...Goodness. What should I do? Unable to leave the room on my own to chase after the attendant, but feeling too awkward to just stand alone in a room with a man I didn’t know despite the fact that he was unconscious, I put a hand to my cheek and sighed.
“My sincerest apologies, Miss Freida.” The head attendant hurriedly walked into the room.
It seemed that while Lord Henrik’s younger brother now lived in the knight dorms, he had been badly injured on duty and taken to his home until a healer was available, since it was so close to the Noble’s Gate. But as he was unconscious and there was no time to prepare a room, he had been brought here instead.
“We have prepared another room for you, Miss Freida, but it seems we were so surprised that we didn’t send word as we should have. My sincerest apologies.”
“I can sympathize with how unsettling it must have been for your master’s younger brother to be brought here unconscious without warning. If the other room is ready, I do not mind moving there now.”
Just as the servant let out a sigh of relief at my understanding, a ball of light flew into the room through the window and spun circles above Damuel, sprinkling a glimmering dust onto him. The falling light shining in the dark room looked brilliant and mystical.
“...So this is magic, is it? How beautiful.” I reached out to touch the dust, but it avoided my hand as if on purpose.
After a minute of me watching the dust, enraptured, Damuel suddenly shot up in bed. “Apprentice! Are you okay?!”
“Eek?!”
Damuel was gripping a shining wand in his hand, and scanned the room with a hard expression as though he was in the middle of combat, but after a second he blinked in surprise.
“...Where am I?” he said in confusion. He must have become disoriented when he was knocked unconscious.
As Damuel looked around the room again, baffled, the head attendant took a step forward. “Sir Damuel, how are you feeling? You were brought home after falling unconscious, and up until now you have been resting in bed.”
“I’m fine. Judging by the remnants of light, there must have been some healing magic.” Damuel looked down at his arm, then shot his head back up. There was an intense look on his face. “I have to hurry back to the Knight’s Order!”
“Sir Damuel, I think it would be wiser to wait and—”
“There’s no time!” Despite having been groaning unconscious just moments ago, Damuel sprang up from the bed with ease, raced to the balcony, and flung the window open. “I’m in the middle of guard duty! If the apprentice shrine maiden is hurt again, I’ll...” He swung his arm, and that alone was enough for a large winged horse of pure white to appear by the balcony. He mounted the horse, his expression worryingly grim, and then flew off. It was dark out, but the horse’s large wings were such a radiant white that I could see them flapping through the air as Damuel quickly disappeared from sight.
The ball of light appearing in the room and Damuel jumping out of bed had happened so suddenly that all I and the head attendant could do was stand in shock and watch him go.
“...Miss Freida, I will guide you to your room.”
“Yes, please do.”
After helplessly watching Damuel go, the head attendant came back to his senses and guided me to my newly prepared room. I climbed into bed and thought back to what I had heard Damuel say. He had certainly yelled about needing to help an apprentice shrine maiden who was in danger. To my understanding, Myne was the only apprentice shrine maiden in the temple at the moment. If Sir Damuel had been badly injured while on guard duty, it was very likely that Myne had gotten wrapped up in whatever was going on as well.
“What in the world has happened?”
I could have asked Lord Henrik, but nobles did not give away information so freely. He might tell me if I explained that I was Myne’s friend, but depending on what mess Myne was wrapped up in, that opened up the possibility of putting myself in danger too. It would likely be safer to keep my relationship with Myne a secret.
“I would at least like to make sure she is alive...”
At breakfast that morning, Lord Henrik apologized for the incident the night before. “I was so concerned about my younger brother that I didn’t send proper word out about it. My apologies.”
“Think nothing of it. I myself got to witness the magic of the nobility for the first time. It was beautiful, mystifying, and very worth seeing.”
After breakfast, Lord Henrik returned my bracelet; all of its feystones were now black again. Shortly after, Grandfather and I returned home.
“Grandfather, there is something I need to research. Please lend me the key to the inner document room.”
I hurried and changed before going to the Merchant’s Guild. There existed a room that compiled documents related to magic contracts, and this room could only be entered by the guildmaster and those who had his permission. I went there to search for copies of the contracts that Myne had signed with Benno. Unlike those in the document rooms that could be browsed by anyone, the contracts here would change when someone who had signed them died.
Magic contracts were used rarely enough that it didn’t take me long to find the documents concerning Myne.
“...‘Rozemyne’?” The document I found said that the contracts had been signed by Benno, Lutz... and Rozemyne. There would be no need to change the name of a Devouring child who had signed a submission contract, so this was almost objective
