The next night, the group was already moving through the underground tunnels in the runic carriage.

Ludger sat near the front.

Viola and Luna were on his right side. Eclaire sat beside them, posture straight despite the constant hum of the vehicle. Jennifer and Rowan occupied the other side, both quieter than usual now that the thing they had agreed to was no longer theoretical. Six young people, armed, prepared, and heading toward a sealed imperial labyrinth as if that were a reasonable way to spend the evening.

They had finished the preparations in a single day.

Not because that was ideal.

Because none of them wanted to stretch it longer and let doubt, second thoughts, or the attention of the wrong people settle over the plan. The suit had been completed. The routes checked. The disguises and fallback movements decided. The roles discussed. The worst obvious weaknesses patched over as well as they could manage in the time they had.

So they moved. And once the vehicle truly began crossing the distance beneath the earth, a weird silence took over the group. Not ordinary silence. Not relaxed silence.

The kind that appeared when everyone in the same space knew exactly where they were headed, knew the thing waiting there was dangerous, and had already finished saying the useful words before departure.

The runic carriage hummed and trembled around them, its arrays pushing them through the dark with steady force while faint light from the runes painted shifting lines over armor, clothes, weapons, and faces that were trying very hard not to look tense.

No one wanted to be the first to speak. That part was obvious.

Rowan looked like he had already run through six different possible failures in his head and rejected all of them only because it was too late to get off now. Jennifer sat with the sort of stillness people often mistook for calm until they noticed how locked her shoulders were. Eclaire remained composed on the surface, but Ludger could tell her mind was moving fast beneath that controlled expression, checking the same angles again and again just because sitting still gave it too much room not to.

Viola was the hardest to read. Not because she was calm. Because she was trying very hard to look like this was exactly the sort of thing she had intended all along. Luna, beside her, looked the most functional. Not relaxed. Just already focused into the shape she would need once the carriage stopped and the real work began.

Ludger watched them all in silence for a while.

The weirdness of it settled on him too. Not fear. Just the quiet awareness that this was, in fact, absurd.

Six teenagers in a runic carriage, heading underground toward a sealed imperial labyrinth tied to noble houses, military rot, and a structure hidden deeply enough that even thinking about it properly felt like treason.

Yes. Absurd was the correct word. And because it was the correct word, no one said it out loud.

The carriage kept moving. It felt like the last quiet moment before the world made its next bad decision. The silence dragged on long enough that Ludger eventually decided it had become annoying.

So he looked toward Rowan and said, “It looks like the tension is because the girls in this group don’t know how to interact.”

That got everyone’s attention immediately. Which was good.

Because if people were going to sit in a runic carriage like they were already halfway to a funeral, then they might as well be irritated out of it.

Ludger continued, perfectly straight-faced.

“I can already tell those pairs are basically the same.” He tilted his head slightly toward Viola and Luna first. “Viola and Luna are always causing me problems.”

Viola looked offended. Luna looked like she was already deciding not to be dragged into whatever this was. Then Ludger shifted his gaze toward Eclaire and Jennifer.

“So Eclaire and Jennifer must always be causing problems for you too, right?”

Rowan blinked once.

Then, caught completely off guard, said, “Not really… sir.”

That answer made Ludger look at him more directly.

“Then explain the tension to me.”

Rowan immediately looked like he regretted being the person addressed. He hesitated. Because there was no good answer now. Not one that didn’t either sound stupid, rude, or dangerously honest in a carriage full of the people being discussed.

Still, Ludger had asked, and the silence around the question only made it worse.

So after a moment, Rowan said, “It’s because they don’t interact all that much.”

That answer sat there for a second.

Then Ludger said, “That can’t be true.”

Rowan blinked again. Ludger continued in the same flat tone.

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“Viola doesn’t know how to be polite in front of strangers.” He glanced toward her. “Much less act socially clumsy around other people.”

Viola stared at him in disbelief.

“Excuse me?”

Ludger ignored her.

“So unless Eclaire and Jennifer are somehow more frightening than armed northerners, corrupt nobles, and old men with titles,” he said, looking back at Rowan, “that explanation seems weak.”

That made Jennifer close her eyes briefly. Luna looked away for a second, very probably to hide the beginning of amusement.

Eclaire, meanwhile, had gone unnaturally still, which Ludger recognized by now as the posture she took when deciding whether to answer with honesty or with elegance sharp enough to count as a weapon.

Viola, naturally, chose neither.

“I know how to be polite,” she said.

Ludger looked at her.

“No.”

“That is slander.”

“That is a fact.”

Jennifer let out a tiny breath that might have been a laugh before she suppressed it. Rowan, unfortunately, was still trapped inside the original problem.

