Can We Become Family?

Chapter 1

A dramatic scene was unfolding inside the walls of the duke’s study within the Agnus mansion, the residence of the wealthiest family in the Edern Empire.

“You ungrateful wretch!”

Slap!

Duke Nikan Agnus, overcome with rage, delivered a sharp blow to the cheek of his adopted daughter, Naviah. Naviah was twenty-two but possessed the delicate frame of a young girl. The strike from her adoptive father, fueled by his formidable strength, sent her staggering.

Yet despite this, her lips remained firmly sealed. Where such violence would typically evoke cries of terror, Naviah displayed an unnerving level of composure. She steadied herself as if the preceding event had been of no significance. She straightened her posture, slightly lifted her chin, and clasped her hands neatly in front of her. Her deep, piercing red eyes seemed to gaze far into an unseen distance, exuding an air of extraordinary dignity. Her silver hair, tousled like a halo of mist, seemed to have been spun of fine silk. Her appearance was the epitome of nobility, a testament to the meticulous training of the Agnus family.

This unshaken grace only served to fuel Nikan’s rage. His heavy investments of time and money in crafting such a refined “product” had now become a waste. Naviah had betrayed him with her actions, thrusting a knife into his back.

“You were an orphan, yet I provided you with the best tutors and a life of unimaginable luxury. And this is how you repay such generosity—by making an attempt on my daughter’s life?”

A callous flicker flashed through the depths of Naviah’s dark red eyes.

Ah, top tutors and luxury... she silently mused.

The duke had generously adopted her from a rural orphanage, a place hardly distinguishable from a den of beggars. However, this act of “kindness” was driven more by Nikan’s own self-interest than genuine goodwill.

If only Vivian wasn’t terminally ill, I wouldn’t have had to resort to using an orphan with no real lineage as a stand-in... Tsk!

Nikan’s intentions had always been clear. He needed another daughter, a healthy and beautiful one, to offer in marriage to the prince—but he was unwilling to take in a girl belonging to a different noble family. This was a strategic move to avoid the division of power and income, should his adopted daughter ever ascend to the status of empress.

In a ruthless maneuver, he eliminated a distant branch of his family in a staged accident and presented Naviah as his new daughter. Her entire existence had been fabricated. Fake portraits, a concocted backstory, an imaginary household, a fictitious family tree—it was a web of elaborate lies. But she desperately wanted those lies to become the truth.

To that end, she sacrificed sleep, neglected her health, and endured rigorous training. She often collapsed from nosebleeds, malnutrition, or exhaustion, all in her unwavering pursuit of becoming a true Agnus. Her desires were simple, yet profoundly challenging: to never starve, to never feel cold, and to lead a peaceful life within the secure embrace of a family.

In the Agnus mansion, which glimmered with gold and precious gems like the backdrop of a fairytale world, these wishes seemed within her grasp. Family—a word that sounded so warm and beautiful—finally appeared to be within her reach.

She almost believed she had succeeded—until she came of age. That was when Nikan’s biological daughter, Vivian, miraculously recovered from her supposed incurable illness. The duke, employing his own daughter as leverage, forced Naviah into breaking her engagement to the prince.

The cancellation of their engagement carried an unspoken implication: Naviah was unsuitable to bear the prince an heir. Nikan spared not a moment’s consideration for the damage such a move would inflict on his adopted daughter’s reputation. Under these circumstances, he had convinced himself that a resentful Naviah must have sought to poison Vivian.

“Nothing I’ve given you was for your sake. It was all for the family. How could you, a mere commoner, ever consider yourself worthy of becoming empress?”

Naviah gazed upon her adoptive father with a mixture of disgust and disbelief as he continued to unleash a torrent of criticism and raw emotion upon her. He seemed indifferent to her broken engagement and the ridicule it invited within the elite social circles.

“Well done, my daughter.”

Those words, though infrequent, radiated a tragic warmth. Just to hear them, she had allowed herself to play the fool, enduring the worst of this charade for just a moment of her father’s affection.

