Nobility

She whirled around to face the butler, her expensive robes ruffled from the commotion. She was a gorgeous woman that could make any man swoon, with flowing brown hair and green eyes that sparkled like diamonds.

She could easily be mistaken for Kathrin Grendeven's older sister due to her youthful looks on a good day, but right now all the butler could see was an enraged tigress whose tail had been stepped on.

Her beauty was masked by vicious bloodlust and her normally kind and loving personality was nowhere to be seen. Her raging aura bore down on him with the unrelenting strength of a Master, something that he as a Journeyman could barely withstand.

"How could he do this to us?" she hissed.

The butler, wisely, kept his mouth shut. An answer was not expected from him. His master simply needed to vent.

"All the work I've put into him, wasted! All the resources, pointless! I even went out of my way to arrange for a sweet little girl to marry him when he graduated, and he threw it all in my face! How could he emancipate himself from me?"

Only four hours ago, the Grendeven estate had received Venden's Notification of Emancipation from the Office of Noble Lineages.

Although the document said Venden had signed it late that Friday, only today did it finally arrive. The butler was unsurprised; the start of the school year always resulted in an uptick in activity for the Office of Nobile Lineages.

Hopeful families applying for a title of nobility because one of their children made it into the Royal Mage Academy, promotions and demotions of noble families based on their deeds and how many children they entered into the Academy that year, and even the occasional emancipation such as this were all things the ONL had to deal at this time.

His mistress was especially cranky during the night, and this bad news allowed her true colors to show. Now the butler knew where young master Venden had been these past few days, at least.

The boy's mother could only see the betrayal in such an action, however. The Grendevens' status as an Earl family was tenuous at best, their bottom line constantly toed by those Viscounts below them who wanted their position.

The rankings of noble families in Ziobrun were, in ascending order: Baron, Viscount, Earl, then Duke.

There was a Marquess rank long ago, but the Empress abolished it to keep the Dukes from getting complacent and to encourage stronger competition.

There were also the Militant families, whose sole purpose was to train and raise the future generations of the Empress' Guard. They weren't necessarily above or below the other rankings, answering only to the Empress and yet holding little power outside of that small sphere.

That is to say, becoming an Earl family was hard work, something that took generations to achieve and could be snatched away in an instant.

The emancipation of one of the family's foremost geniuses, who was also a student in the Royal Mage Academy and had a path to becoming a Guard, could very well be the method by which a Viscount family stole the Grendevens' Earl title.

At the time the servant who handled the mail brought the letter, his mistress had been entertaining some of her female friends for a late dinner. She had opened and read the message to herself in front of her company and had continued the banquet as if nothing was amiss.

It was only three hours later, after she had bade farewell to her guests and locked herself in her room with him, that she started to vent her frustrations. The room was soundproofed, as was standard for a noble's bedroom, allowing her to unleash her fury without the worry of her servants catching wind of it.

Only he, the head butler, was trusted to keep his mouth shut about what he saw.

An hour and a half after having started her fit, she smoothed over her robes and straightened her hair, regaining the air of a refined noblewoman as her green eyes sparkled with hidden intentions.

She tilted her head back and her eyes roamed the ceiling, which held a mural of the Empress vanquishing the aesh and imps in the demon wars of long ago.

"Contact the Black Dragon," she said quietly. "I want him back. The second he steps foot outside of the Academy's grounds, they are to bring him to me."

"Alive, madam?" the butler asked.

"Yes. We can't afford to lose an Academy student. I've worked far too hard for our family to fall from grace now."

The butler nodded and set off to complete his task.

While Arch-Mage Terry Grendeven was the showrunner and leader of the Grendeven family on the surface, only the butler knew the truth. Not even the children of the Arch-Mage knew who ran the show.

Helga Grendeven was a ruthless, cunning woman that had married into the family and swiftly dominated the politics within. Terry Grendeven was more than content enough to sit back and let his wife run the show behind the scenes, giving him more time to chase that distant notion of improvement.

Helga Grendeven was the true head of the family.

As the butler slipped on a thick coat and a tasteful fedora to combat the cold night air, he couldn't help but sigh as he realized what he had been ordered to do.

He quickly shoved those feelings down deep and locked them away as he opened the front door to the estate. Stepping into the dark, he breathed in the freezing air, which did wonders for his mental state.

He stepped forward, the inky blackness of the night wrapping around him like a cloak as he disappeared from sight. When dealing with shady people like the Black Dragons, it was important not to allow rival families to track such deals.

He couldn't help but grow nostalgic as he gazed upon the unassuming tavern with a simple sign bearing the words "The Creaking Floorboard." He had been an information gatherer for the group of assassins long ago before his mistress had negotiated a permanent contract.

But that was all in the past now, he thought as he opened the door. Now, he was here for business.