Luna had likely grasped it the moment Ludger started walking toward them: this was not about curiosity, friendship, or proximity. It was about structure. Guild lines. Authority. Risk. The kind of matters that stopped being harmless the moment the wrong person insisted on treating them like a personal invitation.
So no one spoke for a few seconds.
Elira’s earlier amusement was gone now, replaced by a much quieter attentiveness. Viola looked displeased, but not foolish enough to press immediately. Luna remained still, reading the mood for exactly what it was.
Ludger let the silence do part of the work.
Then he added, “If I want your involvement in something, I’ll say so.”
Which was, in its own way, more generous than simply throwing all three of them out of the yard. Viola exhaled softly through her nose. She did not like it. That was obvious. But she also did not challenge it.
And that alone told Ludger he had made himself understood. Ludger let out a slow sigh. Then he turned and left the area, heading for the guild without another word.
The idea of leaving those three behind together was, admittedly, troublesome. Viola was reckless when curiosity got involved, Elira was far too interested in things that were not her business, and Luna, while more reasonable, had a bad habit of quietly enabling dangerous situations simply by being competent enough to keep up with them if Viola wanted to.
That combination had “future problem” written all over it.
Still, Ludger had better things to do with his life than stand there guarding against the possibility of them scheming in his yard like a pack of unsupervised nobles with too much free time.
So he left. Behind him, a short silence settled after his departure.
Then Viola let out a breath of her own and said, “I’ve never seen him that mad.”
That was not entirely true, but it was close enough.
Elira kept her eyes on the direction Ludger had gone for a moment longer before saying, “It looks like he holds back with his family so he doesn’t make them worry.”
Viola blinked and glanced at her.
Elira’s tone had lost most of its earlier playfulness now. What remained was quieter. More thoughtful.
“He doesn’t act like that by accident,” she said. “That wasn’t someone suddenly losing patience. That was someone deciding to stop being gentle with adults.”
Luna said nothing. She did not need to. Because she had understood that much already. Probably before either of the other two. Ludger was far less easygoing than he looked.
That was the truth of it.
Most of the time, people saw the dry replies, the calm expression, the annoyed little sighs, and mistook that for softness, or at least for a kind of ordinary restraint. But Luna knew better. The ease in him was measured. Chosen. Controlled.
Not natural.
He let people see the version of himself that caused the least pointless friction, especially around those he considered his own. That did not mean the harsher parts were absent. It only meant they were usually kept leashed.
And when that leash shortened, the difference was immediate enough to make even Viola stop trying to push.
Luna looked toward the guild in silence, thoughtful. Elira folded her arms loosely and exhaled.
Viola, meanwhile, frowned after him for another second before muttering, “He could’ve just said no normally.”
Elira gave her a sidelong glance.
“He did,” she said. “You just didn’t listen when he said it the easy way.”
That shut Viola up for a moment.
The twins, who had watched the entire exchange with the open curiosity of children who knew something important had happened without fully understanding what it meant, now looked between the three older girls and the direction Ludger had gone.
The yard felt a little quieter after his absence. Not emptier. Sharper. As if the line he had drawn was still hanging in the air even after he was gone.
Viola crossed her arms and looked Elira up and down with the direct, unashamed scrutiny of someone who had no intention of pretending she was not evaluating her.
“So,” she said, “who exactly are you? And what business do you have with Ludger?”
The question sounded casual enough on the surface. It was not.
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Viola did not say the rest out loud, but the curiosity behind it was far more pointed than simple politeness. Another girl suddenly getting closer to her impossibly self-important younger brother was already enough to make her wary. That alone bothered her more than she wanted to admit. And there were other reasons too, less clear, more tangled, not the sort of thing she felt like unpacking in front of the twins and a stranger.
So she kept those parts to herself. Elira, for her part, did not seem intimidated.
She answered smoothly, “I’m a member of the new guild working with Lionsguard.”
Then, with the same composed little smile, she added, “I came to see how things were here and buy some things as well.”
That was a perfectly reasonable answer. Which made it more annoying.
Elira then tilted her head slightly and asked, “Anyway, are you going to give up after Ludger’s words?”
Viola stared at her for half a second.
Then she said, without even the slightest hesitation, “Hell no.”
That answer came out so fast and so firmly that even the twins looked impressed. Elira’s smile widened just a little, as though she had expected exactly that. Luna, meanwhile, closed her eyes for a brief moment, probably because she already understood this conversation was not heading anywhere peaceful.
