Elaine looked between the girls, then back at Ludger one last time, and said, in a tone that was far too calm for his peace of mind, “They’re probably just worried about you, Ludger.”
Ludger replied immediately, “No. They’re bored and just want to cause me trouble.”
Then, because the situation was already bad enough without pretending otherwise, he added, “You’re smarter than this, Mom.”
Elaine gave him a mildly offended look that did nothing to weaken the warmth in her expression.
“I am,” she said. “But I trust my instincts.”
That was somehow even more troublesome.
Then she looked toward Viola and added, “Viola is no longer a child. She wouldn’t do something to cause you trouble.”
Viola nodded several times at once, wearing a bright, confident smile so shamelessly innocent that it nearly became insulting.
“Yes,” she said, with the exact tone of someone who absolutely should not be trusted. “Exactly.”
Ludger stared at her. Elaine turned away for only a second to reach for another dish. That was enough. The moment her attention shifted, Viola stuck out her tongue at Ludger and made a ridiculous face just to annoy him.
His eyebrows twitched. Of course she did. Of course she proved his point within a single breath of Elaine defending her. Ludger sighed through his nose, long and flat.
At least the members of his guild would follow his orders. That was a comfort. A diminishing one, lately, but still a comfort. “At this rate, I would rather work with Eclaire despite the many issues that came with that.”
The moment he said that, the atmosphere around the table tightened slightly. Not enough to stop the meal. Enough to be felt.
Elira, who until now had mostly been watching the family exchange with poorly hidden fascination, turned toward him and asked, “Who is Eclaire?”
Then, with a little too much ease, she added, “Your girlfriend?”
Elaine’s face lit up with a warm, dangerously interested smile.
“It could be, right, Ludger?” she said. “She has a lot of potential.”
Ludger sighed again and looked up at the ceiling. There were times his life felt like a drama. Complicated. Heavy. Full of politics, pressure, secrets, and people making bad choices with serious consequences.
And then, somehow, without warning, it would become a comedy instead. Not a good one. Not one he would have chosen. Just the sort where everyone at the table suddenly became far too interested in his nonexistent romantic life while he was trying to prepare for an infiltration mission.
He kept staring upward for another second, wondering why fate insisted on changing genres in the middle of his week.
Arslan arrived home not long after that and stopped the moment he saw the table. Elaine serving food. Viola, Luna, and Elira already seated like they belonged there. The twins watching everything with bright little eyes. And Ludger sitting in the middle of it all with the sort of fed-up expression that usually meant several things had already gone wrong before anyone else entered the room.
Arslan frowned.
He clearly had a lot to say.
Ludger could see it forming already, the questions, the complaints, the disbelief, probably a few terrible jokes if left unchecked. But then Arslan looked at Ludger again, saw just how exhausted his expression really was, and made the rare smart decision to keep quiet.
For once.
In the end, they all had dinner together.
The meal went on in that strange family way where everyone silently agreed to pretend nothing had happened, even when the room was still carrying the shape of the earlier confrontation. Elaine guided the conversation toward safer topics. The twins occasionally interrupted with bits of training-related nonsense. Viola behaved just well enough to avoid being thrown out. Elira matched the mood smoothly. Luna, as usual, caused the least trouble simply by speaking less than the others.
And little by little, Ludger’s sour mood faded. Not because the situation had improved much. Mostly because there was no value in staying irritated once the lines had already been drawn. He had made his choice. That was the important part.
He was going ahead with the plan, and he was not going to let curiosity, family pressure, or three troublesome girls changing the atmosphere around him alter that. The next step had already been decided. Everything else was noise.
After dinner, Viola, Luna, and Elira went to the guest room Viola and Luna usually used when they stayed over.
With three people in it, the room would be a little cramped, but none of them seemed bothered by that. If anything, Viola looked pleased to have somehow expanded the nonsense instead of reducing it. Elira adapted with suspicious ease. Luna accepted the arrangement with the quiet resignation of someone who had stopped questioning other people’s decisions hours ago.
Once they had readied their beds, however, that should have been the end of it. It wasn’t. A little while later, the three of them went to check Ludger’s room.
They found him exactly where he usually was when left alone too long with work, seated at the table, writing something by lamplight, his back to the door, papers spread neatly in front of him.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He did not turn. He did not need to.
“What do you want, Viola?” he asked.
That made the three of them pause at the threshold. Viola was the first to recover.
“I want to help,” she said.
Ludger’s pen stopped for half a second. Then he answered without looking back.
“Your help would only add more variables to my job.”
His tone was calm again. Tired, but steady.
“So the best help you can give me is not getting involved.”
That landed harder than if he had snapped. Viola stood there for a moment, and for once she did not answer immediately. The refusal had been too clean for that. Too precise. It left no real opening for charm, stubbornness, or argument unless she wanted to force the issue openly, and even she could tell that would end badly.
