Chapter 932

Drarc noticed the smile. Ludger was fairly certain he noticed the lack of warmth in it too. And yet the man only looked more amused.

Interesting.

After the handshake ended, Drarc turned his attention toward Torvares with a smoothness that suggested he knew exactly how much respect to give and exactly how much to withhold.

“Lord Torvares,” he said with a slight incline of his head. “It is an honor as well.”

Torvares answered with the calm courtesy of a man who had spent his entire life speaking to people he did not trust without ever letting it show plainly.

“The pleasure is mine.”

Ludger doubted that. Drarc probably did too. Still, the exchange flowed easily enough. Then the man’s attention shifted again, this time to Viola and Luna. And here, his charm turned almost theatrical. He took Viola’s hand first, bowed over it with practiced grace, and pressed a light kiss to the back of it.

“My lady,” he said. “The women of your family are truly as beautiful as I was told.”

Viola, naturally, handled that as if she had been born hearing such things.

Which, to be fair, she probably had.

Her smile sharpened slightly, pleased but not foolish enough to show all of it. “You speak well for a foreigner.”

Drarc laughed softly. “A survival habit.”

Then he turned to Luna. He took her hand next, the motion just as smooth, and bent to kiss it as well.

“The same is true here,” he said. “Remarkable beauty seems to gather naturally around this household.”

For some reason, while he kissed Luna’s hand, he looked at Ludger.

Not long. Not enough that anyone else would immediately question it. But long enough. And directly enough. Ludger stared back at him without blinking.

That was a weird kink if he truly was into such things.

Or… A more irritating possibility occurred to him almost immediately. Maybe Drarc had misunderstood the outing with Luna the other day. Maybe that little trip through the city, the café, the quiet movements, the fact they had been together and then noticed… maybe that had looked like something else from the outside.

If so, then this man was either very bold or deeply annoying. Possibly both.

Luna, to her credit, showed no reaction worth reading. She simply withdrew her hand with her usual composed calm, as though being kissed by suspicious foreign warriors at imperial parties was part of a perfectly ordinary routine.

Drarc straightened, looking faintly pleased with himself. Then, as if he had only approached for the sake of courtesy and nothing more, he gave them all one last measured look.

“I won’t take more of your time,” he said. “Enjoy the evening.”

Ludger watched him carefully.

Everything about the man suggested calculation hidden under charm. Nothing wasted. Not the greeting. Not the title. Not the look toward him. Not even the compliment to the women.

“Goodbye,” Drarc said.

Then he turned and left.

He moved back into the crowd with the same quiet gravity he had arrived with, and once again the space around him seemed to shift without needing to be told. Nobles smiled. Guests nodded. A few people clearly recognized his importance without understanding it.

Ludger followed him with his eyes until the man disappeared into the gold-lit sea of the imperial hall.

Only then did he let the faint smile leave his face completely. Because that meeting had been polite on the surface. But beneath it? There had been far too much intent packed into too few words.

Ludger looked at Luna.

And, annoyingly enough, one of the first thoughts that crossed his mind was whether that had flustered her somehow. Given that he had assumed that she had a bit of daddy issues… he wondered why his mind kept heading in that direction.

Drarc kissing her hand while looking at him had been strange enough already. Enough to leave a bad taste in the air even after the man had walked away.

Luna was indeed looking at him. Intently.

But as usual with her, the problem was that her face gave away very little. She did not look embarrassed. She did not look confused. She did not look annoyed either. If anything, she just looked… focused. Like she was weighing something quietly in her head and had not yet decided what to do with it.

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Which told Ludger absolutely nothing useful. Then she noticed he was looking. So he looked away first. That was easier.

Viola, who had been watching Drarc’s retreating back with openly sharpened curiosity, turned to Ludger and asked, “Was that the man you mentioned?”

Ludger nodded once. “Yes.”

Viola folded one arm under the other and exhaled softly through her nose.

“He certainly leaves an impression.”

That was one way to put it. Drarc had the kind of presence that stuck in the room even after he had moved on, like the air had not fully decided whether it was relieved or disappointed to lose him.

Ludger did not answer immediately. His gaze drifted briefly to Torvares instead.

The old lord had been studying the foreign warrior too, his eyes steady, serious, and much harder than before. He said nothing. Not a single word. But the silence itself had weight. The kind that meant he had seen enough to dislike what he saw, even if he was not yet ready to name it aloud.

That bothered Ludger more than a spoken warning would have.

Because Torvares was not a man who wasted serious looks. Still, before any of them could say more, the mood of the hall changed. It was subtle at first. A slight shift in voices. A break in the rhythm of conversations.