Ludger looked back at him and said, “So?”

Rowan hesitated again, then said, more carefully this time, “It’s not that they can’t interact. It’s that… they haven’t had many chances to.”

That was better. Ludger leaned back slightly.

“Because?”

Now Rowan looked like he wanted to be thrown from the moving carriage. But he pushed through anyway.

“Because Lady Viola tends to fill the room when she enters it,” he said. “And Lady Eclaire usually seems to prefer not to.”

That one landed. Viola opened her mouth. Closed it.

Then said, “That sounds unfairly accurate.”

Eclaire let out a quiet breath through her nose.

“Some people arrive,” she said calmly, “and immediately take control of the atmosphere around them.”

Viola turned toward her.

“That sounds like a compliment.”

“It was meant as one.”

That, finally, shifted something in the carriage. Not much. But enough.

Because now Jennifer actually looked at Viola instead of avoiding the line of sight entirely, and Luna’s mouth moved faintly at the corner.

Ludger, seeing that the silence had at least cracked a little, added, “So one of you fills the room, and the other tries not to exist in it.”

Eclaire looked at him.

“That is a barbaric way to summarize a delicate social dynamic.”

“It’s a correct way.”

Viola crossed her arms.

“I don’t fill the room.”

Luna spoke for the first time in a while.

“You absolutely do.”

That got an immediate look from Viola.

“What?”

Luna didn’t even blink.

“You walk into places like they were built with your opinion in mind.”

Jennifer, still quiet, muttered, “That is also unfairly accurate.”

Now Viola looked betrayed.

“Why am I being attacked by my own side?”

Ludger gave a small shrug.

“Because your side knows you.”

That actually drew a real laugh out of Jennifer this time, brief and quiet but unmistakable.

Good. That was something. Rowan, clearly realizing that the carriage had moved from “horrible silence” to “social danger, but survivable,” relaxed by a fraction.

Eclaire looked between Viola and Luna for a moment, then said, “To be fair, I probably did not help.”

Viola turned toward her immediately. That admission had weight because Eclaire did not hand those out for free. Eclaire continued, calm as ever.

“When people are too curious about me, I become more difficult on purpose.”

Viola blinked once.

Then said, “That also sounds like a problem.”

“It is a strategy.”

“It sounds like a strategy that creates problems.”

Eclaire considered that for half a second.

“Yes.”

Ludger nodded.

“That sounds more believable.”

Viola looked between Eclaire and Jennifer now, expression sharpening with interest instead of tension.

“So you two were being weird too.”

Jennifer sighed quietly.

“We were being careful.”

“That’s just a nicer word for weird.”

Luna finally let the faintest smile show. And just like that, the strange silence inside the carriage thinned a little. Not gone. The labyrinth was still ahead of them, and no amount of awkward social dissection was going to change that. But the pressure had shifted shape.

It was no longer six people sitting inside their own thoughts. Now it was six people sitting together being taunted by Ludger’s boredom. Which, for Ludger’s purposes, was close enough.

Viola and Eclaire stared at each other for a moment after that. Not hostile enough to count as a challenge. Not soft enough to count as understanding either.

Just long enough that the rest of the carriage could feel there was still something there, something not entirely settled, not entirely spoken, and definitely not simple.

It was hard to tell what Viola was thinking. That, more than anything, caught Eclaire’s attention.

Usually, people like Viola were easier to read once they decided to stop pretending. Her emotions had weight. Direction. Presence. Even when she held herself back, there was still a kind of forward pressure in her, like the truth of what she felt wanted to move outward and become part of the room whether it was invited or not.

But right now, the shape of her thoughts stayed less clear. So Eclaire filled in the most obvious explanation. She had long assumed Viola wasn’t especially friendly toward her because she believed Eclaire wanted to use Ludger as a political weapon. That would have made sense.

An illegitimate imperial daughter, raised around manipulation, suddenly appearing near a frontier guild whose most absurdly capable young asset just happened to be tied by blood to Torvares and by reputation to a growing power on the border? Yes. From the outside, that looked like the kind of setup any cautious sister would distrust.

Still, even that explanation felt a little thin the more Eclaire thought about it.

Because anyone paying attention should know by now that Ludger was not the sort of person anyone simply used that way. He had already refused the regent’s offer to become a noble. Flatly. Cleanly. Without hesitation. A boy who could look at a path toward official status, safety, influence, and recognition from the center of power and decide no was not someone easily turned into another person’s polished instrument.

So if Viola had truly believed Eclaire was trying that, then the belief itself would have been naive. And Viola was not naive. Which meant the more likely answer was simpler. Protectiveness.