Ludger stared at her. Viola went on anyway.

“You need backup in case something happens.”

Luna said nothing, but from the way she stood, she clearly wasn’t here to disagree with that. Ludger’s expression didn’t change.

“I don’t need it.”

Viola tilted her head slightly. That was the sort of answer she had expected. Unfortunately for him, that meant she had also prepared hers.

Ludger said, “The worst-case scenario here isn’t me being captured.”

Viola’s eyes stayed on him.

“It isn’t me being killed,” he continued.

That made Elle pause mid-swing for half a second before immediately going back to attacking Luna’s stick with all the fury of a tiny goblin.

Ludger kept his voice level.

“It isn’t me getting lost on the other side of a labyrinth.”

Now Viola’s expression sharpened a little, because she knew what was coming and clearly disliked that he was going to say it out loud.

“The worst-case scenario,” Ludger said, “is your identity being revealed by the enemy.”

That landed cleanly. More cleanly than the other objections would have.

Because unlike “you might get hurt,” or “it’s too dangerous,” or “I can handle it,” this one wasn’t about pride or strength or family overprotection. It was a real strategic problem. If the wrong people tied Viola Torvares directly to an unauthorized breach into a sealed labyrinth, then the consequences would ripple far beyond one ugly mission gone wrong.

Viola knew that. Luna knew it too. Which was why Viola’s next response annoyed him so much. She shrugged. Actually shrugged.

“We came prepared for that,” she said.

Ludger stared at her. For one short second, he genuinely considered whether dropping the box again would improve anything. It would not.

So instead he said, “That is not reassuring.”

Viola’s mouth curved slightly.

“It wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be practical.”

That answer sounded far too much like something he would say. Which made it worse. Luna finally spoke then, her tone quieter and more careful, as usual.

“She’s serious,” Luna said. “We didn’t come here thoughtlessly.”

Preparation helped. It mattered. He wasn’t stupid enough to dismiss real planning just because it came from people he wanted far away from the mission. And labyrinths were the sort of places where control vanished quickly once things went bad enough.

He said, “That still doesn’t make this a good idea.”

Viola’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“No,” she said. “It makes it less stupid than you pretending you don’t need anyone.”

Ludger clicked his tongue softly. The twins, naturally, had stopped paying attention to the argument entirely and were now trying to gang up on Luna’s legs with the kind of joyous violence only children and northerners managed properly.

Luna handled it with far more patience than the situation probably deserved.

Viola, meanwhile, stood there looking like she had already accepted this as a negotiation rather than a discussion, which meant she had no intention of leaving simply because he asked.

Ludger stared at her. Viola met the stare without flinching.

Then said, “Because if you go into one of those places alone and something actually goes wrong, then by the time anyone realizes it, the problem won’t be strategic anymore.”

That one sat a little heavier. Because it was true.

If something went wrong badly enough inside a sealed labyrinth, then the clean strategic phase would already be over. What remained after that would be damage control, recovery, or retaliation.

Ludger didn’t like hearing the thought from her. He liked it even less because she had already reached it on her own.

Still.

He said, “You’re assuming I’ll fail.”

Viola’s expression flattened.

“I’m assuming you’re not perfect, you have messed up plenty of times for everyone to consider that.”

That answer came too fast to dismiss.

Viola watched him think, then said, a little more quietly now, “I know you’re trying to keep my position clean.”

That made him look at her again. Her expression had lost some of its usual edge.

“Really,” she said. “I do understand that part.”

Ludger said nothing.

Then she added, “But if you keep deciding by yourself when I’m allowed to take risks, it gets annoying.”

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There it was.The real core of it. Not pride alone. Not curiosity alone. Agency. Viola hated being treated like someone who had to be protected from the shape of the world while being expected to someday inherit and manage pieces of that same world.

Which, honestly, was fair. Still inconvenient. But fair. Ludger folded his arms.

“That doesn’t mean every risk is worth taking.”

Viola nodded once.

“I know.”

“And this one?”

She held his gaze.

“This one is worth arguing for.”

Ludger looked at Luna then. She didn’t look away. Which meant she agreed. Of course she did. Silence stretched for a few seconds after that while the twins resumed their tiny war in the grass and the evening air settled around the house.

Ludger’s mind was already moving through the angles. If he refused flatly, Viola might back off. Or she might investigate harder, interfere differently, or show up anyway in some even worse form of “help.”

A few minutes later, Viola showed what she meant by being ready. Without warning, she crouched by one of the packs they had brought and pulled out a pair of armlets.

Not decorative ones. Not noble accessories pretending to be practical. Real gear. Ludger’s eyes narrowed immediately.

Viola slid them onto her arms with the sort of familiarity that suggested she had practiced the motion more than once. The metal settled around her forearms for half a breath… Then expanded. The change was fast enough to feel wrong.

