Chapter 343. Better Late Than Never, Even If the Timing Is Shit

For a few precious moments, the shadows that had been gathering around their group seemed to retreat. The room dissolved into genuine, unguarded laughter, the kind that fills the lungs and makes the heart feel momentarily invincible.

In that shared mirth, the crushing weight of the Delmore kingdom, the prince’s unsettling obsession, and the looming uncertainty of tomorrow felt distant, like a storm raging on a far-off horizon.

William watched them from the periphery, a ghost at his own feast. A strange, warm ache settled in his chest as he observed this patchwork family.

They weren’t bound by blood or ancient oaths but by something far more volatile and precious: shared trauma, hard-won trust, and a stubborn refusal to break.

Each of them—Clara’s intellect, Olivia’s vigilance, and Kaela’s fierce loyalty—was a thread in a tapestry that had become his entire world. He felt a fierce, protective gratitude; he would burn kingdoms to ash before he let that tapestry unravel.

But gratitude could not kill insomnia.

...

Hours later, when the academy had surrendered to the oppressive silence of midnight, William found himself walking through the corridors. The air felt thin, charged with the static of unspoken fears.

His feet led him instinctively to the training grounds.

The moonlight carved harsh, silver lines across the courtyard, and there she was. Kaela.

She was a silhouette of motion against the pale stone, swinging her sword in a series of slow, hypnotic forms. There was no technique to it, no crisp footwork, and no deliberate blade work.

It was raw, repetitive, and desperate. The sword cut through the air with a lonely whoosh, each swing seeming less like practice and more like an attempt to slice through the invisible walls closing in on her. Her breathing was ragged, audible even from a distance.

"Couldn’t sleep either?" William asked softly, stepping into the silver light.

Kaela didn’t flinch. She simply let the sword arm drop, the blade coming to rest with a dull scrape against the gravel.

"Not even a little," she said, her voice rough, stripped of its usual playful armor.

William didn’t push. He simply walked over to the low stone wall at the field’s edge and sat, leaving an invitation in the space beside him.

After a long moment of silence broken only by the distant chirp of nocturnal insects, Kaela approached. She sank onto the wall beside him, setting her sword aside like a discarded burden.

The restless energy that had driven her swings seemed to drain out of her, leaving behind something quieter, something dangerously honest.

"Can I ask you something?" William said, his voice gentle, cutting through the cool night air. "What’s actually scaring you about tomorrow?"

"And I don’t mean the prince, or the political theater, or the arranged marriage nonsense."

"I mean the real thing. The thing that’s clawing at you underneath all that."

Kaela didn’t answer immediately. She stared out at the darkened training field, her eyes fixed on nothing.

The confident, brash warrior who could crack jokes in the face of death was gone; in her place was someone who looked fragile enough to shatter.

"It’s not really about the marriage," she admitted finally. Her voice was so small it barely carried past them. "I mean, that’s terrifying."

"Being traded like a piece of livestock to a stranger who looks at me like I’m prey? That’s nightmare fuel." She swallowed hard, a visible tremor running through her throat. "But that’s not what’s keeping me awake."

"That’s just... noise."

She paused, her fingers digging into the fabric of her trousers. "It’s what he said. About my father."

"About how he would be the one to explain everything himself."

William turned to face her fully, his expression grim. "You think it’s something serious."

"I know it’s something serious," Kaela snapped, a flash of her old fire returning before dying out into resignation. "My father is not a man who indulges in sentiment."

"He delegates. He manages. He handles the politics and the paperwork so he doesn’t have to deal with the people."

"He only steps onto the stage himself when the curtain is about to fall."

Her breathing quickened slightly as she spiraled into the implications. "If he’s insisting on explaining this personally, if he’s making this a family matter, it means whatever is happening is bigger than a treaty."

"It means whatever leverage the Delmore kingdom has over me isn’t just political... It’s personal."

She wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her knees toward her chest in a defensive posture that made her look painfully small. "I keep running through the scenarios, Instructor Wade."

"Every dark corner of my mind.... What if my father made a deal he couldn’t honor?"

"What if my family’s legacy is built on something rotten?"

"What if he’s not sending me to a kingdom but to a prison?" Her voice cracked. "None of the possibilities I come up with end with me being safe."

William listened in the heavy silence that followed, not rushing to intervene, not offering the hollow comfort of empty platitudes. He knew that when someone is drowning in their own thoughts, false reassurance is just another weight dragging them down.

He simply existed beside her, a steady presence in the moonlit darkness, letting her excavate the terror until she had nothing left to say.

"I won’t lie to you, Kaela," William said finally, his voice carrying the weight of absolute honesty. "I don’t know what he’s going to tell you tomorrow."

"I wish I could stand here and promise you that everything will be fine, that it’s all just some grand misunderstanding or a minor political hiccup."

"But I won’t do that. I won’t give you a lie to cling to when the floor drops out from under you."

He turned his head to meet her gaze, his eyes burning with a quiet, fierce resolve. "What I can promise you is this: whatever truth he lays out on that table, whatever nightmare he tries to bind you to, you are not walking into that room alone."

"I will be right there, behind you, beside you, or in front of you, whatever you need."

"You won’t face whatever he’s hiding by yourself."

Kaela glanced sideways at him. For the first time that night, the rigid tension in her jaw slackened.

The raw vulnerability in her expression softened into something resembling relief, touched by the simple, unshakeable certainty in his voice. "Thank you, Instructor Wade. I mean that. Truly."

"I don’t think I could actually do this... I don’t think I could survive the confrontation if I had to face it alone."

"You won’t have to," William said, his words as solid as stone. "Not tomorrow, and not for whatever hell follows after tomorrow."

A long silence stretched between them, but the quality of it had changed. The air no longer felt suffocating; it felt shared.

Kaela stared at her boots for a long moment, her fingers twisting absently in her lap.

"Can I tell you something?" she asked after a moment’s hesitation, her voice tinged with something like self-consciousness. "Something a little... embarrassing?"

William offered a small, encouraging smile. "Of course."

"Growing up..." she started, looking toward the empty training field where she had been slashing at shadows. "Whenever something genuinely frightened me, something that felt too big to fight, I used to come out here."

"Or somewhere quiet just like this. And I would just swing a sword... Over and over."

"Until my arms burned, until my muscles screamed, until I literally couldn’t lift the blade anymore."

She let out a breath that was half sigh and half laugh. "It never actually solved anything."

"The problem would still be waiting for me when I stopped. But it made the fear feel smaller for a while."

"Like I could out-exhaust it, like if I just kept moving fast enough and hitting hard enough, I could outrun the feeling." She glanced down at the practice sword resting in the dirt beside her. "I think some part of me hoped that would still work tonight."

"That if I just bled enough sweat and pushed myself to the breaking point, I could tire out the dread. But it didn’t work."

"I think I’ve just gotten too good at recognizing when I’m using training as a shield instead of actually facing what’s coming."

William studied her, his expression contemplative. "That’s a fairly significant realization to have at what, midnight?"

"The night before facing your father?"

"Terrible timing, I know," Kaela said, a small, tired laugh escaping her throat, a sound that lacked its usual bravado but carried genuine exhaustion. "But I suppose better late than never."

"Even if the timing is absolutely shit."