Chapter 326. When Was the Last Time You Asked If She Was Happy?

"You have no right to lecture me on how to raise my own daughter," Lord Valestria said.

His voice had dropped. The roaring fury was gone, replaced by something infinitely worse: a cold, flat certainty that sounded like the scrape of steel against stone.

"You are an instructor. A temporary fixture in her life, a passing shadow. Nothing more."

"I built this family’s reputation from nothing but blood and discipline... I know precisely what it takes to maintain it, and idle pleasures have no place in that maintenance."

"Maybe that’s exactly the problem," William said. His voice was quiet, but in the dead silence of the courtyard, it carried like a gunshot.

Lord Valestria’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure venom. "Excuse me?"

"You keep talking about maintaining a reputation," William said, stepping closer until he was close enough to see the flecks of gold in the nobleman’s enraged pupils. "But I’ve been listening to you for ten minutes, and I haven’t heard either of you mention her once."

"Not her wellbeing. Not her happiness. Not even her actual skill with a blade beyond how it reflects on your precious name."

"Every single sentence you’ve uttered tonight has been about House Valestria... Not about Lia."

"They are not separate things!" Lady Valestria snapped.

Her voice was sharp and defensive, but beneath the aristocratic steel, William caught the faintest tremor, a crack in the porcelain. "Her well-being depends entirely on her ability to succeed within the standards this family requires."

"That is not cruelty, Instructor Wade."

"That is preparation for a world that will not show her mercy... A world that will devour her if she shows even a moment of weakness."

William felt a bitter taste in his mouth. ’A world that will devour her.’

’As if you haven’t already started the process.’

"I’ve spent decades around soldiers, Lady Valestria," William said, his words measured and precise. "I understand preparation."

"I understand pushing someone past their breaking point because growth requires friction. But there’s a fundamental difference between pushing someone toward strength and starving them of anything resembling human connection until they perform like clockwork."

"One builds people who can withstand the storm... The other breaks them down so slowly and so thoroughly that nobody notices the damage until the person inside is already gone."

"You speak as though we tortured her," Lord Valestria said.

The accusation was meant to be an insult, but the venom lacked its usual bite. For the first time, something uncertain, something almost like guilt, crept into the corners of his expression, though he fought to bury it beneath his pride.

"I don’t think either of you ever raised a hand against her," William said, his voice dropping to a deadly, intimate whisper. "I read the records."

"I know you never left bruises that could be seen. But there’s more than one way to wound a child."

"Silence can cut deeper than any blade."

"Physical pain heals; bones knit back together."

"But the hollow space you created in her, where a girl should have been, doesn’t appear on any medical report."

"It only shows up when someone finally asks her the right question, and she realizes she doesn’t even know who she is supposed to answer as."

William didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He stood like a monolith in the center of the courtyard, letting the accumulated fury of the Valestrias crash against him and dissipate into nothingness.

He allowed the accusations to hang in the air like poisonous smoke, letting the crowd’s suffocating silence stretch until it became painful, until the only sound was the distant, mocking crackle of the torches and the ragged, broken breathing of the girl standing behind him.

Then, he asked the only question that could truly dismantle them.

"When was the last time either of you asked her if she was happy?"

The question didn’t just land; it detonated. It carried a psychological weight far heavier than any shout or threat that had come before it.

It was a clean, surgical strike to the heart of their entire worldview.

Lord Valestria opened his mouth, his throat working as he prepared to unleash another torrent of aristocratic rage, but the words died before they could reach his lips. His jaw clenched so hard William heard the faint, audible creak of bone, but his mouth remained frozen.

Something flickered behind his eyes not anger, but something far more damning: a hollow, terrifying emptiness. Lady Valestria’s carefully maintained mask of composure didn’t just slip; it shattered.

Her mouth worked silently, a desperate search for a retort that simply didn’t exist in the vocabulary of people who had forgotten how to feel.

The silence that followed was excruciating. It stretched for seconds that felt like hours, a void that swallowed the dignity of House Valestria whole.

