Lady Dhampir
Chapter 217

Milena really couldn't tell if she was mad at Lucian, or amused. Their brother, writing so much to the Lady he was courting? Now, if she hadn't heard it from Chartiana herself, perhaps she would have never known, or never even believed it. She grabbed her cup of tea to chuckle behind while Raphael was fuming, making an exasperated grimace and threatening to break the silverware. "I-I don't understand..." muttered Chartiana, a bit red. "Is it unusual for uh... Sir Lucian to write this much...?"

"It sounds more like he's saving his energy and poetry skills for whom it pleases him," sighed Milena. "Chartie, can you do me a favor? If he tries to ask you for your hand or something of the sort, let him know he needs to get my approval first." "E-e-e-engaged?" Mumbled Chartiana, getting even redder, which was quite impressive for a vampire. "We haven't talked about such-! I mean, he may have m-m-mentioned it a couple of times, but..."

"Just tell him as one of my Ladies-in-waiting, you'll need my approval."

Chartiana nodded helplessly, visibly at a bit of a loss here. Still, the fact that Milena was chuckling behind her cup of tea, and her brother looking about to break his, convinced her not to ask anymore. She silently thought her love interest might be in real trouble there... Luckily, Lady Eugenie made her arrival then.

As expected, the Young Duchess had dark circles under her eyes, but like a true Lady, she tried to show none of her weakness, and simply took a seat while a large cup of black tea was poured for her. For a while, they all chatted, Raphael eager to complain to his sister-in-law about Lucian's attitude and selfishness, which made her react just like Milena. The atmosphere was just a bit heavier than usual, as they had buried the heir of the House De Crescent just the previous day, and although they were all chatting, not much was taken from the plates. Even Milena only fed herself because she was genuinely hungry, but everything was hard to swallow. She kept stealing glances towards the door, with the faint hope her father would show up. Noticing it, Digory quietly came to her side to whisper.

"My Lord is fine, my Lady. We have made sure someone is watching him, so please do not worry too much. He mentioned he'd like to be alone for a while..."

"Thank you, Digory. Ask the doctor to pay him a visit if anything happens, or if he refuses to eat. Anything. If he doesn't want to, let him know I asked for it."

"I will, my Lady. Thank you, my Lady. Would you like some more tea?"

"Yes, please."

To her surprise, it was Mint that appeared next to Digory. The young girl was wearing a maid's outfit, and doing her best to do a convincing service, despite her shaking hands and visible nervousness. She had never seen Milena in her home, let alone the rest of the De Crescent Family. It couldn't be helped that she would be nervous on her first day on the job...

"The children were all taken in as requested, my Lady," added Digory once Mint stepped back. "We are currently assigning them a task, although the Doctor requested some rest for a little longer."

"Thank you, Digory. Please also appoint a handful of them to go and work in the White Palace."

"The White Palace, my Lady?...Understood. I will also send some of our trusted staff there."

"Also send a handful of our Knights," added Milena, a bit enigmatic.

"My humble apologies, my Lady, but... with the war, a lot of our men have been sent to the front under the young Lords' to fight. The ones we have remaining are currently assigned to the family and the Manor's protection. It might be difficult to send someone to the White Palace..."

"What about the younger ones? If we have some young ones still in training and yet to be knighted, it will be enough for now."

"I'll talk to our Captain of the Guards and see what can be done, my Lady." "Thank you, Digory."

Letting out a faint sigh, Milena grabbed her cup again, and let Digory step back to go and get the mail from one of the maids who had walked in. On her lap, Blanche perked up to glance at Milena's plate, probably hungry. She rarely dared to snatch away anything when Milena was with guests, but everyone here knew about Blanche, and wouldn't be surprised to see the white cat steal a piece of meat her mistress wasn't eating. In fact, she grabbed some bacon and jumped down to eat it quietly under Milena's chair; with the belly taking a lot of space, there wasn't much left for her to comfortably nap on her mistress' lap...

As usual, the daily mail was quickly sorted already, so all the non-personal and non-urgent letters were sent to each family member's office or desk, and the few letters in their hands were the ones they could read while with family. Raphael had received just two, both coming in unidentified envelopes, which made Milena feel this ought to be more personal exchanges he still couldn't wait to read. Those for Eugenie came from her sisters, and a few of her friends. Milena received each morning pretty much the same, two or three letters from her ladies in waiting over whatever they had to share with her about, usually Tiphania telling her about the Guild of Commerce's movements, and Briseis letting her know about some replaceings she had unveiled in the Royal Library. The last one came from Lilyan, one of her favorites as always. Lilyan also helped relay how her younger sister was doing while still in charge of the Vermillion Lands, only too happy to help Milena in some way. Her mansion on the edge of the Capital was so much closer than the one she had previously stayed at, the delays between her letters were also shorter, even if they tried to see each other in person from time to time.

