Chapter 576

Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose. The Regent wanted loyalty because Lionsguard had allies beyond his reach. The Regent wanted titles because titles were chains you thanked him for.

And now Ludger had one more reason to refuse, because the cost wasn’t just rails and politics.

It was

Eclaire.

A walking complication the Regent would absolutely notice the moment Lionsguard stopped being “border trash” and became “imperial nobility.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed into a squint, the tell he hated having.

“Annoying,” he muttered, and it wasn’t clear whether he meant the Regent, Torvares, or the fact that the world kept trying to force him into choices where every option tasted like poison.

Then he turned away from the labyrinth entrance, already thinking about contingencies. If the Empire came closer, Lionfang needed to get quieter.

And if Torvares was playing a deeper game… Ludger would have to decide whether he was a shield. Or just another hand reaching for the leash. When Ludger got home, the house was too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind of quiet. The kind where the air felt heavy because everyone had already said the important things and now they were waiting for the consequences to arrive.

He stepped into the dining room and found them there. Elaine and Arslan sat across from each other at the table, a candle burning low between them. No food. No cups. Just the faint smell of wax and the cold trace of road dust that Arslan still carried like a curse.

The twins were already asleep, he could feel it more than hear it. The house had that softened stillness it got when the babies were finally down and nobody wanted to breathe too loudly in case the world noticed.

Elaine’s expression was serious. Arslan’s too. They’d already talked. Probably more than once.

Ludger stopped in the doorway for half a heartbeat, took in the scene like it was a tactical briefing, then did the only sensible thing when walking into a room full of adults who’d decided something without you.

He raised both arms, palms out, as if surrendering to an invisible enemy.

“Alright,” Ludger said. “Tell me your decision, Mother. We’ll obey.”

Elaine’s eyes didn’t soften. If anything, they got sharper.

“Stop joking around,” she said.

Ludger blinked once. Arslan made a small sound in the back of his throat that might’ve been a laugh if he hadn’t looked so tired. Elaine leaned forward slightly, elbows near the table, voice low enough it wouldn’t carry to the twins’ room.

“As much as that idea seems pretty good for me,” she continued, tone flat, “I’m not interested in you turning this into a comedy so you don’t have to say what you’re thinking.”

Ludger’s arms slowly lowered. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t argue. He just looked at her, calm and attentive in the way he got when he realized the room wasn’t going to let him hide behind dry humor. Elaine held his gaze like she could read him through stone.

“Sit,” she said.

Arslan gestured to the chair beside him. Ludger sat.

And the moment he did, the weight of the decision settled on the table between them like another candle, one that didn’t give light, only heat.

Elaine didn’t speak right away.

She looked at Ludger the way she always did when things got real, like she wasn’t just seeing her son, but the edges of the world pressing in around him. Then her gaze shifted to Arslan, and in that glance alone she acknowledged the miles he’d walked, the insults he’d swallowed, and the way “polite negotiation” in the capital was just another kind of fight.

“I understand the situation,” she said finally, voice steady and low.

No panic. No dramatics. Just clarity.

“The Empire wants powerful allies,” Elaine continued. “And more importantly, it wants leverage over those allies.” She tapped a finger lightly on the table, once. “Titles, land, protection, those aren’t gifts. They’re handles. Something to grab when we start pulling in a direction they don’t like.”

Ludger watched her without blinking.

Elaine’s eyes returned to him. “And you want freedom,” she said. Not accusing. Just stating fact. “You want Lionsguard to stay able to choose its own battles, its own allies, its own pace. You don’t want to swear loyalty today and wake up a year from now with a new Regent, new ministers, and a new set of ‘interpretations’ that suddenly make you obligated to do things you never agreed to.”

Ludger’s mouth tightened slightly. She wasn’t guessing. She was

reading

.

Elaine turned her head toward Arslan. “And I know you don’t like the idea either,” she said. “Being tied down by the Empire. Being dragged into their courts and councils.”

Arslan didn’t interrupt. He didn’t need to.

Elaine’s tone sharpened by a hair. “Especially when nobles have looked down on adventurers for pretty much forever. They call you useful when they need you, and crude when they don’t. They want your sword, your labor, your risk… but they don’t want to sit at your table unless they can pretend they’re doing charity.”

Arslan’s jaw flexed once, the old bitterness there. Not loud. Just present. Elaine looked back at Ludger, and her expression softened, not into weakness, but into something more dangerous.

Choice.

“I’m not blind to the benefits,” she said. “A title means stability. It means papers that make it harder for someone to hurt us quietly. It means if someone tries, the Empire

has

to care, because it becomes a political incident.”

Her eyes flicked, briefly, toward the hall that led deeper into the house, toward where the twins slept. Then back to the table.

“But I’m also not blind to the cost,” she said. “Because once you’re inside their structure, you don’t get to pretend you’re just a border family anymore. You become part of their game. And their game has rules written by people who believe they own the board.”

Silence settled again. Elaine inhaled, slow, and then said the one thing neither Ludger nor Arslan had expected to hear so cleanly.

