Chapter 203
The rumor that Natasha Grünehals and Megara Lykeandros were fighting spread through the banquet hall in an instant.
At the center of the growing crowd, Megara slowly rose to her feet. Lifting her chin, she spoke with a pitiful expression.
“An illegitimate child? You shouldn’t say things like that so carelessly, Sister. Do you always hit people when you’re upset? I don’t even know what you’re displeased about, but it’s unpleasant that my family’s name is tossed around every time you feel emotional.”
It seemed she intended to dismiss the word ‘bastard’ as nothing more than an absurd insult.
“Any tongue, you say!”
Natasha nearly fainted but barely restrained herself. She wanted nothing more than to throttle Megara right there, but if she did, the matter would escalate, and the imperial family would investigate.
That would not end well for her. If they discovered she had attempted to use her family’s poison at a royal event, the entire Grünehals Duchy could be implicated. The imperial family had tacitly permitted her to use it, but if the other side denied it, that would be the end of it.
Straightening her back, Natasha spoke sharply, keeping the focus squarely on Megara.
“Daughter of a whore, and you dare talk back to me!”
Everyone heard it — nearly a hundred people, servants included.
Within the gathered crowd, the Marquis of Lykeandros’s face turned pale. He quickly moved to pull his daughter away from the chaos.
“Move, move aside!”
But his visible panic only made things worse. People surrounded him, watching his face closely.
At first, they thought Natasha’s accusation was ridiculous, an uncalled-for attack. Yet the Marquis’s stricken expression suggested there was truth behind the crude insult. Shocked murmurs rippled through the hall.
Megara sensed the shift in atmosphere immediately. Her lips trembled before she asked sharply — with a strained, nervous expression she had never shown before in all her years in society —
“Are you insulting my mother?”
Everyone knew how fond the Marchioness had been of Megara. So if Megara was a bastard, that could only mean the Marchioness had borne a child by someone other than her husband.
And if that was the case, the legitimacy of Megara’s younger brother, the heir apparent, would also be questioned. Faces gleamed with morbid curiosity.
“Yes, your mother,” Natasha said coldly. “Not the noble Marchioness who kindly accepted another woman’s child into her household, but that shameless temptress who seduced a married man and dared to send her filthy brat into a noble family!”
The Marchioness’s own relatives were also present. Natasha took care not to offend them and instead focused her attacks on Megara’s biological mother.
The shock this time was even greater.
Megara Lykeandros wasn’t the Marchioness’s real daughter?
Then whose was she?
There was really only one possible answer. People craned their necks, comparing Megara’s face to that of Rebecca Shirley, the Marquis’s former mistress.
It didn’t take long.
Almond-shaped eyes, thick defined brows, an egg-shaped face — her features bore a striking resemblance to Rebecca’s, though softened by the Marquis’s own.
“How did no one notice until now?”
“But her eyes are purple… How could a commoner’s child have—”
“Oh, please. It’s not as if she has the Ja’an of the Elandria family. Purple eyes appear among commoners now and then! They’re nothing like the Grand Duchess’s Jeweled Eyes.”
Those who prided themselves on their perceptiveness began whispering that they had always suspected some resemblance between Megara and Rebecca. Servants on the edges of the crowd rushed off to spread the story further.
Megara’s face went pale with rage. It was nonsense — a vicious lie. She couldn’t be—! She wasn’t the daughter of some lowly woman! That wretched woman couldn’t have given birth to her!
“Mind your words! Sister, do you realize you’re insulting not just my mother but my father as well?”
“If speaking the truth is an insult, then everyone but you must live insulted. Few in this world have lived a life as full of lies as yours!”
Megara saw it — the horrifying clarity of truth blazing in Natasha’s expression.
The world around her swayed. The faces watching her turned dark, indistinct. The floor seemed to shake beneath her feet.
Natasha looked down at her, laughing mockingly.
“Don’t believe me? Shall I bring witnesses? Those purple eyes you’re so proud of — they came from your vulgar mother’s bloodline. Who knows which noble fool she seduced to get them? You’ve always acted refined and clever here at court — tell me, how does it feel to realize you’re lower than the humblest servant?”
Natasha’s words were cruel, but none could say they were false. The nobles around them thought so too.
After all, even the lowest maid in the royal palace was either a distant relative of nobility or of known lineage.
And everyone here knew Megara had been close to Abelus. Imagine — the future Crown Princess finding out that another woman, born of deceit, had nearly stolen her man.
A few harsh words were hardly unjustified.
Many noblewomen present had suffered from husbands’ or fiancés’ mistresses at least once in their lives. Of course, the fault lay with the men, yet who wouldn’t understand the desire to humiliate the mistress publicly?
