In the Capital

Marriage for Luna was a choice to escape Scarl.

The man who would become her husband was someone she had only seen once before the wedding.

If it weren’t for the tuition Flare’s future husband promised, she wouldn’t have married him.

And it was only on the day of the wedding that she found out the promised money was Scarl’s wedding gift.

Why was her luck with men so terrible?

Was she never going to escape Scarl’s grasp?

“Bastards…”

As soon as the ceremony ended, she was dragged to the Bernatore mansion’s tower, where she despaired of her life.

The day after being captured by strange people, she was shocked and wept at the news of her husband’s death.

Was her life just going to keep getting more twisted?

Even if he was the same kind of trash as Scarl, a husband was still a husband.

As a widow, she went to her in-law’s house, which had turned from a festive occasion to a house of mourning.

‘This is the only place that will accept me now.’

But she was kicked out.

The husband’s family, who had blessed her at this time yesterday, were now cursing her, pointing fingers, and throwing stones, calling her impure.

Everything was confusing.

“You killed my baby!”

“She’s a man-eating monster!”

“She latched onto that trashy lord for money!”

“Don’t even make eye contact. You’ll catch bad luck!”

“It was all, all Scarl’s doing!!!”

It was Scarl’s people who saved her from that.

That day, she was pelted with stones and curses by her husband’s family and the villagers, who had promised to treat her like family.

She despaired once more as she put on the short dress prepared by the Head Maid of the Bernatore mansion.

The touch that stroked her cheek with a subtly stiff face, as if pitying her.

At the time, she thought it was just a whim or a provocation.

Because the words that followed were spoken with the same arrogant expression as always.

-Then stab me. Or become mine.-

How much more miserable was he going to make her next…?

Unable to stab him, she became his maid.

She was depressed when she first wore the maid outfit.

It felt like she had truly become his toy.

She thought she would slowly break down, like a puppet in a puppet show, being played with and pointed at.

-Didn’t I tell you to call me Scarl-nim until you have the courage to kill me? Does the master’s word mean nothing to you, maid?-

Scarl summoned her to his bedchamber the day Flare arrived.

‘Flare can’t find out.’

With that one thought, she obediently followed, but she snapped to her senses at the sight of her shocked sister.

‘At this rate, I’ll only be played by Scarl forever.’

With that resolve, she took out the black dagger she had hidden deep in the closet and gripped it in her hand.

The man she was waiting for didn’t come right away.

He came in late, caressing her body with the ease of a victor, pitying her.

‘What now…!’

She managed to hide the dagger, but her first assassination attempt failed.

Her first kiss was stolen as her hands were held captive.

‘Do you think I’ll just let this happen?!’

She resisted by biting his tongue.

‘Kill me! Just kill me like this!’

She sensed from Scarl’s furious descending hand.

‘If I get hit by that, I could die.’

I’m sorry. Flare. I failed—

-I’ve lost interest. Get out, Luna.-

Those words were even more miserable.

She had come to kill him with all her resolve, but that meant he had enough leeway to spare her life.

Her hair turned white, and she hated everything in the world.

‘I wish my breath would just stop like this.’

At that moment, a repulsive hand climbed up her thigh.

All she could see were Scarl’s greedy eyes.

‘Do you think I’ll let you have your way?!’

She resisted and ran away.

As expected, it was all Scarl’s plan.

The next day, he was suddenly going to the capital.

He told her to tell him if she wanted to go to Flare’s side.

‘What an excuse.’

She had heard of it herself.

The imperial capital was said to have the most beautiful women in the world.

If it was Scarl, who was crazy about women, she thought it was definitely possible.

‘Even including me and my sister in the reason is so pathetic.’

She had never heard of a noble selling their territory to the imperial bank and then deciding to go to the capital.

‘You’re really hopeless.’

Even if he didn’t call her at night, Scarl was still Scarl.

Then a week passed.

“I’m Kasha from the imperial bank. I’ve come to see Baron Scarl Bernatore.”

“This way.”

What she saw when she couldn’t stand Scarl’s tyranny and went inside was Kasha’s shocking sight of trying to lick his shoes.

The female banker, Kasha, came out a completely different person from when she entered Scarl’s office.

‘You’re still a piece of trash, Scarl.’

The smile she saw when she said she would follow him was as disgusting as insects crawling on her body.

Another week passed.

Now, whenever she saw the black dagger in his arms, she wanted to take it.

The new mansion they arrived at…

-Aren’t stupid territory people sometimes helpful?-

Even if they threw stones at her, this was not something a noble should do.

‘Don’t treat you and me the same.’

