Veronique is sitting on a chair by her dresser as Lucia is cleaning, she looking utterly bored with her life.

  ‘This would be going faster if she let me help’ she thought, feeling it was ridiculous that she wasn’t allowed to, but at the mere suggestion Lucia had given her the evil eye and such thing was absolutely terrifying coming from the meek maid.

  ‘It’s always the quiet ones’ she nodded to herself arms crossed then Veronique turned her attention to the stacks of books, then at the Dead surrounding her ‘If they are just hallucinations…’ her eyes rolled over them, they were acting like normal and weren’t interacting with her at all ‘…How did they find those books? What if they are real?’ she followed Little Drag’s movement as it circled around her as she thought it over when something came to her mind

  ‘There was a movie about a kid seeing ghosts’ she recalled ‘He was scared about them, but then he realized they just wanted his help’ her gaze went over to the Decapitated Friends

  ‘Could I be just like that kid?’ she supposed as she started analyzing the Dead surrounding her and that was when she started noticing something

  ‘It seems as if they all died violently’ they indeed all had some lethal looking injures on them ‘They could only look rotten cause it happened a long time ago’ she started making some assumptions ‘Maybe some kind of mass murder happened before this estate was built?’ she focused on Clashing eyes, who had clear stab wounds in the chest area ‘Or my ancestors killed them so they are back as ghosts to take it out on me’ she pulled more and more on her knowledge about Ghost from the movies she saw ‘Or the estate was built on a cemetery and they didn’t bother to move the bodies to cut the costs’ if that was the case Veronique would rather be wrong about it, which seemed likely since she was the only one seeing them, she let out a sigh ‘Whatever, this is useless speculation unless I have solid proof they are actually ghosts’

  ‘Thankfully I got a sure way to prove just that’ her eyes locked on Hanging Jaw as she got up from her spot and started slowly walking towards it ‘There is one element all Ghost movies have in common’

  ‘Touching ghosts…’ she stopped before it ‘Makes people feel cold!’ and started staring it down as if to scrutinize it

  ‘All I need to do is walk through one of them’ she reasoned ‘If I am right, I am going to suddenly feel cold’ she nodded and so Veronique walked through Hanging Jaw and…felt absolutely nothing different.

  “…”

  “Ah, I am actually glad they aren’t ghosts!” Veronique let out a sigh of relief at the news, unnoticed to her Hanging Jaw had given her a look of confusion from behind her back and Lucia had briefly stopped in her tracks to give her an alarmed one.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The redhead didn’t even realize she had spoken out loud and went back to her seat, resolving to start reading one of the books to pass time, even if she still had questions ‘But if they aren’t ghosts, how did they find the books?’ suddenly an possible explanation went on her head ‘Oh, I got it!’

  ‘I must have already seen the books in the past, probably Veronique must have wandered in the library at some point before I took over, which must have influenced my hallucinations’ she reasoned and added to it ‘maybe that’s also why the hallucinations came early, my mere presence could have triggered them early’ she grabbed the first volume of -Techniques to train animals- ‘This would mean Veronique’s memories are still there, is the real Veronique trapped in my head? Ugh whatever it’s not like she was even real in the first place!’ she started reading the book effectively distracting herself from her earlier thoughts.

  Unknown to her Hanging Jaw was looking towards her, head tilted in confusion as it scratched it, while Lucia just seemed worried.

  Training Grounds

  Mr Jerkings made his way towards the Commander of the Aurelia’s knights, Augustus Regulus, a mountain of a man with short brown hair and a thick beard framing his mouth that was shaved to the sides.

  Like all the knights of Aurelia, he was dressed the silver armor with gold trimmers, the only thing indicating his rank was the House banner hanging from his waist.

  It was the dark silhouette of a Deer over a purplish background.

  “What business does a lowly servant have with me?” Commander Regulus had immediately zoned on Mr Jerkings, his amber eyes narrowing on him in disgust

  “I am the head butler and why must you still insist on bearing Aurelia’s ancient banner?” Mr Jerkings hated to deal with this man ‘Augustus always had this weird fascination with that antiquate banner, but he changed for the worse ever since the late Duchess died’ but he would do what he must

  “Still a servant, so what do you want?” the Commander demanded to know, completely ignoring the question as he had always done in the past

  “I need one of your knights to become a personal guard for Lady Veronique” Mr Jerkings went right to the point

  “No”

  “No? I will have Duchess Lucretia know of your insolence” he was outraged by the outright refusal

  “Duchess Lucretia has no power over me, I answer only to the Duke, who has strict orders to keep the cities under our jurisdiction safe and which that requires all of my men to be at their spot and not wasting time guarding the bastard daughter of a bitch” unfortunately Commander Regulus was right, the Duchess didn’t have any authority over the Knights.

  However.

  “How dare you!? This is a clear violation of the Duke orders and clear disrespect to our late Duchess!” Mr Jerkings wouldn’t stand for any disrespect against the late Duchess.

  “That woman lost all the respect when she dared to lie with a lowly servant and the Duke’s orders are just to not mention it to the brat” there was nothing the butler could say against that

  “Regardless it is not appropriate and it is in the Duke’s wishes that Lady Veronique is treated as his own” Mr Jerkings recomposed himself, Commander Regulus just scoffed at his words but said nothing against it.

  “Are you sure you don’t have anyone you can spare? It is a quite urgent matter” he asked again as he couldn’t involve the Duke in this.

  “Mh well there is someone” the Commander responded after a moment

  “Wonderful, who is it?” for a brief moment Mr Jerkings had hope in Augustus…

  “Kain! Get over there” …and it died the moment the only candidate arrived into view.