Chapter 325. You Manufactured a Weapon, Not a Daughter

They continued their slow passage past the mess hall, where the ghost of roasted meat and warm bread still hung heavy in the evening air, and past the small, worn training yard where Kaela had once physically dragged Lia toward the archery range on some half-remembered dare, a memory that remained maddeningly vague despite William’s repeated attempts to extract the full story.

Every corner of this academy was beginning to feel like a living museum to William.

Every alleyway, every courtyard, every stone path now carried a fragment of the transformation he had witnessed—a map of scars, both physical and emotional, marking the territory of Lia’s healing.

"Do you ever think about what would have happened," Lia asked suddenly, her voice breaking the comfortable silence like a stone dropped into a still pond, "if you hadn’t decided to check the training grounds that first rest day?"

"If you’d just... stayed away? If you’d let me keep punishing myself in private and go about your own day instead?"

William slowed his pace, considering the weight behind the question. "I think about it sometimes, yeah."

"I don’t like where that particular train of thought leads... It’s a dark place."

"Neither do I," Lia admitted, her gaze fixed on the cobblestones. "But I try not to dwell on it."

"Dwelling is just another form of self-punishment, isn’t it?"

"What matters is the reality we’re standing in... You checked."

"That’s the version of events that actually matters."

"That’s a healthier way to think about it than I usually manage," William said, offering a rueful smile.

Lia laughed softly, the sound genuine this time, and bumped her shoulder against his with an affectionate force that felt like an anchor.

That fragile peace lasted almost exactly as long as it took for the distant thunder of hooves and the discordant shriek of shouting to pierce the evening air.

The noise built with terrifying speed, harsh, commanding voices carrying across the grounds even before the source of the disturbance emerged from the treeline.

The easy, celebratory chatter around the training field didn’t just fade; it died violently, replaced by an uneasy, suffocating tension. Students froze mid-step, their curious murmurs transforming into anxious whispers as every head turned toward the main gate.

A carriage had slammed to a halt in front of the academy entrance, its horses lathered in sweat and visibly agitated, their eyes rolling in panic from the abrupt, violent stop.

The wheels had ground against the stone approach with a bone-jarring screech that suggested the driver had been less concerned with the animals’ well-being than with sheer, furious haste.

Even from their distance, William recognized the heraldry emblazoned on the carriage’s polished wood: the silver blade crossed over a rising sun. His stomach dropped.

He had studied that crest in the archives weeks ago, the mark of House Valestria.

Before the carriage had even finished settling on its springs, the door was flung open with unnecessary force. Lia’s mother stepped down first.

Her face was a mask of controlled fury, but beneath the anger, William could see something dangerously brittle, something that looked like it might shatter at any moment.

Her elegant traveling clothes were rumpled, suggesting a journey taken in desperation, and her hair, once the epitome of aristocratic precision, was coming undone, strands clinging to her flushed face.

Then came Lord Valestria. He emerged from the carriage like a storm cloud made flesh.

There was none of the shaken, humiliated quality he had worn when he fled the arena hours earlier. Whatever humiliation he had suffered during the duel had apparently been forged into something far more dangerous during the ride: a cold, sharpened rage that seemed to radiate from him in waves.

The atmosphere across the training ground froze solid. Conversations died in throats; torches crackled in the sudden, unnatural silence.

Kaela’s animated story about Ardyn’s blade died halfway through a sentence, her mouth hanging open. Ellie’s laughter vanished as if cut by a blade.

Even Olivia straightened, her relaxed posture evaporating instantly as she shifted into a state of heightened, predatory alertness.

Beside William, Lia went unnaturally still. He could feel the sudden drop in her body temperature and the way her breathing became shallow and controlled.

She looked less like a person and more like a statue carved from ice.

"William Wade."

Lord Valestria’s voice cut through the silence like a guillotine blade. It was sharp, commanding, and carried across the courtyard with lethal clarity despite the distance.

He didn’t look at his daughter; his eyes were fixed solely on William, burning with an accusation that needed no words.

"I want a word with you... Now."

William felt Lia’s fingers dig into his sleeve for one sharp, desperate heartbeat, a silent plea, a warning, a prayer before she wrenched them away, retreating into the shadows of her own shock. He didn’t wait for her to speak; he couldn’t.

