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Chapter 21: I trust my son

Chapter 21: I trust my son

Aldric’s face flushed red almost instantly.

What infuriated him was not what he had just done to Lathel, but Cassian’s attitude.

He was being compared to an Extra.

Worse, judging from the gazes of those around him, Aldric could clearly sense that in this comparison, the person lying broken on the ground had somehow earned the trust that should have belonged to him.

Humiliation quickly turned into anger.

"He’s only pretending!" Aldric shot back almost immediately. "He knew everyone would see him, so he deliberately put on this act to gain your trust. If all he really wanted was to save Leviana, then why did the fire happen precisely when he was inside her room?"

Mirelle looked at him, no longer bothering to hide the disgust in her eyes.

Cassian, however, merely replied coldly, "Because he is Leviana’s caretaker. Lathel has been in that room every day for the past three years. If you intend to use his presence there as evidence, you should at least come up with a more convincing reason."

Aldric froze.

His hands clenched into fists as his mind raced for another argument, but the more anxious he became, the more forced every explanation sounded.

That only made the anger inside him burn hotter.

Why were all these people deliberately picking apart everything he said?

If they simply stopped and thought about it for a moment, wasn’t Lathel obviously the most suspicious one?

He lived in the room beside Leviana.

He had feelings for her.

He had been there when the fire started.

Everything was obvious.

It never occurred to Aldric that he was the one desperately stitching those details together into a story simply because he needed Lathel to be the culprit.

While the others continued arguing, Lathel could barely hear what was happening around him anymore.

Their voices drifted in and out, sometimes near, sometimes impossibly far away. Even the flames behind him had become nothing more than blurry patches of red in his vision. His body hurt so badly that even breathing had become difficult, yet he could still feel Leviana lying behind him.

She was safe.

As long as he could confirm that, he could endure a little longer.

Lathel planted his left palm against the ground and slowly tried to raise himself.

The moment his broken leg shifted, a violent bolt of pain tore through him, making his entire body tremble.

Even so, he forced himself upright and once again positioned himself between Leviana and everyone else.

Trapped in her forced sleep, Leviana felt him move.

Don’t.

Her consciousness immediately became restless.

Lathel, don’t get up again.

She wanted to open her eyes.

She wanted to call for her father.

She wanted to tell everyone that Aldric was the one who had tried to kill Lathel.

But the forced slumber still held her body imprisoned in darkness. No matter how desperately Leviana struggled, she could barely move even a single finger.

All she could do was listen as Aldric continued accusing the man who had just risked his life to save her.

Then another voice sounded.

The head of Aldric’s House looked at Lathel struggling to sit upright, yet there was barely a ripple in his expression. He exhaled slowly before turning to Cassian.

"Lathel cannot properly explain himself anyway. Between believing a mute whose thoughts we cannot possibly know and believing Aldric, naturally, I will believe Aldric."

Inside the darkness, Leviana’s fury erupted.

Just because Lathel could not speak, they could dump any crime they wanted onto his head?

Aldric had just broken two of the fingers Lathel used to communicate, yet his father was now turning around and using that very inability to speak as a reason why Lathel’s explanation could not be trusted.

The sheer absurdity of it made Leviana so furious that even her soul seemed to tremble.

Two tears slowly slipped from the corners of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

Aldric was the first to notice.

He paused for a moment.

Then his eyes suddenly lit up.

"Father, look at Leviana!"

He immediately pointed at her. The anger on his face vanished, replaced by excitement, as though he had finally discovered something capable of proving everything he had said.

Mirelle hurriedly turned toward her daughter.

The instant she saw the tears running down Leviana’s face, her expression changed.

Aldric, however, interpreted her reaction entirely in his own favor.

"She’s crying." He spoke quickly, the corner of his mouth even lifting unconsciously. "Leviana might not be able to wake up, but she can clearly sense what is happening around her. She’s afraid of Lathel. She knows he was the one who started the fire. That’s why she reacted when she heard us talking about it."

Cassian slowly turned his head toward Aldric.

Mirelle did the same.

Neither of them spoke.

But Aldric was too intoxicated by the feeling of victory to notice their expressions.

At last, he had found evidence powerful enough to crush every objection.

"Duke Cassian, you saw that, didn’t you? Even your own daughter is proving that I’m telling the truth."

Inside the darkness, Leviana nearly went mad.

’I’m crying because of you.’

’I want you to shut your mouth.’

’Aldric... I want to kill you.’

Her icy mana began to fluctuate with her emotions. A thin layer of frost slowly formed over the grass nearby, yet Leviana’s body still could not escape its forced sleep.

Cassian stared at the smile on Aldric’s face for a long time.

He had met countless shameless men over the course of his life.

But this was the first time he had seen someone beat a young man nearly to death, then look at the tears of the woman that young man had saved and gleefully twist them into evidence for another accusation.

At last, Cassian said slowly, "I’m beginning to understand why my daughter refused to restore her engagement to you."

Aldric’s smile instantly froze.

"What did you say?"

Cassian had already lost interest in arguing with him.

At that moment, Lathel’s left hand suddenly slipped against the ground.

The last of his strength vanished, and his body tipped to one side.

"Lathel!"

Mirelle cried out in alarm.

Cassian reacted immediately. He stepped forward and caught Lathel by the shoulder before his head could strike the ground.

