Needing time to cool off from the torture that was Griste’s “magic” lesson, I wandered down the halls without a sense of direction. My stomach wanted me to head to the dining hall in the hope there would still be something warm for me to eat, yet my legs were not ready to settle down, nor was my mind ready to put what happened in the study to rest.

Everything the skinwalker told me resonated within my head, all vying to be at the forefront of my mind at once. The best thing I could do to silence their demands was to focus on one and block out the rest.

I knew which ones I would not focus on: anything that had to do with Griste. He was the last thing I wanted to think about, and I would have rather remembered the time I broke my arm falling off a horse.

To my dismay, this did not leave many things I could think about. My inability to react both teetered close to the subject of the skinwalker and was an uncomfortable thing to consider after getting beaten up. I was not willing to touch French; such a thing was for my academic tutors, not something for someone to lecture me over. I groaned when I realized it would have to be something I would have to face eventually, the same way I would have to come back tomorrow.

This left one thing open, and it too was not something I wanted to think about, but for different reasons.

Why is everyone calling Dragoslava a dog?

When Illthic called her such, I thought she was being bitter, clinging on to the idea she could win on a verbal battlefield because she could not win on a physical one. But when Griste called her a hound, I was not as sure as I once was.

My maid being called a dog was not something that sat well with me, and I felt an instinctive desire to defend her. She could be a bitch, no doubt, but not for the same reasons they were implying.

I saw her as someone who would nag me when I preferred solitude. They saw her as a thing rather than a person, which left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. However annoying I found her, she didn’t deserve to be painted that way.

The revelation she could fight was also still fresh in my mind, try as I might to suppress other memories of the night before. Dragoslava struck me as the type of woman who could hold her own in a scrap, and when I was younger, I believed she could wrestle a bear, something I was now more confident she could do.

I always knew she could use magic, but I never believed it was anything beyond creating suds or warm air for drying clothes. Flight, let alone the ability to make things shatter with the wave of her hand, was far above what I believed her pay grade to be.

What stood out most of all, however, was the air in which she carried herself. There was not an ounce of doubt in her, like she knew how everything would play out and that she was in control of all of it despite the things that surprised her. It was clear it was not her first time.

The things she would have had to deal with to gain her level of confidence was something I could not imagine. When I stopped to consider what she must have dealt with to be considered a hound, my imagination painted an uncomfortable image.

It was all but certain she helped my parents with their duties from The Nest, but I wasn’t sure how she would help because I did not know what they did. There were their duties as nobles, but because they had magic at their disposal, there was little required of them they couldn’t solve within hours. Not that she would have been involved with that work in the first place.

My parents were never forthcoming about what The Nest wanted them to do. I knew they were supposed to keep the masses ignorant of magic, but how they did that was a mystery to me, which did not add up with how busy they were.

Only then did I remember what my parents said about why The Nest removed humans from the magical world. When I considered what would need to be done to accomplish such a task and remove those who already knew magic, the title hound started making more sense.

The idea of my maid being a relentless hunter was not out of the question, and I could see it in some of her behavior, but it still did not sit well with me. Last night was the first time I had seen solid evidence of what she was capable of, and it ran headlong into the image of her I had of a maid who worked her hardest no matter what job was given to her.

“I do believe there is breakfast waiting for you in the dining hall,” a familiar maid said.

With my thoughts being on who they were, hearing the subject speak behind me was more than enough to make me jump.

“I know what Griste put you through was rough, but this is a bit much, don’t you think?” she continued.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” I huffed.

Having concluded most of my thoughts about my maid, I resolved to ask her for further details the next time I saw her. But with the woman standing in front of me, I found the words unwilling to come out. Asking someone why others referred to them as a dog was not what started conversations on the right foot.

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“Dragoslava, when did you start using magic?” I inquired, feeling it was the next best place to start.

“A few years after I came under your family's care, I believe,” she answered.

“It took you that long to figure it out?” I asked, more surprised than anything.

“No, just a month or two. Back then, not all the servants were aware they were in the presence of magic, and they kept the secret for some time. After those few years, your parents introduced me to magic before anyone else, so I could help load on the others. Turns out I had something of a knack for it, and things escalated to where they are today,” she elaborated.

