A Mere Replacement
Habelian’s words cast a heavy pall over the parlor. Lefonya kept her head down, wary of speaking out of turn.
The Duke of Craitan let out a low, labored exhale. Across from him, Pelens sat with his arms crossed, staring down fixedly at the tabletop.
The air in the room grew so dense it felt as if an invisible weight pressed down on their shoulders.
The Duke was the first to break the silence.
“Habel.”
“Father. Before I arrived at the estate, I took the liberty of looking into matters myself. You called off the knights searching for my sister. Have you given up?”
“We will discuss that later, in private.”
“Does it truly require privacy?”
Habelian leaned back into his chair with deliberate composure. His gaze drifted across the table, fixing squarely on Lefonya.
“I hear you are already aware to some extent. Does this conversation make you uncomfortable?”
“Brother,” Pelens interrupted, his voice tight. “I get what you’re trying to say, so drop it for now.”
“Why should I? She is the officially adopted lady of House Craitan, taken in by our father. We are discussing the affairs of House Craitan. Is our proper young lady forbidden from hearing them?”
“Habel. There is no need to bring this up now,” the Duke answered on her behalf, his tone hardening. Yet Habelian tilted his head slightly, keeping his sharp crimson eyes trained on Lefonya.
“Can the adopted daughter of Craitan not speak for herself? Must our father or Pelens answer every question on your behalf?”
“No,” Lefonya said quietly.
“If you do not wish to listen, say so yourself. Then we will exclude you and continue among ourselves later.”
Lefonya met Habelian’s gaze without flinching.
She understood why he had insisted on keeping her at this table before opening his mouth. It was simple: if she had dared to take the place of the lost true daughter, this was the bare minimum she had to endure.
Besides, none of this was a surprise to her.
I read all of it when I gathered intelligence before coming here.
Having already pieced together the family’s tragedy long ago, the revelation held no shock for her.
“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” Lefonya replied steadily. “I want to hear it too.”
“Fluffball,” Pelens muttered, leaning toward her. “You really don’t need to listen to this.”
“No, Brother Pelens. The instructor is right. It’s family business, so I should listen. It’s better than being kept in the dark.”
Lefonya gave a small, resolute nod, signaling to Pelens and the Duke that they should proceed.
Watching her reaction, Habelian parted his lips once more.
“There. Since our young lady agrees, I will ask again. Father, have you given up?”
“Haah…”
The Duke raked a hand through his hair, a grimace contorting his rugged features. He could neither confess that he had surrendered hope nor plant false optimism by claiming the search was ongoing.
“We have scoured the entire continent. You know this as well as anyone, Habel.”
“Yes. On the day of the incident, a couple took my sister away. By the time we tracked them down, both were already dead.”
“Indeed. And more than ten years have passed since then without a single lead.”
“That couple boasted to everyone that they intended to sell my sister abroad or to a merchant troupe. And there were records of them receiving funds from someone shortly after. It was hardly a complete dead end.”
Habelian’s tone was analytical, almost chillingly detached. Yet beneath that cool veneer burned a fury stoked over a decade—a heat so fierce one could scarcely touch it.
It was as if she were facing the blazing presence of Hwama, the sealed heirloom of House Craitan, in human flesh.
“And so we raided and dismantled every slave ring and foreign merchant operating around that time,” the Duke countered, his face twisted in torment. “Did anything come of it?”
He slammed a heavy palm onto his knee.
“We rescued hundreds of souls from those wretched cartels. But my daughter… your sister was never among them.”
The rhythmic tapping of Habelian’s fingers on the table abruptly ceased. His hand clenched into a tight fist, thick veins bulging across pale skin.
The couple who took the real daughter…
Lefonya remembered reading those records. A vile, opportunistic pair had stumbled upon the lost infant and sold her off to human traffickers or smugglers across the border.
Even back when Lefonya lived in the abusive orphanage, slave traders had occasionally knocked on the back door, offering meager bags of coin for expendable children. Children sold that way spent their entire lives in chains or died before reaching adulthood, erased from the world without a trace.
Which meant the true young lady of Craitan had likely suffered the same fate.
“So you brought in a replacement?”
“Brother!” Pelens barked, rising half out of his chair.
A replacement.
The word struck Lefonya like a small jolt, making her flinch inwardly. Perhaps it hit home because someone had finally voiced the exact label she had pinned on herself from the start.
She raised her chin, and her eyes met Habelian’s.
In that fleeting instant, an expression of profound chagrin flickered across his cold features—as though catching her gaze had caught him entirely off guard. But before she could decipher it, he jerked his head away, his profile hardening once more.
“Habel.”
The Duke’s voice dropped to a chilling, authoritative register.
“Push this any further, and not even you will escape my wrath. This is my decision as Patriarch. You are obligated to respect it.”
“Did you even investigate that child thoroughly?”
“Habel.”
“I ask for the sake of this family,” Habelian pressed, ignoring the warning. “Someone needs to keep a level head and verify the facts. Have you forgotten how many con artists have attempted to exploit our grief over the years?”
He was not wrong. Listening to him, Lefonya found herself nodding in silent agreement.
If anything, the Duke and Pelens were the ones behaving with unreasonable sentimentality. A true noble heir ought to calculate, verify, and doubt, just as Habelian was doing now.
Of course, it was precisely because the Duke and Pelens had acted on raw emotion that Lefonya had managed to infiltrate the estate and uncover the truth behind the family heirloom.
