Until she recited a familiar letter verbatim.
“Lizzy, why don’t you come to see me? You said you wanted the same thing as me. Was the faith I gave you not enough? I am comforting myself by recalling the proof we shared back then. I keep thinking of your soft lips, your smooth skin…”
The sentences she had written, fueled by dawn’s sentiment and giddy excitement, spilled from Ariella’s lips, causing David to gape in utter shock.
His pale face flushed crimson as he darted glances at his escort knight and Adam. The knights maintained their composure, pretending not to have heard anything, but given the distance, they couldn’t possibly have missed it.
“You, you dare to steal the next head of the family’s letter and read it?!”
He shrieked, desperate to shut her up. At the same moment, he regretted not playing dumb, but the words of admission had already escaped his lips.
Caught red-handed, David puffed himself up, feigning even greater anger, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw a punch as he had threatened just moments before.
He had finally realized that Ariella held his weakness in her hands.
“I wonder, what would happen if it became known that the next head of Bedford committed incest? I don’t know for sure, but… I don’t think Father would let you off easy, would he?”
Ariella smiled gently as she mentioned their father. Only then did David fully grasp the situation he was in, and he flinched back, desperately trying to explain.
“Incest! Nothing like that ever happened!”
“Really? Then how do you explain the letter? It was written as if you and Lizzy shared a very special time together.”
“No, in the first place, Lizzy is…!”
But he quickly trailed off.
It wasn’t incest. He hadn’t yet formed such an intimate relationship with Lizzy, and besides, Lizzy wasn’t his real sister.
But he couldn’t bring himself to tell Ariella that Lizzy was a fake. David believed that Ariella didn’t know he was the real one, and he desperately hoped that she would never find out and be recognized as Ariella Bedford again.
However, he couldn’t just admit to Ariella’s words as they were.
The Juvenil Empire strictly forbade marriage between relatives within the fourth degree of kinship, and the doctrines of Maranatha also regarded carnal relations between relatives as a sin. The new Solarem faith was no different.
Therefore, if David and Lizzy’s relationship became known to other nobles, they would face social death.
No, more than that, David was most afraid of being caught and scolded by his father.
To David, his father was greater than the Emperor and more terrifying than a demon.
After being recognized as the heir to Bedford, his fear of him had lessened somewhat, but after being beaten to a pulp recently, it had soared even higher than before. That was why he had attempted to run away without proper preparation.
“Don’t worry, David. I know it too.”
After a brief silence, Ariella spoke first.
She knows? What does she know?
David frowned, trying to guess her meaning. That unlucky Ariella always disturbed his mind with such incomprehensible words and sentences. He thought it was just her showing off.
As if reading David’s thoughts, Ariella continued.
“That fact that you know. I know it too.”
“What? What fact?”
“That Lizzy is a fake, I mean.”
The impact of the words she uttered as if it were nothing was enormous.
Ariella knows that Lizzy isn’t real. And yet, she’s holding onto the fake’s position without any objection or protest…
David couldn’t understand it at all.
“It’s amazing. How did you figure that out?”
However, Ariella was just as unable to understand her counterpart.
She had noticed that he knew the truth from David’s reaction a moment ago. At the same time, she had several questions.
“There’s no way he could have found evidence that even Father couldn’t find with that stupid head of his… Is his intuition better than I thought?”
“Who are you calling…!”
The word “stupid” was one of the words David hated the most. He stopped being flustered and scowled.
Seeing him like that, Ariella added another unresolved question.
“Just one question, David. Why do you hate me so much?”
This was a question she had been unable to answer for years.
“Why, why did you do such terrible things to me? And even help Lizzy become the real one, knowing she was a fake?”
If she had done something wrong to David, she would have understood.
But David had hated Ariella from the very beginning. That is, from the moment she, at the age of twelve, returned to the Bedford mansion.
“My name is Ariella. Please take care of me, David.”
It was ridiculous to think about it now, but at that time, Ariella was very fond of David.
He was a younger brother she didn’t even know existed, but ten-year-old David, with his hair similar to hers, looked quite cute in her eyes, so she wanted to get close to him.
