Chapter 661

Elaine’s eyes stayed on him, unimpressed, like she was weighing the structural integrity of his ego and finding it… suspicious.

Then, as if remembering something important, she tilted her head.

“And what about being handsome?” she asked.

Ludger blinked. It was such a left turn that for half a second his brain forgot it was in trouble.

He shrugged, small, casual, like it didn’t matter, like he hadn’t just been asked to rate himself out loud.

“I’m that too,” he said.

Elaine’s eyebrow rose. Ludger continued, because if he stopped now it would look like weakness.

“But I didn’t say it before because I didn’t want to sound vain.” He paused, expression dead serious in a way that made the sentence worse. “I definitely am not.”

Elaine stared at him. A full second. Then another.

“Someone forgot to teach you about logical inconsistencies,” she said, voice dry enough to turn sand into dust.

Ludger’s mouth twitched. He

almost

smiled. Almost. Elaine didn’t let the moment breathe. She slid right past the joke like it was a stepping stone, returning to the core with the smooth brutality of someone who knew exactly how to steer a conversation.

“Regardless,” she said, “I don’t want to say something so simplistic.”

Her gaze sharpened.

“But I’ll say it anyway.”

She tapped the table once, a quiet punctuation mark.

“Family is family.”

Tap.

“And Torvares is family.”

The words landed heavier than they should have, because they weren’t about blood. They were about

claim

. About how the world decided who mattered to you.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t like being told what something

was

.

He liked facts. Definitions. Boundaries. So he challenged it.

“Is he?” Ludger asked.

Elaine didn’t answer immediately, which was worse. Ludger pressed, voice controlled, almost clinical.

“He’s a supporter and ally,” he said. “But he’s only Viola’s grandfather.” He hesitated, then added the part that felt like it should settle the argument cleanly. “My half-sister’s grandfather.”

He gestured vaguely, as if drawing family lines in the air.

“We don’t have any blood relation.”

For a moment, Elaine’s expression didn’t change. Then it did, just slightly. Not anger. Not disappointment. Something sharper.

A look that said:

You’re trying to reduce something living into a diagram. That’s why you’re stuck.

Elaine leaned forward, elbows on the table again, hands folded.

“Do you truly care only about that?” she asked quietly.

Ludger frowned. Elaine didn’t give him time to answer.

“Then why,” she said, voice tightening, “did you dash toward Fittar when you knew Harold, Cor, Selene, and Aleia, and other guild members, would be in danger during the labyrinth breach?”

The question hit like a hook. Not because it was loud. Because it was accurate. Ludger’s lips parted slightly, like he was about to answer on instinct… and then nothing came out. Because what was the “correct” response?

Because it was my job?

No. Jobs didn’t make you run headfirst into death when you could have waited for reinforcements.

Because they were valuable assets?

That sounded like something an imperial officer would say right before sacrificing someone.

Because the guild needed them?

True. But incomplete. Elaine held his gaze without blinking, patient as stone.

And Ludger realized, too late, that she’d trapped him the same way he trapped people in negotiations. Not with force. With one question that made every excuse sound hollow. He didn’t have an answer.

Elaine’s gaze stayed on Ludger for a long moment after his silence, like she was letting him sit in it on purpose.

Then she spoke again, softer, but somehow heavier.

“There’s something else,” she said.

Ludger’s eyes flicked up, wary. He didn’t like “something else” from Elaine. It usually meant the conversation was about to get sharper.

Elaine folded her hands on the table, her posture still controlled, but her voice had changed. Less like a lecture. More like… a confession she’d decided he was finally old enough to carry.

“I also know about your father’s parents,” she said.

Ludger’s brow furrowed. That subject was a blank space in his mind, a wall his father never opened.

“He would never talk about them with me,” Ludger said quietly.

Elaine nodded once, as if that was expected.

“I know.”

Ludger’s fingers tightened against the chair arm again.

“Why?” he asked.

Elaine’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger. In thought. In the careful way she chose words when they mattered.

“Because,” she said, “he knew you were better than him.”

Ludger froze. Elaine didn’t let him interrupt.

“And because he believed you wouldn’t make his mistakes and because of his shames and regrets.”

The air in the room felt too still. The twins were still playing on the floor, but their laughter seemed distant now, like it belonged to another world. Elaine continued, voice steady.

“Your father left home when he was ten,” she said.

Ludger’s eyes widened a fraction before he caught himself. Ten again. That age kept showing up like a curse.

“To become an adventurer,” Elaine said. “He argued with his family. He was the only heir of their apothecary, and he didn’t want to inherit the family business.”

Ludger swallowed.

It sounded… too simple. Like one of those mistakes people made before they understood that time didn’t wait for apologies. Elaine’s tone remained calm, but there was an edge of old grief in it.

“He didn’t speak with them for three years,” she said.

Three years. A long time when you were a child. An eternity when you were stubborn.

“Until he learned,” Elaine continued, “that they were all dead.”

Ludger’s chest tightened. Elaine’s eyes didn’t leave him as she delivered the details, clean and brutal.

“Their house was destroyed,” she said. “Their shop. Their storage. All of it.”

She paused, only briefly.

“A huge fire,” Elaine added. “Unknown origins.”

Ludger didn’t breathe for a second. Fire didn’t just kill people. Fire erased evidence. Fire erased closure. Fire turned “why” into a wound that never healed. Elaine’s voice dropped slightly, and now it was unmistakable, this wasn’t gossip. This was something she’d carried with Arslan in the quiet hours when neither of them could sleep.

