Chapter 7
Chapter 7
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: Paternity Doubts
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Shh!”
Peace the priestess sent Rachel a gesture asking her to be quiet.
Peace the priestess had stolen her blood. She pricked her finger with a small needle and squeezed until a large drop welled up, then sucked it into a small vial.
Rachel was flustered. But this wasn’t the first time Peace the priestess had done something like this.
In the 6th round, when she had gone to the temple, Peace had collected her blood during their conversation. Back then, everything had been so unfamiliar that she thought it was some kind of blood test. But now she knew better.
Blood tests weren’t possible with the current level of technology.
“What are you doing?”
Rachel whispered softly. Evelyn and Henri were deep in conversation. Which meant the two of them were unaware of this. Rachel could alert them anytime she wanted.
“Priestess, please tell me clearly why you needed my blood.”
Peace the priestess hadn’t expected Rachel to be so firm. She glanced toward Evelyn.
“You don’t want your mother to find out, right? Please keep it a secret.”
Rachel wasn’t about to miss even the smallest clue. She hadn’t suspected her uncle Paris Emporus until the 13th round, when she finally realized how he had deceived her.
There was no guarantee the priestess before her was always on her side.
“It’s inconvenient here right now. I’ll explain separately when your sister isn’t around.”
“You won’t just up and vanish, will you?”
“I don’t want Sister Evelyn to know about this.”
They reached an agreement in short order. That was when Evelyn approached the two of them.
“What are you two talking about?”
Rachel glanced at Henri fidgeting behind her mother.
“I told her that Miss Rachel looks just like Sister Evelyn did as a child.”
“Rachel does take after me. Though her personality is nothing like mine.”
Evidently pleased by the notion that her daughter resembled her, she waved it off with a smile.
“Time has flown by already. It’s late today—why not head back tomorrow?”
“Shall we?”
“Good thing I had them prepare dinner ahead of time.”
“Please rest in the guest room until dinner’s ready. You’ve been on the move nonstop since you arrived.”
Henri echoed his wife’s suggestion that Peace the priestess rest. He instructed a maid to escort the two guests to their room.
“Then we’ll see you at dinner.”
Peace the priestess and Enoch followed the maid and disappeared. Evelyn turned to Rachel.
“You’ve had plenty of shocks today too, so get some rest. What about you, dear?”
“I have some business to attend to.”
And so the family dispersed to their rooms or studies.
That is, if Rachel and Henri hadn’t crossed paths right in front of the guest room where Peace the priestess was staying.
“Didn’t you say you had business?”
Rachel had given up on playing the pitiful, sweet daughter with Henri after the 10th round.
She had held out hope and tried her best in the 6th round, but after he so easily decided to confine her in the 10th, she realized there was no point in trying to win him over.
“Why are you here?”
“The priestess took some of my blood earlier without Mother knowing. I came to ask why.”
Henri’s brows furrowed ever so slightly at Rachel’s words. She narrowed her eyes at the sight.
“This has something to do with Father, doesn’t it? Truth be told, the Curse Medium I found has me suspecting Uncle.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. Brother has always treated you well!”
“It’s not a conclusion. You saw what I uncovered today, didn’t you? I haven’t told Mother, but one of the futures where I die involves Uncle.”
That was when the sound of a door opening rang out. The two whipped their heads toward it.
“You two will get caught by Sister if you keep chattering in the hall. Come inside first.”
Rachel and her father stepped into the room at Peace the priestess’s urging.
“First, let me clear up Mr. Henri’s curiosity. The results just came in!”
Henri waved his hands in flustered denial at her words.
“No, that’s fine. After Rachel leaves…”
“But I’m dying to know. It’s about the blood you took from me, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Rachel arched a brow. She might finally learn why her father had always been so cold to her.
“Mr. Henri, Rachel is undoubtedly your biological daughter.”
Peace the priestess shook a small vial containing what appeared to be blood.
“That goes without saying…!”
Rachel blurted it out before turning to glare at her father’s face.
“Don’t tell me you thought I wasn’t your daughter this whole time?”
His expression confirmed it. What she had just said was the truth.
Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Henri had been cold to her because he thought she was someone else’s child.
Rachel was the spitting image of her mother Evelyn. He wouldn’t deny that, which meant…
“Ha. Father, you thought Mother cheated on you!”
It was so ridiculous that Rachel barked out a hollow laugh. Henri squeezed his eyes shut, unable to refute his daughter’s accusation.
“No, how could you even think something like that?”
Rachel shook her head as she scolded him.
Wasn’t that the exact kind of twisted thinking that had led him to dabble in black magic?
In this world, the dead went to join the gods. No ordinary person would dream of bringing them back.
Yet Henri couldn’t accept Evelyn’s death. He convinced himself medicine could revive her, turned to human experimentation, and ultimately resorted to black magic.
It was the kind of mad notion and behavior no sane person in this world would entertain.
“Wow. Just… wow.”
