In the office of the richest family in the Eden Empire, Duke of Agnes.
“You ungrateful girl!”
Slap!
Duke Nikan Agnes was unable to overcome the fiery anger rising from the bottom of his heart, so he raised his hand and slapped his foster daughter, Navia, on the cheek.
Navia, who was still at the tender age of 22-years old, was still a small and delicate young girl. She couldn’t withstand the strength behind Nikan’s slap with her fragile body, so she stumbled backward.
“…”
She didn’t respond to the slap and chose to keep her mouth shut.
Normally, she would’ve burst out in tears or trembled in fear when she was faced with Nikan’s violence, but today, Navia was unusually calm. She stood there as if nothing had happened.
She stood there with a straight back and a pair of unwavering eyes. Her hands were clasped calmly in front of her and her silver hair was scattered neatly behind her. Her unwavering gaze and straight posture exuded an unusual amount of elegance.
She appeared nobler than any of the aristocrats in the empire. Her manner and bearing had been personally taught by the Duke of Agnes himself.
However, Nikan was even more upset with Navia’s calm and graceful manners.
This was because the time and money he invested in Navia to make her become into an elegant and graceful lady had backfired.
“I gave you the best tutors and allowed you to enjoy the wealth that normal commoners could never dream of. Instead of repaying my generosity, you decided to hurt my daughter!”
Navia’s face sank as a cold sneer flickered across Navia’s red eyes before quickly disappearing.
Ah, he’s lecturing me again about the first-class tutors he hired for me and about the wealth that he had allowed me to experience…
She was thankful for him for adopting her from an orphanage in the countryside, but he merely did it out of interest rather than goodwill.
“If only Vivian wasn’t so sickly, then I wouldn’t have needed to foster a commoner’s orphan as a shabby stand-in… tch!”
Nikan needed another healthy and beautiful daughter to take the place of his daughter to marry the prince. He didn’t want his foster daughter to be an aristocrat from another noble or influential family. After all, he didn’t want to share the glory with another aristocratic family once his foster daughter became the queen in the future.
Nikan had killed off all the distant kinsmen and framed the incident as an accident, solely to disguise Navia as one of his daughters.
There was a fake portrait in the mansion of her and she had a fake background story. Even her family members and relatives were fake.
Everything that made her ‘Navia’, was fake.
So, she vowed to herself that she would become ‘real’.
She endured the strict training and education that Nikan pushed upon her. She sacrificed sleep and her health to become a real ‘Anges’. Even when she had a nosebleed, she would continue to work. No matter how tired or overworked she was, she preserved on.
What Navia wanted was very easy, but at the same time, it was also very difficult. She didn’t want to starve or sleep on the cold ground again.
In addition to that, she wanted to live in a real house with a real family. At first, living with her foster family was a dream come true. She was whisked away from the poverty-stricken orphanage and was given a soft bed to sleep in and delicious meals to eat. It was like she had stepped into a fairy tale world.
Family.
She thought she could include herself in that warm and beautiful word. It seemed like it was something almost within her reach.
It was all in her grasp until she reached adulthood. Vivian, Nikan’s real daughter was cured of her incurable disease. Nikan forcibly broke Navia’s engagement with the prince and then formed an engagement between the prince and his real daughter, Vivian. He told the others that he had broken Navia’s engagement off and removed her status as his successor because she was unsuitable.
Nikan didn’t care whether or not his words had ruined Navia’s reputation. He acted unreservedly and cruelly, all for the sake of Vivian.
Due to this, Nikan thought that Navia must have held a grudge and tried to poison Vivian.
“Everything I have given you belongs to the family. None of this belongs to you in the first place. Did you actually think that a commoner like you could actually become the queen?”