"Someone's coming! Quick!"
Almost instinctively, Megan lifted her skirt. Shade immediately placed Mia on the table behind him, transformed into a silver cat, and slipped beneath her skirt.
Little Mia wanted to follow, but Miss Sylvia quickly picked up the dice, Black Key, Perfume Bottle, and two rings that had fallen to the floor, drawing its attention to the Fish Training Ring and Elixir of Longevity Ring instead. When Miss Sylvia straightened up, she saw the red-haired Galina Cavendish enter:
"Huh? Where's Shade?"
She asked curiously:
"Didn't the young ladies at the inn say Shade was with you?"
She suspiciously looked at the two frozen-faced women, surveyed the study, where there was clearly no third person, and then spotted Little Mia on the table:
"Don't tell me this is your pet cat?"
Neither of them had realized that an ordinary cat could not have entered this place. At that moment, Megan's skirt moved, and the cat with its head lowered crawled out from beneath it.
A strange expression appeared on the Duchess's face. She then held back her laughter as Shade returned to human form in the light:
"So you thought someone else had come back. What should I say, Shade? Was the view beneath a young lady's skirt nice?"
"Galina!"
Megan, her face bright red, had already forced Audrey to switch with her. Audrey, whose face was equally flushed, made an indignant sound.
When the group left the Council and Miss Sylvia brought Miss Benanis to Shade's room at the Green Lake Inn, the beautiful red-haired Duchess was still laughing.
Naturally, Miss Benanis was curious about what she found so amusing, but neither Miss Sylvia, Audrey, nor Shade was willing to explain.
To keep Miss Benanis from dwelling too much on what had just happened, Shade impatiently asked once