The moment Cassian placed two fingers against Lathel’s neck, his expression turned grave.

The pulse was far too weak.

"Healer! Get a healer here, now!"

The Avarenne guards behind him immediately rushed forward.

Mirelle dropped to her knees beside Lathel as well. She stared at his bloodless face, then her gaze fell upon the two fingers Aldric had broken.

Her hand slowly curled into a fist.

The fury in her eyes was almost impossible to conceal.

Cassian handed Lathel over to one of his guards before ordering in a low voice, "Take him for treatment first. Use the best medicine available. Do not let anything happen to him."

"Yes, Your Grace!"

Aldric stood nearby, watching all of this with an increasingly ugly expression.

It was only Lathel.

Why did these people care about him so much?

Even unconscious, that damned Extra still managed to draw everyone’s attention.

Aldric wanted to speak again, but Cassian had already bent down to lift Leviana.

At that moment, the head of Aldric’s House immediately stepped forward and blocked his path.

"Wait."

Cassian stopped.

His gaze turned icy.

"What else do you want?"

The man knew Cassian’s current mood was dangerous, but he still refused to move aside.

"Leviana cannot leave this place. She only awakened after five years in a coma. Her soul and body are still unstable. The alchemist has already warned us that moving her carelessly during this period could have extremely serious consequences."

Cassian raised his head and looked at the room still burning on the second floor.

Then he looked back at the man before him.

"And you think leaving her here is safer?"

The man’s expression stiffened slightly, but he quickly regained his composure.

"Today’s fire was merely an accident. Our House will investigate immediately, reinforce the guards, and ensure something like this never happens again."

"I don’t need your assurances."

Cassian bent down again.

The man stepped sideways and blocked him once more.

"Duke Cassian, Leviana is not only your daughter."

Mirelle almost laughed from sheer anger.

"Other than our daughter, what exactly is she supposed to be?"

The man did not appear to find the question difficult at all.

"The future daughter-in-law of our House."

Standing behind him, Aldric visibly relaxed upon hearing those words.

The corner of his lips slowly rose again.

The man continued, "The engagement between Leviana and Aldric was agreed upon by both Houses long ago. Lathel was merely brought in as a substitute while Leviana remained unconscious, back when none of us knew whether she would ever awaken. Now that Leviana has recovered consciousness, the engagement should naturally return to its original arrangement."

Mirelle stared at the man before her.

For the first time, she genuinely felt disgusted merely listening to him speak.

"Your son just broke two fingers belonging to the man whose name is still currently written on my daughter’s engagement contract."

"That was merely a conflict that occurred while Aldric was restraining the culprit."

"You have already decided Lathel is the culprit?"

The man replied solemnly, "Based on the current circumstances, that is the most likely possibility."

Mirelle looked at him.

"Simply because Aldric said so?"

The man fell silent for a moment.

Of course he knew there was still no sufficient evidence.

But Aldric was his biological son.

His heir.

The child into whom he had poured an enormous amount of resources and effort.

Lathel, on the other hand, was merely an orphan they had adopted years ago because of a blessing ritual. From the moment Aldric was born, Lathel’s existence had already lost most of its value to the House.

Between the two of them, there was never any choice to make.

The man looked directly at Cassian and Mirelle.

"I trust my son."

A single sentence.

That was all Cassian needed to understand the man standing before him.

He did not truly care who had started the fire.

What mattered was that Aldric could not be the culprit.

And if someone had to bear responsibility for what happened, Lathel was clearly the more convenient choice.

An adopted child with no status and no powerful backing.

A boy who already struggled to defend himself because he could not speak—and whose fingers, the very ones he used to communicate, had just been broken by Aldric himself.

Placing all the blame on Lathel would protect Aldric while preserving the reputation of the House.

To the man before him, it might even seem like the most reasonable solution.

Trapped in her sleep, Leviana heard those words clearly as well.

’I trust my son.’

She slowly engraved every word into her memory.

The violent rage from moments earlier gradually settled.

What replaced it was something much colder.

Aldric could do these things because there had always been someone standing behind him.

He could lie at a scene riddled with obvious contradictions.

He could break Lathel’s hand and then turn Lathel’s inability to speak into evidence against him.

As long as Aldric was the person who needed protection, people like the head of this House would always find a reason to sacrifice someone else in his place.

’Fine.’

Leviana stopped trying to force her body awake.

She simply listened.

She memorized every voice.

Every word.

Every person who had seen Lathel in this condition today and still chosen to stand on Aldric’s side.

Most of all, she remembered Aldric himself.

The man who had seen her tears and actually smiled because he thought he could use them as evidence to continue framing Lathel.

Suddenly, Leviana felt that killing him too soon would be such a waste.

A simple death would be far too merciful.

She wanted Aldric to live long enough to watch everything he took pride in disappear from his grasp, one thing after another.

His talent.

His power.

His House.

The people who always stood behind him and protected him.

And the fate he believed made the entire world revolve around him.

She would take them all.

One by one.

And on the day Aldric had nothing left, Leviana would personally tell him why she had cried today.

She had never been afraid of Lathel.

What brought those tears to her eyes was being forced to lie there, unable to move, while the man who had nearly died saving her was humiliated and falsely accused by shameless people right in front of her.

And once again, she had been unable to open her eyes and protect him.