“Brother,” Pelens ground out. “Father made his choice, and we accepted her. What right do you have to interfere?”
“I have no power to undo it, no.”
“Then shut—”
“Pelens. Have you truly forgotten your sister so easily?”
The biting question lashed out like a whip.
“You were too young to remember her. But my memories are as vivid as yesterday.”
House Craitan’s firstborn was renowned as a genius. Pelens had grumbled about it often enough, and the intelligence reports Lefonya had studied corroborated every word. He never forgot anything he laid eyes upon; his intellect and tactical brilliance were so far beyond ordinary peers that society universally labeled him a prodigy.
A prodigy cursed with total recall could never simply forget his sister.
“The days I spent with her remain etched into my mind,” Habelian murmured, his voice thick with suppressed anguish. “The moment she was born. The warmth when I held her in my arms. The way I patted her back to lull her to sleep when she cried…”
The parlor fell deathly quiet.
“And yet… you expect that creature to take her place?”
Habelian bit out each syllable, grinding the words between clenched teeth.
He was not like Pelens, who erupted in volatile bursts whenever his temper flared. Habelian was the sort to bottle his wrath away in dark, measured increments until the vessel could no longer hold the pressure.
That’s why he didn’t come charging home the second he heard the news, Lefonya realized. He held it in, enduring it until he couldn't take another breath.
The crimson tempest swirling in his eyes made it clear that his patience had shattered completely.
“Judging by how comfortable she looks, she has already carved out her territory in this mansion,” Habelian remarked disdainfully. “I imagine she has little need for my approval anyway.”
Lefonya could understand his resentment.
To watch a stranger sit in the seat meant for a beloved family member was bound to leave a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth. And seeing as Lefonya was actively scheming to entrench herself here rather than be thrown out, she hardly had ground to defend herself.
The distrust, disgust, and simmering fury radiating from him were entirely natural.
“Habel,” the Duke said, his voice ringing with absolute finality. “Your approval was never requested. Ponya is already a child of this house.”
He held his eldest son’s glare without yielding an inch.
“If I see you neglect or mistreat Ponya in any way, I will judge you unfit to inherit this title. Consider yourself warned.”
Lefonya’s eyes widened slightly.
Unfit to inherit? Disowning his heir apparent over an adopted child who had been here for mere weeks?
“I will not accept a successor who defies the Patriarch’s decree and excludes a member of his own family.”
Habelian did not flinch, sitting rigidly as though he had anticipated the threat all along.
“Pelens,” the Duke continued, shifting his commanding gaze. “As Ponya’s sworn escort, if any threat to her safety arises, you are to eliminate the culprit without hesitation—regardless of who they may be. Never forget your duty.”
It was an unmistakable warning aimed straight at Habelian.
“I once respected you, Father,” Habelian murmured, a hollow smile touching his lips. “For one reason alone: because you refused to give up on finding my sister even when the rest of the world told you to stop. But now that you have abandoned her, there is no longer any reason for me to revere you.”
“If you must harbor resentment, direct it toward me for adopting her,” the Duke replied wearily. “Do not vent your bitterness on an innocent five-year-old child who had no say in the matter.”
“An innocent five-year-old?”
Habelian pushed back his chair and stood.
SCREEECH.
The chair legs dragged violently against the polished floorboards, letting out a grating, terrible shriek. For a man who never made a whisper of noise even when setting down a delicate teacup, the display was unmistakably deliberate.
“What sort of five-year-old sits through a barrage of insults with such unnatural poise?” he sneered, glaring down at Lefonya. “Even cadets at the Military Academy break down when subjected to half as much condemnation.”
Indeed, Lefonya had not flinched once throughout the verbal crossfire. Her hands remained neatly folded on her lap, absorbing every sharp barb in silence without offering an excuse or shedding a tear.
Habelian turned on his heel toward the door. Yet as his hand touched the handle, his steps halted, and he threw one last remark over his shoulder.
“Even if she is gone, we should have at least recovered my sister’s remains to bury her in our family crypt. My little sister… enduring God knows what, in God knows where. She might hate us for leaving her behind, but she still deserves to come home. That is all I ever wanted.”
Leaving those rigid, hollow words hanging in the air, Habelian pulled the door open and vanished down the hallway.
Pelens glared fiercely at the empty doorway until the heavy thud of footsteps faded into nothingness. The moment the elder brother was gone, he scrambled out of his seat and rushed to Lefonya’s side.
“Fluffball! Are you alright? Dammit, I should have told you to stay and rest in your room.”
Lefonya shook her head gently.
“I’m fine.”
“Just wait until I catch that bastard later,” Pelens fumed, cracking his knuckles. “I’m going to beat some sense into him.”
“Why?” Lefonya tilted her head, her round eyes blinking in genuine curiosity.
“What do you mean, why?! He crossed the line! Calling you a fraud, talking down to you like that—”
“You called me a fraud the first time you saw me, too, Brother Pelens.”
“Huh? Wh—what? Me? Uh… wait.”
“You told me you’d give me whatever money I wanted or sponsor me if I just packed up and left,” Lefonya reminded him plainly, ticking off the points with her small fingers. “And you said if I turned out to be a swindler, you’d throw me in a dungeon.”
To her, Habelian’s skepticism was merely history repeating itself.
As Lefonya calmly recited his past transgressions word for word, the fiery color drained from Pelens’s face, leaving him thoroughly, mortifyingly pale.