And she received the dagger.

‘To give me another chance to kill you. I’ll do as you wish.’

He couldn’t shake his habits even after coming to the capital.

From the first day, he tried to lay a hand on the maids, so she stopped him.

‘Be careful. This is the owner of the mansion.’

She hoped her gaze was well conveyed.

But the reaction she heard from behind was cold.

“Just because she’s got a pretty face, she must have seduced a noble and come up here.”

“She needs to know her place. Acting like a wife.”

“I mean, at best, it’s just a fling.”

‘…?’

She couldn’t believe her ears.

She was the one who had been saved from the clutches of the villain, the trash Scarl.

The oldest maid approached and stood in front of her.

Still, there was someone who had some sense.

She must be trying to greet her on behalf of everyone.

“Please take this. Head Maid.”

“And this too.”

What she was given was not a greeting of gratitude, but work.

“Okay. I’ll help…”

“Oh, right! There’s this too!”

Even she, who had just come to the capital and didn’t know anything, could tell.

This was bullying.

‘Bernatore and the capital are no different.

…Now, like the gossip, Scarl doesn’t look for her either.

‘Snap out of it. You never wanted the attention of such trash, did you?’

“Head Maid. The master is calling for you in his office.”

A call after a long time.

“I understand.”

Scarl, who used to look at her first when she entered his office, was now just looking down at his documents.

‘…Has he really lost interest in me now?’

She remembered the fates of the maids who were in similar situations to her, which she had heard countless times.

-Leave the mansion.-

‘…You bastard.There was no need to hear any more gossip.

She would stab him today, and she would die too.

That day when everything collapsed.

The moment Scarl suddenly collapsed in the tower overlapped with the way he had just collapsed.

‘…Is it going back to the way it was before?’

She dragged the collapsed Scarl and managed to get him onto the bed.

The bloodstains on his left upper garment were the result of her actions.

The shoulder visible through the hole had no trace of the dagger’s sharp blade having gone in and out.

She recalled Scarl’s appearance, trying to flinch away but stopping.

‘Is he trying to atone, or what?’

What’s more, he had prevented her sister from being expelled from school these past few days.

‘If that was the case, you could have told me.’

She sat down next to him and lifted his bangs.

With his eyes closed, even his face, which had looked so fierce, looked ordinary.

‘Just a little.’

She raised her hand and gently touched his forehead.

He frowned and startled, but she traced her fingertip down his cheek as his face turned back.

Just as she had changed, this man had changed a lot too.

He occasionally showed a nervous and rough side like before, but considering the past, it was a good level.

She picked up the bloodied dagger lying on the floor and pricked her fingertip.

“Ouch!”

It hurt to have blood seeping out like this in droplets.

Scarl had been stabbed in the shoulder, but he didn’t even lift a finger, unlike how he treated others.

“You’re not an idiot.”

She raised the blade of the dagger and brought it over his neck as he lay there.

‘If I drop it like this…’

She asked him the question she had been wondering about all this time, to his peaceful expression.

“Didn’t you hate being called by your name the most?”

Scarl Bernatore was a man who preferred to be called lord, Baron Bernatore, or master.

“Why did you give me the dagger?”

Unlike someone from the Hero’s bloodline, he was more sensitive than anyone to his own safety.

Yet he didn’t resist at all when he was just stabbed.

“Why did you give me the gifts?”

The first time he spent money on her was at the wedding.

There was Flare’s tuition, but the expensive clothes and accessories he had bought one by one now filled the closet and display case and still overflowed.

“…Why don’t you hold me?”

Now he only pretends to flirt even in front of others.

She knew from what the neighborhood women had told her before she got married.

‘Men want the woman they love to carry their seed.’

So at first, he would become a beast, not a husband, day and night.

‘…You always touch me and then stop.’

She put away the dagger.

“…Scarl-nim. Please don’t change like this.”

His mind was hazy.

His vision was blurry.

Something pleasant that had been stroking his cheek and forehead gently lowered his eyelids.

The loud tinnitus in his ears only conveyed a mumbling sound, like a sound heard from the deep sea.

‘What?’

Before he could even identify who it was, he fell asleep again.

He jumped up and looked for Luna.

The next thing he did was stroke his neck.

‘Something felt eerie…’

He breathed a sigh of relief at the smooth skin without a single knife mark.

The clean bedroom seemed to be asking what had happened last night.

‘She cleaned everything up and left.’

The aftermath of being stabbed in the shoulder remained, and he stood in front of the mirror with a staggering body.

His bloodied upper garment had also been changed into pajamas.

Did Luna do this too?