Childhood friends.
What Anastasia had just said kept repeating in Lumine's mind like an endless loop as he stood there, probably wearing some ridiculous, stunned expression. Anastasia wore her trademark dark grin, making no effort to hide the cold contradiction in her jewel-like eyes.
Master Ranni was the first to recover. She asked in a tentative tone,
"Are... are you perhaps a child of the Great Clans?"
But almost immediately, Ranni shook her head.
"No. Apologies—that was inappropriate of me to ask."
Whether Anastasia was or wasn't shouldn't have mattered. It did, in a way, but Ranni still believed it wasn't her place to ask something like that outright.
And yet—what else could make sense?
A normal noble from the Lesser Clans would never boldly declare something so dangerous.
Unless...
Unless Anastasia wasn't a normal noble at all.
Unless she was royal. A princess, like Celestina and Jasmine.
