Chapter 3

"You knew I was coming back, so you found all these frauds to stand against me, didn't you?!" Ivy yelled.

I was standing at my mother's side, a half-shelled pine nut still in my hand, my face carefully arranged into shock and helplessness.

My mother's expression turned to stone. She pulled me behind her.

"Ivy! Have you lost your mind? What do you mean 'coming back,' what 'frauds'? If they're frauds despite sharing my blood, then what does that make you?

"Marigold, take Ivy back to her courtyard. She's not to leave without my say-so. And fetch a physician. I want her head examined properly."

"I won't go! There's nothing wrong with me! Mother, believe me! Please believe me!"

Ivy was hauled off by two matrons, one on each arm, thrashing and fighting the whole way, her hair coming loose.

"Celeste! You'll come to a bad end! Just you wait! I won't let this go! I'm the real heiress! I'm the real—"

There was a lot buried in what Ivy had just screamed. My mother hadn't caught it, but I—a well-read woman in my own right—understood perfectly.

Ivy had been reborn.

Well, wasn't that something. A story about a real heiress and a fake one had just turned into a story about a reborn real heiress running into a transmigrated fake one.

Talk about a plot twist.

…

After a few days locked in her courtyard, Ivy seemed to have learned her lesson.

The day she was let out, she went straight to my mother and dropped to her knees, tears already streaming before she'd said a word.

"Mother. I was wrong."

She sniffled, her shoulders shaking.

"That day... seeing so many sisters all at once, it frightened me so badly.

"I was just... scared. Scared that I'd come home last, that I'd fall short of my sisters in everything, that I'd never earn Mother's love..."

She lifted her tearstained face—a face that shared a good six parts resemblance with my mother's younger self.

"I never knew I could have such a gentle, beautiful mother... that I could live a life without farm work, without feeding chickens and ducks, day after day..."

My mother looked at Ivy's thin, drawn face, listened to her recount her hard years, and her heart softened.

She sighed and bent down to help Ivy to her feet.

"There, there. What's past is past. You're home now—that makes you family.

"Your sisters are all good girls. Spend time with them and you'll see. As for love..."

She reached out and stroked Ivy's hair fondly.

"You're all my daughters. Of course, I love you all."

Ivy leaned into her arms, choking back a sob as she answered.

"Yes, Mother. I understand."

Then, from an angle only I could see, she shot me a look of pure defiance.

…

A few days later, my father returned to the manor.

He surveyed the room full of daughters in their fine dresses and closed his eyes, resigned to his fate.

Everyone in Rosemont already knew the Griffith family's daughters were something special. Nine daughters! Every one of them shared the same blood!

The sage himself had declared it—nine daughters of fate, split from one soul and scattered down to earth. A blessing on the Griffith house.

What was there left for the Marquis to say?

"Well then." My father cleared his throat, his voice carrying. "Now that everyone's home, it's time we held a presentation ball!"

Word spread, and the whole manor burst into motion—tailoring gowns for nine young ladies, commissioning jewelry for nine young ladies, and making sure every piece matched down to the last detail, with not a single girl shorted.

Ivy, meanwhile, had gone strangely quiet these past few days. Aside from greeting our mother each morning, she stayed shut up in her own courtyard.

A quiet child was a child up to something.

In the original story, this was the very ball where Ivy had schemed to catch me in bed with my brother. Once the household discovered us, my reputation would be ruined, and the Marquis and his wife, in their fury, would have thrown me out of the house.

Not satisfied with that alone, Ivy had gone on to have me assaulted in secret.