“Since then,” she said, “your father never forgave himself.”

Ludger stared at her, mind turning it over. Arslan, the currently steady one, the man who always tried to absorb responsibility like it was his job, carrying that kind of weight all this time.

That explained a lot of his youth, his philandering, leaving girls behind after sleeping with them as if running away from true familiarity and anything that made him recall his family. It didn’t excuse behavior, but it explained a lot.

Elaine nodded, as if answering the conclusion forming in Ludger’s eyes.

“That’s why,” she said, “he tried so hard to take responsibility over us once he learned about your birth.”

Her gaze sharpened again, but this time it wasn’t a blade meant to cut Ludger. It was meant to

anchor

him.

“He didn’t want to repeat the same mistake,” Elaine said quietly. “Not with you. Not with me. Not with this family.”

Ludger’s throat worked. He didn’t speak. Because suddenly a lot of things about his father made sense in a way that felt uncomfortable. The overprotectiveness disguised as discipline. All the shame and anger he endured in silence thanks to his youth indiscretions.

The way Arslan looked at Ludger sometimes, like he was seeing a second chance walking around in a green scarf. Ludger’s eyes flicked, just for a moment, toward the twins and the direwolf cubs. Then back to Elaine.

“…He never told me,” Ludger said finally, voice low.

Elaine’s expression softened by a hair.

“No,” she said. “He didn’t.”

And then, quieter still, she added the part that made Ludger’s chest ache in a way he didn’t like.

“He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want you carrying his guilt on your shoulders.”

Her eyes held his.

“But you’re old enough now,” Elaine said, “to understand why your father acts like the world will punish him the second he relaxes.”

Ludger sat very still. Because for the first time in a long time, the weight he felt on his shoulders wasn’t just his own. It was inherited. Elaine let the silence sit between them for a while. Not as punishment. As space, because some truths needed room to settle before they stopped cutting. Then she spoke again, quieter than before.

“I was planning to tell you all of this in the future,” she said. “When you were an adult.”

Ludger didn’t move. His eyes stayed on the table grain like he could read answers in it. Elaine’s fingers tightened together once, then relaxed.

“But,” she continued, “I figured out this is a good time.”

She looked at him directly, and there was no humor in her expression now—just blunt honesty.

“You’re wiser beyond your years,” she said. “Keeping it hidden didn’t make sense anymore.”

Ludger stayed silent a bit longer. He could’ve made a joke. He could’ve deflected. He could’ve tried to reclaim control of the conversation the way he did in council meetings. But his throat felt too tight for any of that.

Elaine watched him, patient. Then her voice softened in a way that made Ludger’s skin prickle, because softness from Elaine was rare and usually meant something important had slipped past her defenses.

“And,” she added, “you make us proud.”

Ludger’s eyes flicked up, fast, suspicious, like he didn’t trust the sentence.

Elaine didn’t blink.

“All of your accomplishments,” she said. “Your hard-working nature. Your desire to protect the family. The way you help others.”

Her gaze drifted for half a second toward the twins playing with the direwolf cubs, then returned to Ludger.

“And you don’t get carried away,” she continued. “Not despite your strength. Not despite your intelligence at your age.”

Ludger’s mouth opened slightly, then closed. Compliments were harder to parry than insults. Elaine exhaled, and the next words came out like something she’d been holding back for a long time.

“We thought,” she said, “it was only a matter of time before you started thinking less of others.”

Ludger stiffened. Not because the idea offended him. Because the idea was… plausible. Because he’d seen it happen. Power did that to people. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes overnight. Elaine’s gaze held his.

“But we were wrong,” she said.

The twins squealed again. One of the cubs rolled over and Arash patted its belly like he was taming a beast king. Elaine’s lips curved slightly, almost a smile.

“You’re almost perfect,” she said.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

“Almost,” Elaine repeated, and now the edge of humor returned, thin, sharp. “But this situation with Torvares proved you aren’t.”

Ludger’s brow furrowed. Elaine’s expression softened.

“And that,” she said, like it was the final piece of a strange puzzle, “makes me glad.”

Ludger went very still.

“…What?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

Because

that

didn’t make sense. Elaine leaned back, arms crossing again, not defensive now, just comfortable in her authority.

“Because if you were perfect,” she said, voice calm and certain, “you’d be inhuman.”

She tilted her head slightly.

“And inhuman people don’t learn.”

Her eyes sharpened on him.

“They just break everyone else.”

Ludger stared at her, confusion slowly turning into something else, something quieter.

Understanding, maybe. Or the beginning of it. Elaine’s gaze didn’t leave his.

“So yes,” she said softly. “I’m glad.”

Ludger swallowed. He still didn’t like it. But for the first time, he understood why she meant it as comfort. Elaine’s gaze didn’t waver. She didn’t need to raise her voice. She didn’t need to threaten. She had that calm gravity that made even Ludger’s stubbornness feel like a child trying to argue with winter.

“I’m glad,” she said again, “because your actions shows you aren’t perfect.”

Ludger’s brow twitched, still not liking the word

glad

paired with

not perfect

.

Elaine leaned forward a little, hands resting on the table as if she were anchoring the conversation so it couldn’t slip away into jokes.

“But you try,” she added, softer. “You try to be better as much as possible.”

Her eyes studied him, really studied him, like she was measuring a person and not a weapon.

“You struggle like everyone else,” Elaine said. “You get tired. You get angry. You get… stubborn.”

That last word had the faintest hint of affection.

“But you keep moving forward,” she continued. “And you do it without leaving others behind.”

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