I Became the Female Lead Ruined by Others - Chapter 8

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 8

Before I could even process what the Butler was saying, my entire body recoiled in instinctive rejection.

“Cough, hack……!”

A harsh coughing fit erupted from my throat, one convulsion after another.
I gripped my neck with trembling hands and expelled rough, gasping breaths.
I was determined to purge the fragrant sweetness that had just been soothing my parched throat.

‘Poison?’

The Butler had definitely said poison.
A smaller dose than usual.

‘What kind of nonsense is this? I’ve been drinking poison regularly?’

I knew that the Possessed One had committed some act without my knowledge.
But I couldn’t even begin to imagine why I would need to consume poison.

“Ah, are you all right, sir?”

I swallowed against the thundering of my heart as though it might burst from my chest, and managed to lift my head.

“Is there any other discomfort troubling you?”

I drew in a long breath and released it slowly.
Now that I thought about it, aside from the accelerated heartbeat, there was no real discomfort. My hands and feet weren’t numb, and there was no blood in my mouth—no adverse reaction whatsoever.
If anything, my mind felt clearer.

“Ah, is it perhaps that your memory is hazy again?”

At those words, the grip of my hand around my throat loosened.
He withdrew a small Poison Vial from inside his jacket pocket with deliberate slowness.

“You ingested this poison, sir.”

* * *

Beyond the western seas of Kargen lay the kingdom of Sandrio.
Arcadius, called the heir to the throne, was thoroughly furious.

“Yulia!”

The King of Sandrio had fathered countless children.
So many that some of the less conspicuous ones were children of his own making, yet the king himself could forget—the exact count was thirty.
The seventh was Arcadius, and the twenty-third was Yulia.
The siblings, including the two of them, never saw eye to eye, but Arcadius didn’t particularly mind.
The fools who brought shame upon the royal name could be purged the moment she ascended to the throne.
But Yulia was different.
Among thirty siblings, he was the only one who shared the same mother—her full brother.
That was why Arcadius could not turn away from him.

“Where the hell has that bastard hidden himself?!”

Arcadius’s roar echoed through the Royal Pavilion.
This Royal Pavilion had once belonged to their mother, the king’s fourth consort. After her death, it became Yulia’s residence.
Arcadius, breathing hard with agitation, caught hold of a passing maidservant.

“Where is Yulia?”
“His Highness is upstairs on the second floor…….”

Arcadius spun around at once and bounded up three steps of the staircase in a single leap.
The second floor was predictable enough. The room at the top of the stairs, on the right.
She flung the door wide open, her voice rising to meet the challenge.

“You wretched little rat!”

At that shout, the back of a head that had been lolling against the sofa, facing away from the door, went suddenly still.
The man reclined with one arm draped over the armrest, savoring the tranquil leisure of the morning, tilted his head back with deliberate slowness. His platinum hair, which had been draped across the nape of his neck as though barely grazing his shoulder line, cascaded down.
A man regarding Arcadius through an inverted gaze.

“Yulia Sandrio!”

His eyes, a blue as deep as the sea itself, were brimming with mischief.

“Sister, why are you standing upside down?”
“You’re the one craning your neck to look at me like a twisted fool!”

At her stern retort, Yulia let out a soft laugh and straightened himself on the sofa.

“With that much force behind your voice, you’d bring the city walls down. Your shouting echoed all the way out here, you know.”
“So it echoed everywhere, and yet you stayed hidden in this room with your lips sealed?”
“Hidden? No, I was simply resting. It’s Sister who came bursting in, isn’t it?”
“In any case, your mouth’s the only thing about you that’s alive.”

As Arcadius settled herself across from him, she did not lower her gaze of contempt.
Yet Yulia’s expression remained shameless and innocent, as though he understood nothing.
At such brazenness, Arcadius raised her voice again and began to speak.

“You remember that I came to find you myself yesterday, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“And the two full hours I spent explaining things so you could understand properly?”
“Though that was less like lecturing and more like a soliloquy on your part, wasn’t it?”

At those words, Arcadius’s eyes flashed with intensity.
Yulia exhaled softly and shifted his approach.

