Chapter 329. Neither of Us Chose This, It Was Chosen for Us

The raw honesty of the plea seemed to vibrate through the courtyard. William saw Lia’s jaw tighten and saw the way her throat moved as she swallowed back the tide of emotion threatening to overwhelm her.

For a moment, the mask of the disciplined warrior slipped, revealing the raw, bleeding wound of a girl who had been starved for exactly that moment for acknowledgment that had nothing to do with her utility.

Lia’s composure wavered. A single tear escaped, carving a hot path through the dried blood and dirt on her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it away.

Her eyes searched her mother’s face, looking for the lie, looking for the hidden expectation, but finding only a broken woman offering a broken olive branch.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of suspended tension, Lia gave a single, small, careful nod. It wasn’t a surrender; it was a concession.

A tiny crack in the wall she had built to protect herself.

"I’d like that too," Lia whispered, her voice rough but certain. "Eventually."

Lord Valestria remained frozen, his silhouette cut stark against the flickering torchlight. For several heartbeats, he seemed less like a man and more like a crumbling monument, ancient and eroded by the very storms he had sought to command.

His gaze was fixed on the blood-stained gravel between them on the dirt that had witnessed his daughter’s pain and his own failure.

When he finally spoke, the commanding baritone that could shatter enemy lines was gone, replaced by something hollow, brittle, and terrifyingly human.

"I don’t know how to be the father you’re describing," he admitted.

The words seemed to physically pain him, as if each syllable were being dragged through broken glass. "I don’t know how to simply... love someone without a standard attached to it."

"Without a goal... Without a price..." His shoulders sagged, the weight of centuries of Valestria doctrine pressing down on him. "I was never taught that."

"I don’t think my own father knew how either."

"I was raised to be a blade, Lia. And blades don’t know how to hold anything fragile without breaking it."

The admission hung between them, raw and bleeding. William watched from the shadows, feeling like an intruder on something sacred and devastating.

He saw Lia’s chest heave as she took in a shaky breath, her fingers still twitching from the adrenaline of the confrontation.

"Then learn," Lia said.

Her voice wasn’t soft; she couldn’t afford softness, but the venom that had fueled her earlier had drained away, leaving behind something colder, clearer, and infinitely more dangerous: honesty. "I’m not asking you to become someone entirely different overnight."

"I’m not asking for a miracle, but I’m asking you to try."

"That’s all any human being can reasonably ask of another. Even you."

Lord Valestria finally lifted his head. For the first time in William’s memory, the Lord’s eyes weren’t calculating tactical advantages or assessing threats.

They were wide, vulnerable, and swimming with something William had never before associated with the Valestria name: ’terror.’

"And if I fail at that too?" he asked.

The question was quiet, almost a whisper, but it carried more force than any battle cry. "What if I slip?"

"What if the instinct to mold you, to correct you, returns before I can stop it?"

"What if I break you again?"

It was the fear of a predator realizing he had become the monster he taught his children to hunt.

Lia met that terror with a stare that was as unflinching as any veteran’s.

"Then you fail," she said simply, the bluntness of her words cutting through his self-pity like a surgeon’s scalpel. "And you try again."

"That’s what you always told me growing up, wasn’t it?"

"Every time I fell, every time I bled, every time I failed a test or lost a spar, you said the same thing: ’Failure is only permanent if you stop trying afterward.’"

She took a step closer, her shadow stretching long across the stones. "I suppose I’m asking you to actually believe that yourself, for once."

"To apply your own merciless lessons to your own soul, instead of only demanding they be met by me."

The irony was devastating. The words landed with the weight of a killing blow, turning Valestria’s own philosophy against him.

William saw the moment it hit; the way the Lord’s composure didn’t just crack but shattered. His mouth parted slightly, his throat working convulsively as he processed the quiet, surgical precision with which his daughter had dismantled his entire worldview.

A long, agonizing silence followed. Then, slowly, so slowly, it seemed as though his bones might snap under the effort. Lord Valestria inclined his head in a small, reluctant nod.