Had Megara still been the Marquis’s legitimate daughter, Natasha would have been scorned. But as the illegitimate child of a commoner? That was the lowest birth of all — unworthy of sympathy, let alone defense.
By the time the Marquis broke through the crowd and reached his daughter, the damage was done. Megara turned toward her father, silently pleading for him to deny it, to protect her.
But that brief exchange of eyes brought her more pain than all of Natasha’s words combined.
Nothing wounded deeper than the confirmation of a truth one refused to accept.
Megara turned and ran from the ballroom.
Where people had blocked the Marquis before, they now stepped aside instantly, as if afraid even to brush against her.
Inside her head, a desperate denial echoed again and again.
‘No.’
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
‘Mother loved me so much.’
When she was a child, the Marchioness had always smiled at her. When she entered the room calling, ‘Mother’, she was embraced. When she dressed prettily and ran to show off, saying she wanted to grow up to be like her mother…
What expression had the Marchioness worn then?
She couldn’t remember.
An empty corridor.
Somewhere dark, quiet, unfamiliar — Megara stopped walking. The focus faded from her eyes.
❖ ❖ ❖
“It was entertaining enough, wasn’t it?”
Nerys Truydd whispered to her husband while glancing sideways at Natasha being escorted away by a man in royal livery.
Nerys recognized his face — one of Camille’s direct subordinates. No doubt he’d been moving about the banquet hall in disguise.
Cledwyn Maindulante chuckled.
“Of course it was entertaining. You planned it.”
“Don’t worry about ‘her’.”
The two were locked in each other’s arms in the darkest corner of the hall. To any onlooker, their posture would have been scandalous — enough to be condemned as shameless and vulgar.
But Cledwyn had never cared about gossip; he was the kind of man who would rather break a finger that pointed at him. And Nerys was long accustomed to being scorned by society. As he held her close, she gently cupped his cheek.
‘Her’ referred to the former Grand Duchess. They avoided saying it aloud, but both understood.
The former Grand Duchess had been the illegitimate child of the late Marquis Tipian. Her existence had been hidden until political necessity brought her forth — plucked from the dirt like discarded trash.
She had already endured enough hardship, yet if her birth had been exposed, she would have suffered the same insults hurled at Megara. And her son, Cledwyn, would have been stripped of his title, the vultures of nobility claiming ancient ties to the ducal line.
Cledwyn kissed Nerys’s cheek softly.
“I don’t care.”
She knew he truly didn’t, but Nerys refused to leave even the slightest chance of pain uncrushed. She wanted to destroy every possible thing that could ever make him suffer.
“Yes. If ‘she’ had come to these parties, she would’ve heard the same words. So many fools still believe that their worth depends on whether their parents were properly wedded before a temple god. But what does that mean? ‘She’ simply lived — she tried her best. That’s all.”
She had exploited the nobles’ way of thinking because it was convenient, not because she agreed with it.
“…Right.”
Cledwyn’s smile gleamed like a jewel. So beautiful, so noble. Nerys buried her face in his chest and closed her eyes.
Voices from another life came vividly to mind.
– “Do you understand? When someone smells like that, nobles can’t help but feel uncomfortable.”
– “Just being in the same class as you is an insult to some of us.”
– “Is there anything more vulgar than you, Nerys?”
– “Say it — that you’re sorry for being alive. No? Then die.”
The children’s taunting eyes, the whispered laughter, the scattered books thrown to the floor, the silence after unanswered questions.
And that coffin on the frozen lake.
All those forms of cruelty one person could inflict upon another.
“Your Highness the Crown Princess, you shouldn’t eavesdrop on another woman’s bedchamber.”
“Unlike Your Grace, I’m only a mistress… Won’t you even grant me that single warmth? A night in the Crown Prince’s arms is all I have for comfort…”
Whenever Nerys angered Megara, Abelus always found out soon after. She might have called herself a mere mistress, but Megara had wielded more power than most Crown Princesses in history.
The true Crown Princess had been humiliated, driven barefoot into the snowy gardens, locked overnight in the stables — such cruelties had been commonplace.
‘I’m not happy.’
Even seeing Megara Lykeandros humiliated and fleeing before everyone’s eyes wasn’t enough to extinguish the shadow in Nerys’s heart.
Holding her husband tightly, she thought wistfully that her desires might be too greedy.
Yes… this wasn’t the end.
Natasha would simply face the annulment of her royal engagement and live on. Many houses still needed the Grünehals Duchy’s favor; some wouldn’t even require her to bear heirs.
But Megara — she would be exiled from high society. No matter who needed the Lykeandros family’s support, none would admit a commoner into their home.
And Megara, who always needed to be the best, would never endure that.
If she couldn’t regain her place through birth, then only one path remained before her.
The final piece of the puzzle was about to fall into place.