“Come inside,” Devina said. “I have an offer that might interest you.”

Elena hesitated briefly, but followed behind. Devina sat on a chair in front of her desk, gesturing for Elena to sit on the other. “Elena, what is it that you do in this castle? What is your job?”

“Why, I’m a maid, my lady. I work under the head housekeeper, Mrs. Wren. I do some cleaning, laundry, and I help keeping inventory for the kitchens.” Elena gave Devina a curious glance, probably wondering where this line of questioning was leading.

“But you can read and write”, Devina said. “And from what I gathered from our talk yesterday, you have read half the library. I’ve never met a maid quite like you before. You also seem to be the only servant here who’s not afraid of me. Careful, maybe, but not afraid.”

“Well, they have good reason to be afraid of you,” Elena said, meeting her lady’s eyes. “I wasn’t going to mention it yesterday because you seemed nice, but we can’t simply ignore your past actions.” She paused, then asked, “You mentioned an offer?”

Devina chuckled, a mix of amusement and appreciation in her voice. “This is precisely what I mean. Very well, let’s discuss the offer.” She leaned back in her chair. “I’ve recently taken an interest in our territory’s governance. And it has come to my attention that there’s a lot of paperwork involved, and many things to keep on top of. So I’d like to hire you to help me with that.”

“With all due respect, I’d rather not,” Elena replied firmly, almost immediately. “Governing a province isn’t a trivial thing. You should really try your hand at it yourself. It’s not something you can just offload onto someone else.” She said, planting her hands on her hips, elbows flaring out in a defiant stance. “And I from what I’ve heard, you don’t treat those beneath you too well.”

She continued, her tone serious, “You shouldn’t expect to get anywhere with that either. There isn’t even much governing that you can do in the first place, to be frank. As far as I can tell, your brother and father have been doing most of that. And you’re the junior heir, so you technically don’t govern anything to begin with.”

Devina smiled. “You have a better grasp of the situation than I would have expected. Look, I’m not trying to do this because I’m bored or anything. We actually have big troubles that my brother isn’t addressing. Our food is rotting away in the fields, so if we don’t do anything, our citizens are going to starve in the winter. I’m trying to prevent that.” She took a deep breath before continuing, “About the servants. I do regret that, and I’m willing to offer reparations for their inconveniences. But right now, you and I need to start doing something because our people are going to starve otherwise.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Elena’s expression hardened. “Inconveniences? I’ve heard you struck someone in the face! And you fired an elderly woman for not bringing your food quickly enough. Making amends is the bare minimum you should do. You need to apologize to them personally.” Her voice rose with each word. “In fact, if you don’t, you can forget about me working for you. How does that sound?”

Devina sighed internally. Her predecessor had been a moron, complicating things for her. She didn’t like the thought of apologizing for the wrongs of another, in fact she just wanted to be done with this charade and get to growing stronger. But she needed Elena, and if this was what it took to get her on board, then so be it.

“Those terms are acceptable,” Devina said. “I’ll deal with each of them personally. I can’t force you to become my secretary, but should you change your mind I can promise we could do a lot of good together. Making sure less people starve or freeze in winter, for starters.”

Elena considered for a moment, her expression softening slightly. “A worthy cause. But you won’t just dump everything on me, right? And what about compensation? I’d expect more than the few coppers I earn as a maid.”

“For now, I can offer you ten silver a month,” Devina replied. “If you accept, you’ll be relieved of your maid duties. We’ll convert one of the empty rooms in this wing into an office. Your first task would be to obtain copies of the reports my brother receives. After that, we’ll strategize on how to aid our province.”

Elena nodded thoughtfully. “That doesn’t sound too bad. We could use one of the rooms near the library, so I can still look after it. It would be a shame to let it fall into disrepair.”

“Of course,” Devina agreed. “You can even assign a couple of people to maintain it. Being my assistant does come with certain perks, as you’ll discover.” She paused, then added, “There’s one more thing I’ll need you to do once we’re set up.”

Elena raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s that?”

“I need you to summon the most experienced ranger from the mutated forest,” Devina said. “That place is a mystery to me, and I intend to uncover why our citizens keep perishing there. We need to understand what we’re dealing with.”

Elena’s eyes widened slightly. “The mutated forest? That’s… quite an ambitious undertaking, my lady. But I’ll see to it once we’re settled.”

Devina nodded, satisfied. “Excellent. Why don’t you get started on those tasks? I have some personal matters to attend to.”