Chapter 3

"Is this how you call washing? Can't even manage such a simple task—are you being lazy on purpose?" she barked, snatching the clothes from my hands and hurling them to the ground. The bamboo cane cracked across my back, fire lancing through me.

Tears burned in my eyes, but I dared not let a sound escape.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Pick them up and wash them again!" she snapped. Biting back the pain, I gathered the clothes from the floor and forced myself to keep scrubbing, every movement a stab of agony.

And so the day dragged on, my hands submerged in freezing water until they swelled red and raw, my fingertips split and bleeding. Every motion sent waves of piercing pain through me.

Yet I didn't dare slow down. I knew too well—if I faltered, harsher punishment would be waiting.

At last, night crept in. One by one, the other maids slipped away to rest, but I was kept behind—punished for the few garments I had yet to finish.

The laundry room stood empty but for me, a lone lamp flickering weakly above, its glow trembling as though it might vanish into darkness at any moment.

I stared at the clothes in my hands until my vision blurred, and at last the tears I had held back all day spilled over, unstoppable.

Once, I was the pampered daughter of the Murray family—clothes laid out for me, meals prepared at a word, a life untouched by care. Now I was nothing but a drudge in the laundry quarters, bullied, beaten, and broken.

The sheer gap between what I had and what I'd become left me drowning in despair.

Again and again, I asked myself: how had it come to this? What sin had I committed? Why had my parents and brother turned so cruel? Why had Kael betrayed me? Why had the whole world cast me aside?

Night deepened, and the laundry quarters sank into a suffocating silence. Curled in a corner, aching in body and spirit, I lay wide awake, unable to escape the torment.

Through the window, I stared at the lonely moon adrift in the night sky. Tears slid down my face as fear and uncertainty for the future hollowed me out.

Life in the laundry quarters was torment without end, as though I had fallen into a bottomless abyss where no light could ever reach me.

Long before dawn, before even the roosters stirred, the head matron's shrill voice would tear me from my fragile sleep.

"The sun's so high, wake your lazy ass up! Want to starve? Then keep lying there!" Her voice raked across my ears like claws, wrenching me into harsh wakefulness.

Half-dazed, I crawled from the frozen bed. My blanket was little more than a tattered rag, useless against the bite of winter. Night after night, I shivered through the dark, warmth nothing but a memory.

After a hasty wash, I threw myself into work. The water in the tubs was glacial, biting into my flesh with every plunge, each stab of cold like a thousand needles. I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

But I dared not falter. Clenching my teeth, I kept scrubbing at the endless mountains of filthy clothes. Soon, my hands were swollen and raw, the skin split with tiny cuts that flared with pain at the slightest touch.

Yet even then, the head matron never ceased her fault-finding. At the faintest trace of dirt, she would swoop in, striking my back and arms with her bamboo cane, each blow sharp and merciless.

"Is this what you call washing? Useless girl—what good are you if you can't even manage this?" Her voice cracked through the air, each word an echo of humiliation and despair.

Summer brought no relief. The laundry room became a stifling box of heat and damp, alive with swarms of mosquitoes whose endless buzzing frayed my nerves.

My body was soon covered with itchy welts, but I had no time to scratch or swat. I could only grit my teeth, endure the torment, and keep scrubbing.

Sweat ran down my brow and cheeks, dripping into the basin to mingle with the cold water. My hands, soaked for hours, had turned pale and wrinkled, so numb they hardly felt like my own.

Beyond the beatings and exhaustion, hunger gnawed at me. Our meals were little more than hard, coarse rice and yellowed vegetable scraps—gritty with sand, sometimes writhing with insects.

The portions were pitiful, never enough to quiet the hollow ache in my stomach.

I often fell asleep hungry and woke the same. At times, when the hunger became unbearable, I crept to the kitchen to scavenge for scraps. But discovery meant another savage beating.

In this sunless prison, I was like a caged bird—stripped of freedom, stripped of hope. Countless nights, I wept in silence until my threadbare pillow was soaked through with tears.

I longed for the days at Murray Manor—for my parents' affection, my brother's indulgence, and Kael's gentle warmth.

But I knew those golden days were gone forever. All that remained was this pit of suffering, where I clawed alone for survival.

It was the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month—the dead of winter, when the cold cut straight to the bone.

I had just finished the morning's final garment, my fingers stiff and purple with cold, when the matron's sharp voice rang out: "Lila! Quickly—the Murray family has come for you!"

I froze. The Murray family—words at once familiar and foreign. For fifteen years, I had lived there as the cherished daughter, until three years ago, when the truth was laid bare: I was an impostor.

The midwife who had delivered me, driven by selfish desire, had exchanged me with the Murrays' true-born daughter. Only on her deathbed, her conscience roused at last, did she confess the crime.

I still remembered the day Lord and Lady Murray embraced their true daughter, Isabelle. They wept and laughed as they held her, while I stood aside, lost and bewildered—unable to understand how the parents I had called my own for fifteen years could suddenly be nothing to me.

Perhaps they saw the desolation in my eyes, for Lord Murray assured me I remained his daughter still. He even bade Isabelle call me "sister." Lady Murray, too, promised they would cherish me as though I were their own blood.

Yet I would never forget the day Isabelle shattered the princess's crystal bowl. Her maid cast the blame on me, and I was scolded, condemned, and sent to the laundry quarters as a servant. Through it all, Lord and Lady Murray stood silently at Isabelle's side, shielding her, never once raising a word in my defense.

From that moment on, I knew—I could never be their daughter again.

"Lila, what are you dawdling for? Don't keep the young lord waiting!" The matron's sharp voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

I lifted my gaze toward the doorway and saw a tall, commanding figure standing just beyond. The winter sun was pallid and cold, yet upon him it seemed to cast a faint, ethereal glow.