Chapter 663

Ludger exhaled, slow.

The lack of information had done the exact opposite of what he’d intended.

He’d thought keeping it contained would keep it safe.

Instead, it had leaked, through curiosity, through worry, through people trying to protect each other with incomplete knowledge.

Now more people knew about Eclaire than had needed to. And that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that his silence had made his family worry. Elaine didn’t sit at that table with her arms crossed because she was bored. She sat there because she’d sensed something wrong and she couldn’t ignore it.

Arslan’s quiet tension over the last months suddenly made a different kind of sense, too. The man carried guilt like a second spine; of course he noticed when Ludger carried something heavy and refused to speak. He worried that his son might follow the same path as him and make the same mistakes as well.

Ludger’s mouth tightened. He’d spent his whole second life trying not to waste things. And here he was, wasting peace. Letting a private issue scale into a wider problem because he’d handled it like he handled threats, by boxing them up and pretending the lid would hold forever.

It wouldn’t. Not with people. Not with family. Not with Viola, who attacked silence the way she attacked problems, with her whole body and zero fear. He needed to handle this kind of thing better. Not by spilling every secret into the street. Not by turning the guildhall into a confession booth. But by controlling the flow. By choosing

who

knew

what

, and

why

, before worry and rumor did it for him.

And given this situation, he could only think of a single solution.

He stared at the ceiling, eyes narrowing as the shape of it formed in his mind. clean, practical, unpleasant. A controlled conversation. Not a fight. Not an argument. A decision. A meeting with Torvares, direct, private, and definitive.

Set terms. Set boundaries. Make it clear what was acceptable, what wasn’t, and what would happen if the Empire’s shadow reached Lionfang through that girl. If Torvares wanted Lionsguard’s protection, then Torvares would give Lionsguard what it needed to do the job properly.

Information. And a promise written in something stronger than polite words. Ludger breathed out again, slower this time. He didn’t like it. But he liked the alternative even less.

Because if he let this spiral again, if he let secrets and worry drag more people into the blast radius, then the next “conversation” wouldn’t be at a table. It would be on a battlefield. And Ludger was very tired of cleaning up messes that could have been prevented with one hard talk at the right time.

The next day at noon, Ludger was in Lord Torvares’ office.

A room that smelled like ink, old wood, and the kind of expensive paper you didn’t use unless the words were meant to last. Sunlight cut in through the windows in neat bars, illuminating shelves lined with ledgers and maps and sealed letters, proof that Torvares didn’t fight wars with swords, but with information and timing.

Ludger walked in without an escort. He didn’t announce himself. He didn’t bow.

He just crossed the room like he belonged there, because in a way he did. Not by blood, not by title, but by consequence. Everything Torvares had built on the frontier leaned on Lionsguard’s shoulders, and Ludger was the hinge those shoulders rotated around.

Lord Torvares looked up from behind his desk.

The old bull of a man didn’t startle. He didn’t flinch. His gaze flicked to Ludger’s face, then to the green scarf, then back again, reading posture, reading mood, reading what kind of storm had just walked into his room.

Ludger didn’t give him much. He stepped up to the desk and set a bottle down with a single clean motion. Glass. Thick. Perfectly clear. Wax seal stamped with the Lionsguard mark, a lion head profile with a fang line, sharp enough to look like it could bite through silk.

Inside, the wine caught the light like dark honey, with a faint shimmer that wasn’t quite glow and wasn’t quite reflection. Magic wine. The kind of gift nobles smiled about while counting how many more they could extract later.

Ludger didn’t smile. He dropped it like evidence. Then he pulled the chair out in front of the desk and sat. No greeting.

No preamble. No sarcasm to soften the edge.

Just a thirteen-year-old vice guildmaster sitting with his back straight and his eyes steady, like he’d decided he was done being dragged around by other people’s plans.

For a moment, the only sound was the faint crackle of a hearth that didn’t need to be lit. The ticking of a clock tucked somewhere behind Torvares’ books. The distant murmur of the estate outside, filtered through stone.

Lord Torvares didn’t say anything either. He simply… waited. Because he hadn’t expected this meeting. Ludger had been avoiding him for a while. Not a week. Not a month. Almost a year.

Ever since the secret had taken root like a thorn in Ludger’s mind.

Torvares’ eyes moved once, slow and measured, down to the bottle and back up again. The corner of his mouth twitched like he might find humor in the fact that Ludger was trying to negotiate with alcohol.

But he didn’t let it become a smile.

Not yet. He just sat there behind the desk, hands folded, posture calm, and watched Ludger the way a veteran watched a blade being drawn.

He had no script for this. He probably had a dozen for everything else. But not for the boy who’d built walls, killed an ant king, absorbed a refugee crisis, and then decided, out of nowhere, to walk into his office at noon and say nothing.

Torvares could apologize. He’d already tried that in different ways. Quiet words. Polite offers. A few careful attempts to speak around the subject without piercing it.

But “sorry” didn’t cut it.