“I’m fine either way.”

Arslan blinked. Ludger’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Elaine didn’t flinch under either reaction.

“As long as both of you agree on the plan,” she continued, voice calm and absolute, “I’ll follow you. I won’t sabotage it. I won’t split the house. I won’t make this into a battle between father and son.”

Her gaze pinned them both.

“But you

do

need to agree,” she said. “Because if you don’t, then the Empire doesn’t need to trap us. We’ll trap ourselves.”

Arslan exhaled slowly, like he’d been holding his breath for permission to breathe.

Ludger sat very still, taking in her words the way he took in enemy movements, carefully, memorizing the shape. Elaine’s expression didn’t change, but her voice softened just enough to remind them that this wasn’t a council meeting. This was a family.

“I can live with risk,” she said. “I’ve lived with it since the day you decided to create the guild.” Her eyes slid to Ludger. “And since the day you decided the world would bend, even if it didn’t want to.”

A pause.

“I just refuse to live with

division,

” Elaine finished. “So decide together. Then we move.”

Ludger felt a small, genuine relief at Elaine’s words. It was clean. It was fair. It meant he wouldn’t have to fight a battle at home while an Empire leaned on the door. For a heartbeat, that was enough.

Then the meaning of what she’d said finished settling in.

As long as both of you agree.

Ludger’s relief thinned into something sharper. Because agreement wasn’t automatic.

Because Arslan had come back tired and troubled, and tired men didn’t look that way unless they were carrying a decision they didn’t like but couldn’t dismiss. Ludger’s eyes slid to his father.

Arslan’s expression was tight, jaw set, gaze slightly unfocused like he was still seeing the capital’s marble halls and smiling mouths. Like the Regent’s “reasonable tone” had left fingerprints on his thoughts.

Ludger sat up straighter.

“Dad,” he said, voice even. “Do you think this is a good deal?”

Arslan didn’t answer.

Ludger didn’t push, yet. He watched.

Arslan’s fingers shifted on the table, rubbing thumb against knuckle. His shoulders were tense in a way they weren’t when he was facing bandits or monsters. This was a different kind of discomfort. The kind that came from being forced to choose between pride and safety.

Ludger narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Even if they don’t give us unrestricted access to all the labyrinths,” Ludger continued, “even the sealed ones in the Empire?”

Arslan’s mouth tightened. Still no answer. Seconds passed. Long enough that the candle crackled. Elaine didn’t interrupt. She just watched Arslan with the patient sharpness of someone who already knew he was fighting himself.

Arslan finally shifted in his chair, uncomfortable, and exhaled slowly through his nose.

“I…” he began, then stopped.

His eyes moved to the side, not meeting Ludger’s. Not avoiding him out of shame, avoiding him because if he met his son’s stare too early, he’d say the wrong thing.

He swallowed. Then, at last, he spoke.

“After thinking about it all this time,” Arslan said, voice low and rough, “and on the way back from the capital…”

He paused again, as if the words were heavier than they should’ve been.

“…I can understand Torvares’ point of view now.”

Ludger went still. Because that wasn’t an answer. Not yet. But it was the first crack in the wall. Ludger’s eyes narrowed, not in anger, in focus.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

Arslan didn’t answer immediately. He inhaled, slow, like he was bracing his ribs against something invisible, then let the breath out and forced his shoulders to unclench.

He gathered his thoughts the way he gathered a blade: deliberately, carefully, without letting emotion make the grip sloppy.

“If it were twenty years ago,” Arslan said, voice rough with honesty, “I would’ve spat on their marble floor.”

Ludger didn’t react. He just listened.

“I would’ve looked those nobles in the eye, laughed at their ‘offers,’ and walked out,” Arslan continued. “Back then, that would’ve been the right answer. Back then, I had pride and a sword and nothing else that could be taken from me.”

His gaze flicked toward the hallway, toward where the twins slept, and when it returned to the table, it wasn’t weaker. It was heavier.

“But now I have a family,” Arslan said. “I have your mother. I have the twins. I have you—” his jaw tightened as if he hated admitting that Ludger belonged on the list of things he worried about, “—and I have a town full of people who think Lionsguard is the thing keeping the world from swallowing them.”

He rubbed his thumb against his knuckle again, the same small motion he’d done since Ludger was little, back when worry had been simpler.

“Antagonizing the Empire isn’t a good idea,” Arslan said. “Not this one. Not

now.

”

Ludger’s gaze sharpened, but he didn’t interrupt.

Arslan leaned forward slightly. “Even if this Empire is smaller than the one that came before,” he said. “Even if it’s just… the smallest version of a much larger structure from the past, clinging to old traditions and wearing old crowns.”

He exhaled through his nose.

“It’s still an Empire,” he said. “Still organized. Still layered. Still full of people whose entire job is making sure anyone who says ‘no’ regrets it slowly and legally.”

Ludger’s fingers tightened around his own forearm, the only sign he was resisting a response.

Arslan kept going, because he needed Ludger to understand

why

Torvares’ advice had started making sense in his head.

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