"Young Master, my Ladies, who should I entrust these with...?"

Digory was holding, on a large silver tray, a heavy pile of letters, all in dark envelopes, with several families' seals on them. Their expressions fell, as they realized those were condolence letters... In normal times, the Duke should have been the one to take care of these, but Digory was acting out of concern for their Father by asking his children first.

Raphael sighed.

"I'll do it."

"I can do it too," said Eugenie.

"No, you take care of the children," retorted Raphael. "You've already taken care of most of the preparations for the Funeral, Eugenie, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it looks to me you could really use a nap, darling." Eugenie frowned, a bit upset, but Milena stood with Raphael on this one. Their sister-in-law really didn't need to be the one to endure all those letters, reminding her over and over of her loss.

"...I understand," she sighed, accepting her defeat. "I'll let you handle this, then... But you have to go to sleep too after that, Raphael. Vampires may not show dark circles like we do, but you still ought to get some sleep also."

"Yes, yes..."

While they discussed lighter matters, notably Eugenie sharing about her sister's kind letter, Milena's thoughts drifted away to Prudence. She ought to write to the young woman, too, for she had left the Royal Castle a bit too quickly to properly explain things to her. It would actually be quite helpful to still have someone she entrusted there, and the young lady had learned a lot over the past few weeks, but Prudence still needed a bit of guidance at times.

Milena called Olivia to have her take the rest of her letters upstairs, but just as her maid was about to leave the room, another one barged into the dining room, so quickly everyone got on edge, ready for an attack. However, it was an older maid who had been at this family's service for generations. Embarrassed, she still walked with quick steps to whisper in Digory's ear first, while everyone waited to know what this was about. Milena was a bit worried for her father, but from her coat and wet shoes, that woman was coming from outside, not the main aisle of the Manor. Once she was done, Digory's expression had gone very dark too, and he asked Mint to leave the room to get more hot water, which worried her even more.

"I apologize," he said. "But we were just informed that... a young child's body was found dead in the middle of the Capital."

"What?" Exclaimed Eugenie.

"Do we have more details?" Immediately asked Milena, frowning.

She already had a gut feeling about what this was about, and she was not going to like it at all...

"Sadly so, my Lady. They say the child was found with a... very visible bite wound on its neck. The child hasn't been identified yet, but the word that it might be a... vampire attack is already spreading quickly among the commoners. The Royal Guard has been notified, as the body was found early this morning by the merchants."
Raphael slapped his hand furiously on the table, making both women jump.

"Raphael!" Exclaimed Eugenie, furious. "Don't do that when Milena's there!"

"Those bastards," hissed the young vampire, unable to hear. "This is what they had been meaning to do all this damn time!"

Milena had a cold chill going down her spine too. She felt even sicker suspecting that child's identity. From the way Digory had Mint leave before giving them the information, their astute butler had probably gone to the same conclusion as she did. The sacrificed child was most likely one of the orphans who had gone missing... "This is just plain horrible," muttered Eugenie. "Who would sr a child in the middle of the street...?"

"They probably killed him elsewhere and brought the body there for show," retorted Raphael. "They wanted commoners to replace him before the guards on night watch would."

Milena thought the same. When the previous attack involving both princes had occurred, the issue had been somewhat contained not to alarm the public opinion, but this time, the people who wanted it very public had succeeded. It made her even madder. She didn't believe for a single second a vampire had really done this, not out of their own volition. Most adult vampires weren't even attracted to children's blood, they fed on adults! Either the vampire had done this in an abnormal state, or it was entirely staged. Either way, they had won this time.

"Let's go and see if we can control the crowd," declared Milena, standing up. "If we take action now to calm down the rumors, then perhaps we can limit the..."

"Oh, you're not going anywhere," suddenly said Eugenie, getting up too. "Milena, have you forgotten what you came here for? To rest, and deliver those babies safely. I'm certainly not letting you go to that place, in the middle of an angry crowd and next to a dead body!"

"I'm fine," retorted Milena. "But if we don't act now to contain this, we will lose time our enemies will take spreading more rumors. They may have even paid people to have more rumors spreading that a vampire did this, and it all happened before the morning court, too. If we don't go and make sure that..."