Viola lifted her chin.
“If he thinks glaring at me is enough to make me back off, then he clearly still underestimates how annoying I can be.”
“That,” Luna said dryly, “is not in doubt.”
Viola ignored her. Her attention stayed on Elira, sharp and openly curious now.
“So,” she said, “what exactly did you mean when you said the things he does are interesting?”
Elira glanced in the direction Ludger had gone, then back at Viola. And the smile she gave this time carried a bit more thought behind it. Because if Viola was asking like that, then she was not going to let this go easily either.
By the time Ludger finished the preparations for the expedition the next day, everything important was in place.
The cover story had spread. The selected members had their instructions. The visible preparations for the training trip were credible enough to live on their own. His route, timing, and the first steps beyond the border had been refined as much as they could be without actually moving.
It should have been enough. And yet he had the unpleasant feeling that things would not go as planned. Part of that was normal.
Operations like this were volatile by nature, and Ludger never trusted plans that looked too clean before the first step. But this time the feeling was worse than usual.
Mostly because three highly volatile variables had arrived all at once to make his life harder. Viola. Luna. Elira.
Any one of them alone could become troublesome. Together, they looked like the sort of combination fate assembled specifically to test his patience. Still, there was nothing to be done about it immediately.
So once the work was finished for the day, Ludger headed home for dinner. And the moment he stepped inside, he realized fate had not even bothered pretending subtlety anymore. Those three were already sitting at the table.
Viola looked far too comfortable. Elira looked far too pleased. Luna looked exactly like someone who knew this had become ridiculous and had come anyway. Worse, Elaine was standing there serving food while thanking them for helping around the house.
Ludger stopped. Just stopped. For one brief second, he simply stared at the scene in complete silence. Elaine turned, saw him, and smiled.
“Welcome back,” she said. “Come sit.”
She was clearly in a good mood. Of course she was. Viola and Elira were both smiling too, and doing it with exactly the same infuriating energy, polite, bright, and playing dumb so blatantly that it somehow wrapped back around into disrespect.
Ludger looked at them.
Then Elaine, noticing the direction of his gaze, said, “Don’t glare at them so much.”
Ludger did not sit down yet.
Instead, he said, completely flat, “They’re using you, Mom, to find out what I’m working on.”
The room went still. Ludger, having decided he was already in hell, continued anyway.
“They’re using your gentleness against you.”
That landed like a stone through glass.
Elaine turned slowly and looked at the three girls with an expression of honest confusion, as if trying to determine whether what she had just heard was some kind of dry joke, an exaggeration, or the exact truth stated far too directly.
The problem, unfortunately for everyone involved, was that Ludger’s tone made all three options equally dangerous.
Viola looked offended. Elira’s smile froze for a fraction of a second. Luna, for the first time that evening, seemed to have no immediate response ready. Because none of them had expected him to drop something like that so openly at the dinner table. Not softened. Not disguised. Not delayed until later.
Just said. Out loud. To his mother. Elaine blinked once, then looked back at Ludger. The silence stretched.
The twins, already seated and halfway into the dangerous territory of sensing entertainment, looked between everyone with bright, poorly hidden curiosity. Viola was the first to find her voice.
“That makes it sound much worse than it is.”
Ludger finally moved and took his seat.
“Does it?”
Elira, to her credit, recovered quickly.
“We only came because Lady Elaine invited us kindly,” she said.
“That happened after you wandered into my yard, ignored what I told you, and decided my home was the next place to inspect,” Ludger replied.
Elira opened her mouth, then closed it again. Viola clicked her tongue. Luna looked at the table as though hoping the food might become more interesting than the conversation.
Elaine, still holding the serving spoon, studied all of them for another long second.
Then she said, very carefully, “Well.”
That one word somehow carried more danger than most people’s shouting. Ludger recognized it immediately. It meant she was now thinking. Which also meant the three girls had probably done real damage to their own position without fully realizing it.
Good.
Viola shifted slightly in her chair.
Elira’s posture remained composed, but a little less playfully so than before.
Luna, wise as ever, remained silent.
Elaine finally set the spoon down and said, “I see.”
That was not a good sign for anyone except Ludger.
Because when Elaine said I see in that tone, it usually meant she had not yet decided whether to be amused, disappointed, or terrifying. And, judging by the way the room had gone tense, everyone at the table understood that at roughly the same time.