Chapter 2

The moat's water was bone-chillingly cold, but I didn't fight it. I simply allowed myself to sink into the depths.

I was almost home. I wondered what kind of pie Mom and Dad had bought this year.

Amid the engulfing darkness, someone seized my wrist, forcibly pulling me back out of the large body of water. "Kieran, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

I peeled my eyes open and found Esmeralda, who had been calm and composed just moments ago, drenched from head to toe. Her complexion was pallid, and she kept coughing as she glared at me with bloodshot eyes. "Do you think your fake suicide attempt can erase the harm you caused to Caelum?"

I watched calmly as she fumed and responded apathetically, "In that case, let me die. Isn't that exactly what you want?"

Caught off guard, her eyes blazed with anger. "Caelum just returned. I don't want you to cause him any more trouble."

Looking at her red-rimmed eyes, I was suddenly reminded of the past.

When the House of St. Clair was first condemned, Esmeralda had endured all manner of insults from everyone around her. She was sickly and prone to overthinking. Whenever she felt aggrieved, she never uttered a single word, but the corners of her eyes would turn bright red. I was the only one who could calm her down.

What right did she have to feel aggrieved now? For the last four years, she was the one who constantly ordered the handmaidens and page boys to torment me.

It seemed I wouldn't be able to end my life here. So, I picked up my belongings from the ground and prepared to head home.

When Esmeralda noticed I was walking home, she grabbed my wrist and refused to let go, trailing close behind me. "You've always been full of schemes. If I don't keep an eye on you, who knows what kind of stunt you'll pull on your way home? Once I hand you over to Calista, I'll never trouble myself with you again."

I stopped in my tracks. No one in this world wished for my death more passionately than my sister. Consequently, when I'd been banished from the palace, I hadn't even considered returning to Talbot Manor.

Now that I thought about it, I would have a better chance to end my life when I returned to Talbot Manor.

As soon as I crossed Talbot Manor's gates, I noticed that all the attendants were urgently cleaning Caelum's room, and the courtyard was filled with oleanders, Caelum's favorite flowers.

Calista was beaming when she emerged with a gift box. However, the moment she saw me, all the joy left her face. "How dare you show your face here! I thought you'd already died in the palace."

I stood rooted to the spot. I suddenly recalled that my older sister hadn't always been like this.

Calista and I had lost our parents when we were young. We only had each other to rely on, and we were each other's only remaining kin.

The Talbots were all skilled in medicine. Calista had set her heart on entering the palace and becoming the Chief Royal Female Physician of the Royal Medical Household. Hence, I ventured into the mountains to forage for rare herbs to earn enough money for her journey to the capital.

Rain made the slopes dangerously slick. While attempting to harvest a thousand-year Reishi mushroom, I lost my footing and broke my leg. That was the first time I'd ever seen Calista, who was usually soft-spoken, lose her temper.

She had sprinted so fast that she'd lost one of her shoes. She threw her arms around me in tears and told me she'd rather not go to the capital than lose me. She said that without me, she would have no home, and everything she had would lose all meaning.

However, after we took Caelum in, I was no longer the only younger brother in Calista's heart.

Caelum had a weak constitution, so Calista took the pills I'd spent years painstakingly refining and fed them to him. I'd been saving them to sell for money to buy the proper attire she'd need to enter the palace. Caelum, however, found them distasteful and secretly spat them out.

When I caught him, I merely chided him. Yet, Calista faulted me for being materialistic. "Kieran, do you really think those pills of yours are more important than Caelum's life?"

Later on, after Caelum ran away, Calista broke my fingers and removed me from the family tree. "A malicious person like you isn't worthy of learning our family's medical skills. From now on, you're no longer my brother!"

From then on, the hands I'd trained for more than a decade could no longer wield acupuncture needles. Even when I did menial labor in the abandoned palace, I was slower than everyone else and had to endure endless contempt and scorn.

Esmeralda looked a little odd as she hesitated for a moment before saying, "Now that Caelum has returned, Her Majesty has dismissed all her male consorts. It seems he couldn't accept it. He tried to take his own life twice before my very eyes…"

Calista frowned. "He's merely causing a scene. How could you be fooled by him, Your Grace? I know Kieran the best. Someone like him would never take his own life."

After hearing that, Esmeralda's expression softened. She shook her head and plastered a self-deprecating smile on her face, seemingly regretting how she'd lost her composure in front of me earlier.

Calista pointed at the gift box in her hand and looked at me with contempt. "I'm going to the palace to deliver this to Caelum. I don't have time to deal with you. By the time I get back tonight, you had better have already left—"

Before she could finish speaking, I plucked an oleander leaf from the plant beside me and popped it into my mouth.

Calista's expression changed drastically in an instant.