Checkmate, Heiress

Bad news: I died. Good news: I got transmigrated into a book. Bad news: I landed in the belly of a peasant woman and was about to be born as a fake heiress. Good news: I'd read this book cover to cover. I knew that when the real heiress came home, she'd use her parents' guilt against me. She'd even scheme to get me caught in bed with my own brother, so furious would our parents be that they'd throw me out of the house, and I'd die a miserable death in some back alley on a rainy night. So the year I turned five, I took every coin I'd ever been given and paid a street urchin to show up at the manor gates claiming to be the real heiress. When I turned eight, a second urchin took her place. At ten, a third. By the time I turned fifteen, the household already had eight "real heiresses" crammed into it. People back then didn't know about alum and water to distinguish family lines, so as far as anyone could tell, all eight girls shared blood with both the Marquis and his wife. As for why one daughter had become eight... The sage just smiled and said it wasn't meant to be spoken of. The year I turned sixteen, the real heiress finally came home. Chapter 1 "I'm looking for the Marquis, or Lady Griffith. Please let them know—I'm their birth daughter. I was switched as a baby at the hospital sixteen years ago." The day Ivy Griffith, the real heiress, came to find her family, the rain fell harder than usual. She stood square in the doorway, drenched. Her thin, coarse dress clung to a frame gone gaunt with hunger, every angle of her showing through the fabric. Rainwater ran in dark ropes from her matted hair, and her face had gone blue-white with cold. Only her eyes stayed startlingly bright. Tucker, the gatekeeper, summed her up in his own words. "This girl's missing a screw somewhere, running to a stranger's house in rain like this. "And I sure can't bring her in soaked to the bone like this to see the Marquis and the Marchioness. What if she catches a chill and gets everybody else sick too?" Tucker eyed the girl standing there dripping onto the front steps, clearly torn. Ever since the manor had picked up several new heiresses, someone showed up almost every month claiming to be a long-lost Griffith heiress. Most were frauds. But you could never be sure one of them wasn't the real thing. By the time the news reached the inner house, I was sitting with my mother, keeping her company. The moment she heard another girl had come to claim kinship, Lady Griffith shuddered. "Lord above, when does this end? I don't have any fingers left to prick for her." She held up both hands miserably, ten fingers wrapped in gauze, her face somewhere between exhausted and despairing. "I haven't picked up a needle to sew in so long my fingers ache just looking at one." She thrust her bandaged hands toward me, pouting like a scolded child. "I'll need to drink ten cups of your tea before I'll feel better." I laughed despite myself and cradled her hands gently, blowing on them. "All right, all right. I'll make you a batch this afternoon. With extra sugar." "You'd think she could've picked a better time to show up than while your father's away—now I'm the one who has to get pricked again." My mother sighed, but she dutifully unwound the bandage from one finger anyway. Marigold, her personal maid, brought over a small gold bowl and carefully drew a single drop of blood. "I swear, I hope this one really is my ninth daughter, so I never have to prick myself again." "Heaven willing, Momma, this will be your ninth daughter for real." Everyone at Griffith Manor already knew there were supposed to be nine daughters coming home. With me, that made ten—my mother liked to say I completed the set, her perfect ten. When the first "real heiress" came home, her blood matched both parents', and the three of them had wept in each other's arms with joy. When the second one's blood matched my nominal father's too, my mother had actually gone for a sword—only to discover, to everyone's shock, that the girl's blood matched hers as well. None of them understood how, but the three of them ended up in another tearful embrace regardless. By the time the third "real heiress" was welcomed home, my parents had finally realized something was deeply wrong, and sent for the sage. Chapter 2 The sage said nine was the number of extremes, and by some quirk of fate, the Maquis and Marchioness's real heiress had split into nine. As for why nine— The sage stroked his beard. Not meant to be spoken of, he said. More "real daughters" kept turning up, and plenty of impostors tried to pass themselves off as one of them too. That only made me—the fake daughter who'd grown up under my parents' roof since infancy—all the more precious by comparison. Add in the fact that I had a honeyed tongue and knew exactly what to say, and it made perfect sense that I'd end up their favorite. While all this was happening, Marigold came back carrying the bowl. Sure enough, Ivy and my mother hadn't even laid eyes on each other yet. Blood testing had become practically an assembly line at Griffith Manor by this point. My mother watched the two drops of blood swirl together in the bowl and dissolve into one, and tears of relief spilled down her cheeks. "Quick! Get a courtyard ready for our ninth daughter! And pass the word—anyone else who comes claiming kinship gets thrown straight out!" … Once Ivy had been cleaned up and dressed properly, they brought her out to the