Hearing this, her adoptive mother beamed with delight. "Oh, our Iris is so obedient. How wonderful! You won’t have to suffer through years of schooling, and you get to marry the man you’ve loved for so long. Even though I adopted you, I haven’t treated you badly, have I?"
From as far back as she could remember, Iris had always known she was adopted.
When Wendel was born, he was constantly sick. The village shaman claimed that the only way to ward off misfortune was to adopt a girl to take his place as the family’s scapegoat. And so, the Lancaster family took in Iris.
Back then, many poor families couldn't afford to raise their children, so they simply abandoned them by the roadside, leaving them to starve. With that in mind, Iris had always been grateful to the Lancaster family for taking her in.
That was until she turned eighteen—when she learned the truth.
She hadn’t been abandoned. She had been kidnapped.
Her real parents were wealthy who had never stopped searching for their missing daughter all these years.
Overcome with shock and hope, Iris tried to contact them—only to receive a vicious slap across the face from her adoptive mother.