“Ah, now that you mention it, I do seem to recall that Sister was lecturing me yesterday, come to think of it.”
“‘Seem to recall’?”
“Perhaps you were lecturing me?”
“Perhaps?”

At the sight of Arcadius grinding her teeth, Yulia finally let loose the laughter he’d been holding back.
There was the problem.
When he laughed with that face—the very image of their late mother—it was simply impossible to stay angry with him.

“You did lecture me, Sister.”
“If you remember so well, then explain why you didn’t appear at the dinner with the Duke Layla’s daughter.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”

Yulia spoke with perfect serenity, his expression as peaceful as though stating a simple fact.
It was the look of someone who might say “one plus one equals two,” wearing an expression that asked, “Why ask such obvious things?”
Now Arcadius felt her will to fight ebbing away entirely.

“Yulia, Duke Layla’s House is an incomparable match. Why are you throwing away such an extraordinary opportunity?”
“Then I shall yield that remarkable opportunity to you, sister. Perhaps the Duchess would rather be Queen than a cast-off princess with a broken thread.”
“You madman, talk sense!”
“What makes no sense, you ask? I am deeply concerned that you, who will bear the future of the kingdom, harbor such narrow-minded thinking.”

Arcadius trembled from head to foot at Yulia’s grave reply.
Her fury was ice-edged and undisguised; the anxiety beneath it was equally transparent. The source of these emotions she could never quite shed remained singular and constant.

“You need a formidable backing.”

At those words, Yulia brushed back a strand of hair that had slipped free and laughed as though genuinely delighted.

“I suspect that even if I enter into some arrangement with the Duchess, Dior won’t lose his taste for sending assassins my way?”

His tone was light, as if he were making an amusing jest.
Yet at those words, Arcadius’s eyes turned to steel.

“What? That tongue-deserving wretch is still at it?”
“Severe emotional deprivation, I’d say. He probably craves my attention.”
“You deranged fool—what are you saying?”
“Perhaps he’s still haunted by the humiliation of losing his dance partner to me.”
“That was ten years ago, you bastard—what nonsense is this?”
“If not that either, then he must want to grow close to me. Dior does have his charming side, after all.”
“Did those assassins scoop out your brain?”

Now Arcadius leaped up from her seat in fury, while Yulia, chin propped on his hand, watched and burst into laughter.
He knew perfectly well why Dior sent assassins—but he saw no reason to tell his sister.
It was enough that she remain wary of Dior while he was away.

“But sister, compared to the other siblings, I live rather peacefully, don’t I?”

It was true.
Among the Sandrio Royal Family, it was commonplace for siblings to send assassins after one another, to ruin each other’s fortunes.

“That may be so. But Yulia, your case is different—and that’s precisely the problem.”

As the twenty-third child, Yulia stood nowhere near the throne’s succession.
Yet that the fifth-born Dior would threaten him at all baffled her.
Whether or not Yulia sensed her turmoil, he merely shrugged.

“He simply likes me, that’s all. When we actually meet, he’s too shy to say a word.”

The image of Dior’s face—consumed by terror and dread—flickered into his mind, and he felt another smile tugging at his lips.

“It’s best to leave it alone. Lest he run straight to his mother crying, and those in-laws kick up a scandal.”

It was a quiet warning and advice both: do not go seeking Dior out to press the matter.
Arcadius caught his meaning at once, let out a breath, and turned away.

“So when do you depart?”
“After a cup of tea with you, sister.”
“You still won’t say where you’re going?”
“I’ll tell you when I return.”

Breaking Yulia’s resolve was no easy feat, after all.
Arcadius gave up pressing further and spoke with deliberate weight.

“When you return, you must take a meal with Layla. Do you understand? At the coming ball, you will present the Duchess as your partner, and make it known to all that you have the Duke’s House at your back.”
“How unfortunate. I wonder if there are cookies to go with the tea. Jeanne’s on holiday.”
“Answer me, you wretch!”

Arcadius’s shout and Yulia’s laughter echoed all the way down the second-floor corridor.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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