Then more and more heads began turning in the same direction, like a current moving through the crowd all at once. The atmosphere tightened. Not with fear. With attention.

Everywhere around them, nobles, servants, guards, and guests all started looking toward the far end of the hall, toward the grand entrance leading deeper into the castle.

Ludger followed the line of sight with the others. And saw him. The regent had finally arrived at the party.

The crowd did not fall fully silent, but the sound thinned enough that the difference was obvious. Smiles sharpened. Postures straightened. Men who had been laughing a moment ago now looked carefully composed. Women adjusted expressions and stances in the span of a breath. Even the foreign guests who did not know every detail of imperial politics could clearly sense that someone important had stepped into the room.

Ludger’s gaze narrowed slightly.

Alphonse. The man with almost no past. The man close to the center of the empire. The man Torvares distrusted without being able to properly grasp.

As the regent entered beneath the gold light and the weight of a hundred watching eyes, Ludger could feel the party subtly reorganizing itself around him. Power had a way of doing that. And suddenly, whatever tension Drarc had left behind became secondary. Because now the room’s true center had shifted, and everyone, whether they liked it or not, was being pulled to face it.

The regent began to move through the hall with smooth, practiced ease. Just measured enough that everyone could feel the significance without ever seeing him break into something as vulgar as obvious performance.

He greeted people one by one, or group by group, pausing just long enough to exchange a few words before moving on. Nobles bowed slightly. Some smiled too much. Others looked careful in the way people did when they were speaking to someone who did not technically sit on the throne yet still stood close enough to cast a shadow over it.

Alphonse handled all of it well.

Too well.

He knew when to appear warm. When to appear grave. When to let a small smile rest on his face just long enough to soften it. When to listen instead of speak. When to say something short and precise that made the other side feel noticed without actually giving them much of anything in return.

Ludger watched him for a while. Studied him.

Measured his posture, the rhythm of his steps, the way he turned his head when someone addressed him, the timing of his replies, the points where others unconsciously adjusted themselves around him.

And yet… He found nothing clearly odd. That only irritated him more. The regent’s aura was nothing special either. Just… ordinary.

Ordinary enough that if Ludger had not known who he was, and if Torvares had not spoken so seriously about him, he might have passed Alphonse over as merely another capable court figure wrapped in expensive cloth and political instinct.

There was no crushing pressure around him. No weird layered presence like Drarc’s. No strange depth. No obvious malice. Nothing in his aura alone explained why he felt so wrong in every other way.

So instead of becoming clearer, the whole thing only made Ludger more confused.

Because men who climbed that far, that cleanly, and erased that much of themselves should not feel this… normal.

That was the real problem. He looked too reasonable. Too understandable. Too easy to underestimate. Ludger’s eyes narrowed faintly as he followed the regent’s movement through the hall.

It was like staring at a plain wall while knowing there was something hidden behind it and hating the fact that your senses could not catch the seam.

Still, if Ludger had been hoping the regent would at least give him something strange to work with, the man refused to oblige.

Which left only irritation behind. And growing impatience. Because at this point, Ludger wanted to go home.

That feeling had started as a quiet preference and was steadily becoming a more serious desire the longer the evening dragged on. The foreign warriors had shown up. Drarc had introduced himself. The regent was here and looked annoyingly ordinary. The hall remained just as bright, loud, and full of polished nonsense as before.

He had seen enough.

Or so he would have liked to say. Unfortunately, it looked like he would not be able to leave before the young emperor showed up first.

If the child did not appear, leaving early would be much harder to justify cleanly. It would stand out. It would invite questions. And the whole point of coming here in the first place was to avoid creating extra political friction where none was needed.

So, once again, Ludger was being held in place by ceremony.

As if that were not annoying enough, the regent began walking toward them. Ludger noticed it before the others did. A slight shift in the angle of movement. A quiet reorientation through the crowd.

Alphonse finished speaking with one noble pair, then turned just enough that his next path would bring him directly toward Torvares’ group.

Ludger’s expression cooled by a fraction. Viola noticed a second later and straightened slightly. Luna’s posture remained composed, but Ludger caught the subtle sharpening in her attention immediately.

Torvares, on the other hand, had likely seen it the moment Ludger did. The old lord’s expression did not change much, but some heavier readiness settled into the line of his shoulders.

The regent kept approaching, calm as ever, the gold light of the chandeliers sliding across his clothes while the crowd made room for him without seeming to do so.

And Ludger, who had spent the last few minutes finding nothing visibly wrong with the man at all, suddenly disliked him even more.