The next morning Veronique went through her normal morning routine, even if it was much earlier then the usual and the only difference was Lucia coming in trying to assist her, which only annoyed her since she was perfectly capable of doing such things by herself, so Lucia simply limited herself to making her bed and tiding up the room.

  Once she was presentable Veronique headed to get breakfast as usual with the only difference that she took her book with her and Lucia was with her.

  Her dogs were still asleep and she didn’t want to wake them up.

  “Morning Kaine” she saluted the guard as she exited her room and saw him standing there, he started following them.

  “Uhm Lady Veronique where are you going?” Lucia asked

  “Getting breakfast?” she answered not getting why she would be asked such an oblivious thing.

  “…y-you are supposed to shadow Lady Rhea’s schedule, which means” Lucia trailed off

  “Oh…I got to go have breakfast with her” Veronique got the issue and stopped in place with a frown then she looked up at Lucia “where exactly am I supposed to go?” she felt a bit embarrassed for not knowing and made a mental not to look for a map.

  “I-I will escort you there” the maid gently said and started leading the way, this time Lucia knew exactly where to go because she used to work in that part of the household.

  “Thanks” the redhead quietly responded, as she followed along and payed attention to the path, they had to cross the garden again, so Veronique supposed it must be a central part of the Aurelia estate, but as they reached an impressive structure, much bigger then the one Veronique resided at, Kaine stopped in place.

  “Why did you stop?” Veronique noticed and asked turning towards him and stopping herself to do so.

  “I-It’s the main wing m-maybe he’s not allowed in?” Lucia gave a possible answer.

  “So there is some racist, specist whatever thing going on there?!” Veronique inquired out loud at which her maid gave her a confused look.

  “Rank…too…low” the raspy words came right from Kaine, who was holding his hand up to cover his mouth.

  “You can talk?” Veronique seriously thought he was mute since he hadn’t said a word before.

  “Yes…I wait…there…for…Lucia” Kaine had said slowly, his voice was muffled by his hand and seemed as if it was being strangled out from a fissure, did he have some kind of impairment that didn’t allow him to open his mouth correctly? It did kind of sounded as if he was trying to talk with his teeth closed.

  “Alright” the redhead didn’t press on it to not sound insensitive and Lucia resumed in leading her all the way to the doors of the dinning room in the Main wing.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “R-remember Miss Hawkings will j-judge e-every move” the maid reminded her

  “Don’t forget to take Mos and Bos for their walks” Veronique told her back, feeling it was quite lucky that yesterday they didn’t come back to another kind of mess, then entered the room and immediately felt at unease as she saw it wasn’t just Rhea at the table.

  ‘Of course the kid isn’t eating alone’ she thought feeling stupid for expecting such thing.

  Technically there were three tables in the room, the one that was being used was in a U shape and collocated on a raised platform, while the other two were simply long ones were placed so they aligned to the far ends of the U one continuing the shape and leaving a gap.

  The Duke and the Duchess were also there, the first was sitting at the table highest point at the center while the other was at his right, at his left was sitting some boy, that didn’t seem too older then Veronique, with golden eyes identical to the Duchess and deep black hair, who upon seeing her approaching immediately changed his expression to one of utter disgust

  “What is she doing there?!” he demanded to know and Veronique immediately got a deep dislike for the boy

  “Alexander Atelier Aurelia, such behaviour is beneath you” Duchess Lucretia scolded him and unintentionally confirmed Veronique’s suspicious that he was related to the Duchess, she will have to discretely inform herself about it later since it was important information that she should know.

  Miss Hawking wasn’t sitting with them, but she saw the old hawk merely observing from the side

  “Alexander” the Duke’s voice boomed “as I had informed you, Veronique is to join Rhea in her lessons with Miss Hawkings, which means she has a duty to be there”

  “Didn’t you dismiss her from this room because she was being too much of nuisance?” Alexander argued back “She has no right to be-” the boy yelped, interrupting his rant as Rhea, who was sitting to his other side, gave him an elbow to the gut

  “Don’t be mean to big sis!” the child said outraged

  ‘I like that kid’ Veronique thought with barely veiled satisfaction

  “Rhea!?” the boy said in betrayal

  “Enough! Veronique sit down, you are already late” the Duke stopped the arguing before it started

  “Sure” at that the redhead had another dilemma on her hands.

  Where exactly was she supposed to sit? So when she saw little Rhea gesturing for her to sit next to her Veronique saw no reason to refuse so she did just that letting her book rest on a spot at the table, not quite in front of her but to her right so she would have space to eat and it was out of reach of the little kid, who had been watching the cover out of curiosity.

  However once she sat down she felt like she did something very wrong from the sharp displeased sound coming from Miss Hawkings and the way the Duke gave her a warning look, but at the least Duchess Lucretia didn’t seem to care much and gave her a smile.

  Alexander was just grinding his teeth at her, looking as if he ate something sour.

  “Where are the pumpkins?” Rhea inquired completely oblivious to the sudden heaviness of the room

  “Oh Mos and Bos are still sleeping, Lucia is going to watch them till I come back” Veronique immediately knew the kid meant the dogs

  “Mos and Bos? That’s the name you gave to a pair of rare pure breeds?” Alexander butted in on the conversation

  “It’s short for Deimos and Phobos genius” Veronique lightly snapped at him making his ears turn red out of embarrassment

  “Terror and fear? Those are quite ominous names” Duchess Lucretia commented “but I guess it wasn’t why you named them that way, did you see those names in a book?” she asked

  “Yea…” Veronique left it at that, she didn’t know those names meant such thing and couldn’t exactly explain her full thought process because it was quite possible Mars didn’t even exist there.

  Alexander smirked at her, no doubt thinking she was illiterate or something.

  ‘This was going to be a long breakfast’ she thought feeling as if she stepped to a battlefield.