Veronique had been having a quite pleasant dream, as pleasant as it could be with some random guy offering cheese samples every now and then, when suddenly it was as if she had been yanked out of it and for a moment she had seen a woman with purple hair, but the other features were too fuzzy for her to make out, before it all stopped leaving her with the sensation of falling as she woke up.
The first thing that came up to her was how cold she felt, especially behind her ears and neck.
Did Bos betray her and went to sleep with Rhea too?
‘Was a window open?’ she sleepily thought as she shivered fully opening her eyes with a groan, but the room was too dark to see anything ‘I better go and close it before Rhea gets a cold’ and with that in mind she went to close the window, but there was a problem.
She couldn’t move her arms.
It was as if they were stuck to her torso and so the last vestiges of sleep left her.
‘Did I get tangled in my sheets?’ she thought as she managed to sit up and maneuver herself so that she would be sitting at her bedside, but something was off for one her feet had fully planted on the floor and she usually can’t even touch it with her toes.
The other was that what she was feeling under her feet wasn’t the usual cool marble, but something coarse and rough.
“What’s going on?” she asked out loud and as she did so she felt how dry her mouth was, while her throat was hurting to the point speaking had felt like swallowing glass
She tried to move her arms again, but they were still stuck to her torso yet she couldn't even feel a blanket on her.
What she tied up?
‘What the? I can barely feel them!’ Veronique thought as started to panic as what she supposed where ropes were that tight ‘Was I kidnapped?!’
“Help! Somebody” she had to interrupt her call for help because it simply hurt too much to keep it up, so she started looking around for anything that could be useful as a terrible headache was over taking her.
Her eyes locked in the only illuminated spot in the room, courtesy of the Moon, Veronique scrambled on her feet and almost fell in the process, her body standing up taller then what she was used to.
She shivered as she stumbled her way to the light feeling the cold hitting her bare skin, just then a terrible stench of human waste hit her nose.
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It was so foul she wondered how she didn’t notice it before.
She reached her goal, but the few steps that got her there made her legs burn and the heels of her feet hurt as soon as she put her weight on them.
Now that she was there Veronique let herself sit, or it would be more correct to say fall, facing the small barred window and frowning in confusion as she tried to catch her breath, her dry throat making her cough.
Her eyes went over the cracked stone walls, then fell on her legs.
Her bare and bruised legs way too long and impossibly thin, her gaze went lower and she found herself in some kind of closed robe, barely covering half of her thighs.
The sleeves of this robe were the ones trapping her arms, it was locked shut with leather belts.
‘…this this a straitjacket?’ she thought alarmed, her headache intensified and she found Hanging Jaw sitting down on its knees looking at her in concern, but something about it was different.
She could see through it.
“What’s going on?” she rasped out, just then her cough started getting worse and red splattered on stone as she heard a loud bark
In an instant the whole scenario blinked away and Veronique found herself sitting on her warm bed still breathing heavily, but that foreign pain was gone as if it had been nothing more then a bad dream.
She brought her arms out, relieved that they were free of the captivity.
It was as if she could still feel the tingling in her limbs.
“Veronique are you alright?” Rhea’s small voice brought her back fully to the present along with a wet nose on her cheek
“Yea, just a bad dream, go back to sleep” Veronique had reassured the child with a giggle as she avoided Bos’s sudden surge of affection, her eyes could easily see both Rhea and Mos looking at her in worry thanks to the abundant moonlight coming in from the spacious window
She got distracted by looking towards the moon when her bed tipped and she found Rhea getting cozy at her side, Mos doing the same at their feet with Bos joining to curl with his brother.
“Eh?” Veronique was confused as Rhea tugged at her nightgown to make her lie down
“I am sleepy, so go back to sleep” the child whined at her, at that Veronique just obeyed and was out like a light as soon as she hugged back.
Their maids would found them still asleep in morning, Rhea still clinging to Veronique while the eldest was hugging her close with a slight snore and drooling in her sleep, the dogs still curled at their feet.
“It feels l-like a c-crime to wake them u-up” Lucia commented at the sight with a small giggle
“…yea it sure does” Penelope would agree, arms crossed and with a small frown on her face
“It’s a-a s-shame t-they will h-have to s-separate” the other maid would add in a sad tone at that the orange haired woman could only huff.
They let the children sleep for a few more minutes before waking them up for the day.
The Duke’s study
In the evening, after her work shift, Penelope had marched herself to ask for an audience with the Duke, she wasn’t sure she would be seen today given how much work fell on the man lately and he was real busy normally but against her expectation she was allowed to enter right away.
“Thank you for seeing me, my Lord” Penelope had greeted him with bow, half wondering if the room was brighter then usual or she just remembered it differently.
“What it is that you wanted to speak with me about?” the Duke went right to the point, never looking up from his documents as he wrote down something
“It’s about Rhea and Veronique” the maid did the same
“What about them?” the Duke stilled his writing and looked up
“I beg you to consider not separating them” Penelope just dropped her plea, a which the Duke simply tilted his head intrigued.