“And how long ago was this?”

“Around four hundred years ago, if I remember correctly,” she answered.

“What?” I interrupted.

“Be more specific, what are you-”

“You’re four hundred years old,” I once again interrupted.

“I suppose you wouldn’t expect that coming from me, but yes. I am several centuries old,” she admitted.

I knew that both my parents were of similar ages, each surpassing half a millennium by several decades, while my grandparents, who were still around, each surpassed the millennium mark. Despite their ages, all of them looked young, with my grandparents casting illusions over themselves to look elderly when we had guests. Because of this, I had a hard time gauging the ages of those around me, and if I were to guess, my parents were trying to give the impression they were just leaving their twenties.

Dragoslava did not look young, and her appearance would suggest she was in her forties. While it was possible she figured out how to freeze her age and extend her lifespan at that age, it was a stretch to think she couldn’t reverse her aging. As much as I hated to think it, doing so would benefit her. Dragoslava was not easy on the eyes, and although I doubted she was much better in her younger years, it still would have been an improvement.

My maid being several centuries old explained where her skills came from. Being alive for several centuries would allow anyone to master any skill, regardless of what talents they had. At the same time, it raised the question as to why she was my personal maid.

If she worked for my parents for as long as she said, I found it hard to believe she would stop her service to take care of a child. No matter how I looked at it, I could not see her skills transferring.

“Why did you become my personal maid? If you’ve had magic for so long, wouldn’t you be better off continuing to work under my parents? Does this have something to do with Illthic calling you a dog?” I asked.

Against all expectations, Dragoslava responded with a smile, though not a happy one. She began a silent chuckle, shaking her head the whole way.

"So that’s why you were asking. Not something I was looking forward to answering,” she mumbled. “Guinevere, do you know what was happening four hundred years ago in Siberia?”

“No, I don’t believe I do,” I answered.

“Do you know about the Mongols?” she clarified.

“Yes, my parents wanted me to know about their conquests. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Well, if you don’t know the specific dates, about four hundred years ago they were conquering Siberia, and I was in the middle of it.

Because of how large an area they waged war on, they breached the veil between the magical world and Pangea. This resulted in your parents being dispatched to the area to curb the effects. Considering they only brought along a few hundred soldiers, they were never meant to stop their conquests but to slow them down so others could hide the magic being revealed.

I became a refugee during the war, and in order to survive, I looked for work wherever I could. After working odd jobs here and there, I ended up under your parents' service. When they went home, I went with them.”

“And what does this have to do with your title?” I interrupted.

“I’m getting there. As I explained, this is where I learned magic and solidified my abilities. In fact, they promoted me from maid to soldier. The pay was better, though the work was harder. Plus, I had to be disguised as a man to quell the complaints of the Pangean soldiers mixed in. Regardless, I felt at home among their ranks.

This continued for a while until the downfall of the Mongolian Empire. The chaos that followed its dissolution created similar problems as when it first started, but this time on a larger scale—a scale so large that your parents alone weren’t enough. Four other families on top of our own had to step in to regain control of the situation, and even then, The Nest was on the brink of getting involved themselves.

It was here that I earned that name. Because of how much that slipped through, several people ended up learning magic, and an uncomfortable amount figured out how to resist memory manipulation. I won’t lie or dress it up; I hunted those people down, and, well, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine what happened. I was good at it—so good, in fact, it became a moniker. I hated it. To me, I was just picking up other people’s slack, but before I knew it, it stuck.”

Dragoslava paused as if reminiscing the days she described, something she looked neither pleased nor upset about.

“Around the time things started winding down, however,” she continued, “I sustained an injury to my abdomen from magic that…let’s just say it changed things. Nothing life altering, or at least nothing that would prevent me from living a full life. Once I learned I could not be healed, though, I started rethinking my life, and I realized that with my injury, I didn’t want to be a soldier anymore. And so, after consulting your parents about it, they gave me my job back as a maid,” Dragoslava finished.

“So why me? Wouldn’t my parents be a better choice to serve?” I asked.

Dragoslava was once again hesitant to answer my question, this time ending her thoughts with a long sigh.

“With all due respect, m'lady, I would like to keep that to myself.”