Not when what he’d done had altered the shape of Ludger’s life—even if only slightly. Not when the irritation wasn’t about the outcome, but about being used. Torvares knew that. And he also knew he didn’t have much else to offer besides truth and patience.

So he waited. And Ludger… let the silence shimmer. For some reason.

He watched the light dance faintly through the bottle’s glass, watched the liquid shift like it was breathing, and did not look away. His fingers rested on the chair arms, still, controlled. Silence was a weapon in its own way.

Ludger used it like he used earth magic, pressure, time, inevitability. Torvares’ gaze stayed on him, unreadable. A minute passed. Two.

The air between them grew taut, not hostile, not friendly. Just full. Full of everything that hadn’t been said for almost a year.

Finally, Lord Torvares’ voice broke the quiet, low and even.

“Well,” he said, eyes flicking once more to the bottle, “I assume this is either a gift… or a threat.”

Ludger didn’t blink. The silence trembled on the edge of becoming something else. Ludger didn’t take the opening Torvares offered. He didn’t answer

gift or threat

. He didn’t even acknowledge the bottle. He just lifted his eyes, steady and flat, and asked the question that mattered to him first.

“Where’s Viola?”

Lord Torvares blinked once, subtle surprise, then settled back into his usual calm.

“Training,” he said. “Somewhere with Luna and the direwolves.”

His gaze slid briefly to the bottle again, then back to Ludger.

“After hearing about your fight with the ant king,” Torvares added, voice faintly amused in that restrained way of his, “she decided to try that move the creature did.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed a fraction.

“Which move?”

Torvares’s mouth twitched, just barely.

“The…

four arms

magic attack you mentioned,” he said, choosing his words like he was trying not to insult anyone. “There are similar techniques here. Styles that mimic multiple angles of attack—feints layered over real strikes, overlapping rhythms, aggressive pressure that feels like you’re fighting more limbs than the enemy actually has.”

He lifted a hand, making a small, circular gesture as if illustrating blades crossing.

“She’d never tried to learn it,” Torvares continued. “Too… inelegant for her taste, I think.”

Ludger could picture it. Viola preferred momentum, decisive violence, the kind of fighting that bullied an opponent into making mistakes. Not delicate trickery. But then Torvares finished, and Ludger’s mental image turned ridiculous.

“Now she’s swinging two swords around to mimic the technique,” Torvares said, “even though she’s never dual-wielded before.”

Ludger nodded once. That tracked.

Viola heard “dangerous technique,” and her brain translated it as

new toy to master immediately.

The fact it was wildly inefficient for her current style probably made her want it more.

He let that sit, then his eyes drifted across the office. His gaze swept the desk, ink, ledgers, seals, the bottle. And then he noticed something missing. No glasses. Not even decorative ones. Just… Torvares being Torvares, prepared for politics and war and not prepared for a thirteen-year-old showing up with alcohol and silent intent.

Ludger didn’t comment. Two cups rose from his mana to the air, smooth, dense, polished with thin walls and stable bases. Not crude. Not heavy-handed. Elegant in a blunt, honest way that made glass feel like vanity.

They formed without sound, without tremor. A small flex of mastery. Ludger set them down on the desk with a soft tap. Torvares watched the cups, then Ludger, and something like reluctant appreciation flashed in his eyes. Ludger finally spoke again, voice even.

“Let’s drink a bit.”

It wasn’t friendliness. It wasn’t forgiveness. It was… a starting point. A way to turn a year of avoided conversations into something that could actually be handled. Torvares’s gaze lingered on him for a heartbeat longer, as if measuring whether this was an ambush or a bridge. Then the older man reached for the bottle.

“Very well,” Torvares said quietly. “A bit.”

The wax seal cracked. And the silence between them shifted, no longer empty. Just waiting to be filled. The first pour was careful.

Not because the bottle was precious, though it was, but because both of them understood what the act represented. Two men sitting across a desk with a year of tension between them, pretending for a moment that a drink could make it easier to speak.

The wine hit the stone cups with a soft, thick sound. Dark, clean, a faint shimmer clinging to the surface like the liquid held light in suspension. Torvares lifted his cup first. He didn’t toast. He didn’t make a show of it. He just took a sip.

Then he paused. Not politely. Not theatrically. Genuinely. His eyes unfocused for a heartbeat as the taste settled, and when he looked back at Ludger, there was something almost… impressed there, despite himself.

“…Remarkable,” Torvares said.

He took another small sip, slower this time, as if confirming he wasn’t being fooled by novelty.

“This is the best I’ve ever had.”

Ludger drank too. The wine was good, Aronia’s work always was, and the magic water did something subtle to it, sharpening the finish, making it feel clean in the mouth instead of heavy.

But he didn’t react the way Torvares did.

He set the cup down and said, flatly, “I didn’t produce it.”

Torvares’ brows lifted slightly.

Ludger’s eyes stayed on the stone cup like it was safer than looking at the man across from him.

“I’m just getting the profits,” Ludger added. “So your compliments don’t mean much to me. Sorry.”

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