Anna had invited her sister inside her house, and the two sat in the lounge area together, drinking a glass of wine. Alex, Raven, Eve, and Amelie were all in the house's playroom, playing with toys and games, while Mary watched over the four of them.
Anna and her sister started to talk about the simple things—where they have been, what they have been doing, and things like that—but those were all just the lighter topics, with many more things to be discussed.
Lyanna turned her head towards the blue-haired maid, who was pouring more wine into Anna's glass.
"Kaede, there is something you should know." Lyanna said this before taking a sip of her wine.
"Yes, Ms. Lyanna?" Kaede said politely.
"Dear, I told you just to call me Lyanna." Lyanna said with a smile.
"Sorry Lyanna." Kaede said, correcting herself.
Lyanna took another sip of her wine and asked Kaede "Kaede, you should know Eve was like us."
Kaede, whose face was still stoic, still jolted back in surprise. "You mean she was..."
"Yes" Lyanna said, interrupting Kaede. "Luckily, she never made it passed the initiation phase, so she didn't have to do anything extreme."
"How did you find her, Ms. Lya-Lyanna i mean." Kaede said it with a curious expression.
"When my guards attacked one of their hideouts, she was found among several other children. I found the families of nearly all of the children except for her. Her mother died when Eve was born, and her father was nothing more than a drunk who sold her to them for beer money. So when I met her father, I bought her from him, and Anna adopted her. Now here we are." Lyanna explained.
Kaede, who rarely showed her feelings, had a sigh of relief, which both Anna and Lyanna took notice of.
Anna then chimed in "Kaede, you and Mary will teach her how to be a proper maid for the next few years. She will become the private maid for both Alex and Raven, so teach her well."
"I will, ma'am" Kaede said with a bow.
Lyanna then turned to her sister and asked her "So, what has that bastard husband of yours been up to?"
Anna groaned upon hearing this question. "He's still obsessing over me, apparently. According to my sources in the city, whenever he's mad at me for not sleeping with him, he orders whores with long black hair."
Lyanna's face turned into disgust. "That's disgusting."
"Tell me about it." Anna said with a disgusted expression. "I still don't understand what our mother was thinking about when she decided to marry me to a man like this. The only good thing that came out of this marriage was the birth of my children."
Lyanna then had to ask her sister something she was curious about "What about just getting rid of him?"
Anna sighed "Then I lose the little bit of security my children have. While he is a disgusting excuse of a man, he has influence, and very few would dare attack this household."
Lyanna sighed once again. "Maybe one of these days, when the children are older, you could always come with me to the capital."
Anna smiled "Hopefully that happens when Alex and Raven are older, but as of right now, they don't even know how to use their magic yet. Time will tell, though."
The two sisters took a sip of wine, and Lyanna smiled upon hearing that before asking Kaede something "Kaede, does anyone besides me and Anna know about your mark?"
Kaede, taken aback by the sudden question, answered Lyanna honestly "No, Mary nor the children have seen the mark."
Lyanna smiled and said, "Let me see it."
Kaede looked apprehensive about showing it, so Anna nodded as if giving her permission.
Kaede lifted the right side of her skirt and revealed a mark on her thigh, the mark being a glowing light blue symbol.
(AN:I will post it's looks on the Discord hard to describe) located at the top of her thigh.
Lyanna looked at it closely before saying "It's the same as mine."
Lyanna lifted her dress and showed her thigh as well, and in the same place as Kaede stood the same symbol, but this time it was glowing the color purple.
Anna looked at both Lyanna and Kaede's marks and sighed. She herself did not possess one, but she knew exactly what those marks represented.
"Kaede." Anna said before standing up and putting her hands on Kaede's shoulders.
"I will not push you to ever force yourself to reveal your past; that will be your own decision. I know what that mark means, but that doesn't mean I know everything about what happened to you. I only know what my sister has told me about her past. But when or if you are ready to discuss your past, either with me, Lyanna, Mary, or even the kids when they grow older. I'd bet all of us will listen."
Kaede nodded, hearing Anna's words, and stayed silent.
Kaede put her hand down on the mark on her leg; her eyes quickly filled with sorrow before she quickly moved on from her thoughts and returned to her stoic expression. She remembered her past, which was how she met Anna, and now lived a peaceful and happy life. Even if her past still haunted her, she could still look forward to the future.
*Elsewhere*
In a town in the middle of nowhere sat a man who sat at a bar, drink in hand. His entire body was covered in a white cloak; he had a light brown beard and hair that was wrapped up in a small ponytail. He also had a foreign sword located on his hip as he was sitting. It was a sword that was made on the eastern side of the continent, which made it an extremely rare sword in the western part of the continent.
As he took a sip of the whiskey from the glass he had in hand, he heard the doors to the bar slam open, garnering the attention of every person inside the bar.
Three men, all dressed in black uniforms, entered the bar and scanned the people inside. One of the men, a man wearing a black hat, pointed at the man wearing the white cloak. All three men nodded their heads and walked over to the white-cloaked man.
"Are you the one they identify as 'Ghost"?" The man with the black hat asked.
The man didn't say anything; instead, he took another drink.
The three men noticed a white mask right next to the man—a mask without any eye holes; it was just a plain white mask.
"Silon? What did the description we were given say?" The man in the black hat asked his friend.
"A plain white mask and a white cloak—it's him." Silon answered.
It was then that the group of men grabbed onto their weapons. The man with the hat grabbed his sword. Another one of the men grabbed his axe, and the last man grabbed his two knives.
Seeing this, everyone in the bar started to flee, including the bartender, causing the man in the cloak to sigh.
"You ruined my night..." the man in the cloak said. "I planned on drinking until I forgot what day tomorrow was."
The man in the top hat swung his sword at the white-cloaked man, who, instead of dodging, grabbed the sword with two fingers, completely rendering it stuck.
"What the..." the man in the top hat said.
The man in the cloak used his other hand to grab his mask and put it on his face.
"You idiots are going to pay for ruining my night." the white-cloaked man said.
It was then that the man in the cloak smashed the man in the top hat's sword with only his two fingers, causing the man to stumble backwards.
The man with the axe charged forward and swung his sword with all of his might, but every swing completely missed the white-cloaked man.
The cloaked man then kicked the axe man in the stomach, sending him flying backwards and smashing through one of the bar tables.
Then the man with the knives charged at the cloaked man, who grabbed the man's wrists and twisted them so hard that the man dropped the knives and went down to one knee, which the cloaked man let go of before kicking him in the face and knocking him to the ground.
"Before we get started, I think I should introduce myself." The man in the white cloak said. "I've gone by many names in the past, but the name you three can call me...is "Ghost."
The bartender who ran outside of the bar stared inside one of the windows, and he couldn't even describe what he saw. A combination of blood, screams, and loud noises and what shocked him the most—something that looked like white lightning flashing throughout the bar.
After five minutes, this ghost walked outside the bar, his white cloak now bloodied in red.
Upon seeing the bartender, Ghost reached into his pocket, flipped him a golden coin, and said "To pay off the tab, plus a little extra to apologize for the mess."
The bartender quickly ran inside and saw the mess of what used to be three men, now dismembered corpses with expressions of terror on their faces.
The bartender turned his head towards "Ghost" and saw he was now nowhere to be found.
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