Every one of my desires was trivial and insignificant to him. It was a painful epiphany. She had realized, much too late, that she was merely a placeholder for Vivian.

She gathered her resolve as if preparing for a final stand.

“I did not try to poison Vivian, Father. I—”

Slap!

Before she could complete her explanation, a harsh palm struck her cheek. Unable to withstand the force, she crumpled pitifully to the ground.

“Traces of poison were found in the tea leaves you gave to Vivian! How long will you persist in trying to deceive me?”

Vivian had asked Naviah to procure some rare tea leaves to serve to a guest. Being the dedicated sister she was, Naviah promptly fulfilled her request. But to her dismay, poison was later discovered in those very tea leaves.

“My engagement to Prince Ares was broken off long ago. I have no motive to commit such an act now.”

“When Vivian took your place, you must have been jealous! That’s why you tried to poison her!”

It would be dishonest for her to claim she hadn’t been wounded by his decision, opting to force her into ruin rather than allow an adopted daughter to become empress. However, none of these events had caused her to harbor any ill will toward Vivian. She neither loved Prince Ares nor desired the title of empress.

The circumstances surrounding the attempted murder seemed convenient, almost planned, and were enough to garner suspicion from anyone who gave it even a little thought. In essence, Nikan’s ignorance of such an obvious truth reflected his complete lack of effort or willingness to offer Naviah true understanding.

“What you’ve done goes beyond a mere family conflict! Harming the fiancée of a prince is tantamount to an assassination attempt on the royal family!”

Amid his erupting anger, Nikan’s voice carried a hint of regret. He was dismayed at having to discard what he had considered his most useful “hound.” Naviah understood this all too well.

“If I really was resentful and wished to harm Vivian, I wouldn’t have chosen a method that would so clearly incriminate me.”

Such a strategy would have been unimaginably foolish—even a child would have thought better of it.

Provoked to rage by her bold assertion, Nikan swiftly drew his sword from its sheath at his waist. “How dare you!”

Just as the blade was about to slice into Naviah’s neck, a stern voice cut through the tension in the study.

“Father.”

Naviah’s eyes shifted to the figure entering the room, a red-haired man who bore a striking resemblance to Nikan. It was Eudes Agnus, the duke’s eldest son.

“His Highness Prince Ares has arrived,” the man announced sarcastically.

Nikan’s expression contorted into a deep frown. “Ugh, what a disgrace to the royal family!” he muttered.

“Hurry and go greet the prince. I’ll deal with the girl,” Eudes told him, assuredly.

“Very well.”

With that, the duke exited the study, leaving Naviah in Eudes’ hands.

“Pfft.”

An abrupt, mocking laugh broke the silence.

Eudes sauntered over to Naviah and crouched before her, exuding a demeanor of insincerity.

“This serves you right,” he sneered. He seemed to find genuine amusement in her predicament.

A spark of anger ignited in the pits of Naviah’s eyes.

“Not even a feral beast would have stooped so low.”

“What do you mean?” he retorted, feigning ignorance.

“I know it was you who poisoned the tea.” Her voice was cold and steady.

“Oh no! Looks like I’ve been caught.” Eudes shrugged, his tone dripping with insincerity.

“If Vivian had drunk that tea, she would have died. Don’t you feel any remorse?”

“But lucky for her, she didn’t. What more needs to be said?”

Naviah’s hands tightened into fists against the rug beneath her. She had long been aware of the Agnus family’s moral depravity but had chosen to overlook it. In the world of nobility, ruthlessness was commonplace, and she had resigned herself to the belief that this was the natural order of things. Or rather, she had no choice but to see it that way.

However, Eudes’ siblings posed no threat to his rights of inheritance. His cruelty toward them was malevolent, surpassing mere ruthlessness. He had always embodied the worst traits a person could have, being at once brutal, vulgar, and unrefined.

“You know, I’ve always detested you. Do you know why?”

Naviah braced herself for the wave of contempt she knew was coming.

“You’re a mere commoner. An insect,” he declared, his face distorting into a scowl of disgust, as if the mere thought repulsed him.

