Chapter2

I clutched the chocolate box to my chest. tears dropped straight onto the back of my hand.

"I..." I sniffled, my voice fracturing beyond repair. "Eighteen years. Down in the Lower City, getting tossed half a moldy loaf of bread would earn me a brutal beating. I've never seen anything so beautiful..."

Carmen froze. Vivian did, too.

I kept sobbing, pulling out every acting trick I had honed in the slums. "Could I... could I wait until midnight tomorrow, for my birthday, to eat them? I want to make a wish to the gods upon them. That will guarantee me a lifetime of good luck, won't it?..."

I hunched my shoulders, curling myself into a pitiful little ball.

Weiss let out a low chuckle in my mind. 【Beautifully played, kid.】

Having survived the slums for eighteen years, I knew exactly what kind of look made people hesitate to strike.

A pained, sympathetic smile surfaced on Vivian's face, and she reached out to pull me close. "Silly child, you're a Marquis's daughter now. You'll have every wonderful thing in the world from now on. These are just chocolates. Come on, have a taste..."

"She's right, sister." Carmen pushed the box closer to me. "Just try one for now. You can save the rest for tomorrow."

I jerked back violently, my voice spiking in pitch. "I said I'll eat them tomorrow! Why are you forcing me to eat them right now?!"

Carmen's hand froze in midair, her smile stiffening for a fraction of a second.

Vivian quickly tried to smooth things over. "Jessica, your sister is only trying to be nice..."

"Nice?" I glared at her, my eyes entirely red. "It's just a box of chocolates. What difference does it make if I eat them today or tomorrow? The way you're all pressuring me to swallow them right this second reminds me exactly of those crooked merchants in the slums who used to mix sand into their bread."

The room plunged into a dead silence.

Carmen and Vivian exchanged a quick glance. Grayson stood off to the side, a smile still resting on his lips, but all warmth had vanished from his eyes.

Vivian was the first to recover. She reached out, attempting to embrace me. "What nonsense are you saying? How could your mother ever hurt you..."

I swatted her hand away, turned on my heel, and sprinted into the bedroom. "I said tomorrow! Leave me alone before I change my mind!"

The door slammed shut with a loud bang, and I shoved the deadbolt into place.

Silence hung outside the door for two or three seconds, followed by the sound of footsteps fading down the hall.

I slid down against the wooden door panel and crouched there, clutching the box of chocolates. My heart pounded like a war drum in my ears.

"Weiss," I whispered, "is there really no other way around this?"

【None.】 Her voice dropped, growing heavy. 【Once you touch anything made by an Abyssal Witch, there's no turning back. The only thing you can do is make sure it doesn't take effect on you.】

I took a few deep breaths to steady myself, stood up, and placed the box on the desk. I unwrapped one of the pieces.

The gold foil peeled away, revealing a smooth, brown chocolate. It smelled incredibly sweet, indistinguishable from a perfectly normal piece of candy.

I unwrapped all three and swapped the real things with cheap, ordinary chocolates I had bought from a street vendor. I folded the gold foils back into their original perfect creases and set the box on the nightstand.

Once I finished, I collapsed into a chair, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

Weiss fell silent, but every word she had spoken remained seared into my brain: my mother’s death, the miasma island, the billions in magical assets, the stolen token necklace, and the fiancé who intended to gift-wrap my body for another woman.

If I destroyed them, they would notice immediately and simply brew another batch. I might not be lucky enough to dodge the trap a second time.

If I kept them but didn't eat them, I wouldn't survive my "performance" tomorrow night.

The only way out was to find the someone I trusted completely, someone who was willing to take that deadly risk.

Only one face surfaced in my mind.

I stood up and placed the decoy box in the most conspicuous spot on the table. Then, I grabbed a dark coat, shoved the three real chocolates deep into the inner pocket, and tightly secured the drawstring.

I took a deep breath. I pulled the door open. Scooping up the hem of my dress, I crept down the stairs, carefully stepping only on the edges of the floorboards that didn't creak, and slipped out through a ruined dog-hole at the back of the estate.

The frigid night wind made me violently shiver. Clutching the inner pocket of my coat, I broke into a desperate sprint toward the slums.