Ard had been seven years old when it happened.
He had been identified as a demon at the age of two. From that point forward, rumors had circulated through Mansion Ventias like a slow leak that no one could fully stop. His father and mother had forbidden it, threatening dismissal and worse for anyone caught spreading gossip.
But rumors are their own kind of illness, and illness does not stop because it has been told to.
From early childhood, the discrimination had been quiet but consistent. Maids, cooks, soldiers, even the head servant had kept their distance in ways that were never quite direct enough to punish. Ard had not let it bother him. His older sister played with him, and that had been enough.
Whether she did it out of genuine affection or because she believed children should have someone to play with, Ard had never been entirely sure. But he had played along, and found that he did not mind.
Inside the mansion, only three people truly cared for him without reservation. His father, his mother, and his sister. Ard understood that he had become a subject of gossip.
He chose, without particular drama, to simply not care. His sister had cried over it once. Ard had reassured her, at an age most children are still learning to read, that he was perfectly fine.
When Ard turned seven, his father announced that he needed a personal maid for his youngest son. Among all the staff in the mansion, not one came forward.
Ard had not expected otherwise. On this continent, demons carried a certain reputation, and no amount of ducal authority could fully erase centuries of that.
He had been in the garden that day, picking flowers by himself. No maid nearby. A few soldiers at a distance, standing their posts.
He had just reached for a stem when he heard footsteps.
*Tok. Tok. Tok.
Steady. Purposeful. Not the light step of a soldier on patrol, not the hurried shuffle of a maid going somewhere she had been sent.
'That is not a soldier or one of the other maids.'
Ard had long since memorized the sound of people by the way they walked. Light but clear meant a soldier. Maids did not move like this, quick and certain and unhesitating.
"Hello, Young Master Ard."
He turned around.
A girl was kneeling in front of him, head lowered, with a small beauty mark beneath her lip. She introduced herself as his personal maid in a voice that was composed and unhurried, as though she had already decided this was where she was meant to be.
Her name was Lutra.
---
"You are..."
Back in the present, Ard sat across from Lutra in the quiet of his room, the moonlight still coming through the window, the night air still cool and unhurried.
"I have already come to think of you as family."
He smiled. Wide and without restraint, the kind of smile he almost never wore in front of anyone else.
Lutra looked back at him with eyes slightly narrowed and an expression that had gone carefully still.
"I am truly grateful you became my personal maid."
That night, Lutra said nothing for a long time. The room was quiet. The moonlight moved slowly across the floor, and the breeze lifted the ends of both their hair.
"Young Master."
"Yes?"
"Do you have... any interest in pursuing a relationship with your own maid?" She delivered this with an expression of visible distaste.
"What are you thinking?!"
"I was thinking that you might have developed an interest in your personal maid, as tends to happen in novels."
"Do not compare me to something from a novel!"
"If you are interested, I am prepared to offer myself entirely." Lutra began unbuttoning her collar with slow, theatrical deliberateness.
"STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY!" Ard spun around, face turned fully toward the window, both hands raised.
"I was being completely sincere. Ugh. I would rather not say anything like that ever again."
Ard kept his back to her, arms crossed over his chest, staring hard at the night sky beyond the glass.
"Young Master."
"What now?"
"Thank you."
He did not turn around. But he knew she was smiling behind him, and he smiled too, still facing the window.
"Work harder." His voice came out quieter than he intended, but it carried the warmth he had not quite managed to say directly.
---
Ragged breathing. Sweat dripping from her chin onto the grass below.
The training grounds were empty except for Claire. The moonlight was cold and clear, which suited her.
She swung her sword. Vertical. Horizontal. Thrust. Three basic movements, repeated without variation, until her arms ached and her hands bled.
She knew what people thought when they watched her practice fundamentals. That she was behind. That she should have moved on to something more advanced by now. But she remembered what her brother had told her once, standing in the courtyard with the afternoon light behind him, smiling in that quiet way of his.
'If the foundation is solid, you can hold more. If the foundation is weak, nothing built on top of it will last. Surely you already understand what the difference means, Claire.'
She remembered his face. The gentleness of it. She remembered the small wooden sword she had been holding at the time.
The memory brought two things at once. Something like longing, and something else beneath it, quieter and harder to name.
She finished with a thrust, held the pose for a breath, then straightened and let her arms fall.
She looked at her hands. Calloused and cracked, with old scars layered beneath newer ones that had opened again tonight. She stared at them for a moment.
"Is it not unsightly? A girl with hands like a servant's."
The voice was arrogant and immediately familiar. Claire did not look up. She had heard variations of this her entire life and had long since stopped finding them interesting.
"Rude, but then she is a servant's daughter at heart. Same manners as her mother."
A fact, technically. Claire had been born from a moment of carelessness by the head of her family, drunk and irresponsible, with a servant woman who had since died under circumstances that were never quite explained. She had grown up in the mansion as a stain no one was quite willing to remove and no one was willing to acknowledge.
Her father, the head of the family, regarded her as a mistake. Her half-siblings treated her accordingly. The insults had been so consistent for so long that they had simply stopped landing.
"The rumor that you train through the night was apparently true. Are you aiming for the position of heir?"
"Did you come all the way here just to talk, Brother? Rion Winterfail."
"You dare say my name so plainly now."
"Why would I hesitate to say the name of someone who clings to his mother's back?"
"Insolent—!" One of the men standing beside Rion stepped forward, but Rion raised his right hand without looking at him. The man stopped.
"It seems you need some additional instruction from me."
"I appreciate the offer, but I have already learned more than anything you could teach."
"You are refusing my instruction?"
"Declining is more accurate. I simply do not need it."
"You—!" The man moved again. Rion's hand went up again. The man went still.
"Very well. If you no longer need your elder brother's guidance, I find myself curious what you have learned instead. Shall we duel?"
"I will go in your place, my lord."
"Who asked you?"
"But my lord—" A pause. "Understood."
"What do you say, Claire? A healthy bout between siblings."
Claire drove the tip of her sword into the ground and took a slow breath, wiping the sweat from her face. When she had steadied herself, she answered.
"Fine. Who will judge?"
"I will." A woman's voice, stepping forward from the shadows at the edge of the grounds.
* * *