courtyard. Why the courtyard and not one of the private sitting rooms? Simple—there were too many of us to fit anywhere smaller. Ivy was led out in a daze, and immediately a flock of sisters descended on her, chattering all at once. "How old is our little sister this year?" "Silly, she's the same age as the rest of us, obviously!" "Where have you been living all these years? Why'd it take you so long to come home?" "Have you had any schooling, little sister?" "You look so pale. Are you taking some kind of medicine?" "What are you good at, little sister? We could all learn from each other." My mother looked over her nine daughters with unmistakable pride. It had been a chaotic road getting here, but every single one of them had turned out to be a good girl. Diana, the eldest, had come home early and had already mastered music, chess, calligraphy, and painting. Vera, the second, had also come home fairly early, though she'd never cared for those refined arts. These days, she served as a battalion commander in the Falcon Battalion and was rarely home. Nora, the third, had grown up poor and terrified of poverty, so the moment she came home, she threw herself into learning how to make money. These days, she was responsible for most of the household's income. Sylvia, Iris, Clara, Rosalind, and Odette had all come home considerably later, but every one of them had thrown herself into mastering some skill regardless. Sylvia excelled at embroidery. In the years my mother's fingers had been off-limits to needlework, it was Sylvia's embroidered pieces that had gone to court as gifts for the palace ladies. Iris was a gifted painter. Clara had a talent for medicine. Rosalind could charm anyone in any room. Odette had come home the latest of them all, but she was sharp—sharp enough to already be serving as a princess's companion. And me? I'd cornered the market on modern cuisine and had every single one of them wrapped around my little finger through their stomachs. And Ivy? As far as I knew, she couldn't do a single thing. After the farmer's wife had swapped her out at birth, Ivy hadn't exactly suffered—but the family had been too poor to afford lessons of any kind for her. "Who... who are they?" Ivy stammered, trembling. "These are all your sisters. Come say hello," my mother said warmly, waving her over. Ivy looked like she might faint on the spot. She could never have imagined it—she'd traveled all this way to find her family, only to discover they already had eight other daughters waiting for her? "No! It's not possible! I'm the only real one! I'm your only daughter! Mother, they've tricked you!" The courtyard went dead silent. My mother's smile faded. Her brow creased. "Don't talk nonsense. Every one of these girls is your true sister, bound to me by blood just like you are. How could that possibly be faked?" "Blood? What blood?!" Ivy shrieked. "They're fakes! All of them! Someone's playing tricks! Mother, believe me. I'm your only daughter!" She was shaking with fury, her eyes sweeping wildly over her sisters' varied expressions. Finally, her gaze landed on me, standing beside my mother. She lit up like she'd found her proof, and pointed a trembling finger straight at me. "It's her! It has to be her! Celeste Griffith! Is this your doing? Did you come back too?!" Chapter 3 "You knew I was coming back, so you found all these frauds to stand against me, didn't you?!" Ivy yelled. I was standing at my mother's side, a half-shelled pine nut still in my hand, my face carefully arranged into shock and helplessness. My mother's expression turned to stone. She pulled me behind her. "Ivy! Have you lost your mind? What do you mean 'coming back,' what 'frauds'? If they're frauds despite sharing my blood, then what does that make you? "Marigold, take Ivy back to her courtyard. She's not to leave without my say-so. And fetch a physician. I want her head examined properly." "I won't go! There's nothing wrong with me! Mother, believe me! Please believe me!" Ivy was hauled off by two matrons, one on each arm, thrashing and fighting the whole way, her hair coming loose. "Celeste! You'll come to a bad end! Just you wait! I won't let this go! I'm the real heiress! I'm the real—" There was a lot buried in what Ivy had just screamed. My mother hadn't caught it, but I—a well-read woman in my own right—understood perfectly. Ivy had been reborn. Well, wasn't that something. A story about a real heiress and a fake one had just turned into a story about a reborn real heiress running into a transmigrated fake one. Talk about a plot twist. … After a few days locked in her courtyard, Ivy seemed to have learned her lesson. The day she was let out, she went straight to my mother and dropped to her knees, tears already streaming before she'd said a word. "Mother. I was wrong." She sniffled, her shoulders shaking. "That day... seeing so many sisters all at once, it frightened me so badly. "I was just... scared. Scared that I'd come home last, that I'd fall short of my sisters in everything, that I'd never earn Mother's love..." She lifted her tearstained face—a face that shared a good six parts resemblance with my mother's younger self. "I never knew I could have such a gentle, beautiful mother... that I could live a life without farm work, without feeding chickens and ducks, day after day..." My mother looked at Ivy's thin, drawn face, listened to her recount her hard years, and her heart softened. She sighed and bent down to help Ivy to