Ch 102: Vice Headmistress is in Trouble Due to Lucien

Inside the dining room of Vice Headmistress Charlotte's manor, Charlotte sat in the seat of honor at the head of the long table.

She rubbed her temples and sighed. Why does that man keep bringing trouble to my door? First Melissa, now a pair of elven royal twins.

Charlotte sighed for the umpteenth time. She had barely woken up, having spent the previous night drinking despite Lucien's advice and her own resolution to quit. She simply hadn't been able to manage it; the nights left her feeling far too lonely, and so she had ended up drinking a good deal of alcohol in the end, the effects of which still lingered even now. She hadn't fully sobered up, but seeing the twins before her, she suspected that wouldn't take long.

"It's quite delicious," Olivia muttered, taking another bite of the meat stick she held roughly in her hand.

The girl was rather rough around the edges, and Charlotte would have found it difficult to believe Olivia was truly a princess at all, had she not already met her before.

"It is, but shouldn't you eat a little slower, sis?" Joseph added, his own mouth just as full as his twin sister's.

Olivia's cheeks flushed slightly at her brother's comment, but she quickly sharpened her glare, fixing her black eyes on Joseph. "I'm eating normally," she retorted, rebutting his claim.

Charlotte wanted nothing more than to flee the dining room entirely, and she would have, if not for the fact that the twins were royalty from the elven kingdoms, and she had yet to understand how they had traveled so far into the northwest, or how they had come to meet Lucien in the first place. All she had managed to gather from the chattering twins was that Lucien had dropped them off here; her maid had confirmed as much, though the maid herself hadn't been told anything more than that. More like the maid was told nothing at all.

There had been no message. Nothing to say he would be returning soon, or that he had simply gone out for work and would return back to take the twins away, or anything at all. He had quite literally shoved the twins onto her doorstep, too unwilling to deal with the hassle of caring for them himself, and ran off like a coward.

That bastard. Charlotte tightened her grip on the spoon she had been using to drink her soup, hoping the warmth of the soup might help sober her up faster, and the handle bent beneath the pressure of her fingers.

She set the bent spoon down beside her plate, and a maid hurried over at once, offering her a fresh one. Charlotte accepted it and decided it would be best not to take her anger out on innocent cutlery. No, she would save that particular anger for Lucien instead, whom she fully intended to strangle, both literally and metaphorically.

"Vice Headmistress, when will the Northern Blade be back?" Olivia asked, her words breaking apart through a mouth still full of food, sending small pieces flying as she spoke.

Eat slowly, girl. The food isn't going anywhere.

Charlotte smiled the same professional smile she had cultivated over a lifetime of practice, the very one she reserved for stubborn and troublesome guardians of her students. "I don't know," she said, not letting her irritation show up on her face.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" This time it was Joseph who asked, and thankfully, his mouth wasn't full like his sister's.

Charlotte turned her head toward him and smiled once more. "How would I know, when he didn't leave so much as a single message about either of you?" she answered, every bit as professional as before, and she watched as Joseph's lips twitched while Olivia visibly fought back a laugh.

Joseph nodded in defeat.

Charlotte brought another spoonful of soup to her mouth, closed her eyes, and let the tension slowly dissipate.

After calming herself with a few more spoonfuls of soup, Charlotte turned her attention back to the twins and cleared her throat with a deliberate, fake cough to pull them away from their food.

They had been eating like a pair of hungry beasts, and her maids had been refilling their plates one after another without pause. Olivia, surprisingly, possessed the larger appetite of the two, and Charlotte found it rather curious that the girl seemed to be more boyish than her brother. She noted the observation in her mind.

The twins turned to face her. Olivia's mouth was still full, and she let out a muffled "mm" around her food as she chewed, while Joseph swallowed what he had been chewing and gave Charlotte his full attention.

"I've already sent a message to your family. They should be getting back to us soon, but if not, I can arrange an airship for you both, should you wish to return quickly," Charlotte said, and the twins turned to face one another. Some manner of silent conversation seemed to pass between them, conducted entirely through shifting eyes and raised eyebrows that Charlotte found impossible to decipher.

"We'll wait for the message from our family," Joseph replied, and Charlotte noticed Olivia hurriedly swallowing down her food.

After gulping down the last bit of food in her mouth, Olivia met Charlotte's eyes. "We'll wait, and..." She echoed her brother's answer, before pausing, hesitating for a moment, then continuing, "I, ahem, we want to tour the academy and the city in the meantime."

Charlotte let out another sigh and let her head fall back against her chair. She could have agreed to the proposal easily enough, but she didn't have the time to babysit the twins herself, and neither her servants nor her guards would be able to properly handle them. As for the other professors, she didn't trust any of them enough to leave the twins in their care.

Well, not all of them. There was one who certainly could. Since he was the one who'd created this entire mess in the first place by shoving twins to her, it was only natural for her to hand him back the work.

Charlotte lifted her head, a wide smile forming on her lips as her black eyes twinkled with her plan. "Sure, I think I know the perfect person to show you both around, someone who'll make certain no harm comes to either of you," she said.

The twins shuddered at the sight of her smile, though it only made her feel all the better for it. She had finally found a way to get back at him. How dare he dump these twins on her doorstep in the first place, without so much as a request, let alone the courtesy of meeting her himself.

***

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