"You shameless girl!" he screamed at her. "Taking things from strangers? Smiling at men in the street? What were you doing out there, sitting alone? Is this apartment not enough for you?"

Cixi’s tiny body shrank against the peeling wallpaper. Tears immediately filled her wide eyes, spilling down her flushed cheeks before she could blink them away.

She had never seen her father like this. As long as she remembers, her parents had barely spoken to her, let alone raised their voices at her. This was the first time she witnessed the anger twisting his face into something monstrous, and the sheer terror of it locked her limbs in place.

"Why did you take ice cream from a stranger?" This time, he yelled so loudly that his voice echoed outside the apartment, rattling through the thin corridor for the neighbours to hear.

Cixi’s tiny body lost its balance in sheer fear, and she fell backwards onto the wooden floor, landing hard on her tailbone.

Pain shot up her spine, but it barely registered against the horror consuming her chest.

"What did I do wrong?" she tried to ask in her small voice through her tears. She genuinely did not understand what crime she had committed by accepting ice cream. "Everyone was eating ice cream." She spoke in a muffled, hiccupping voice, and snot ran over her trembling lips. "I also wanted—"

She tried to complete her sentence but stopped midway when she saw what her father was doing.

He reached into the shoe rack by the front door and pulled out a long, heavy wooden shoehorn, the kind used to slide feet into dress shoes. He gripped it in his fist and turned toward her.

Cixi looked through her wet, blurry eyes and watched her father marching toward her, raising the shoehorn above his head with both hands.

"How dare you talk back to me?"

The first strike landed hard across her left arm. The wood landed sharply against a small bone, sending a blinding white pain shooting through her body. Screamed tore through her throat and instinctively curled onto her side, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her thin arms around her head.

He did not stop there. The shoehorn came down again and again... And again, found a new part of her fragile body.

"We spend so much money to raise you, and you beg for ice cream from someone else?" He struck her back. "You ungrateful daughter!" He struck her legs. "How could you make me look bad in front of others?" He struck her raised arms when she lifted them to protect her swollen face.

Unbearable pain burst across her legs, then her back, then her arms. Each hit felt like fire eating through her skin and sinking into the bone beneath. She could not tell which part of her body hurt the worst because everything burned.

"I am sorry, Papa!" she cried out in her raw and shredded voice. She begged. She promised she would never do it again. She swore on everything her seven-year-old mind could think of.

But the blows kept falling on her sensitive skin and flesh without mercy as though her apologies only fueled his rage.

In between the strikes, she tried to crawl away. Her small hands clawed at the wooden floorboards, dragging her body toward the hallway. She almost reached the door frame before she stumbled, collapsed face-first onto the floor, and curled into herself while he beat her with all the strength he had failed to spend on the stranger outside.

By the time her mother pushed through the front door, Cixi had already been sobbing too hard to breathe properly. Her small chest heaved in violent, airless spasms, and her face was pressed against the floor, wet with tears and blood.

Her mother’s eyes widened in horror when she saw the crimson stains on Cixi’s clothes, on her pale skin, and splattered across the floor. She dropped everything in her hands and rushed toward her husband, catching his wrist mid-swing and wrenching the bloodied shoehorn from his grip with a strength born from pure maternal terror.

"Have you gone mad?" Cixi’s mother screamed, shoving him backwards. "She is just a child! Are you planning to kill her?"

Cixi’s father stood there panting, his face red and glistening with sweat, his eyes bright with something wild and hateful that refused to die down even after the weapon left his hand.

"Then let her learn like one," he spat.

He walked out of the apartment without looking back, slamming the door behind him, heading to the nearest bar to drown himself in cheap liquor.

That night, lying in the dark with her body covered in swollen welts and deep purple bruises, Cixi’s mother sat beside her on the thin mattress. Her mother gently applied cooling cream to the raised marks striping Cixi’s back. Every time the cold ointment touched a fresh wound, Cixi flinched and bit down on the corner of her pillow to keep from crying out.

