Chapter 7 I Will Make This Work Somehow
The knock didn’t sound as faraway as Maeve wished because she could still hear it even though she buried herself under the many blankets she could find. If anything, it sounded like it was right at her eardrums.
Maeve had to bite hard into the pillow in her arms to stop herself from screaming as a scared but worried voice said through the door, “My Lady, y-you have to come outside. You cannot lock in yourself like this. Your life is more important than the Presentation Day. Yes, you… you have unlocked something we did not count for but it is okay! We will love and support you no matter what!”
“Griselda! Do not remind her of that!”
“It has been a week, Elaine. She refuses to let us even look at her. Do you think it’s also because the Duke refused her advances? I heard she told him how she felt and he blatantly refused them?”
“… thank the gods, I suppose?”
“Ah,” Maeve groaned, pulling off the blankets over her head as she sat up. She looked a mess and she probably smelled like one too. For one, her hair stuck out like a bird nest with some parts poking in every direction like she was electrocuted, her face was red and greasy, and her eyes… well, they looked swollen and red.
NACE popped up a system message, \[READY TO END YOUR TEMPER TANTRUM?\]
Maeve gripped the sheets as she hissed, “Over my dead body,”
\[GIVE UP ALREADY OR DO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BEFORE\]
“You mean before you got back and decided to make my life a living hell?” Maeve felt like an evil witch, which wouldn’t be too different from a real one as she got out of bed. Her joints immediately flamed up, sending a wave of pain up her spine.
She immediately grabbed the wall, the pain almost causing her to faint. Her body was weak too since she had been unable to eat anything, and sleep too had been cruelly taken away from her by a certain floating thing.
\[YOU CHOSE HAVING THE PENALTIES NOW. YOU CHOSE THIS\]
Maeve groaned. “Stop reminding me or I will give up the ghost and you’ll be sad and alone with no one to talk to,”
How did everything go so wrong?
Simple.
The Duke had pinned Maeve to the wall with his knife at her throat as he demanded that she give an answer about who she really was, because apparently— get this— he had already met Isabella previously and could tell that her mana affinity was light. And also he knew this ‘brutish, uncouth, unpleasant and manipulative woman was not his Isabella.’ In his own words.
HIS!
Maeve was sure he would kill her. She could feel it in her bones. She waited for the system to reappear, to come defend her or give her some ability to fight him away but when that didn’t happen, she opened her mouth, ready to confess everything but then it returned.
It glitched right above the Duke’s head, like static. Shaking and flashing between many colors before it said in red scary letters, \[STOP. NOT. GOOD. REALITY. BREAK\]
So she pulled out another stupid excuse from her ass.
“Telling him I am suffering memory loss was such a dumb excuse,” Maeve fell to the floor, landing on her back now as she spread her arms. “God, is the ceiling dividing into ten pieces? I’ve never done drugs before. Is this effect similar to mushrooms?”
He let her go only because he couldn’t refute that claim. Maeve returned home, realized that NACE wasn’t responding to her, and ordered every sweet delicacy they could bake and lounged as lazily as she could, prepared never to leave her room again.
It was nice, for three days, and then NACE returned with blaring penalties. It demanded that she return back to the main plot or the penalties will begin in full. Maeve dared it to do its worst.
Now, she couldn’t taste food, sleep without having a nightmare or even have a relaxing shower. Her ears were also extra sensitive so she could hear every single noise and all the pains in her joints had returned.
The screen hovered over her body, \[I DO NOT POSSESS THE ABILITY TO STOP THE PENALTIES. YOU HAVE DEALT WITH THEM ENOUGH. JUST RETURN BACK TO THE STORYLINE AND THEY WILL END\]
Maeve let out a weak scoff. The world was already beginning to spin, each breath she took feeling like its last, “You undermine my ability for suffering. This is nothing compared to working in a company after your soul. I will not give in first.”
