It Turned Out She Wasn't a Favored Concubine - Episode 5

I looked down at the chef in bewilderment. But the chef still had his forehead pressed to the floor, and the other maids were trembling, unable to lift their heads.

Only Louis met my gaze.

“Louis, why is everyone acting like this?”

Louis glanced between me and the chef before speaking softly.

“…It seems they misunderstood Your Highness’s true intentions because of the incident with the poisoned cookie for the cat.”

What?

Where did poison suddenly come into this?

I said to share the delicious cookies, not to poison anyone!

Wait—did I really give a poisoned cookie to a cat before? That can’t be…

I laughed it off at first, thinking it was absurd, but quickly sobered up. If it was Arne, she was more than capable of such cruelty.

I quickly had Louis bring me the diary. I searched for the entry related to the poisoned cookie and read it swiftly. Based on Arne’s well-known temperament, the past likely unfolded like this:

On a sunny day like today, Arne was enjoying tea time outdoors when a small cat suddenly appeared and ruined her dress.

Naturally, Arne screamed for the cat to be caught, and it was eventually captured and caged by the servants. She didn’t spare it out of pity but rather to devise a cruel punishment for dirtying her precious dress.

It was discovered that a young maid who handled laundry had been caring for the cat, and she was dragged in as well.

Wanting to torment both the maid and the cat, Arne devised a cruel plan: she put poison in a chocolate cookie and handed it to the maid.

She said if the cat happily ate the cookie, she’d spare them both.

The maid refused, saying she couldn’t feed it to the cat, but under Arne’s terrifying pressure, she broke off a tiny piece and gave it to the cat.

Of course, the poisoned cookie killed the cat instantly, and the maid fainted from shock. Arne laughed hysterically at the scene…

“Wow, this woman was seriously insane.”

The maids’ faces turned pale. I quickly waved my hand to reassure them.

“No, I wasn’t talking about you. Don’t worry.”

The diary’s pages were filled with so many outrageous misdeeds that reading them all at once was mentally exhausting.

I had planned to read them slowly, but clearly, I needed to go through them quickly.

A poisoned chocolate cookie? Chocolate alone is bad enough, but poison too? And feeding it to a cat with its caretaker’s own hands? What kind of twisted mind does that?

Cold sweat ran down my back. I needed to know every one of Arne’s misdeeds for my future plans.

As I flipped through the thick diary, I heard sniffling from the front.

Right there was something I needed to deal with first. A droplet, possibly tears or snot, hung from the tip of the chef’s mustache.

“Sigh… I think I get why you’re upset, but it’s not what you think, so don’t cry. It just happened to be chocolate cookies… I really just wanted to share something delicious with you all. I didn’t put anything weird in them. So please, get up.”

The chef awkwardly stood up. That droplet still dangling from his mustache bothered me, but I pretended not to notice and gave another order.

“Just like I said earlier, prepare enough cookies identical to the ones on my table to distribute to all the staff in Arlin Palace. Don’t add anything strange. Make them exactly the same. Got it?”

“Yes, yes. Understood.”

The chef answered tearfully, as if he’d narrowly escaped death.

He really looked like someone who’d come back from the brink. I returned to my room with a bitter feeling.

Sharing delicious food brings a sense of unity and joy. I’d wanted to start small with cookies instead of something extravagant, but I’d run into an unexpected obstacle.

Maybe my insistence on giving out cookies came off as forceful. But I couldn’t help it—I was stubborn. How could they think I was someone who handed out poisoned cookies? Ugh, I had a long way to go.

Changing my image was no easy task.

The cookies arrived just before lunch. Come to think of it, I hadn’t told the chef to take his time.

He probably hadn’t even wiped away that droplet and had been churning out cookies nonstop…

I’d have to ask Louis to prepare more gold coins.

Just as I’d said, I summoned all the staff in Arlin Palace and handed out a bag of cookies to each.

It must have still felt coercive the hands receiving the cookie bags were trembling.

Louis ate half of his cookies on the spot, praising their taste repeatedly, but no one else ate theirs. I worried they might just throw them away.

Even distributing a single cookie wasn’t going smoothly…

It was shocking.

A few days of kindness and learning names weren’t enough to erase the fear and terror Arne had instilled in their hearts. Sure, with time, they might come around, but I was impatient.

With the war’s end uncertain, I needed a stronger method to shed my infamous reputation quickly.

“Louis, how much money do I have?”

“Pardon?”

Louis, usually composed, looked startled. I clarified.

“How much of Arlin Palace’s budget can I use freely right now?”

Louis gave me a subtle look.

“If there’s something you need, Your Highness…”

“No, I just want to understand my overall financial situation.”

Louis rolled his eyes thoughtfully, then brought me several sheets of paper with figures. Though he’d only been at Arlin Palace for three months, all the maids followed him thanks to his competence.

The papers detailed Arne’s financial status.

As the emperor’s favored concubine, Arne’s palace received the highest budget among all the concubines’ residences.

But no matter how much money she had, her spending was so excessive that the funds quickly ran dry.

Arne’s extravagance barely held together even with the generous imperial budget.

“At least the budget from the past three months while I was sick should still be intact, right?”

“That’s not the case. More than half has been used for Your Highness’s regular purchases.”

“What regular purchases?”

“Monthly new designs of dresses and jewelry from the shops Your Highness selected.”

“…Cancel that immediately.”

Louis looked concerned at my gloomy expression.

“If there’s anything you need, just say the word. The Edelheit family will surely send support.”

Even if it was my family, I couldn’t just ask them for money so easily. Giscal had said in his letters to ask if I needed anything, but I had my pride. And they’d already been sending support equal to the palace budget for the past three months, likely out of concern for my illness.

Even if the Edelheit family was a powerful marquis house, money didn’t just appear out of thin air. I’d learned the hard way how important money was during my corporate life. And if Giscal were ever cast aside by Erich in the future…

I looked around. Expensive silk curtains, elegant stained-glass lights, furniture made by foreign artisans, delicate jewelry, countless custom dresses from the capital’s top designers, diamond necklaces worth several castles… Maybe selling these unused luxury items could free up some budget?

“I want to clear out some of the things in this room.”

Louis lit up and quickly responded.

“Oh, are you thinking of replacing the furniture? Last time you only removed the large mirror, but refreshing everything could be nice.”

“No, I want to sell them. The jewelry in that box, the dresses if we put them up for auction, could we get some money? And just to be clear, I don’t want to ask the Edelheit family.”

Louis gave me a calm, assessing look, then nodded.

“Noble families often auction off valuable jewelry, so it should be possible. Shall I look into it?”

As expected, Louis didn’t question me and followed my wishes. He even quickly found an auction house that dealt in noblewomen’s jewelry.

“There are five auction houses in the capital that could handle Your Highness’s items. To sell everything quickly, Martavid or Esselvid would be suitable.”

“Really? I want to sell them as soon as possible. Which one’s better?”

“Then Martavid might be best. However, they have a Motus auction scheduled this month…”

“Wait Motus?”

I interrupted Louis. My interest spiked instantly. Motus was the only magical element in this world.

Wow! To think a single stone could let someone teleport across space! It’s like seeing teleportation from books come to life!

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