Chapter 01 The Wife and the Mistress (Part I)

If despair had a scent, it would be sweat, piss, and damp, stale air.

If hope had a face, it would look like stone walls lit by moonlight seeping in from a single rectangular frame with thick iron bars a meter above one’s head.

And if death made a sound, it’d be a sharp, echoing sound of heels clacking along the dirty stone floor at a relaxed pace.

Sylvia despised all three. She sat on the floor, hugging herself, with a moldy patch of straw between her and the grimy stones.

Goosebumps had risen all over her skin from the freezing winter night and the incessant blowing of the wind through the small window. The dress she wore provided some warmth due to its many layers, but it was hardly enough to stave off the cold.

She’d lost count of how long she had been detained. No one came to visit her, and the guards on patrol simply passed her by.

Cold, starved, and humiliated—Sylvia believed herself to have reached a new low. Despite that, she held a sliver of hope that her husband, Duke Alec of House Winston, would come for her soon.

He ordered her incarceration out of a fit of anger, but surely, he’d allow her to defend herself. After all, being accused of infidelity, especially without evidence, wouldn’t make sense even to a halfwit.

But the small glimmer of hope Sylvia held on to disappeared the moment the echoing stopped, a blinding flame brightened her gaunt face, and a sickly sweet scent violated her lungs.

“Ho-ho-ho.”

The woman laughed haughtily. She waved to the guard accompanying her to stay behind her. She was wearing the dress that Sylvia had ordered custom-made for Lord Marcus’s birthday banquet.

Like a bad omen, the red dress seemed to take on the color of blood. Only, it was Sylvia’s cream-colored dress that had actual blood stains from the scraping of her knees when she was forcibly dragged into the dungeon and thrown in this dinky cell.

Her laughter grated on Sylvia’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard. It ignited heat in her stomach, and the smoke took form in the name of the one person she wanted to meet the least.

“Clementine.”

“Sylvia,” Lady Clementine acknowledged calmly. “It’s nice to see you here. The place suits you. It must feel like home for you, doesn’t it?”

Her words weren’t exactly wrong, even though they were meant to be an insult. Having grown in the slums of the empire, this circumstance was nothing new to her. If anything, it was a villa compared to sleeping in the sewers like a rat.

 “What do you want?’ Sylvia snarled as she glared at her husband’s mistress with cold eyes the color of mashed strawberries.

“My, my, how unladylike. As expected of a beggar. You can dress it up as nicely as you want, but it’s still a beggar at the end of the day. Its manners, its stench—,” she paused to sneer behind her fan, then added, “—it’s all out of place. But that’s not what I hated about you. In fact, it was entertaining watching a street rat act all dignified.”

Lady Clementine snapped her fan closed, one side tapping against her black-gloved palm. Malice danced in her ruby red eyes as well as sadistic pleasure.

“Heh. It’s an honor a lady would descend to the dungeons to talk to a rat.”

Pretty red lips twitched. Less than a second later, her face contorted into a madman’s.

“How dare this worthless woman covet someone else’s place!”

Lady Clementine roared, revealing her true feelings.

“You are no one! A dirty rag picked up from nowhere! You don’t even have a name, yet you dare to take His Grace for yourself!”

Her voice echoed throughout the dungeons. The guard flinched from the sudden projection, likely shocked and confused that the Lady of House Carriere had this side to her, which was different from her public image of being soft-spoken, graceful, and fragile.

Lady Clementine took a moment to catch her breath. Her teeth gnashed from the rage boiling inside her, and those eyes held nothing but contempt towards the prisoner.

It was meant to intimidate her.

Sylvia, who had been around her for a long time and well-aware of the face the lady hid from the public eye, knew exactly what Lady Clementine wanted. She wanted her to beg and cry at her feet to save her.

But Sylvia responded by drawing in a quiet breath and standing tall on her feet. She shivered from the cold, but her eyes were even colder.

It wasn’t she who desired her current position. In fact, if she could only turn back time, she wouldn’t have stayed and allowed herself to be used for the sake of love.

Sylvia might have been complacent, but that didn’t mean she was the only one who sinned.

Her eyes met Lady Clementine’s, making the lady snarl.

“Who do you think you’re looking at with those disgusting eyes? I should have them plu—”

Sylvia smiled.

“Five years ago, His Grace begged at my feet.”

“What are you—”

She began to talk in a manner of someone speaking so desperately.

“Please don’t leave me. Please don’t go. I’ll give you anything if you stay by my side.”

“This crazy—”

She cut off Lady Clementine by lunging towards her. Hands grabbed the rusty iron bars, causing them to rattle.

Lady Clementine instinctively took a step backward, causing her to step on her dress and fall on her bottom. In such a position, she was forced to look up at the woman she hated.

Sylvia stared her down, her smile gone. With a soft but firm voice, she voiced words devoid of any lie.

“His Grace begged me, Lady Clementine. Your beloved duke begged this street rat to stay by his side. Five years ago.”

She released the bars and stepped back, hiding her face once again in the shadows, just a short distance from the pale-yellow light that lit the corridors. Instead, the soft moonlight fell upon her ragged figure.

Then, a chilling laugh left her lips.

It drained the color from Lady Clementine’s face.

It started off low and slow until she was laughing like crazy. Without reserve, without anyone to stop her, and without anyone else to hear her.

By the end of it, her shoulders had loosened. A smile remained etched on her lips, one that didn’t reach her eyes.

Lady Clementine seemed dumbstruck from seeing her act this way, a far cry from her indifference. She hurriedly rose to her feet without any complaints regarding the state of her dress.

“You-You crazy wench!” she shouted while pointing an accusatory finger.

“Well, yes,” Sylvia responded calmly. “Who wouldn’t be? Even a rat would go insane staying by that son of a bitch’s side for five years. I should’ve snapped off his dick and made a run for it. Ah—of course—I would’ve given it to you as a gift, seeing as how you love it so much that you’d sneak into his chambers in the dead of night nearly every night.”

At her words, Lady Clementine blushed. But she lashed out just as quickly.

“Ha! You have no right to accuse me of adultery when you’re no different.”

She smiled, and so did her mocking eyes.

“Do you really think that child in your womb belongs to him?”

-gn_cc-