It has been a few months since things returned to normal.

Ok, normal was definitely not the word that I should be using. Things were not normal, and they probably would never ever be, but they were… calm, subdued. At least, as much as they could be.

One good thing out of everything that happened was that… at least now I have my own room.

No, it’s not because my parents are trying to compensate me for selling me or comfort me after the ordeal I went through. The reason it’s much more mundane.

Lucas now lives in my house, and he shares the room I used to sleep in with Thomas, my little brother. Since it would obviously be scandalous for me to sleep in the same room as a boy not blood-related to me, I was given a new room all to myself. No, really, it’s a new room. The whole house has been renovated.

The compensation Mathias talked about didn’t come from the viscounty, that had their funds and wealth taken by the royal family after what happened. Sure, they did contribute a little before the whole fiasco, but most of the money we were given was from the Duke of Sellan.

You know, Mathias’ uncle, the one who hired a band of mercenaries to ‘rescue’ him and kill the viscount.

Although more than compensation it would be better to call it bribery. To keep our mouths shut in case the King called for me or my parents to testify. Which he didn’t, because no one cares what peasants have to say, apparently. Despite that, it was a good quantity of money, probably more than what the viscount could have ever given us. Made sense, since the distance between the position of a viscount and a duke was as big as… the distance between the position of a viscount and a duke.

Well.

Turns out the Duke of Sellan did want Mathias for a reason. The duke’s wife and children passed away in an unfortunate fire that broke out on their summer house, while the duke was away in official business. Because of grief, he never married again, but he needed an heir in order to pass on his title and lands, and he didn’t want a distant cousin whom he’d never met to inherit after him. So, he decided to adopt Mathias, his closer blood-relative. But for Mathias to assume the role he obviously had to prevent his only nephew from being sentenced to death or imprisoned for life. Thus, the bribe.

If that was not enough, our new liege, the Earl of Navarra actually came to our house a few days after Mathias was summoned to the royal palace and presented to us more compensation money. Not as much as what the duke gave us but still a hefty quantity.

Just what was it with all these nobles trying to compensate us? In the end, the money was used to renovate and expand the house, clean up the fields and maintain the cattle that were almost as starved as us. With that, in just the span of a little over a month, we were all ready to tackle the world once again.

Don’t you love happy endings?

Now, that part of the story covers how my family recovered its economic stability, but it does not cover how in the world Lucas ended up living with us.

Mathias was right. Lucas’ maternal family wanted nothing to do with him. Knowing what the viscount did made things worse, and they reached the point where they denied the existence of a woman named Eve in their family just to save themselves shall the wrath of the king ever fall down upon them. In the end I was so angry I decided to take Lucas with me, while kicking down some trouble, but he wasn’t easily accepted in my own home either.

As expected, my parents were completely against Lucas coming with me. My mother was especially vocal about it, going on and on about how he was the son of a devil incarnate and his older brother was no better, how they ruined our lives and just why in the world should we do them this big favor?

In the end, I had to appeal by force of guilt over selling me when long explanations about how Lucas was actually innocent and how he helped me from the very beginning did not work. Jeez, never thought my mom would be such an angry person. And resentful! I’m really glad I’m nothing like her at all.

Surprisingly, or should I say, unsurprisingly, given Lucas’ open and kind nature, with time and a few fights in between, my parents came to accept Lucas’ presence in our home. Ironically, it later became my mother the one who doted on him the most. Dad was happy to have another helping hand and Thomas adored him. All in all, let’s say Lucas adapted pretty well to his new life. As far as my family was concerned, that is.

Going from being a noble, even if an illegitimate one, to a farmer was, no need to say, hard for him. He was clumsy at first, slowing down everyone significantly with all the chores around the farm, but, in the end, he accustomed himself to this new life fairly well, never once complaining even during the time my mother liked to give him a hard time. Despite that, I could tell how sad he was with how things ended. He almost never talked about it, almost never mentioned Mathias, from whom we had no news of after he was sent to the royal palace, but I knew that, even though he tried to look happy with everything, he was deeply hurting.

Before I knew it, a little over three months have come and gone, and now, not only was it autumn, it was also close to harvest time, and with it, my twelfth birthday celebration.

A.P.R.L.

(◞･౪･) Guess who's back? And I come with a schedule! Expect new chapters every Monday and Thursday!