Luna lowered her voice. “Then what do we do?”
Ludger kept his expression steady and reached for the coffee again, more for appearances than taste.
“We finish this naturally,” he said. “Slowly. No sudden changes.”
Luna stayed still, but he could see the tension settle more sharply into her shoulders now, not panic, just a cleaner readiness.
Then he added, “After that, we leave like normal people who have somewhere else to be.”
“And then?”
Ludger looked once more toward the alley. Still empty.
“Then we decide whether they wanted to scare me,” he said, “or lure me.”
Luna’s eyes narrowed slightly. Neither option sounded pleasant. Ludger, however, was already past unpleasant. His thoughts had gone cold.
Because whatever confusion had filled his mind a few moments ago, Luna, feelings, what to say, what not to say, that had been shoved aside instantly by something much easier to handle.
Unknown enemies making themselves known. That, at least, was familiar. He set the cup down gently.
“We don’t stay walking around for long after this,” he said. “But we also don’t run back like idiots.”
Luna gave a small nod.
“Understood.”
Then, for a few seconds, both of them remained seated at the table by the window, looking outwardly calm while the capital kept moving beneath them in all its festive noise and color.
Only now, to Ludger, the city looked different.
Less like a stage. More like a hunting ground where something had just raised its head and shown its teeth.
They returned to the manor about an hour later. Not immediately. Ludger had made sure of that.
They finished at the café without rushing, left at a normal pace, walked through a few other streets, changed direction twice, and only then headed back. There was no sign of the illusionist again, no second glimpse of the dragon-armored warrior, and no obvious tail he could point to with certainty. But that did not improve his mood.
By the time they entered the manor, the quiet inside felt tighter than before.
Viola was waiting.
The moment she saw them, she looked up expectantly, clearly ready to hear what they had found. Her expression carried the kind of impatience that only grew stronger when she believed useful information was about to appear.
Luna met that look first. Then simply shook her head.
Viola’s brows drew together. “What happened?”
Luna answered plainly. “We were being watched.”
That alone sharpened the room.
Then she added, “And I didn’t notice it at all.”
The admission landed harder than the first part. Because Luna was not the kind of person who missed things casually. Not without reason. Not without the other side being either very skilled, very deliberate, or both. Torvares, who had already been seated nearby, turned his attention toward Ludger.
“What’s your opinion?”
Ludger did not sit immediately.
He remained standing for a second, replaying the moment in his mind once more, the alley, the face, the smile, the pointing hand, the warrior beyond.
“The illusionist was there,” he said. “Or at least the face he used before.”
Viola’s expression darkened at once.
Ludger continued, “But what caught my attention more was the warrior.”
Torvares’ gaze sharpened slightly. “The dragon armor?”
Ludger nodded once.
“Yes.”
He paused, trying to put the feeling into words without reducing it into something simpler than it had been.
“His aura was… different,” he said.
That made the old lord lean back just a little, listening more carefully now.
“Different how?” Torvares asked.
Ludger frowned faintly.
“That’s the problem. I’m not sure how to describe it properly.”
He looked at the floor for half a second, then back up.
“It wasn’t like anything I’ve seen before.”
Viola folded her arms. “That doesn’t help much.” Ludger ignored her. Torvares asked the next question immediately.
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“Hostile?”
Ludger shook his head.
“No.”
That answer seemed to surprise them more than if he had simply said yes.
“It didn’t feel openly hostile,” he clarified. “Not calm either. Not friendly. Just…” He clicked his tongue softly, annoyed at his own lack of precision. “Layered.”
Torvares stayed silent. Ludger kept going.
“It was like an onion,” he said at last. “A bunch of layers stacked on top of each other.”
That got a reaction. Viola frowned the moment she heard it, clearly disliking the image or what it implied. Luna’s eyes narrowed slightly, her full attention on him. Torvares remained still, but the look in his eyes had changed. Ludger went on, slower now, choosing the words more carefully.
“One part of it felt restrained. Another part felt old. Another part felt like violence held behind something else.” He frowned again. “And none of it sat together naturally.”
The room stayed quiet.
“It wasn’t like sensing a strong fighter,” Ludger said. “It felt more like looking at someone wearing too many versions of himself at once.”
That description settled heavily into the silence.
Viola shifted first. “That sounds disturbing.”
“It was,” Ludger said.
Torvares folded his hands and looked at him for a long moment before speaking.
“And the illusionist showed him to you on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“Which means he wanted you to notice.”
“Yes.”
Viola clicked her tongue. “Why do that? If they wanted to observe us, why reveal themselves at all?”
“Because they wanted to send a message,” Luna said quietly.
