Chapter 1

I hid the last gold coin in the bottom pocket of my bag and gave it a good pat, feeling good about it. I would turn 25 the next morning, old enough to be released from the palace and become a free citizen.

The medicine furnace was still gurgling from the heat, with white, bitter smoke wafting in the air outside the crown princess' private quarters.

I picked up a porcelain cup filled with the herbal concoction and entered the bedchambers of the crown princess, Maxine Somerset.

She was lying on her bed and coughing violently. Her pale face had a smear of red caused by all the coughing.

I approached her and handed the cup to her. "It's time for your medicine, Your Highness."

Maxine did not take the bowl from me but instead gripped me hard on the wrist. Her grip was so strong that it hurt me in the bones, but she did not look at me. She was looking over my shoulder and staring into the air while muttering a name.

"Leo… Leo, is it cold where you are?"

I allowed her to grip my wrist as I looked stoically.

Leo. Leopold March.

He was a political hostage married off to a faraway kingdom and Maxine's lost love. She had never forgotten him.

I remained silent, but I moved my arm and forcefully pulled it away from her grip. After that, I placed the medicine on a redwood table by her bed. "The medicine is getting cold, Your Highness."

Maxine snapped out of her reverie and glanced at me. The distant aloofness in her eyes slowly returned as she picked up her bowl and finished the medicine in one gulp.

"The royal physician has informed me that I'm almost cleared of the poison residue in my body." She wiped her lips with a handkerchief. "You did well."

I lowered my head and replied, "Thank you, Your Highness."

Of course, I did well. I had been testing every poison I could find in this world for the past five years just to concoct the antidote to neutralize the hex on Leopold.

However, I was not a saint with a big heart. I was just a venal, common man who loved money.

My name was Jasper Hoard. I gave myself the name because I loved money and wanted to one day be the treasurer of my personal hoard of gold.

I was originally the Earl Marshal's illegitimate son.

To salvage the reputation of the Earl Marshal, his wife and lady of the House refused to acknowledge the existence of my mother and me.

When I was ten, my mother became seriously ill. I knelt in the muddy puddle in front of the Earl Marshal's house, begging for help until my knees bled from kneeling. However, all I received was a cold voice from the footman.

"If you don't have the money for medicine, then you deserve to die. Don't dirty the doorsteps of the honorable Earl Marshal."

I had already turned purple from shivering in the cold, and by the time I returned to the dilapidated church, my mother had stopped breathing. When she died, she was still clutching the prescription I had begged from others.

That was when I understood something. If I did not have money, all I had waiting for me was death. Without money, my father would pretend my mother and I never existed, and allow his wife to drive us to death.

In this world, money was the only thing that would never betray me.

I wrapped my mother in a straw mat and buried her before I sold myself to the Palace.

On the first day I entered the palace, I picked up a piece of silver on the ground greedily and did not notice where I was going. I knocked into the Crown Princess Maxine's carriage steps.

Her footman screamed for the guards to apprehend the assassin, and I was pressed to the ground. Maxine coughed while opening the carriage blinds. She was very beautiful and had an icy demeanor, but she was also weak in health and was constantly resting in bed.

"Take him back to my private quarters. I'll use him as a manservant."

That was how I started working for the crown princess.

Maxine was constantly on medication, and her body was extremely weak. The most life-threatening moment was when she had a high fever that refused to subside, and there was nothing left for the royal physician to do.

To ensure my job security, I took care of her for three days and three nights without sleeping a wink, and I managed to keep her alive, albeit barely.

When she woke up, she leaned on my shoulder weakly and made me a promise in a soft voice, "You saved my life. I promise to protect you for the rest of yours."

I believed her then, thinking that I had met my fairy godmother as it was told in the storybooks, but it was all just a pipe dream.