Novel Full Chapter 389: Winds of War [II]
Chapter 389: Winds of War [II]
“This is bullshit!” Tristan cried out, clawing at his face as if he wanted to rip his own skin off. “Did you see that girl, Callie? I can’t spend the rest of my life with her!”
“Dude, it’s fine,” Calliope rolled her eyes, already exhausted by her brother’s wailing. “Just marry her, stick her in a far corner of the mansion somewhere, and then marry again — someone you actually like this time. What’s the big deal?”
“Oh! Oh, really?!” Tristan spread his hands wide, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Wow, you’re so smart! It’s almost as if I hadn’t already thought of that! Oh, wait! I did!”
“Then what is the problem?!”
“The problem is that neither Father nor our two Uncles has taken more than one wife! Do you realize how bad it would look if I became the first man in two generations to start collecting wives like I’m curating a gallery!” Tristan snapped, looking genuinely offended by the very suggestion.
Calliope gave him a deadpan look, leaning back in her chair, thoroughly unimpressed. “Oh, no. The horror. Your spotless reputation might take a hit. Truly tragic.”
“This isn’t about reputation,” Tristan countered, pacing the room now. “This is about precedent! About image! Besides, Uncle Thorax would kill me! He’s always lecturing about what a true man should and shouldn’t do. You know what he did to Nick when the boy tried asking for a second marriage, right? He threw him from the sky! The sky! And Nick was his son! His own son! Imagine what he’ll do to me!”
Calliope snorted. “First of all, Nick survived—”
“Barely!” Tristan shot back. “He landed in a lake and still broke three ribs! What level of insanity do you have to possess to take your own son into the clouds and just… drop him? What kind of man does that?!”
“The kind of man you just described,” she said flatly.
Tristan ran both hands through his hair, his pace quickening like he was trying to outrun his future marital problems and failing miserably to do so.
The three of them were on the third floor of the main mansion. This entire wing was specifically reserved for the cousins, vassal heirs, and direct descendants of the family.
No one else — adult or Elder — ever stepped foot here, out of respect for the privacy of the younger generation.
Even the maids and butlers who served on this floor were of the same age group as the young lords residing here.
None of the staff were present now, however. They all had been dismissed.
As for their other peers, most were either attending to their own affairs, back in Luxara on Earth, or just conveniently not here — which, in this family, usually meant they had caught wind of incoming drama and decided to preserve their sanity.
Cowards. All of them.
Still, that was precisely why Tristan felt safe enough to have a full-blown existential crisis in the middle of the lounge.
There were no disloyal ears around.
Unfortunately for him, a safe space to vent did not guarantee dignity.
“Sit down,” Calliope said, already regretting being born into the same bloodline as him.
“No!” Tristan shouted, refusing to break his stride. “If I sit down, I might start thinking. And if I start thinking, I might accept this situation. I refuse to accept this situation! My teen romantic comedy life will not end like this! I won’t let it!”
“You already are,” she pointed out. “You’re just doing it loudly. Also, it already is. You’re not a teen. You’re twenty-two.”
“Don’t talk about my age! And I’m brainstorming a solution! That’s different!”
“It really isn’t.”
“Shut up!”
Calliope sighed, then turned to her younger sister for support. “Lia, tell him something.”
Thalia was sprawled on the couch nearby, her legs propped on the center table and ankles crossed.
She was breathing through clenched teeth, a grim expression twisting her face. She was staring at her phone, likely at a text message, and was clearly not in a good mood.
Calliope frowned, calling out to her again. “Lia—”
But Thalia cut her off curtly. “Can you both please shut the fuck up?”
Her voice was low, but it carried an edge sharp enough to make Calliope flinch.
Tristan stopped to stare at her as well. “What the hell, Lia?”
Thalia suppressed a frustrated grunt. She clicked her phone off and swung her legs off the table to lean forward, glaring at her elder brother.
“Be a man for once,” she spat. “Be useful to this family instead of a constant nuisance. Stop crying and do what you are told to do.”
Tristan froze. The room, which had been vibrating with his frantic energy for the last half-hour, fell silent in an instant.
Even the distant ticking of the clock sounded like a drumbeat in that stillness.
Thalia’s gaze had him pinned to the spot. Looking into the golden depths of her eyes, seeing them ablaze with the same cold intensity that defined their father, Tristan balled his hands into fists.
It was a look he knew well.
They were five siblings. And while all of them possessed the signature golden eyes of the Theosbanes, Thalia’s were the only ones that resembled Duke Arthur’s so perfectly.
And she knew exactly how to use them like their father.
Well… her and Ezra.
