ste

s over the cold Moon Goddess carvings. The hum of high-grade mana cry

ulled a yellowed parchment scroll fr

your dowry. Check it and hide i

half-step back and bowed deeply to he

invite disaster. If my father and Brenda suspect I have this

met her gaze with

ry greedy eye in the kingdom. I beg you, Great-Grandmother, let me disguise it as an ordinary dowry on the wedding day, cut the visible amount down

f fierce pride lit up her wrinkled face. She no

say. I will seal the chests with my own hands today, and on the wedding day we

my shoulders melted away. In my past life, Brenda and Carlie had used every excuse to withhold and steal

Grandmother back up the stairs to the main floor

y, a shrill, hysterical scream pierced through the

ilted my head, focusing my senses. My superior White Wolf

arlie swept bottles and a copper mirror off her van

et two shabby wooden

id Ruby whimpered as sh

easury is nearly empty! Two trunks is already

y Ruby's muffled cry. Carlie's

there were ten full wagonloads of dowry! There were

corridor, I listened to the sudden dead silence that foll

she had no idea those wagons held my late mother Adrianna's private inheritance, which Great-Grandmoth

da's urgent, hushed v

e! What nonsense are you spouting ab

into loud,

to the Fisher family with two trunks of

to a venomous whisper as

ink carefully-what exactly was insi

biting her nails as she strained her s

g potions, two boxes of ice-soul mana crystals,

used silver tableware because it poisoned us; those had been white-gold plates s

ly snapped an or

verything my daughter just said. We will take this list

n my gray skirt and walked back toward my shabb

was wiping her tears while packing my fe

r hers to stop her, and dropped fi

the slave market at the edge of town and buy

g down at the gleami

ld Martha and young Ivy are just lowest-rank ki

y voice dropping

s whose lives belong solely to me and who know ho

the gold coins tightly against he

er mother were already marching toward Great-Grandmother's study with their forged demand list. Picking up a tray with a fre