"Millie, sit your heavy butt down!" suddenly said Raphael, sighing. "Don't you ever know when to stop?"

"This isn't the time for me to rest!"

"Oh, yes it is. Eugenie is completely right, and you're just being stubborn as always. So, you sit down and do what you want, but you do it from this Manor only. I swear I will have Digory f**g lock you in your bedroom if we have to, but you're not going anywhere right now." "I shall happily follow Master Raphael's orders," immediately added Digory.

Milena glared at their impertinent butler, annoyed at him too. However, she slowly sat back down. She was incredibly frustrated that she would have to sit this one out, but with both Eugenie, Raphael and their butler set on keeping her here, she knew she wouldn't have a choice.

"We still can't leave things at that," she protested.

"

I know," nodded Raphael. "Don't worry. I'll reach out to the Society so they know what happened, and we can figure out a plan to counter this without any mistakes, or making things worse. We can also try and replace if any vampire has gone missing that could have been used to stage this..."

"I'll go there myself," said Eugenie. "But..."

"I'm still the Duchess de Crescent," she retorted. "If I go there personally to talk in our family's name and condemn what happened, people will understand our family doesn't stand with those acts. It's important they know the family De Crescent isn't staying silent, right, Milena?"
She slowly nodded, a bit impressed at her sister-in-law's cool-headed thinking. Indeed. With such a horrible thing happening in broad daylight, although there was no proof, people would be quick to point at vampires, mostly vampire families. It was important the noble families voiced themselves against those acts, or people would be quick to point their inaction instead. When there was no culprit in sight, the people would be looking for whom to blame, and the most notorious vampire family would be pointed out, for sure. She sighed, massaging her temples.

"...Alright. It should be enough if you go and offer our help to the competent authorities. I'll write to Tiphania right away to have her ask the Guild of Commerce and the Press that we can control, to spare us any slander and let us know if they can replace any tips." Eugenie nodded, while Raphael angrily threw the daily news on the table.
"At least it happened after the news of the day was released..."

"No, it would have been better if we could talk about it before," frowned Milena. "If we can't control the crowd's whispers now, they will be quick to make their own assumptions rather than wait for the next publication. I'll askTiphania if they can't have something prepared to warn people, or at least control those rumors..."

Milena was incredibly frustrated with this situation. She should have seen it coming, have some people patrol or something before it happened. Now, it felt like their enemies had thrown a rock in a lake, and were simply waiting to see where the waves and droplets would reach. With the horrible rumors that were already spread about things on the battlefront, it was just about to become a lot worse for the Vampire population. The timing was just the worst...

"I'll write to the Queen," declared Milena.

"Aren't you afraid the King will turn this into his own publicity...?"

"Even if he does, we have to at least pretend the situation is under control." Raphael crossed his arms.

"... What if he's the one who orchestrated this, Millie? Have you thought about it?"

Milena remained silent for a full minute, then slowly shook her head.

"I don't think it's Ellias. He's not in a position to do something like that or order it. In fact, more agitation is probably the last thing he wants, right now. The Council is already giving him a hard time, and he's just trying to show he can rule the whole Kingdom by himself. Such a thing happening right now despite him, he's already got too much on his plate... No, if anything happened, I believe it came from the people we've been looking for."
"You mean... the Church?" Muttered Eugenie.
"I think so," nodded Milena. "Think about it. This is the perfect opportunity to strengthen their position. The people are already scared of the war and the article we made about the Wendigo. With this, they will trust the King less to protect them, and turn to God instead. I bet more and more people have already been going to Church since the beginning of the War."

"That's a fact..."

"Now, they can gather even more believers than the Royalty, and influence people how they want. Even if we think that it's only a branch of the Church that's been corrupted, the higher ranked those people we are looking for are..." "...The harder it will be to make them fall," sighed Eugenie. "...Isn't there a way to stop them?"

"Those people want the vampires to fall. No, in fact, I bet they want even more power. The Church has been going under since the rise of the nobility, and they aren't so close to the crown anymore. They want the vampires to go, so they can control the Kingdom better. They know the vampires will never follow them, so..."
"They want to get rid of them. But Milena, they can't do that so easily, the noble families have been established for..."
"Not as long as the Church," frowned Raphael. "Millie is right, they have a lot of power and influence already..."

"And worse," muttered Milena. "I'm sure they have more children. More innocent victims to sacrifice and shock the public opinion with..."