Rachel was so flabbergasted she could barely get the words out.
Henri looked relieved now that his long-held suspicions were laid to rest, but he soon began gauging her reaction.
“I’m telling Mother! Hey… mmph!”
Rachel bolted for the door to fetch Evelyn, but Peace the priestess grabbed her. Her mouth was clamped shut, her body held fast.
“Miss Rachel, I get that you’re upset, but please don’t tell Sister. She’ll be heartbroken if she learns her husband doubted her.”
The priestess’s tone was gentle despite her rough handling.
No, what about me? Rachel tilted her head back, pleading with her eyes.
She thought Evelyn must have endured the same suspicions all along and deserved to know—but the priestess was telling her not to say a word.
“For the family’s peace.”
‘Living up to your name, alright.’
“I only want Sister Evelyn to stay happy. You won’t say anything, will you?”
Gazing into those soft brown eyes, Rachel couldn’t refuse. She nodded curtly, cursing up a storm in her head.
Only then did the priestess release her. Her eyes curved into happy crescents as she beamed at Rachel.
“Miss Rachel really is a good girl. Anyway, Mr. Henri—why did you ever doubt Sister?”
Her gaze shifted from Rachel to Henri. What had been merry curves turned razor-sharp. The man flinched and averted his eyes.
“That’s…”
“That’s?”
The priestess pressed him relentlessly, repeating his vague words.
“No daughters have ever been born in the Emporus family.”
Rachel’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t close it.
‘What the hell kind of nonsense is that?’
It sounded like distant barking. Rachel’s head spun.
She turned to Peace the priestess, who looked just as dumbfounded.
“You suspected Sister of infidelity over something that trivial?”
Even this pacifist found the excuse absurd enough to challenge him directly. He replied.
“It wasn’t trivial. There hasn’t been a single daughter in ten generations of my family tree.”
Ten generations. Factoring in roughly twenty years to reach adulthood, that was at least two hundred years. No girls born into the family for all that time—so Henri had believed daughters simply didn’t happen in House Emporus.
‘Is that even possible?’
Rachel tilted her head in bewilderment.
‘The ancestors’ Y chromosomes must’ve been pulling overtime.’
A child’s sex was determined by the father’s chromosomes.
Women had XX, men XY. Women contributed an X; men contributed either X or Y.
‘Two hundred years of nothing but boys—surely there’s some genetic defect in that family?’
Rachel cocked her head to the other side.
“It finally normalized in Father’s generation.”
Peace the priestess and Henri both turned to her at the mutter.
“But this is a world of divine power, magic, and black magic. A spell ensuring only sons wouldn’t be out of place.”
“Miss Rachel?”
Rachel didn’t register Peace the priestess calling her name.
She sorted through her thoughts and arrived at one conclusion.
“Then you suspected Mother right from the moment I was born?”
Rachel fixed her father with an intense stare. He averted his eyes from his daughter, whose gaze matched his wife’s exact shade.
He approached Rachel again.
“Please, don’t tell your mother!”
He pleaded desperately. Rachel crossed her arms.
She had never seen Henri like this before. The man who wore his emotions openly had always been icy toward her because he believed she wasn’t his.
‘No way—he spent all that time in the capital just to avoid looking at me?’
Rachel’s lips twisted at this new side of him. A snicker slipped out.
“I have a condition.”
Their relationship was already in ruins. Rachel had zero interest in playing the dutiful daughter for him.
Fine, then. She would use him. Make Henri her springboard to a better future.
“A condition?”
“I mentioned Uncle earlier, remember?”
“I was wondering about that myself.”
She had overheard their father-daughter exchange at the door. Peace the priestess made no effort to hide her curiosity.
“It’s too shocking to tell my parents, so I held back. In one future I saw, Uncle kills me. But I don’t know why. Do you, Father?”
“Impossible! Brother dotes on you.”
“It’s all an act.”
She herself had been thoroughly fooled. Henri clamped his mouth shut under Rachel’s icy stare, then spoke again.
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine why Brother would kill you.”
‘Does Father truly know nothing?’
“But you saw it too, didn’t you? Those Curse Mediums today. Who in the mansion could’ve hidden them?”
“The servants or maids could have!”
“Who knows? Wouldn’t mere employees draw attention doing something like that? Be honest with me, Father. I’m not raising this without reason. If things stay like this, Mother dies.”
His dark eyes wavered. He had doubted his wife, yet loved her beyond measure.
Even believing Rachel wasn’t his own, he couldn’t bring himself to hate the girl who so resembled Evelyn. But seeing her dredged up those suspicions and tormented him, so he lingered in the capital far more than at the estate.
Diving into work was the best way to bury his misgivings.
If Rachel knew what churned inside him, she’d write it off as pathetic with a single word—but that was the depth of his love for his wife. He could bear the distance between them, but not the thought of her death.
As his silence dragged on, Peace the priestess toyed with the holy relic at her throat.
“That’s no small matter.”