Everyone looked at her. Luna’s expression was calm again, but her earlier irritation with herself had not fully faded.
“They could have remained hidden,” she said. “Instead, one exposed himself and pointed out the other. That wasn’t carelessness.”
“No,” Ludger said. “It wasn’t.”
Torvares let out a low breath.
“Then the question is whether the message was a warning, an invitation…” His eyes dimmed slightly. “Or a test.”
That made the room feel colder. Ludger did not answer immediately, because the truth was that he was still not certain which one he disliked more.
The illusionist smiling from the alley. The dragon-armored warrior turning away after being seen. The sense that both of them had shown exactly as much as they wanted and not a bit more.
Viola looked between them, her frown deepening. “And now?”
Ludger finally sat down.
“Now,” he said, “we assume the capital is even more crowded with hidden players than we thought.”
Torvares nodded once. No one argued with that.
Over the next two days, Ludger looked for both Hroth and the illusionist. He found neither. That, by itself, was irritating enough.
The capital was crowded, swollen with movement, noise, guests, servants, nobles, guards, merchants, and enough strangers to make tracking any single person unpleasant even on a good day. But Hroth was not the sort of man who should have been impossible to find completely. The illusionist, on the other hand, probably was, but that did not make failing to locate him any less annoying.
Ludger checked the same kinds of places again.
Taverns. Market roads. Back streets. Rooftops. The shadows near noble districts where information liked to gather in dirty clothes and pretend it had no value.
Nothing.
No sign of Hroth’s half-drunken face. No familiar slouch. No trace of the illusionist’s borrowed features slipping through the city like a lie too confident to hide properly.
It made Ludger wonder more and more why the illusionist had chosen to show himself at all. That was the part that would not leave his mind. If the man had only wanted to remain hidden, he would have.
If he had wanted to attack, there had been better ways. If he had wanted to threaten Ludger cleanly, he could have done that too. Instead, he had shown himself just long enough to be recognized, pointed out the dragon-armored warrior, and vanished again.
A message. But what message? That was the problem with the illusionist.
He was as hard as ever to understand, and Ludger hated men who moved like that. Men whose actions were real enough to matter but slippery enough that every meaning came with two more possibilities attached to it.
What did he truly want? Ludger still could not answer that. The man did not want to help him. That much felt obvious. And yet he had helped him that much. Enough to matter. Enough to shift Ludger’s attention exactly where it needed to go.
Which meant the help itself was probably not kindness, alliance, or trust. More likely, the illusionist simply wanted him alert. Wanted his guard raised even higher. Wanted him looking in the right direction before something else happened.
That fit better. Still irritating. Still impossible to trust. But better.
Ludger stood near one of the manor windows that evening, arms crossed, eyes on the capital below, and thought that the illusionist was exactly the sort of bastard who would hand someone useful information not to save them, but to make sure they survived long enough to become useful later.
That sounded right. Unfortunately. Torvares, meanwhile, had informants moving. The old man received several small reports over those two days, enough that servants came and went more often than usual and enough that his expression grew a little heavier each time he finished reading one.
But the results were thin.
Very thin.
When he finally shared what had been gathered, the answer only sharpened Ludger’s irritation.
The reports all said the same sort of thing. The warriors looked impressive. That was it. Impressive armor. Impressive builds. Impressive bearing. Impressive enough that people noticed them and remembered them.
But when it came to the part that actually mattered, the useful part, the answer fell apart.
No one could feel their aura. That made the room go quiet the first time Torvares said it.
Viola frowned immediately. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Ludger said before Torvares could answer, “that either they’re hiding it well…”
“Or?” Luna asked.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Or whatever they are doesn’t get read normally.”
That possibility sat badly with everyone. Torvares rested the report in his hand against the table and said, “Every description agrees they stand out physically. Presence, appearance, gear, bearing. Yet no one gives a clean account of pressure from them.”
“Not even trained people?” Viola asked.
Torvares shook his head once.
“Nothing reliable.”
Ludger clicked his tongue.
That fit too neatly with what he had felt from the dragon-armored warrior. Like something present and restrained at the same time, built in a way normal instinct did not know how to sort cleanly. He looked at the report in Torvares’ hand and felt his annoyance deepen. That made the capital worse.
Because visible strength people could measure. Aura people could judge. But warriors who looked powerful while giving others nothing clear to sense? Those were the kind of pieces that shifted a board without warning. And now there were several of them in the city.
Which, as far as Ludger was concerned, was exactly the sort of situation that usually ended with blood, confusion, and someone pretending afterward that no one could have seen it coming.
In the end, the day of the party arrived.
The entire capital had been building toward it for days, but when the morning finally came, the city transformed into something almost unrecognizable.
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