"That’s a simple enough question," William said finally.

His voice remained terrifyingly level, cutting through the stillness like a blade through silk. "It shouldn’t require this much cognitive effort to answer, if the answer were something you’d actually considered before tonight."

"That is not the point," Lord Valestria finally managed, though his voice lacked its iron conviction.

It sounded brittle, like old parchment ready to tear. "The point of raising a child capable of carrying our name is "

"Then what is the point?" William interrupted, stepping forward, his shadow falling across the Lord. "Because from where I’m standing, it looks like the point was building a weapon, not raising a daughter."

"And weapons don’t need happiness... They don’t need love."

"They just need to function correctly until they’re no longer useful."

William turned his gaze slightly, not to Lia, but to the parents, forcing them to face the reality of what they had engineered.

"I’ll tell you what I’ve seen," William said, his voice dropping to a register that carried to every corner of the hushed field. "In the weeks I’ve spent training your daughter, I’ve watched her apologize for things that were never her fault."

"It’s not conscious, but it’s reflexive... to the point that it was an instinctive thing she do."

"The moment Seraphina stepped out of that carriage weeks ago before a single word was exchanged, before any accusation was made Lia’s entire body language collapsed."

"Her shoulders hunched, her chin dipped, her hands curled inward."

"She offered contrition for a crime she hadn’t committed before she’d even processed the situation. That isn’t shyness, and that isn’t respect."

"That is a trauma response built over years of learning that the safest way to survive your presence was to beg for forgiveness before you even knew why you were being punished."

Lady Valestria’s eyes glistened, the first sign of genuine human emotion breaking through her aristocratic armor. A single tear threatened to spill, but she choked it back, her hand trembling at her side.

"I found her once," William continued, each word landing like a hammer blow, "training alone in the dead of night."

"Six straight hours on what was supposed to be a mandatory rest day."

"She was repeating the same basic sword forms she’d mastered years ago, over and over, until her knuckles bled and her muscles screamed."

"When I asked her why she wouldn’t stop, she didn’t say she wanted to improve."

"She said she believed that stopping meant failing."

"She didn’t know how to relax because she genuinely believes that relaxation is a weakness that invites punishment."

He paused, letting the image of a bleeding, exhausted child sink in.

"I asked her what her favorite food was," William said, a bitter smile touching his lips. "She looked at me with genuine confusion, as if I’d asked her to explain a concept from a foreign civilization."

"She has never chosen a meal based on pleasure or taste only on optimal nutritional value for performance."

"She has no preferences. No desires. Because preferences require a self, and you’ve spent her entire life systematically erasing hers."

Lord Valestria’s hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned white as bone, but he remained silent, trapped by the truth.

"She has never attended the city festival," William went on, the narration of her stolen life unfolding like a funeral dirge. "Not once in three years, despite every other student having that week free."

"She has never traveled for enjoyment. Every journey she has taken was either a tournament or a mandatory obligation."

"And I found the records, Lord Valestria... I saw the progress reports from her previous instructors."

"Every single one praised her dedication, but every single one was followed by a note in your own handwriting."

"A cold, clinical comparison to Seraphina. ’Two months to master this technique, compared to Seraphina’s three weeks.’ You didn’t give her a goal; you gave her a race she could never win because the finish line moved every time she got close."

Lady Valestria let out a broken, strangled sound, pressing her palm against her mouth as if to physically hold back the sob rising in her throat.

"I found accounts of meals withheld without explanation," William said, his voice carrying the full weight of his disgust. "Days of punishment for ’insufficient focus.’ Weeks of complete, icy silence from both of you following any perceived failure, treating her as though she had ceased to exist in the house until she earned her way back into your acknowledgment."

"I have watched a girl who possesses more raw, terrifying talent than almost any soldier I served with in my decades of war a girl who could become a legend spend every waking second terrified that she simply isn’t enough."

"Not because she lacks ability, but because you taught her that love in House Valestria is conditional."

"And worse, you taught her that the condition keeps moving further away every single time she gets close to meeting it."