We were just about getting up from the table to move out of the dinner room for the time being when my phone started to vibrate in my pocket. I wormed my way past one of the maids so I had enough space to pick it up as I saw that the call came from Claire.

  “Hey Claire, what’s up?”

  “Yo, Aurora, I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “No, not really. We are at the castle now, we just finished eating lunch and are moving to a different room.”

  “Do you have a minute to talk?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I looked at Alessia who had waited by the door for me to join and signalled that she could go ahead without me. “Give me a second while I go outside.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I left the room through the door on the other side and made my way out of the building through the back door, ending up in the garden. “Alright, I’m outside. What exactly did you want to talk about?” A gust of wind blew through the nearby pine trees. It was not too cold, especially not with my leather jacket on, but I definitely felt its presence.

  “I wanted to talk about Anya, or more like, something you knew about her but didn’t tell me.”

  “Ah…” It wasn’t hard to tell where this conversation was going, as there could only really be one thing. But I decided to let Claire herself say it just to make sure. “Did she tell you anything?”

  “That she is from a family that has basically trained to kill people like you? Yes, she just told me. But apparently you knew about that already?” It was hard to gauge from Claire’s voice if she was angry with me or not. From the tone earlier in the conversation I would assume she wasn’t tho.

  “I did.” I admitted.

  “And why didn’t you tell me? I thought I was your best friend, if not one of them at the very least. Or was I wrong?”

  “Claire…” I could hear Anya in the background. Claire must’ve called me pretty much immediately after she had been told Anya’s secret.

  “You are my best friend, Claire.” I replied. “But Anya made me promise not to tell anyone, so I didn’t. I had the feeling she wanted to tell you herself, which I assume she just did.”

  “...” Claire didn’t immediately reply. I think she was slightly in shock at the moment. She never had this reaction when I declared I was a vampire to her, but then again, maybe it was the combined shock of both her best friend and her girlfriend somehow being vampire related. That shock probably stacks. It would for me.

  “Look, I didn’t tell Ria and Em about it either. The only person I told about Anya was my mother because I wanted to hear her out on the matter. Seeing as she is the head of the conclave and everything.”

  “They really don’t know?” Claire finally replied.

  “No, I didn’t want to betray the trust Anya gave me. The same trust she has now put onto you as telling this to her girlfriend must not have been easy at all. I know, because I felt the same way coming out to Ria and Em with this.” I paused a second before continuing. “So why doesn’t your theatrical ass hang up the phone, hug and kiss your girlfriend and thank her profoundly for telling you one of her deepest secrets to you. You can call me back later today if you’ve got that sorted, okay?”

  “...You are right, Aurora.” Claire sighed. “I was being stupid. Sorry. I don’t know what came over me…” She chuckled softly. “Thank you for pointing out my mistake.”

  “No problem.” I smiled. “Talk to you later?”

  “Yeah. Talk to you in a bit.” Claire then hung up the phone. As I looked down at my screen I saw that the conversation had only lasted five minutes in total and most of that time was spent by walking out of the door. Well, I don’t particularly mind. I would rather have a quick easy conversation rather than a long hard one, and this was one of the more risky ones that could have gone either way. Luckily Claire has a good head on her shoulders.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I hurried my way back inside, trying not to trip in the heeled boots I was wearing and tried to catch up with the rest. As I opened the door on the other side of the dining hall I almost bumped into Alessia, but she managed to catch me before I did so.

  “Clearly not used to running in heels all too well yet.”

  “Can you blame me?” I chuckled and then realized the entire party of guests was also still standing in the hallway. “Oh… Didn’t I ask you to go ahead without me?”

  “You did, but our guests wanted to wait for you so we did.” Alessia smiled. “It’s not up to me to say no to your guests, right?” She smiled.

  I looked at Ilse, Paul and Karin. “You really didn’t have to wait up.”

  “We didn’t mind.” Ilse smiled. “We want you to show us around after all.”

  “Want to do the tour of the rest of the chateau now rather than relaxing for a bit?” I asked.

  Ilse nodded. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.” I smiled back. I then looked at Alessia, Viktor and Aileen. “Are you all joining the tour as well?”

  Viktor gave me a thumbs up. “Naturlich.”

  “I would also like to get the tour.” Aileen smiled. “I’ve been here hundreds of times but there’s always new things to discover.”

  “And I will be joining you to grade you of course.” Alessia smiled smugly.

  “G-grades? I didn’t agree to any of that.” I did my best to fake a stutter.

  “How else am I going to judge that you are a worthy successor?”

  “Wha-?” I raised my hands in acted shock.

  Alessia chuckled. “No, I’ll be here to provide some extra knowledge for those who want it.”

  “Alright. let’s head back to the foyer and start the rest of the tour from there.” I said as I started leading the way back to the foyer. It was the best point in the chateau to branch out from and the easiest for people to get their bearings from too.

  While we were walking, Em and Ria joined me at my side.

  “What did Claire want to talk about?” Em asked.

  “Uh, well…” I wasn’t sure if Anya wanted me to tell my girlfriends already so I decided to keep it a little bit vague for the time being. “She was having a… conversation with Anya and wanted my opinion on something. She will call me again later this evening though. She had to calm down a little first.”

  “That sounds really serious. Are they alright?” Ria looked quite worried.

  “I’m sure they will be.” I reassured my girlfriend. “It’s just a difficult conversation they were having. Have faith in both of them that they’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah. I would really hate it if they broke up. Especially after we finally spent some quality time together.” Em commented.

  “I wouldn’t like that at all.” Ria added.

  “Don’t worry too much about it. They’ll be fine.” I repeated my statement. Although I did really understand the sentiment my girlfriends were feeling. We finally got to know Anya better, it would suck seeing her go. Not that I would purposely avoid her if Claire and her broke up, but it would definitely add a level of awkwardness to hang out with the ex of your best friend.

  Ria and Em both decided that worrying wouldn’t help much anyway and followed my advice of having some faith in our friends while the entire group made its way to the foyer.

  When we arrived it was time for me to guide the group on a tour through the rest of the chateau. We covered pretty much most rooms apart from the attic with me being able to tell most of the history of the different rooms we passed through. In a couple of places Alessia did need to help me just a little but overall, I think I did pretty well with guiding everyone around.

  I kept the bedroom tour for last as I thought that to be a fitting ending for a guided tour so people could get situated in their room for a bit, going past the bedroom that I would share with Ria and Em this evening. As opposed to the guest bedroom that we had gotten last time, we had gotten a bit of an ‘upgrade’ so to speak. The bedroom was larger to begin with and had a lot more decoration, decoration which had been tuned to my personal preferences. That meant a few old paintings, tapestries and even some banners with my personal heraldry. Aside from that, the infinity pool/hot tub was also a bit bigger.

  Everyone was incredibly impressed, but most of all, my girlfriends were both looking in awe at the place.

  “Is this our own bedroom for the time being?” Ria asked, hugging me tight.

  “Yep. Do you like it?”

  “I do.” She giggled.

  “It feels like you.” Em commented.

  “In a good way?”

  “In a good way.” She confirmed with a smile. “I look forward to spending time here.”

  “So do I.” I smiled back. -In more ways than one…-