They Said the Serpent Was a Prank, but I Found the Scales This Morning Chapter 08

They Said the Serpent Was a Prank, but I Found the Scales This Morning Chapter 08

According to customs, newlyweds were supposed to visit the bride’s family three days after the wedding.

After Cael told me all of this, I got up and rubbed my eyes.

His tall figure move unhurriedly to a door and open it.

When I saw the room beyond, filled from floor to ceiling with gold, silver, jewels, and treasures glowing in every color, I was stunned.

I had thought the four chests he sent as a bride-gift were already extravagant enough.

Now I realized that to Cael, they were barely a drop in the ocean.

He noticed my astonishment and seemed faintly embarrassed.

“Well,” he said softly, clearing his throat, “our kind is born with a fondness for shining things. I collected these over the years while traveling.”

He looked at me, a faint warmth rising over his cheeks.

“They were all prepared for you.”

As if afraid I would refuse, he quickly changed the subject.

“Maren, do you want to go back today and see your parents and relatives?”

I was silent for a moment, looking through the window at the misty, dreamlike forest outside.

“No.”

The thought that my parents had secretly promised me to a widower over fifty still sent a dull pain through my heart.

But even if that had never happened, I had already made up my mind before the wedding.

Leaving those four chests of bride-gifts behind would count as repaying them for giving me life.

From now on, my only identity was Cael’s wife.

Blood ties in the human world, my parents’ love, the sweetness I had once begged for and never received, all of it had become like mist passing through these mountains.

It no longer mattered.

Time passed strangely in the mountains.

In the blink of an eye, I had lived in the hidden estate for half a year.

At first, Cael’s white tiger attendant often brought news from below, saying that Everett had collapsed in the mountains more than once while searching for me, refusing to sleep or rest.

I asked the tiger to save him twice.

After that, when he put himself in danger again, I told the tiger not to interfere.

Gradually, Everett finally stopped appearing.

When I heard about him again, it was Cael who brought him up.

That summer, the weather turned strange.

Storms came one after another, and Raven Hollow suffered flooding.

One day, after Cael rescued a child from the swollen riverbank, he returned with his brows faintly drawn in resentment.

“That man really is stubborn.”

Only then did I learn that all of Raven Hollow had been talking.

Ever since the wedding fell apart, Everett had not only searched everywhere for traces of me, but had also given up his promising future in the capital and settled at the foot of the mountain.

In just half a year, the once brilliant, celebrated young scholar had become a silent, withdrawn man.

I caught the way Cael’s deep eyes quietly watched for my reaction, and I could not help finding it funny.

“Whether he’s stubborn or not has nothing to do with me anymore.”

“As for you, my husband, you seem to have gotten thinner lately. Would you like to try the quail soup I made?”

This man was surprisingly easy to soothe.

But what I said was also the truth.

The day I heard with my own ears that Everett had willingly helped Tessa trick me.

The moment I saw our love token on Tessa’s wrist.

No.

Perhaps it had happened even earlier.

When Everett casually turned the betrothal gifts I had worked so hard to catch for him into stew for Tessa.

When Everett slowly became like my parents, instinctively favoring Tessa, treating my obedience and tolerance as things he was owed.

I already knew we had no future.

My final struggle that day had only been because I could not bear to let go of the five years I had spent waiting for him, day after day, night after night.

It was my way of forcing myself to cut off the last of my longing.

That night, rain continued to pour over the valley.

At the foot of the mountain, outside a certain house, Tessa pushed open the door with a food carrier in her hand.

She had come through the rain, almost soaked from head to toe, yet she still wore a bright smile.

“Everett, I made this myself…”

The man sitting beside the desk did not even lift his head.

“No need. Take it away.”

Seeing the cold distance on his face, and thinking of how unmoved he had been over the past six months, Tessa bit her lip in grievance.

“Everett, can’t you even look at me?”

Her eyes reddened.

Finally unable to endure it anymore, she lost control and demanded,

“Are you still dreaming of finding Maren?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? Maren isn’t coming back. She married a monster. She might even be dead by now.”