If he stayed frozen, he would freeze with her. He stepped forward, his boots striking the cobblestones with a measured rhythm that betrayed none of the lightning-fast calculations racing through his mind.

He met Lord Valestria’s advancing fury with a spine of tempered steel, forcing himself to maintain a steady, deliberate calm even as his pulse thundered against his ribs like a caged animal.

"I assumed you’d have more to say," William said, his voice deceptively even, slicing through the oppressive silence of the courtyard. "Given how spectacularly the day ended."

"How did the day end?" Lord Valestria roared, the sound tearing from his throat like a wounded beast.

He closed the distance between them with terrifying strides, each step vibrating with a suppressed violence that promised retribution. His wife followed half a step behind, her face pale with fury, her posture rigid with the kind of aristocratic tension that demanded immediate submission.

"You dare speak of the day’s end as if it were some triviality?!"

"You have spent the last several weeks systematically dismantling years of proper discipline, Wade!"

He stopped inches from William’s face, his breath hot with rage. "Years, Instructor Wade, years of carefully cultivating the character, the composure, the very marrow of what it means to bear the Valestria name, and you have undone it all in a matter of days!"

"You have replaced steel with sentimentality and duty with... with idleness."

"Discipline," William repeated, the word tasting like ash.

He felt the anger beginning to coil beneath his ribs, a hot, molten pressure. He refused to flinch and he refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing him cowed.

"Yes, discipline!" Lady Valestria interjected, her voice sharp and clipped, each syllable landing like a whipcrack.

She stepped forward to flank her husband, creating a wall of Valestria authority that seemed to shrink the very world around them. "Do you have even the slightest comprehension of what it takes to forge a child capable of carrying our legacy?"

"The sacrifices required? And the brutal standards that must be maintained without exception?"

"You haven’t been teaching her; you’ve been corrupting her."

"You’ve thrown away her future for the sake of momentary amusement... Night markets... Carnival games..."

"My daughter’s potential, squandered for the sake of cheap cotton candy and worthless festival prizes."

’Squandered?’ William thought, a bitter laugh threatening to bubble up. ’She’s not squandering anything.’

’She’s finally learning how to breathe without permission.’

"She won a duel today against a Grand Greatswordmaster," William said, the words coming out with a dangerous edge he couldn’t quite blunt.

His eyes flickered briefly toward Lia, then snapped back to Valestria’s murderous gaze. "I’d hardly call a victory of that magnitude ’squandered.’"

"One duel," Lord Valestria snapped, his fingers twitching as if imagining the hilt of a sword. "One momentary flash of competence does not undo months of cultivated weakness."

"I have read the reports, Wade."

"I know exactly what she has been doing... My daughter, a scion of House Valestria, spending her precious hours wandering through common markets like a peasant girl, eating street food like a child, competing in games meant for infants!"

"That is not the behavior of a warrior!"

"That is the behavior of someone who has forgotten who she is!"

William took a half step closer, invading the Lord’s space, daring him to strike. The air between them felt charged with static, the kind that precedes a lethal storm.

"No, my lord," William said, his voice dropping to a low, deadly register that commanded attention. "That is the behavior of someone who was never once allowed to simply be a child."

"For years, you didn’t raise a daughter; you manufactured a weapon!"

"And now that she’s finally finding out what it feels like to actually live, you’re angry that the weapon has developed a soul."

A low, dangerous murmur rippled through the gathered crowd like wind through dry grass. From the periphery of his vision, William saw Kaela usually the first to throw a punch, her knuckles whitening as her hands curled into fists so tight they shook.

Her entire body was a coiled spring of restrained fury. Beside her, Catherine took an instinctive step forward, her face set in defiance, ready to intervene, but Albert’s hand settled on her shoulder not to stop her but to command her patience.

A silent order: ’Let William handle this first.’

Behind him, the atmosphere changed. The air felt thinner and colder.

William didn’t need to turn around to know that Lia was unraveling. He could hear it in the ragged, shallow hitch of her breathing.

He could feel the phantom tremors of her body through the space between them. The old terror that was an ancient conditioned reflex to shrink away from her father’s shadow was clawing its way back up her throat.