The system stared blankly at her, as if thinking… if something like that could think and ever so slowly, new words appeared on the screen, \[WHAT IF WE HAD AN AGREEMENT?\]
“Mhm, no. I’m ready to go into the heavens,”
\[OKAY. A CONTRACT\]
Maeve was suddenly sitting up, a move that felt like her spine would snap in half though she didn’t seem to care as she said in that same grin that could restart Armageddon, “I will be the one to draft all of it. Every clause, every rule. You can go over it when I’m done but you only have twenty four hours. If you say no, we resume from where I stopped and I keep enduring this until one of us breaks, and trust me, the human spirit can be very unbreakable,”
The system waited again, its blue screen empty before it said, \[AGREEMENT DRAFTING PERMISSION GRANTED\]
\[CONDITION: FAILURE TO COMPLETE DRAFT WITHIN TWELVE HOURS RESULTS IN IMMEDIATE RESUMPTION OF PENALTIES\]
A sound of relief poured out of Maeve’s lips as her joint pain vanished. She was still weak from starving herself but that didn’t matter anymore in the grand scheme of things.
She shot up from the floor, and the world tipped slightly due to the flow of blood to her head but she ignored all of that as she walked to the door, turned the lock and spread both doors open as widely as she possibly could. “Now, now. There was no need for you to… t-to… w-what am I looking at?”
Right where five maids that looked familiar stood, there were four extremely good looking men standing behind them.
One of them had skin the color of polished gold, dark curls pulled back with thin chains that glinted every time he moved.
Another was so pale it almost looked unreal, silver hair spilling down his back like silk, his eyes a soft lilac that made Maeve vaguely drift into a trance the longer she stared.
The third had faint, glowing markings tracing along his collarbone and throat— too precise to be scars, too gor groups to be anything but decoration.
The fourth was all sharp angles, kohl darkening his eyes and clothes cut just revealing enough that it felt planned rather than accidental.
All of them had their chests exposed, revealing… perfect looking chests and a dangerously tight v lines on their waist that seemed to promise a world of perfection and glory.
Maeve took one look at their ears, realized they were elves, also realized she would not stand a chance against them in this world or the next and instantly shut the doors back. “NACE. What was I looking at a second ago?”
\[GIFTS FROM THE ROYAL FAMILY. THE QUEEN HEARD THE RUMOUR THAT YOU WERE FEELING UNWELL SINCE THE DUKE’S STRAIGHT REJECTION OF YOU AND SENT ESCORTS AS PEACE OFFERINGS\]
Escorts?
Escorts?!
“Rejection of me?!” She heard herself snap. “He didn’t reject me! I didn’t even ask for his hand,”
\[… SURE\]
Maeve raised her middle finger again. “Escorts. What does she take me for? Something… something cheap and… and weak willed and… and… Jesus Christ, I can fight every other thing but elves? Will they… will they let me touch them?”
\[…\]
\[YOU DISGUST ME\]
“Ahhhhh,” Maeve grabbed her hair, trying her best to calm herself down. She needed to calm her thirty five year old heart. Sure. She might have had a thing for elves but it didn’t matter. None of it did. She was on a time limit. She had to make the contract.
But first, she had to see her parents.
So she did the best thing that she could.
Maeve stretched for three minutes, then grabbing her night dress upwards, she licked her lips and burst through the door, screaming at the top of her lungs.
The whole estate turned into an uproar. Everyone screamed, some maids abandoning their duties to chase her down while others wailed, worrying that she was still ill. Maeve on the other hand kept running, not bothering to stop until she found a door to a room that looked familiar.
The Countess’s study room.
She walked in, making sure to search for the hallway for any upcoming maids before scuttering to the table in the front. She didn’t mean to look, she wasn’t a snoop… it was just supposed to be a tiny peak. Just very tiny and short.
But she found herself sitting there for hours, her eyes scanning through every line again and again before she heard herself scream, “WE’RE BANKRUPT?!”