giving her a way to step down in front of everyone, she would be satisfied?
In her dreams!!
No matter what, the queen could not eliminate her and did not dare defy her. So what if she went a bit further?
…This was that box of the queen’s most treasured pearls! Before, that woman would not even let anyone glance at them. The moment someone entered, she would quickly close the box, lock it, put it in a larger box, and lock that too.
But look now—her most treasured pearls were in her hands!
Make them into face cream for her? Yes, yes, she would. After using up all these pearls the queen treasured so dearly, she would have someone grind some white shells into powder and make face cream to present to the queen!
Thinking of the queen’s skin, white to an unnatural degree, Juliana opened the gold box with jealousy and greed. She took out a pearl and admired it closely in the moonlight from the window.
How beautiful.
This lovely treasure would soon bring her skin as icy and snowy as jade.
Several days later—
“Aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!”
The maid Annie who came to find Juliana screamed.
Juliana had not appeared for several days now. Even as Sir Ravenrot’s niece, skipping duties for so long could no longer be overlooked.
Annie was on good terms with Juliana, so everyone elected her to go find her. Though Annie feared Juliana’s explosive temper, she also wanted to ask what had happened to her these past days to draw closer to her.
She knocked on the door of Juliana’s single room—the only one maids had—and got no response, so she opened it.
A big bluebottle fly flew out.
Followed by a swarm of flies.
Seeing “that thing” crawling with flies, Annie was scared half to death.
“That thing” had previously been named Juliana, and she had been a beauty with fine looks.
Several days earlier, after dumping out all the “pearls,” Juliana had discovered a thin paper at the bottom of the box.
Written on the thin paper in Castellion’s language were the effects of grinding “pearls” into powder and swallowing it for the best results.
Thinking the queen was too reluctant to part with the pearls to ever dump them all out and check the bottom, or that the queen could not read Castellion script, Juliana mocked the queen’s stupidity while gleefully using the kitchen tool for grinding salt crystals to pulverize the entire box of “pearls” and swallow all the “pearl powder.”
Though Castellion had short days and long nights and was particularly cold, even cold air could not stop bluebottle flies from breeding.
On Juliana, only her poisonous internal organs remained intact.
No one knew how Juliana had ended up like this. Because the gold box that held the “pearls” had been returned to the queen’s room. The thin paper at the bottom of the gold box had long since turned to ash in the fireplace.
“…You are no witch, yet more than a witch.”
Diesel, who had hypnotized Fara to retrieve the gold box without her memory, cupped his face in the mirror and said.
After breakfast, Ye Tang, who had draped a shawl and prepared to visit Snow White, smiled: “I will take your words as a compliment.”