Whitney's POV
Finally, when I looked at David again, all emotion had drained from my eyes.
I bit my lower lip so hard it bled before saying, “A fake nun doesn’t get to put on a show here.”
The moment those words left my mouth, the entire room fell silent.
David’s jaw twitched. “What did you just say?”
Andrea immediately stepped in to hold him back, gently tugging him toward his seat. “Don’t let her get to you, David. Don’t hurt your health over this.” She gave me a sideways glance and sneered, “Let the rabid dog bark. We’ll see where that gets her.”
“This time, I choose number 10,” I calmly said, looking at the butler.
That egg had a distinct pattern on it, and I recognized it as my second child.
The butler raised an eyebrow, a sly smile forming on his lips. “Miss Miller, are you sure? If you're wrong again, you’ll only have one fake egg left.”
The crowd burst into laughter.
“You see that? Mr. Elledge and his wife already figured her out. They were just giving her a way to save face earlier.”
“But Whitney wouldn’t back down. And now she’s insulting the Madam’s religious beliefs. She's not afraid of divine punishment, huh?”
“Descendant of Eirian? Sounds like some fantasy novel nonsense. She’s just lying to everyone, including herself.”
Their taunts hit like steel whips across my back.
Fighting the pain, I slowly lifted my head and said, “Cut the crap. Just tell me the result.”
The butler didn’t answer. Instead of retrieving egg number 10, he picked up the one next to it.
“The answer is..." he trailed off, "wrong again.”
Before I could stop him, he tossed my egg into a silver platter. The shell cracked open with a sickening pop, and a wave of thick, foul-smelling fluid spilled out, along with a blurred, barely-formed piece of flesh.
No… no, this couldn't be real.
I couldn’t breathe. My brain went blank, and my nerves twitched violently beneath my eyelids.
The butler calmly continued, “Fortunately, we had a gentleman guess correctly just now. That means the egg is now his to deal with.”
A man stepped out from behind the crowd, grinning like he’d won the lottery. “Told you! I said it was number 7. Before the game started, Mr. Elledge told me to compare it with 7 and mark a line on number 6. Said it’d be worth it. Sure enough, Whitney got fooled by it, so the victory is mine.”
Holding up the platter proudly, he walked it over to Andrea and asked, “Mrs. Elledge, it looks like the egg’s gone bad. Doesn’t seem edible anymore. How would you like to handle it?”
I started trembling uncontrollably.
It hadn’t gone bad. That was my child’s underdeveloped organs.
Andrea didn’t respond right away. Instead, she calmly took out a strip of yellow prayer cloth from behind her and smiled faintly.
“Miss Miller says I’m a fake nun… well, I guess I’ll have to prove her wrong.”
She looked at the cracked egg with a tilt of her head and continued, “If what you say is true, and this really was your child, then, if I use this, it’ll never find peace in the afterlife.”
I started coughing violently.
It felt like all the air had been sucked from the room, stolen by her words.
I knew Andrea was no real nun, but I wasn’t brave enough to bet against the power of that cloth.
Lifting my head, my mouth already stained with blood, I whispered, “What do you want from me, Andrea?”
She clasped her hands together in false innocence and replied, “All I want is for you to tell the truth.”
“You claim to be a descendant of Eirian. You made some deal with my father, seduced my brother, drugged him night after night, slept with him, and then wormed your way into thier family’s wealth. All of it... just to secure your place, right?” she accused.
Dozens of eyes stabbed into me like knives, their judgment suffocating.
No. That’s not what happened.
I fell for David the moment I met him, and I wanted to heal him. That was all.
