"Leave Backlund...?!"
"Hibbert, are you serious?"
Both Audrey and her mother, Madam Caitlyn, looked visibly stunned by the sudden news. Unlike her mother, who had been kept in the dark all along, Audrey, a Spectator, quickly recovered from her surprise. Her fair face, however, had turned rather pale, and her expression grew grave.
She had already guessed something from her brother's and father's unusual behavior lately. She simply hadn't expected the situation to deteriorate so quickly.
"Do we... really have to leave?" Audrey pressed her lips together, unease stirring within her.
"Yes... Father wants us to go to the estate in East Chester County."
Hibbert forced an strained smile. In the end, he still hadn't been able to overcome his father's stubbornness. Yet aside from a lingering sense of frustration and resentment, he no longer felt quite so opposed to leaving Backlund, the center of power. Perhaps the string of upheavals really had frightened him.
Just as he was about to persuade them with his prepared excuse of "going to our lands early for a holiday," Madam Caitlyn suddenly spoke. Worry and fear all but spilled from her eyes.
"Hibbert, tell me honestly... has something really happened to Alfred in the Southern Continent?"
Hibbert, Earl Hall, and even Audrey had all been deliberately concealing certain truths from Madam Caitlyn. The servants had also been strictly forbidden from discussing the rumors outside. But some things couldn't be hidden from a mother's intuition.
The sight of her husband and son being so overwhelmed lately had already told Madam Caitlyn something was wrong. And now came this unusual demand for the whole family to leave Backlund...
She had always thought Alfred had made a mistake in the Southern Continent and would, at worst, be sent home, disciplined, and barred from military service forever.