Chapter 3

Elianna POV:

A dozen iron-tipped truncheons formed a bristling ring around my stone table, their steel studs glinting under the crystal chandeliers.

Standing at the front of the enforcers, Matron Martha Hicks puffed her barrel chest, the flabby jowls of her florid face quivering with vicious delight. Beside her, the treacherous steward cowered like a hyena behind a predator, eyes darting with cowardly spite.

I set my silver teacup down against the stone table with a slow, deliberate clink.

In my mind, cold memories flared—countless freezing nights in the cellar vaults where this vile creature had withheld my crusts of bread and gleefully driven poisonous drake-bone needles beneath my fingernails while I sat mute in the dark.

I looked up at her, my eyes devoid of a single flicker of warmth. "Matron Martha. You break the inner doors and surround your master's daughter with weapons? What, did Concubine Deloris never teach you the penalty for armed insurrection in the inner court?"

Martha rolled her small, piggy eyes toward the vaulted ceiling and let out a grating, mocking bray. "Insurrection? The Eldest Miss must have knocked her wits against the river rocks! This old servant belongs to Lady Deloris! I take commands only from the acting mistress of this castle. A coreless cripple does not have the blood-rank to breathe near me, let alone question my guards!"

She turned to her circle of burly manor enforcers, waving her barbed crop like a scepter. "What are you standing there for? Take this wild animal down! Pin her arms, clamp the iron gag between her jaws, and drag her to the punishment cells before she defiles the Lady's presence any longer!"

The enforcers tightened their ring, boots scraping the stone as two burly men stepped forward with heavy cold-iron chains.

I didn't move an inch from my bench. I merely tilted my head, looking straight past the iron truncheons into Deloris's anxious, calculating eyes.

"I am the sole legitimate daughter of the Stanley Duchy, born of the wedded Lady Celesta," I said, my voice quiet, carrying through the vaulted hall with the weight of ancient law. "By feudal decree, even Concubine Deloris is nothing more than a vassal bound by blood-contract beneath my mother's sacred lineage. If I tell a concubine to kneel, she kneels—let alone a mangy, barking hound wearing a housekeeper's apron."

Deloris's powdered face contorted violently. Being publicly reminded in front of the entire household and armed guards that she had no legal rank as a true Lady struck her deepest, most humiliating sore spot. "Elianna Stanley! Mind your insolent tongue!" she hissed, her knuckles whitening against her gold-embroidered sash.

From the wall, Vivian seized the opportunity to fan the flames, dabbing her dry eyes and whimpering, "Madam, you see how she barks! I offered prayers and lit sulfur incense for her soul, yet she treats us like common gutter trash!"

I clapped my hands in two slow, sarcastic beats. "Bravo, Concubine Vivian. Everyone in this court knows you were plucked from a wandering tavern troupe before crawling into my father's bed. Singing, weeping, and playing the victim are bred into your mongrel marrow. It is a pity Aunt Deloris hasn't mastered half your vulgar tricks."

Both women went deathly pale, their chests heaving in choked humiliation.

Pushed past reason by the insult to her mistress, Martha’s porcine eyes turned bloodshot. "You insolent little bitch!" she snarled, dropping all pretense. Rolling up her thick woolen sleeves, she lunged across the stone table with thick, calloused claws aimed straight for my eyes!

The instant her filthy nails grazed the air before my forehead, my right arm snapped out like an iron vise.

I seized her wrist joint with lethal, surgical precision, drove my thumb into the major nerve cluster beneath the bone, and wrenched downward with brutal, unbroken torque!

CRACK!

The sickening crunch of splintering bone echoed off the high masonry.

Martha’s vicious sneer vanished, replaced by an ear-splitting, pig-like squeal of agony as the fractured bone tore through the meat of her forearm! Her immense weight collapsed like a felled sack of flour, slamming hard into the flagstones at my boots.

The dozen manor enforcers halted in absolute shock, their grips loosening on their truncheons.

Before a single guard could recover from their paralysis, I rose to my feet without breaking a breath. Sadie—who had secured the side passages and slipped silently back through the shadows—stepped smoothly to my side, presenting a clean linen cloth.

I slowly wiped the black grease and sweat from my knuckles, looking down at the writhing heap of blubber.

"Sadie," I said, my tone as tranquil as if ordering breakfast. "Give her twenty slaps across the mouth. Beat her until she remembers whose name is etched on the castle keep."

Cradling her dangling, mangled wrist in the filth, Martha shrieked through foaming lips, "I am Lady Deloris's nurse! I suckled her from the cradle! You dare touch me—"

"Sadie," I murmured. "Begin."

A fierce, righteous flame blazed in Sadie's scarred face. She stepped forward, hoisted Martha up by her thick collar like a slaughtered sow, and drove her open palm across the old woman's cheeks with every ounce of muscle she possessed!

SLAP! SLAP!

Thunderous, bone-jarring cracks ricocheted through the hall. Every strike carried the weight of years of starvation, poisoned needles, and cold cellar beatings. Within seconds, twenty savage blows landed cleanly. Blood, pink saliva, and splintered bone sprayed across the flagstones, followed by five jagged, yellow teeth clattering loudly against the marble.

Sadie released her collar. Martha crumpled into a boneless heap, her face swollen into a grotesque, purple ruin, glassy eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as she choked on her own teeth.

A suffocating, terrified silence fell over the hall.

The dozen manor enforcers clutched their truncheons with shaking hands, stepping backward in sync, completely paralyzed by the cold-blooded brutality. Deloris’s knees trembled so violently that her gold chains rattled against her skirts.

"Elianna! Have you lost your mind?!" Deloris screamed, her regal veneer shattered beyond repair. She turned frantically to the dozen guards. "What are you waiting for?! Cut her down! In the name of the household, execute her!"

Not a single guard moved.

I slowly turned my eyes toward the enforcers. A suffocating, apex-predator aura—the cold, blood-soaked pressure of someone who had climbed out of a charnel pit—washed over every man in the room. The lead guard took one look into my dead, unblinking glare, swallowed hard, and dropped his iron truncheon onto the flagstones with a hollow clatter.

The rest of the enforcers backed away into the corridor shadows, lowering their heads in absolute surrender.

Deloris’s household authority had evaporated into thin air.

I shifted my dead gaze down onto the old steward, who was trembling like a leaf behind the pillar, clutching his robes in terror.

"Steward Hicks," I whispered, every syllable dropping like an icicle. "If Third Sister Kristal and Sixth Sister Beatrice are not kneeling on this floor before the blood on your wife’s face dries, you will take twenty lashes with the drake-hide whip next."

The steward let out a strangled squeak. Without daring to look at Deloris, he hitched up his long tunic, stepped over his groaning wife, and sprinted toward the rear courtyard as fast as his trembling legs could carry him!

Deloris stood paralyzed, clutching her chest as if suffocating on her own venom.

I returned to my seat at the stone table, leaning my cheek against my knuckles in complete, unyielding composure.

Minutes ticked by like dying heartbeats—until slow, haughty giggles echoed down the outer gallery, and Kristal Stanley swept into the courtyard alongside young Beatrice, completely blind to the fresh pool of blood awaiting them.