Naviah silently pondered the label “commoner,” letting it swirl around in her thoughts.

Her memory rolled back to the painful disclosure of her birth, when she learned that she wasn’t the blood daughter of a minor noble, but rather a common orphan.

“You, a commoner?”

Indeed, the truth had been revealed during Eudes’ twentieth year. His incredulous voice, questioning her lowly status, still echoed clearly in her mind as if it had just been uttered yesterday.

“I’ve always believed that vermin like you have no place tainting the purity of our noble society. Yet Father persists in his stubborn ways.”

Eudes seized Naviah’s chin with a firm grip and forced her to look into his eyes. He dragged his thumb across her lips and up her cheek, leaving a streak of crimson blood.

“The blood of nobility is a refined blue, not a common red like yours,” he remarked with a self-satisfied chuckle. “Regarding this incident, I only executed the plan. The true instigator was someone else entirely. Care to guess who?”

Naviah responded with a composed clarity. “It must be the empress.”

Eudes sharply focused on her, observing her keen understanding. “Correct. So what reason could you have had to seduce Prince Ares and provoke the empress’s wrath?”

He drew a small vial from his pocket and tossed it toward her. It contained a deadly poison, capable of rapidly dissolving internal organs once ingested.

“Drink. You won’t get a second chance to die with the dignity of a noblewoman. What do you think the prince came here to do?”

“He likely intends to auction me off as a slave.”

Ares was enamored with Naviah for her beauty and her ruthlessness while facing adversaries.

He loves me not as a person but as a tool, she contemplated. He and Nikan Agnus were hardly different.

Although Eudes was anxious that Prince Ares might intervene and extract Naviah from the situation, he maintained a facade of indifference, masking his concern with a show of bravado.

“Wouldn’t it be more honorable to end your life now than to carry on as a slave?”

If she refused to swallow the poison, Eudes was prepared to force her. The empress had assured him that in exchange for disposing of his adopted sister, she would facilitate his marriage to Lady Sarah of the Lucia family, who was a niece of the empress herself.

Naviah’s eyes fixed on the small vial of poison that had rolled to her feet.

So, this is my fate once again.

She downed the poison without hesitation, catching even Eudes off guard with her show of decisiveness. Watching her drink the poison, he felt a twisted sense of relief, though he was repulsed by her unyielding spirit. This resolve was precisely why he loathed her.

“Putting on the noble act to the very end? How revolting.”

Even as Naviah coughed up blood, struggling against the effects of the poison, she managed to muster up a feeble chuckle. Her laughter was tinged with both irony and despair. Whether she behaved as a commoner or a noble, the end result was the same.

“How much longer must I endeavor?” she muttered despondently.

What does it take to be truly accepted and embraced as a member of this family? I’ve given my all—my very best.

Peeling off a blood-soaked glove, she revealed a number etched into her right wrist, hidden from others’ plain view—

1.

Gazing at the numeral, she made a calm disclosure. “Brother, I have lived through this same life seven times before.”

“What?”

“And now I have only one remaining chance to live.”

Eudes, failing to grasp her meaning, furrowed his brow. “Is this a loss of wits on death’s door?”

As the poison’s effects intensified, Naviah’s vision began to dim. The number on her wrist became hazy. Gasping for air, she pressed on.

“I always thought that if I tried hard enough, we could become a true family...” A coldness set into her faint smile, an emotion never before seen in her. Her voice dwindled and became icy. “But I’m done playing this twisted game of pretend.”

In the moments before her vision succumbed to complete darkness, Naviah cast a final chilling look at Eudes. Her stare, so intense and unforgiving, rendered him petrified and speechless, like prey caught in the unwavering gaze of a predator.

“See you in my next life, Eudes.”

With that, she made an internal vow: I won’t live for this family any longer.

“You wretch…!” He began to shout something in response, but his words were futile—she couldn’t hear a thing he said.

Darkness then enveloped her vision completely.

The number on her wrist changed.

0.

And then it vanished, leaving behind no trace.