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~Chapter 14~
“…Duke?”
Except for the red eyes, Hiskin’s face looked exactly like Theron’s.
The next moment, Aveline woke up in her own room.
She was still holding her book, <The Tyrant Is a Little Brother Fan>.
“…What was that?”
What kind of dream did she just have?
Why did the vampire Hiskin look like Duke Ribes in her dream?
“Did I see it wrong?”
That seemed unlikely. She wouldn’t mistake that face.
“Or maybe dreams are just random and mean nothing…”
No, if she dreamed of Duke Ribes without meaning to, wasn’t that a bigger problem?
“Ouch.”
Suddenly, her wrist hurt.
When she checked, the bite mark from the dream was still there.
“Isn’t it hot?”
Ares, already eating breakfast, asked Aveline as she entered the dining room with long sleeves to hide the clear bite mark on her wrist.
“Mind your own business.”
Aveline wore clothes a little too thick for the warming weather, just to hide her wrist.
“Come on, I got in trouble yesterday while looking for you, remember?”
Ares looked like he hadn’t slept at all, with dark circles under his eyes. His plate was full of broccoli and salmon.
“Why do you look like you didn’t sleep either?”
Actually, Aveline hadn’t slept well either. She was bothered by seeing Duke Ribes’s face in her dream and the mark left on her wrist.
“Wait… is it because you feel bad for me?”
Ares thought her tired face was because she felt sorry for him.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Aveline didn’t feel like explaining, so she just agreed.
“Really? You didn’t show it, but you were worrying about me all along.”
Ares, looking pleased, put some broccoli on Aveline’s plate.
“Here, eat this.”
“Give me some salmon too.”
Ares quickly pulled his plate away to keep the salmon for himself.
“You’re just giving me vegetables as thanks?”
Ares teased Aveline, popping a piece of salmon in his mouth as she reached for his plate.
“Not a chance.”
Ares was faster, holding his plate over his head with a triumphant smile.
“Oh, so you want to play?”
Aveline grabbed her fork, ready for battle.
The servants were used to the twins fighting over nothing, so they calmly went on with their work.
“I’ll eat your salmon, no matter what.”
While Aveline was out of breath from swinging her fork, Count Heralds and the butler entered the dining room.
“…What is going on here?”
He looked at the messy tablecloth, Ares holding his plate in the air, and Aveline glaring with her fork.
A servant quietly explained to the butler.
“It’s… because of the salmon, sir.”
Count Heralds looked even more confused.
“Is there no salmon in the kitchen?”
“We just bought enough groceries, so there should be plenty.”
“…Give Aveline a new plate of salmon. Bring my breakfast to my office.”
Count Heralds left the room.
The butler brought Aveline a plate full of salmon.
“The chef says there’s plenty of fresh salmon. Please eat as much as you like, miss.”
Then he left with Count Heralds’s food.
“Oooh, lucky you. Eat up,” Ares said, trying to tease her.
But Aveline wasn’t in the mood for Ares’s jokes.
‘Why did I have to act like this in front of Father?’
She’d tried so hard to get her father’s attention, but ended up just showing a silly side, fighting with her brother over salmon.
‘What must he think of me?’
Even at twenty years old, he probably saw her as a foolish daughter, arguing over fish with her twin.
Her mood dropped fast.
At times like this, she really missed her mother, who’d left for her health right after the twins were born. She heard from her mother by letter, but when she was sad like this, she wanted her mother’s comfort more than anything.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
Ares noticed something was wrong with Aveline.
“You eat. I’m not hungry.”
Aveline held back her tears and got up from the table.
Maybe because of her recent dreams about families taking care of each other, she suddenly felt jealous of Chloe, who always got unconditional love from her brother Klein in her dreams.
She had felt, even just in a dream, how happy and safe it was to get that kind of love.
“Hey, sis… what’s wrong?”
Ares stood up, worried, and caught Aveline’s hand as she was about to leave the dining room.
“Wait, let me— Wait.”
As Aveline twisted her wrist to break free, Ares saw something and his face turned serious.
“What’s this?”
He noticed the bite mark Aveline was trying to hide.
“Did you hit yourself while sleeping?”
A man with long, dark red hair loosely braided over one shoulder spoke.
He was a handsome man with tanned skin and red eyes, sitting with his legs out on a sofa.
“Did you succeed?”
The man he was talking to was Theron.
Theron wore comfortable white silk loungewear, but there was a red scratch on his cheek.
“What? The dream?”
The other man, Barom, showed interest at once.
Barom was the one who had pulled Ares into the alley earlier, and was Theron’s closest aide. He had once been a slave, but Theron had arranged a fake identity for him, making him the son of a rich foreign merchant.
“So, that mark on your face isn’t from scratching yourself in your sleep?”
Barom found that even stranger.
“So, how did you get hit?”
Barom tried to sum up what Theron told him.
“So, you succeeded in following your magic trail into her dream, but couldn’t change your face?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you do?”
“I wore a mask and just changed my eye color. I tried to talk and act like the guy from the book.”
Barom smiled, watching Theron’s face.
“Still, you managed to finish the book, huh? Yesterday, you walked out of the study right after opening it.”
Theron flinched, but quickly hid it.
“I needed to understand the young lady’s tastes.”
He answered calmly, but the truth was, he was a bit shocked. The shopkeeper’s strange look made sense now—Theron, who knew nothing about romance, found the book very embarrassing. Still, he forced himself to read it all, thinking of it as learning something new.
After that, he successfully entered Aveline’s dream by following his magic.
But then things got tricky.
“Here, do you see this? You’re supposed to bite here.”
Aveline had exposed her neck, telling him what to do.
“It hurts!”
She yelled as he tried to act out the scene and pretended to bite her wrist, but she ended up punching him.
Theron found Aveline hard to predict.
But the strangest thing was what happened when he actually bit her arm. He only meant to pretend, but the moment he smelled her, he almost couldn’t stop himself, like a real vampire.
If Aveline hadn’t hit him, he might not have been able to stop.
After waking up, Theron realized it was because his magic stone was with Aveline. Magic was always most tempting to its owner.
“Still, to think you actually tried to track her down just because she talked about entering a book in her dreams. That’s impressive,” Barom said honestly.
“But the young lady said something odd.”
“She already seems odd enough. What did she say?”
“She said she wanted to wake up and have a different dream.”
That meant she had experienced this kind of dream several times before.
“She seems to be enjoying herself,” Barom laughed.
From the moment he heard she’d touched Theron’s magic stone, thinking it was candy, Barom had thought she was unusual. Now he was even more curious about her.
“So what does the young lady look like? She’s the twin of that pink-haired boy, right? Are they similar?”
“…Why do you ask?”
Theron replied cautiously. Barom grinned.
Interesting.
But Barom quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway, what will you do now?”
“I’ll keep tracking her for a while.”
“So you’ll be following her?”
“Tracking.”
Theron corrected him.
Barom just smiled at Theron’s serious face.
