The next morning, the first thing Elena felt upon waking was a violent throbbing in her head—a lingering reminder of her skull colliding with the concrete wall yesterday.
She turned her head from side to side.
Her roommates were already awake, making their beds and getting into their maid uniforms, moving about normally as if nothing extraordinary had occurred last night.
“A dream?” Elena murmured under her breath.
Her voice was raspy, barely a whisper.
She tried to piece together last night’s events.
The phantom image of Alexander sitting on the edge of her bed, the scent of his masculine cologne mingling with the aroma of cinnamon, and his husky whisper telling her that her gaze of hatred was beautiful.
It had all felt so visceral.
Yet, looking at the medicine bottles on the table and the mundane, quiet room, Elena began to question her own sanity.
Perhaps her injured brain had merely conjured a hallucination as an escape from the agonizing pain.
However, as she stood up with trembling limbs to change her clothes, she passed a cracked mirror in the corner of the room.
She froze.
Gently, she tugged down the collar of her worn-out undergarment.
There, right at the intersection of her neck and her collarbone, was a bruised mark.
It was deep red, almost purple, forming the distinct shape of a grip from slender yet incredibly strong and commanding fingers.
Elena touched it.
Strangely, the mark didn’t hurt at all.
It stood in stark contrast to the purplish-blue bruises on her abdomen from Clementine’s kicks or the raw tears on her knees.
This red mark felt warm, leaving behind a faint, eerie sensation–as though the ghost of someone’s fingers still lingered on her skin.
Elena’s heart hammered wildly.
It wasn’t a dream.
But how was that even possible?
There were no footprints, no lingering scent, and no eyewitnesses.
Alexander truly was like a demon capable of vanishing into the shadows.
A few hours later, Elena was forced out of her room despite her body shivering from a mild fever.
Bad news traveled faster than her recovery.
She had been demoted to a laundry maid in the back storehouse–the lowest, most grueling position, and the one that kept her furthest from the eyes of the world.
As she walked across the grand terrace toward the laundry area, a sight met her eyes that pierced her heart.
There, beneath a luxurious silk parasol, the family of Grand Duke Dracox was enjoying their morning tea.
Alexander was there, seated right next to Clementine.
The man looked utterly breathtaking in the crisp white shirt, sans jacket–that he had used to spark the slander the night before.
He let out a soft chuckle, tossing out a joke that made Clementine blush furiously and caused the Grand Duke to nod in satisfaction.
His expression was completely relaxed, filled with a carefree nonchalance, as if he were a holy light that had never once brushed against the darkness.
Elena stood in the distance, freezing in place with a pile of soiled linens in her arms.
She stared at Alexander, desperately hoping to find a shred of guilt or at least a flicker of recognition in those sea-blue eyes.
Yet, when Alexander’s gaze accidentally brushed past her direction, his eyes swept right over her without pausing.
To him, Elena was nothing more than a speck of dust ruining the view.
*’He lied last night.
He lied to everyone, and now he’s acting like a saint,’* Elena thought bitterly.
The flush that usually appeared on Elena’s plump cheeks when she worked beneath the sun had vanished.
Her face was deathly pale, resembling a corpse forced to walk.
Her blood circulation felt erratic; one moment she felt so freezing cold that her bones ached, and the next, her head felt as though it were boiling.
“Look who’s here!
The Red Pig who craves affection!”
Daisy’s shrill voice welcomed Elena to the back laundry area.
There, a dozen maids were busy scrubbing large bedsheets over wooden boards.
The moment Elena stepped inside, the atmosphere instantly shifted into a bullying arena.
“How dare you show your face here after trying to seduce His Highness,” Emily chimed in, tossing a bucket of dirty, soapy water right at Elena’s feet.
“I didn’t do that…
it was all a setup,” Elena whispered, attempting to walk toward her designated washing tub.
“A setup, you say?
His Highness said so himself!
Do you think His Highness would lie for a disgusting maid like you?” Daisy stepped closer, her face distorted with hatred.
“You’re trash, Elena.
You’ve brought shame upon every maid in this mansion.
Because of you, Lady Clementine is suspicious of all of us!”
To them, the truth did not matter.
What mattered was having an object to vent their frustration and jealousy upon.
They believed Alexander’s words implicitly because Alexander was the ultimate authority.
If the Crown Prince claimed Elena had seduced him, then Elena was a seductress.
Elena did not offer another reply.
She began to wash the heavy pile of fabrics.
Her head, still wrapped in bandages, throbbed violently.
Cold sweat poured down, dampening the cloth beneath.
“Don’t just stand there!
Do these as well!” a male servant barked, throwing a crushing weight of knight uniforms toward her.
Elena stumbled.
Her already broken body was being pushed far past its limits.
The steam rising from the hot water in the tub blurred her vision even further.
The wound on her head began to sting excruciatingly as the harsh soapy water started to seep underneath her bandages.
“Come on, Elena!
They say you love being held in someone’s lap?
How about you sit in this water tub’s lap instead?” Daisy laughed out loud, followed closely by the others.
Suddenly, a powerful shove slammed into Elena’s back.
“Aaaaa!”
Elena’s heavy frame pitched forward, plunging directly into the massive washing tub filled with scalding water and soap suds.
The tub was deep enough to submerge half her body.
Her head struck the wooden rim of the tub before she went completely under.
“Ahahaha!” everyone shouted in laughter.
The stinging soapy water immediately pierced her eyes and flooded into the open wound on her head.
The pain was so sharp that Elena lost the ability to scream.
She tried to reach for the edge of the tub, but the hands of the other maids pinned her shoulders down instead.
“Take that!
Let’s wash every inch of this filthy, jinxed body clean!” Emily shrieked amidst the raucous laughter of the remaining servants.
Beneath the murky, hot water, Elena felt her world fading into darkness.
The oxygen in her lungs depleted rapidly.
Fleeting images of her mother and father’s faces flashed before her eyes.
She felt tired.
So incredibly tired.
Perhaps, if she drowned here, her suffering would finally end.
There would be no more of Clementine’s whips, no more disgusting stares from men, and no more of Alexander’s twisted games.
Her consciousness began to wane.
Her eyes, open beneath the water, could only discern blurry shapes on the surface.
Yet, just before everything went pitch black, Elena felt something.
Someone tore through the crowd of servants.
The laughter stopped abruptly.
A pair of immensely powerful arms plunged into the water, wrapping securely around Elena’s body, and pulled her upward with a single, forceful yank.
Elena coughed violently, retching up soapy water from her lungs.
Her head lolled weakly against someone’s broad chest.
In the very last thread of her fading consciousness, right before her eyes closed entirely, Elena caught a scent she recognized all too well.
A masculine perfume–cold, yet burning.
The exact same scent as the red mark on her neck.