"Should I bring Lena along?" Daisy suggested.
"Who's Lena?" Joji asked.
"The maid who wrote the novels, silly. She used to be my maid back at the academy too."
"Do you not remember?" Daisy said, shaking her head at how forgetful her man could be.
Joji did remember her then. Lena had been their age, quiet and seldom seen unless there was reason.
More than once, she had warned him that people at the academy were plotting against Daisy, a quiet guardian to them both who asked for no notice and kept always to herself.
"I do remember," Joji said. "I just get forgetful sometimes."
He was already on his feet by then, moving through the room and dimming the lights of the mana lamp.
Later, when Daisy had fallen asleep against his shoulder, the thought returned and would not leave him.
The Snow Family was no ordinary servant line. They had served Everhart since the days of the first patriarch, an old and peculiar bond that had survived across generations.