Segments unfolded, locked, and spread outward from the armlets in a fluid chain of fitted plates and hidden joints, wrapping over her shoulders, chest, waist, and down through the upper legs until everything above her knees was covered. The shape that formed around her was unmistakably armor, but not the kind used by any smith in the Empire that Ludger had ever seen. It was too compact at the start. Too precise in how it deployed. Too good at hiding its full structure until the last moment.

When it was done, Viola looked like a female warrior in full plate.

Not the oversized parade nonsense nobles liked commissioning to look impressive. This was real. Functional. Tight to the body without looking fragile, built to allow movement while still carrying the hard confidence of proper armor. The helmet-like upper section obscured her face well enough that the heir of Torvares vanished into something much harder to name at a glance.

Luna equipped hers a second later. The result was different. Same principle. Same hidden expansion from compact armlets into a full combat-ready shell.

But Luna’s looked lighter, sharper, and less direct. Where Viola’s presence became that of a frontal fighter, solid, armored, unmistakably dangerous, Luna’s became something closer to a rogue. Leaner plates. Cleaner lines. The armor protected her, but in a way designed around speed, stealth, and movement rather than standing in the open and daring someone to test it.

Ludger frowned at both of them.

Then asked, “Where did you get that?”

Because yes, the armor hid their faces. But that wasn’t enough to reassure him.

Anyone with a functioning brain could still track down the buyers and sellers of something that unusual. In a world where most armor had to be put on like actual armor instead of hidden inside compact armlets and deployed in seconds, pieces like these were too distinct to ignore. Too rare. Too memorable.

Viola crossed her arms, or tried to, which was slightly less natural in the armor, and said, “I knew that.”

Ludger waited.

“So we looked for the person who made them,” she said. “Or at least for where they came from.”

That was better. A little.

Viola continued, “But it’s not technology from the Empire.”

Ludger raised his eyebrows. That made the whole thing more interesting immediately.

“And how did you get it then?” he asked.

Viola shrugged once.

“A random man offered it to me the last time I was in the capital.”

That answer landed with all the grace of a brick. Ludger stared at her.

Viola, apparently not feeling the absurdity hard enough yet, went on, “He had two sets of armor.”

Luna looked like she had already accepted how bad this sounded.

“So I bought them,” Viola finished.

For one full second, no one spoke.

Then Ludger asked, very flatly, “A random man walked up to you in the capital and offered highly suspicious foreign transforming armor.”

“Yes.”

“And you bought it.”

“Yes.”

Ludger kept staring. Viola frowned slightly.

“It is a good armor.”

“That is not the problem.”

“I know it sounds suspicious.”

“It sounds insane.”

Luna, to her credit, stepped in before Viola could defend the purchase like it had been a completely reasonable afternoon decision.

“I did go back looking for him,” Luna said. “For details. For origin. For anything.”

Ludger looked at her next.

Luna continued, “But we didn’t find him again.”

That only made the whole thing worse. Because of course they hadn’t.

A stranger with foreign technology nobody could identify properly, selling exactly two sets of deployable armor to the heir of Torvares and her close companion, then disappearing before follow-up questions could be asked?

That was not just suspicious. That was deliberately suspicious. Viola exhaled through her nose.

“Yes,” she admitted. “It’s very suspicious.”

Ludger’s eyes moved over the armor again.

The craftsmanship really was impressive. Too impressive. The kind of thing that made even his irritation pause long enough to notice the quality. Which was deeply unhelpful.

He asked, “Did the man say where it was from?”

Viola shook her head.

“Not clearly. He implied it came from outside the Empire and that people here wouldn’t know how to make it.”

That sounded true enough. Which, again, was not comforting.

Ludger stepped closer and looked more carefully at the lines where the armor had unfolded from the armlets. The joints, the locking pattern, the distribution of plates, the weight balance, the way the surface hid its transitions after deployment. This was not some cheap gimmick. Someone smart had made this.

Very smart. The problem was that smart people did not usually hand tools like this to Viola by coincidence. Not random foreign men. Not in the capital. Not when the girl in question was who she was.

That meant one of two things.

Either someone wanted her armed, hidden, and able to move in ways the Empire couldn’t easily predict… Or someone wanted to put a very specific piece on the board and watch what it did later. Possibly both.

Ludger’s frown deepened.

Viola saw it and said, “I know. I know.”

“That doesn’t sound like enough.”

“It is armor,” she said. “Useful armor.”

“That is exactly how people get lured into carrying strange knives with curses in the handle.”

Viola looked offended.

“I checked for curses.”

Luna added, “Several times.”

That helped a little. Not enough. Ludger looked at Luna’s armor next. Same principle, different role. Matching origin. Matching suspicion.

He clicked his tongue softly.

“Did anyone else see you buy it?”

Viola thought for a moment.

“Not closely.”

At least there was that. Still, the whole thing sat wrong.

Because now the armor itself became another thread tied to people who moved in the same shadows. Not necessarily the same group. Not necessarily even connected directly. But in a world where Armandis ran hidden structures and the Rodericks buried curse murders under noble districts, Ludger was done dismissing “suspicious foreign stranger” as background noise.