her feet. "There, there. What's past is past. You're home now—that makes you family. "Your sisters are all good girls. Spend time with them and you'll see. As for love..." She reached out and stroked Ivy's hair fondly. "You're all my daughters. Of course, I love you all." Ivy leaned into her arms, choking back a sob as she answered. "Yes, Mother. I understand." Then, from an angle only I could see, she shot me a look of pure defiance. … A few days later, my father returned to the manor. He surveyed the room full of daughters in their fine dresses and closed his eyes, resigned to his fate. Everyone in Rosemont already knew the Griffith family's daughters were something special. Nine daughters! Every one of them shared the same blood! The sage himself had declared it—nine daughters of fate, split from one soul and scattered down to earth. A blessing on the Griffith house. What was there left for the Marquis to say? "Well then." My father cleared his throat, his voice carrying. "Now that everyone's home, it's time we held a presentation ball!" Word spread, and the whole manor burst into motion—tailoring gowns for nine young ladies, commissioning jewelry for nine young ladies, and making sure every piece matched down to the last detail, with not a single girl shorted. Ivy, meanwhile, had gone strangely quiet these past few days. Aside from greeting our mother each morning, she stayed shut up in her own courtyard. A quiet child was a child up to something. In the original story, this was the very ball where Ivy had schemed to catch me in bed with my brother. Once the household discovered us, my reputation would be ruined, and the Marquis and his wife, in their fury, would have thrown me out of the house. Not satisfied with that alone, Ivy had gone on to have me assaulted in secret. Chapter 4 That was the night the original character was supposed to die, thrown out into the rain. From the moment I'd transmigrated in, I'd made a point of keeping my distance from Nathaniel, my nominal brother. I'd been dripping poison in my parents' ears since I was small, too—telling them a real man ought to make his mark protecting the realm, that a house like ours needed real accomplishments to keep its title secure, that Grandfather had won his rank on horseback and it was a shame to let his old sword gather dust. Apparently, my father dreamed that very night of his own father chasing him around with a stick. The next day, Nathaniel was shipped off to the border. He didn't come home once in three years. Even for this presentation ball, all he sent was a servant bearing ten pairs of frontier-carved emerald bracelets. I was curious what Ivy could possibly improvise without Nathaniel around to use. Turned out, people can be reborn, but their wits don't come back with them. … Ivy had never gone through the kind of proper training a noble daughter received. She hadn't read any scheming-household dramas either. Her repertoire of tricks, apparently, began and ended right about here. The moment my dress got splashed by a maid I didn't recognize, I knew. It had started. I set off toward my assigned room with my personal maid at my side. Partway down a quiet stretch of corridor, another maid came hurrying up, begging mine for help. "Please, Lady Griffith needs you—something about a missing hairpin for Lady Ivy." My maid glanced at me. I nodded. "Go on. I can find my own way to the room." Reassured, my maid hurried off. I walked the rest of the corridor alone, my steps unhurried. When I reached the door, I didn't push straight in—I paused first and listened. Heavy breathing came from inside. I opened the door. Ivy was there. She looked at me with pure venom. "Did you really think I was stupid? You knew I'd been reborn, so of course you'd expect the same old tricks and prepare for them ahead of time. Celeste, you're as good as dead." The words had barely left her mouth when noise erupted at the door. Ivy's eyes lit up. From somewhere, she produced a dagger and plunged it into her own chest. "Help! Help me! Celeste is trying to kill me!" She staggered toward the door and collapsed straight into my mother's arms as it opened. "Ivy! What— what happened to you!" My mother nearly jumped out of her skin at the blood soaking Ivy's dress. "Someone get the physician! Where's the physician! Hurry!" Ivy shook her head weakly, then, with visible effort, pulled a bloodstained doll from inside her robe. "Celeste… Celeste resents that she isn't one of the fated daughters, that she can never marry into the royal family... so she made this cursed poppet of the Crown Prince. I caught her... and she tried to silence me for it." I looked at Ivy's performance and pointed at myself, unable to help it. "Me?" Ivy ignored me completely, gazing up at my mother with an expression of pure fragility. My mother's tearful face froze solid. "You're saying... Celeste cursed the Crown Prince because she can't marry into the royal family?" Ivy, utterly oblivious to the strange look on my mother's face, didn't notice the sisters behind us either, all of them fighting not to burst out laughing. She simply stared, full of feeling, at the man standing at the back of the crowd—the Crown Prince. "Yes... yes. I beg the Crown Prince not to hold this against the Griffith house. Celeste isn't truly of Griffith blood—whatever she's done has nothing to do with this family..." Under the weight of Ivy's expectant gaze, the Crown Prince parted the crowd and stepped forward.