The night had grown late.
The turmoil in the Greyrat Family had settled for the time being, thanks to Cui Ciyou's unexpected solution.
Zenith Greyrat-or rather, Zenith Latoreia.
She was sitting alone on the edge of her bed.
The moonlight outside her window fell cool and clear as water upon her beautiful golden braid.
Yet it could not dispel the deep, impenetrable gloom in her eyes.
Everything that had happened that day replayed over and over in her mind.
That storm, which had nearly torn her entire world apart, kept playing back.
She, Zenith Latoreia, had been born in the Millis Holy Country, renowned for its faith and rules, as the second daughter of the Earl of Latoreia.
Noble pride ran in her blood, but the most devout faith of a follower of Millis was engraved even deeper within her.
The teachings of Millis had guided her every action since childhood-unwavering fidelity and monogamy.
A man and a woman should have only one sacred partner.
Pure love, kindness, courage, loyalty... these virtues formed the foundation of Zenith's entire worldview.
And it was precisely because of that devotion to "freedom" and "purity."
At her coming-of-age ceremony when she was fifteen, Zenith had a fierce argument with her parents and resolutely ran away from home.
She refused to live like a flower sheltered in a greenhouse, following the "perfect life" her family had arranged for her, a life whose ending she could already see.
-After graduating from a school for nobles, she would become a bargaining chip in a political marriage.
She would marry the eldest son of some marquis or duke whom she had never met, then become a proper, elegant noblewoman with no identity of her own.
What Zenith wanted was the same freedom her younger sister, Therese, enjoyed.
So