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Chapter 8
Vahadr
“Really, Vahadr, darling…you should consider the nanny I recommended to you. I could have her over at yours by this afternoon.”
I resist the almost overwhelming urge to sigh at the holo-screen floating before me as I stroll through my hallways towards the kitchen. I barely have any time today before I need to be at the office.
“No, thank you, Mother.” As I round a corner, I can hear the somewhat muted voice of Miss Martin as she makes an effort to shush Asili’s morning exuberance. “If she’s anything like the females you employed to look after myself and Kyrin, I would rather remain without.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.”
The woman on the screen waves a perfectly manicured hand, her salt-and-pepper hair swept back in a loose, elegant bun as she throws her silver, fur-lined shawl over a plump white shoulder. Even in her nearly sixty-five years of age, my mother is beautiful—the perfect picture of femininity.
“I’ll instruct the new nanny to arrive after dinner,” she continues with a haughty confidence, casually adjusting the dangling crystal headpiece that twines out from her hair and falls against her forehead. “With that offspring of yours, I know you need all the help you can get.”
“Mother,” I warn as I pad over the dark carpet lining the halls. “As soon as I end this conversation with you, I’ll be instructing security not to allow any strangers onto my property today, no matter who they claim to be.”
She sniffs, her nose scrunching delicately as she tilts her chin up. “Such an emotional male you are. No wonder Asili has turned out so—”
With a tap of my fingers, the connection ends, and I enter the kitchen to the sight of Asili avoiding breakfast with a mischievous look on his face, running around the marble countertop and giggling in his odd way, while Miss Martin chases after him looking part exasperated, part amused.
“Papa!” He launches himself at my waist, and my hand drops to the back of his head as he looks up at me, a slight flush to his cheeks.
“Are you being difficult again, Asili?”
“Yep!” He grins up at me, baring his full row of sharp teeth, and I can’t help the way my own lips twitch up in response. “I’m going with Miss Martin to her university campus today!”
“Yes,” I murmur, “You seem rather excited.”
It had been part of the deal I’d struck with Miss Martin—she would work for me, giving me her full devotion and her focus at all hours possible, but it would not come at the expense of her studies. She was very adamant about this, in fact. If I was to force her down to part-time study, as she put it (although I rather see it as lessening her workload, for which she should be grateful), then I was not to interfere with the classes she did have left. She insisted that she would not miss a single day of study, nor would she study remotely, but that she would attend every class and lecture on campus—and she was quite emphatic about the whole thing, which I found rather cute.
I told her that Asili would need her constant supervision for as long as there was no nanny on staff.
She’d shrugged and said, “So send him to classes with me.”
When I’d only raised an eyebrow at the proposition, she’d made a few points about how it would be good for Asili to experience the everyday life of normal people, as she’d assumed (correctly) that he was somewhat sheltered in his current life, and that it could only make him a stronger leader in the future. Then she’d doubled down on her insistence that the only way she would take the job would be if she could attend her classes.
As this setup would suit me just fine, and because I found the way her eyes lit up as she held her ground to be quite fascinating, I decided to allow it.
I have of course, outfitted the entire university with scores of my security guards. Asili’s safety comes before all else, after all.
“I’ve never been inside a university before,” Asili chirps, bouncing back from me and heading towards Miss Martin to finally accept the breakfast she’d been chasing him with. She hands him a dense, dark slice of bread with thin cuts of smoked tvornuk meat and a healthy sprinkling of caviar—and she rather obviously avoiding looking in my direction. The red stain slowly emerging over her cheeks is on full display with her hair pulled up in a messy bun, and I cock my head slightly as I study her awkward countenance.
“Uncle Kyrin will be with us today, too, right?”
“Of course.” I assigned my brother to supervise the security and to instruct the guards in person.
“M’flor’mv!”
I frown at Asili as he stuffs almost the entire slice of bread in his mouth in one go. “Don’t speak with your mouth full of food.”
He throws me another wide grin, his cheeks puffed out with bread. “’Orry.”
I click my fingers impatiently at a maid as my gaze trails back to Miss Martin, who is being oddly endearing as she packs and re-packs her bag in a clear effort to avoid having to look at me, nearly tipping over her cup of hot kafe in the process. Speaking of which…
“Maid, what are you doing?” I say, finally turning around to face the help. “Have you readied my morning kafe yet, or must I come over there and do it myself?”
“Apologies, sir,” the female in question mutters demurely, hurrying over with my cup and saucer. “I accidentally added sugar, so I had to make it again—”