It was a gesture of submission, not to an enemy, but to the truth. Beside him, Lady Valestria followed suit, her face wet with tears that she no longer bothered to hide, her head bowing in shared shame and shared hope.

No one had expected this. William certainly hadn’t.

He had expected anger, perhaps a final, explosive argument that would sever their ties forever. He had expected the pride of House Valestria to reassert itself like armor.

Instead, he watched as the two most powerful figures in the room turned away. They walked toward their waiting carriage with steps that were considerably slower and heavier than the furious, purposeful strides that had carried them onto the grounds minutes earlier.

They looked diminished, smaller, older, and profoundly exhausted. As the carriage door closed with a soft, final thud, William realized he hadn’t witnessed a victory or a defeat.

He had witnessed something far more painful and far more hopeful: the slow, agonizing death of an old world and the uncertain birth of something new.

The carriage wheels ground against the gravel with a harsh, final sound before fading into the distance, leaving behind a silence so profound it felt suffocating.

Two parents had departed, not in triumph, but in a state of hollow recognition, finally understanding the catastrophic price of their own ambition.

They had spent years carving away pieces of their daughter with deliberate, clinical cruelty, one expectation at a time, until the girl they knew had been replaced by something forged in pain.

They were leaving behind a stranger they had built with their own hands, and they could never get those years back.

On the training grounds, the air remained thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid smoke from the torches.

The gathered crowd of students, faculty, and witnesses stood paralyzed, like statues caught in a moment of shared grief. Nobody spoke.

The weight of the Valestria collapse pressed down on them, heavy as a tombstone.

It was Seraphina who finally shattered the paralysis.

She turned toward Lia, and for the first time in anyone’s memory, the ’Perfect Daughter,’ the untouchable prodigy, the flawless weapon of House Valestria, cracked.

Her composed exterior didn’t just slip; it disintegrated. Her shoulders trembled, her breathing became ragged, and the regal mask she had worn like armor since childhood fell away to reveal raw, bleeding vulnerability.

"I’m sorry," she whispered.

The words were small, fragile things that seemed to struggle against the enormity of her guilt. "I’m so sorry, Lia."

Her voice broke on the last syllable, thick with a lifetime of suppressed emotion. "I should have protected you."

"I should have seen what they were doing to you, what they were doing to us."

"I convinced myself that by being perfect and never failing, I was creating space for you and sparing you from pressure by carrying it all myself."

"I thought my absence was a shield... I never realized I was just leaving you alone in the dark."

A tear escaped, trailing through the flawless makeup she wore, leaving a streak like a scar. "I never once considered how wrong I was until tonight... Until I almost lost you completely."

Lia watched her sister, her own mind racing.

’She was the sun they all worshipped,’ Lia thought bitterly, ’and she never realized that a sun burns everything beneath it.’

But as she looked at Seraphina’s shaking hands, the old anger and the hot, poisonous resentment she had nursed for years began to cool, turning into something softer, something more devastating: understanding.

Lia didn’t hesitate. She crossed the remaining distance between them, each step deliberate, each movement shedding a layer of the defensive walls she had built.

When she reached Seraphina, she didn’t offer a polite nod or a formal bow. She threw her arms around her sister with enough force to bruise, clinging to her as if she might disappear if she let go.

It wasn’t the practiced embrace of two nobles; it was the desperate, bone-deep collision of two survivors clinging to each other in the aftermath of a wreck.

"I don’t blame you," Lia said, her voice muffled against Seraphina’s shoulder, cracked and raw. "I couldn’t blame you even if I wanted to."

"Not anymore."

She pulled back just enough to meet Seraphina’s eyes, her own gaze fierce despite the tears. "I understand now, sister."

"You weren’t the favorite; you were the prisoner... You were the standard that nobody, not even you, was allowed to fall short of."

"And I was the shadow that nobody would let me escape."

"We weren’t children to them... We were investments... We were assets." A bitter laugh escaped her. "Neither of us chose this. It was chosen for us."