chapter 08
“I didn’t take you for someone like this. You’re more calculating than you look.”
Click—
She didn’t know much about firearms, but even she could tell that this sound wasn’t a good sign.
Shael shouted in panic.
“Th-the head maid told me to! She suddenly ordered me to go down to the kitchen. Then much later, the Duchess came down, and I only saw her eating the food Lady Hauer gave her. I swear, that’s all I know, Duchess!”
The muzzle of the gun that had been pressing down on her head finally pulled away. Shael gasped desperately for air.
“Alright, Shael. Everything you just said has been recorded.”
“W-what…?!”
As the muzzle disappeared, the maid, now emboldened, began shouting again—only for the barrel to be shoved directly in front of her face this time.
“If your story changes later, it means you’ll die by my hand. Understood? I’ll trust the intelligence you obviously possess as a maid of the Duke’s household.”
Shael trembled like prey before a predator, to the point where one might even feel pity for her.
Maya glanced at her, then turned without hesitation and opened the door.
Long after Maya had left, Shael remained trembling in the center of the room. The next day, she was found burning with fever, her whole body overwhelmed with heat.
Helia Jabez Delfon.
The eldest daughter of Marquis Delfon. A woman who had lived her whole life upholding her family’s honor, never once bringing them shame.
But now, she was trembling in anxiety—something most unlike her.
All because of the Duchess of Western, who had miraculously returned from the brink of death.
“This makes no sense. They said she wouldn’t survive more than a few hours!”
That wretched girl, who had constantly irritated her, was finally supposed to be gone. Even the Empress herself, unable to tolerate the girl anymore, had provided a deadly poison with a command:
“Kill that shameless girl who dares to take my daughter’s place.”
The head maid had faithfully carried out the order.
She framed a lowly maid—one who used to be close to that wretch—and poisoned the food intended for her.
Then she rejoiced.
Surely, the late princess would also be pleased from the afterlife to know that the lowborn wench who had taken her place was finally gone.
But the wench survived.
“This is impossible!”
She couldn’t believe it. That woman should have been dead.
There was no way the Empress’s poison had failed.
“Unless she was blessed by Ruar…”
Recalling that possibility made the head maid scoff.
The daughter of a merchant—how could she have possibly received a blessing from Ruar, the eternal master of the Mage Tower? It was absurd.
Then how? How had she survived?
Creaaak—
“W-who’s there?!”
Startled by the sound of a door opening in a room filled only with her own angry breaths and footsteps, she spun toward it.
But no one was there.
Only the view of the night-soaked corridor through the wide-open doorway.
“What the…”
She blinked in confusion.
At that moment, a hand reached from behind and clamped tightly over her mouth.
“……!”
Panicked, the head maid thrashed to resist. But before she could react, a sharp blow struck the back of her neck.
She lost consciousness instantly.
“Urgh…”
How much time had passed?
“You’re finally awake.”
A familiar voice rang in her ears. She quickly looked up.
“……Duchess?”
The head maid murmured in disbelief.
Maya let out a shallow sigh and stepped closer.
“What is the meaning of this… What have you done to me?!”
Both her arms were tightly bound.
Sensing a subtle magical pulse through her collar, the head maid realized that the restraints tying her to the chair were enchanted artifacts.
Immediately, a furious scream erupted from her throat.
“How vulgar and shameful…! I suppose it’s no surprise, considering you’re the daughter of a merchant who deals with the criminal underworld!”
“You, who tried to poison your mistress, have no right to speak of shame.”
Maya replied coldly.
The head maid froze, unable to continue her tirade, and cried out desperately.
“What do you mean?! Poison? You’re terribly mistaken, Duchess. The person who tried to poison you was—”
“What an impressive level of brazenness. Does noble honor require you to lie when the person you tried to murder comes back alive?”
The head maid’s eyes widened as she looked up at Maya.
Maya, tired of even sharing the same air, finally spoke.
“I’ll ask you once. Are you the one who poisoned the food I was meant to eat?”
The head maid pursed her lips in unease.
“No. I swear, it wasn’t me!”
A denial—just as Maya had expected.
She wasn’t angry. Only disappointed.
“If you had just told me the truth, it would have been better for you. But it’s pointless to ask further now.”
The head maid looked at Maya with trembling eyes.
Maya turned and walked to the door.
The heavy black iron door creaked silently open. Maya looked back at the woman and said,
“Whatever happens next is no longer my concern. You brought this upon yourself. Accept it, and it might be slightly easier to endure.”
The head maid tried to speak, a chilling dread pressing against her spine—but the door had already shut.
An unfamiliar cold gripped her.
Maya climbed the stairs slowly, feeling drained to her bones.
Outside, the sharp chill of the night air made her grimace.
“It’s cold, isn’t it? Here, take this.”
A man with red hair appeared beside her, handing her a brown blanket with a playful grin.
“Thank you.”
Maya accepted the kindness without resistance.
“May I ask what prompted our young lady to request something like this?”
His teasing voice was slightly muffled by the mask covering half his face.
Maya quietly looked up at the ink-black sky and replied,
“After almost dying from poison, I’ve lost my taste for mercy.”
The man’s expression shifted.
After a short pause, he spoke more seriously than before.
“…Why not just get a confession and kill her? You can record it.”
That was unnecessary interference.
Maya stopped his escalating thoughts with a gentle smile.
“No. She’s more useful alive. I’ve already told the torturers to keep her breathing. Please don’t get involved in this, Mr. Viper.”
The master of the intelligence guild, which had its claws in every corner of the Adalstein Empire, smiled slyly.
With a hand covered in a black glove, he gently took Maya’s hand and pressed it to the lips hidden beneath his mask.
“Understood, my lady.”
The reason she had asked for help from this man—who had long been on friendly terms with her mother—was simple.
To track down every single person who dared to poison her and make them pay.
From the moment she stepped into the Duke’s household, she had been met with cold indifference and contempt.
Yet Maya smiled.
Partly because she was inherently kind and warm-hearted—but mostly because of what her mother had drilled into her since she was young:
“Never strike first. Not until your enemy harms you.”
Maya was born into the middle class. Neither noble nor common.
In that in-between space, attacking first was never an option.
But that didn’t mean you could just sit there and bleed to death.
So her mother taught her:
“Hide your fangs deep in your mouth and smile like a flower. Until they raise the blade.”
To follow that teaching meant willingly enduring the risk of being stabbed first.
But once you were attacked, their offense became your justification—to retaliate with a vengeance so brutal that they could never rise again.
So they’d never bare their teeth at you again.
Maya had endured enough.
She looked down into the abyssal underground.
Now it was her turn to bite back.
More ruthlessly, more mercilessly—many times over.