"You must never talk to strangers, Cixi," her mother whispered. "Do you understand? Never. No matter how kind they seem. Don’t answer them. Don’t look at them. Just run away when anyone tries to be nice to you. This world is full of monsters, and you never know who will take you away."

Cixi had nodded into the pillow because she could not bear the pain of speaking.

That was the only time she had been beaten up.

Since that brutal day, Cixi had never dared to strike up a conversation with anyone. And no one in the neighbourhood ever tried to talk to her again, having witnessed firsthand how violently unhinged her father was.

The memory faded, but not the ache it left behind.

When Cixi came back to the room, the scented air felt heavier than before.

She looked at the woman who had insulted her and smiled with a politeness that did not reach her eyes. "So, unless you intend to introduce yourself properly, I don’t see the point in listening to you."

The three women stared, genuinely surprised by the sharp retort. They had summoned this homeless stray to humiliate her, expecting tears or cowering silence. They had not anticipated a smart mouth. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

For a brief moment, all three simply looked at Cixi, and the offence on their faces was almost comical.

Rosetta recovered first.

"I am Rosetta Crown," she announced, drawing herself up with the polished hauteur of a woman who had never once doubted the value of her own surname. "Wife of Gabriel Crown, second brother of Michael Crown." She turned her chin slightly towards the woman beside her. "And this is Ursa Crown, wife of Raguel Crown, the youngest brother of Michael."

"It is lovely to meet you all." Cixi lifted her chin in return, her smile small but steady. "I am Cixi McLore, fiancée of Cassian Crown."

That struck them badly, how the cheap woman was taking Cassian’s name.

"Fiancee?" Ursa let out a sharp laugh, one hand drifting to the necklace at her throat as though the word itself had insulted jewellery. Her ash-blonde curls framed a face too pretty to be carrying so much malice. "We do not even know whether he is alive, and yet here you are, persistently claiming you are his future wife."

"Until a physical body is recovered, a person is legally classified as missing, not dead," Cixi replied without blinking. Her unwavering confidence stemmed entirely from the fact that she knew exactly where the Devil was. If she had not known he was alive, she would never have dared to pull off such a far-fetched lie. "And I have faith that he is alive."

That confidence held only because she knew it.

"Being a dirt-poor orphan certainly did not wipe the arrogance off your face," Rosetta remarked, her manicured fingers tapping against the armrest.

"If by arrogance you mean holding pride in myself, then yes. I am very proud of who I am," Cixi replied, keeping her voice even and strong.

Rosetta actually looked amused by that. "Pride?" She gave a little incredulous laugh and flicked her hand in Cixi’s direction, indicating the scarf, the dress, the shoes, all of it. "Pride in what, exactly? Those pitiful clothes? For begging on your knees to stay inside our Palace? Or is it the swollen belly you are most proud of—the one you dragged in here hoping to chain yourself to the Crown name?"

Tamara finally entered the exchange again, fixing a look of utter disgust on Cixi’s swollen belly. "You spread your legs and got yourself knocked up, and now praying it would secure the Crown name and our bank accounts for yourself. Keep your head down, gold digger. You hold zero value in this Palace. If you expect to be treated like family, forget it. Your worth in this estate is far lower than the dirt on the servants’ shoes."

Ursa gave a brittle smile. "Do not even attempt to seduce any of the men living in this Palace. If you do, your body will turn up missing the very next day. We all know you are an untraceable orphan. Making you vanish, or quietly selling you off to a foreign brothel, would be the easiest thing in the world. No one would ever come looking for you."

Cixi’s hand clenched so tightly at her side that her nails bit into her palm, but a second later she gave a soft scoff and smiled.

"How fascinating." Her tone remained almost pleasant. "The youngest must always learn from the elders. Listening to the three of you speak about money, comfort, and husbands, I would have thought you were warning me against becoming too much like you. I have not even joined the family yet, and already you seem frightened I might outrank you in gold-digging a husband." She blinked once, twice, then added with innocent brightness, "When Cassian returns, perhaps you can all teach me how to achieve such excellence."