So Viola sighed. A small one. And she did not say anything in response. Behind her, Luna remained still, unsurprised. Elira, meanwhile, watched Ludger’s back in silence, likely noticing the same thing she had in the labyrinth and again in the yard: when he truly decided something, there was very little room left around it for anyone else.
Luna was the one who finally stepped farther into the room.
Not Viola. Not Elira.
Luna.
That alone made Ludger pause internally, even if his pen only continued moving across the page in a steady line.
Her voice, when it came, was as calm as always.
“I’m going to say something that will probably annoy you a bit.”
Ludger did not turn around.
“It wouldn’t be the first annoying thing I’ve heard today.”
That got the faintest shift in the air behind him. Viola almost snorting, probably. Elira staying quiet. Luna, however, did not retreat from it.
She continued.
“In your attempts not to make anyone worry by working alone,” she said, “you only make the people closer to you worry more.”
The room stayed quiet around her words. Ludger’s hand did not stop, but the line he was writing slowed slightly. Luna went on in the same even tone.
“Your parents. Viola.” She paused there, not because she lacked more names, but because saying them seemed to require a little more care. “And… many other people.”
The pause was long enough to be felt. Not dramatic. Just honest.
Then she said, “If you had backup, people would worry less.”
Ludger still did not turn. The lamplight cast his shadow long across the desk and papers, making the room feel narrower than it really was. Luna took another small breath and kept speaking.
“Not involving others isn’t only about protecting them,” she said. “It’s also a way for you to feel more comfortable.”
That made Viola glance at her, then toward Ludger’s back, as if checking whether those words had landed too hard. Elira said nothing. She was listening very carefully now.
Ludger’s pen finally stopped. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the faint crackle of the lamp and the dull quiet of the house settling into the night. Then he spoke.
“Your desire to get involved,” he said, voice calm and flat, “is because you want to make yourselves more comfortable too.”
Still, he did not turn. That somehow made it worse. Or heavier. Because all of the weight stayed in the words instead of being softened by expression.
“Or am I wrong?” Ludger asked.
No one answered immediately. So he continued.
“In the end, all of us do things to make matters more convenient for ourselves.”
His hand rested lightly beside the page now, fingers still, the pen set down with quiet precision.
“So why do your comfort have more weight than mine?”
The room went very still after that. Viola opened her mouth slightly, then closed it again.
Luna’s expression did not change much, but there was a subtle tightening around her eyes, the look of someone who knew the answer had struck deeper than she had wanted. Elira remained near the door, arms loosely folded now, her earlier curiosity gone quiet under something more serious.
Viola was the first one who tried to push against it.
“That’s not fair.”
Ludger answered immediately.
“It’s not, so what? Life isn’t fair.”
Luna exhaled softly through her nose.
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t selfish.”
That finally made Ludger shift. Not enough to face them.
Only enough that his shoulder turned slightly, a minimal movement that somehow sharpened his presence more than a full turn might have.
“Of course it’s selfish,” he said. “So is asking to be included because being left behind makes you uneasy.”
That struck home too. Viola frowned. Elira looked away for a brief second. Luna, to her credit, did not deny it. Ludger continued, voice still level.
“I understand why you want to be involved. I understand why that feels better to you. But understanding it does not make it more important than the shape of the work itself.”
He tapped one finger once against the table.
“What I’m doing requires fewer moving parts, fewer assumptions, and fewer chances for things to go wrong.”
Then, after a beat, he added, “That matters more to me than whether other people sleep better.”
That one was harsher. Not cruel. Just harsh in the way plain truths often were. Viola’s expression shifted at that, something between frustration and hurt flickering across her face before she covered it with annoyance.
Elira’s gaze returned to Ludger, more thoughtful now than playful. And Luna stood there quietly, absorbing the answer without trying to interrupt it. Because she, more than the others, understood what he was really saying. Not that their worry meant nothing.
But that he had already weighed it. And decided it still lost. After another few seconds, Luna spoke again.
“Then maybe,” she said carefully, “the problem is that you’re the one deciding those weights alone.”
Ludger was silent for a moment. That was the closest she had come to the real center of it. The closest anyone had tonight. When he answered, his voice was quieter.
“Yes.”
No denial. No defense. Just that.
Then he added, “That is how command works.”
The line sat there between them like a closed gate. Because that was the part none of them could argue with cleanly. Not really.
He was not simply a brother. Not simply a son. Not simply the person they worried about. He was also Ludger, vice guildmaster of Lionsguard, the one who made decisions other people followed, the one who took risks because that was part of the position he had built around himself.
And if he started distributing those decisions based on who cared enough to demand a share of them, then everything under him would become weaker.
Messier. Less reliable. Luna understood that. Viola hated it. Elira, somewhere in between, was still thinking through what it meant. In the end, no one spoke for a little while. The silence this time did not feel like anger. Just weight.
Then Ludger reached for his pen again. Not dismissing them dramatically. Just returning to the work. Which, in its own way, was an answer too.