Chapter 5

In the weeks that followed, Lucian’s cruelty continued to escalate.

One evening, I opened the lunch prepared by the manor staff and found the box filled with silver tacks. Dead spiders appeared in my moisturizer and toothpaste. Someone burned black holes through the gowns in my wardrobe with cigarettes.

Silver slowed a vampire’s healing.

The first time I opened the lunch box, I was unprepared. A tack pierced my fingertip, and blood fell onto the table. The burning pain remained for hours.

When I looked up, I met Lucian’s vicious smile.

From several rows away, he silently mouthed, Tessa, you deserve it.

He expected me to cry.

Perhaps he also expected me to run to Mr. and Mrs. Ashcroft and complain. Then he could prove to everyone that I was exactly what he had always claimed: a calculating girl who used her position as their adopted daughter to demand attention.

Instead, I put on gloves and emptied the silver tacks into the trash.

When I found spiders in my skincare products, I asked a maid to replace them. I did not throw a tantrum over the ruined gowns. I folded each one, recorded when I had discovered the damage, and saved photographs of every burn.

My composure only made Lucian more frustrated.

He stared at me, his voice forced through clenched teeth.

“I’d like to see how long you can keep pretending.”

I did not answer.

In this life, I had to endure Lucian’s malice, but I also had access to every resource the Ashcroft family could provide.

I no longer had to attend school in the evening and spend the rest of the night cleaning the entire building for my adoptive mother.

Maids handled my daily needs. A driver took me wherever I needed to go. I never had to worry about fortified blood, study materials, or private lessons.

The only thing I had to do was learn.

In my previous life, buying one additional workbook meant saving small amounts from my food allowance for weeks. Even after I had collected enough, I had to hide the money in several different places so Mr. Miller could not find it and spend it on cheap liquor and underground gambling.

Since I had entered this family, I intended to turn every resource available to me into an ability no one could take away.

Meanwhile, all the hardship I had endured in my previous life had fallen to Sylvia.

She began sleeping through class.

The Millers required her to help Mrs. Miller clean the school every evening. By the time they finished the last classroom, dawn was usually close. Sylvia could only rest briefly after returning home before she had to wake and go back to Night Academy.

Gradually, she stopped completing her assignments.

Large sections of her examination papers remained blank.

I had once lived exactly the same way.

I used black coffee to stay awake. When exhaustion became so overwhelming that I could no longer keep my eyes open, I pressed the point of a compass into my palm.

The pain bought me several minutes of clarity.

I used those minutes to memorize one more problem.

Sylvia had spent her previous life as a privileged young lady. She had never experienced such hardship and had never developed the endurance required to keep going when there seemed to be no hope.

More importantly, she did not care about her education.

In her mind, spending years fighting for admission to the best university was far less valuable than becoming the mate of the Ashcroft heir.

Once she had Lucian, she would regain everything the pureblood family had once given her.

So she devoted all her energy to making Lucian love her.

During mathematics, she wrote a diary intended for him to read.

During dance rehearsals, she climbed over the school wall, got into Lucian’s car, and went with him to the countryside to watch the stars.

It was not until the Founders’ Night performance approached that Sylvia discovered she had been removed from the program.

That evening, she sat alone outside the rehearsal studio.

One look was enough to tell me she had spent a long time preparing the scene.

Her face was tilted slightly upward. Tears filled her eyes but refused to fall, as though held back by pride. Her black hair lay across her shoulders, while the corridor lights illuminated the pale curve of her face.

As expected, Lucian noticed her when he passed.

“What happened?”

At the sound of his voice, the tears she had been holding back finally spilled over.

Sylvia threw herself into his arms and began to sob.

“Lucian, I can’t perform at Founders’ Night. Every other girl in the class is allowed onstage. Tessa only excluded me.”

Lucian already despised me. His expression darkened immediately.

“Why?”

Sylvia bit her lip as if desperately trying to stop crying, but her voice continued to break.

“She said my mother is only a school cleaner and my father is a low-ranking vampire who repairs the buildings and patrols the grounds. She said I can’t even afford the eight-hundred-dollar costume, so I have no right to stand on the same stage as students from pureblood families.”

Lucian’s gaze grew colder.

He looked down at the trembling girl in his arms, but his voice remained gentle.

“It’s only a costume. I’ll buy it for you.”

Sylvia immediately shook her head.

“No. It costs eight hundred dollars. I can’t accept such an expensive gift from you.”

Her refusal was firm, as if poverty itself could not weaken her dignity.

Lucian looked even more distressed.

“How dare Tessa treat you that way?”

Still crying, Sylvia shook her head again.

“She is your sister, and she is the Ashcrofts’ only adopted daughter. Your family donated several buildings to Night Academy, and Mr. Ashcroft is an honorary trustee. Even if the teachers know she’s bullying me, what can they possibly do?”

Sylvia failed to notice the reporter passing behind her.

He had come to Night Academy for a scheduled feature. The moment he heard the word bullying, he stopped and turned toward them like a shark catching the scent of blood.

“Wait. What bullying are you talking about?”