Only those two were considered the pride of this generation of direct descendants, while the rest were viewed as marginally competent at best or straight-up disappointments at worst.
…No, wait.
That wasn’t true anymore.
There was also Samael now, the youngest of the five.
He was regarded as a child prodigy when he was little… until he fell from grace so hard the Elders just wrote him off.
But if the reports were true, then the feats he’d accomplished to survive the Noctveil Wilds were nothing short of legendary — probably not unlike those heroes in old myths and fables.
He slew a fallen deity, after all.
So only Calliope and he were left. She could definitely pull her weight in the family. That meant, in the category of ’disappointment,’ Tristan now stood alone.
That realization, coupled with the way his own little sister was talking down to him, turned his insecurities into a blinding white anger.
“I am your elder!” he shouted, his voice cracking and veins bulging on his neck. “You will show me due respect!”
Thalia scoffed, making no effort to hide her contempt. “If you have to demand respect, elder brother, you never earned it to begin with.”
Tristan lost it. He lunged toward her, only to be stopped as Calliope threw herself between them.
“Thalia!” she barked, firmly planting herself there. “What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with me?” Thalia stood up, snarling. “I was sitting here in peace until you two barged in. And you, Callie! You should be confronting him instead of entertaining his tantrum. Oh wait, you won’t. Because you’re scared of conflict.”
Calliope’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth to respond, but Tristan beat her to it.
“Leave her, Callie,” he snickered. “Try to understand. Lia is just terrified of falling out of dear Daddy’s favor. He’s thinking of sending Sam to support Ezra instead of our resident ’Miss Genius’ here. She’s being pushed out of the limelight.”
Thalia’s glare didn’t waver, but the retort didn’t come quite fast enough.
Tristan took the chance to twist the knife.
“And why wouldn’t he, Lia? You lost to Sam twice. He even achieved ascension before you, despite being cut off by the family. It’s clear who the better twin is,” he sneered. “So, how does it feel? To spend your whole life being obsessed with one goal, only to fail at the finish line? What does it feel like to be replaced?”
Thalia held her tongue for a while, though her golden eyes flared brighter, as if struggling to restrain a mounting storm churning inside her.
Then, she gave a dry chuckle. “Talking is all you’ve ever been good at, Tristan.”
Neither of them spoke after that. They simply stared daggers at each other as the tension in the room continued to rise toward a breaking point, threatening to boil over.
…But it didn’t.
Thalia scoffed one last time and moved to walk away.
“Wait—” Calliope, feeling that it wasn’t right to leave things on such a bitter note since none of them knew when they’d see each other in person again, reached out to grab her hand.
—Thwaap!
But Thalia slapped it away. “Don’t touch me.”
Calliope recoiled, rubbing her wrist as if the slap had left a sting deeper than the skin. “I… I was just—”
“Don’t pretend we’re suddenly best friends,” Thalia cut her off, dropping her voice into a growl, “when you couldn’t even manage to be a sister to me.”
“…Lia, we were kids—” Calliope tried again, but her voice failed her.
Thalia took a step forward, forcing her elder sister to take a step back in response.
She then reached out and grabbed a lock of her own dark hair, glowering. “This black hair— I inherited it from my mother. My mother! You all had so much fun mocking it, but the day she passed away, you all made such a grand show of mourning her. Hypocrites! You. Ezra. Tristan. All of you.”
Calliope’s shoulders slumped. The words struck her cold like ice.
However, Thalia couldn’t have cared less about her sister’s guilt. She had a Mock War to prepare for and a score to settle.
If her source was correct, then their father truly was in favor of sending Samael to Iron Height.
But so what? All she had to do was best him once, and that would be the end of it.
Better yet… she could just keep him from reclaiming his title.
Yes, in the last four months, the Academy had officially declared the Cadets lost in the Noctveil Wilds as deceased.
Unluckily for her twin brother, that meant the title of Ace was open for the taking.
As a result, challengers had swarmed for the position, and Thalia had been the favorite to inherit it.
An elimination tournament was established, and she had already reached the finals.
There was only one more match left.
If she could convince the Cadet Council to proceed with that final bout, she would officially claim her place as the Ace of Apex. Once the title was hers, the argument would be over.
Their father would have to send her then.
She turned on her heel and walked away, her boots clicking tak-tak-tak against the polished floor, leaving an echoing silence in her wake.
Calliope stared after her for a long moment, feeling that peculiar mixture of exasperation, guilt, and helplessness that always came along when dealing with Thalia.
Tristan, meanwhile, collapsed into the nearest chair like a deflated balloon. He rubbed his face, muttering curses under his breath. “I want to change my family.”