An enormous smile bloomed on Justin’s face, something which hadn’t happened much since seeing his daughter off when she decided to join the Knight Academy.  Now, he had to fight to maintain his dignity and not sprint off his yacht when he saw Valeria waiting for him on the docks.  Instead, Justin walked as swiftly as he could without looking ridiculous.

“Ah, my Lord, there’s something I nee-” one of Justin’s servants said as he passed, but he wasn’t going to wait around for anything.

“Later,” he growled, not even sparing the servant a single glance.  The servant wisely shut his mouth and decided to just deal with his problem himself.

As he approached Valeria, a smile to match her father’s appeared on the young woman’s normally stoic face, shattering her icy demeanor and making her appear as warm as the sun.

Without a word, Justin pulled his daughter into a tight hug, and his concerns about his noble dignity vanished.

“I missed you, kiddo,” he whispered into her ear.

“I missed you too, Father,” Valeria replied, returning Justin’s hug in full.

When they finally parted, Justin looked her over, inspecting her for any signs of unhappiness or mistreatment.  However, Valeria appeared perfectly happy and healthy, so much so that she almost glowed under the sun.  Her silver hair gleamed in the sun’s light and her bright blue eyes glittered like the clearest of lakes.  Her heart-shaped face, normally so expressionless that it almost appeared to be carved from ice, was warmed and brightened with a radiant smile at her father’s arrival.

“Ahh, look at you, the spitting image of your mother,” Justin said with a fatherly sigh, tainting Valeria’s smile of joy with embarrassment.  His own silver hair wasn’t quite as shiny, and the beauty of his blue eyes was ruined somewhat by his lack of sleep leaving them as bloodshot as his body would allow.  “You’ve my colors, but you look so much like her…  How are you doing, my dear?  Has the capital been treating you well?”

“I’m doing just fine, Father,” Valeria replied.  “I have friends here, and I enjoy my work.  Plus, I get all the time I need to train.”

“And I see you haven’t been slacking,” Justin said appreciatively as he inspected his daughter’s aura.  “I know how seriously you tend to take your training, but I have to admit that I’m surprised to see that you’re a fourth-tier mage already!  Especially in such a magically barren land!”

“Yes…” Valeria said hesitantly, giving her father a slight look of panic and alarm, instantly cueing him into the mistake he’d just made.  He didn’t want to say such disparaging things about the Bull Kingdom out loud, but his joy in seeing his daughter again after more than two years had clouded his reason.

“Anyway,” he continued, “let’s find somewhere we can catch up!”

Valeria nodded, leading her father back to her waiting blue and silver carriage.

About a quarter of an hour later, they arrived at Asiya’s estate, where both Asiya herself and Valeria had been staying during their time in the capital when they weren’t fulfilling their duties guarding the Royal Harem with their assigned knights.  Justin whistled appreciatively at the rippled black glass architecture that Asiya’s family had brought with them from the Samar Kingdom.

“Most of the architecture in this Kingdom is fairly bland and uninspired,” Justin said, “but this place sure is something to behold…”  He ignored most of the statues, murals, and tapestries that filled the luxurious estate in favor of admiring the ripples in the thick glass walls.  At certain angles, the reflected light would split and form beautiful rainbow streaks across the pitch-black glass, and the Samarid architecture took full advantage of this, with the walls being subtly slanted to allow these streams of rainbow light to fill the palace.  Some sections were even so well built that they emphasized certain colors, with the two most common that Justin had seen as they walked through the palace being deep green and vibrant magenta.  As a result of all of this, the palace had no need for magic lanterns, with the walls themselves providing all the necessary lighting.

“I agree,” Valeria said.  “Asiya has been incredibly generous letting me stay with her, and I’ve enjoyed my time immensely.”

“Speaking of, where are Lady Asiya and her family?” Justin asked.  “I would like to thank them for the hospitality they’ve shown you.”

“Lord Samarid is currently working as a minor Exarch in the Southern Territories, and Lady Samarid is with him, so it’s just been me and Asiya here for the past couple of years.”

“Just the two of you here alone?” Justin asked incredulously.  “I’m surprised the place hasn’t burned down yet…”

“Hey!  We’re not that bad!” Valeria said in a mock-hurt tone.

“So no wild parties?  No inviting hordes of boys and girls back here to have wild orgies that keep the entire city awake?” Justin playfully asked.

“Of course not!” Valeria cried.  “The guard unit for the Royal Harem is only female, hardly the best place to look for boys, and besides, I’ve been too busy!”

“Too busy in our duties, but not too busy before that, right?” Justin asked as the two finally reached the guest quarters.  Justin wasn’t going to stay there, he had a room in a high-class inn closer to the Royal Palace, but this was the group of rooms that Valeria had been staying in for the past couple of years, including a bedroom, living room, large bathroom, and even a private dining room and study.

“Daaad!” Valeria complained, her exasperation finally getting her to drop much of her usual formality.

“I’m just saying, I’d be surprised if you didn’t meet someone you weren’t at least tentatively interested in since your move here,” Justin said as he took a seat in a nearby couch.

Valeria sat down in an armchair across the table from him and went silent for a long few moments.  Leon’s face flashed through her mind as she thought about her father’s inquiry, and she knew that she’d be lying through her teeth if she tried to claim that she hadn’t met anyone she was interested in and that her father would pick up on that.  And yet, she hadn’t seen Leon in more than a year; even during the short time he spent in the capital after going north that she’d heard about from Elise, they hadn’t seen each other.

And yet, despite this long period of time, her crush hadn’t gone away.  She certainly thought about Leon less than she did back in the Knight Academy since he wasn’t an active part of her life anymore, but when she did think about him, her heart still beat with the desire to spar and train with him, plus a few more feelings that she hadn’t quite gotten around to sorting out yet.

But she had no idea how to explain this to her father, who sat expectantly waiting with a smile on his face that grew wider with every passing second that she hesitated to respond.

Eventually, she just bashfully averted her eyes and whispered, “Not… not yet…”

“Are you sure?” Justin asked.

Valeria could only smile in response.

Justin shrugged and decided to drop his inquiry right there.  If Valeria actually met someone she liked, then he was certain she’d tell him when she was ready.  “Oh well, probably for the best,” he said.  “I doubt anyone you could meet here and become romantically involved with could ever follow us home once our job is complete.”

“Speaking of… made any progress yet?” Valeria hesitantly asked.  She quite liked her life in the Bull Kingdom, and she had never known what it was like where she was born, so she had no way to personally know if it was better than here.  But Justin insisted that it was, and she believed her father.

“Not much,” Justin admitted.  He didn’t want Valeria to become as entangled in such dirty business as he was, so he didn’t want to give her too many details, but he also wanted to keep her informed, since their mission affected her as well.  “Honestly, it’s been long enough that I think the trail has gone cold.  No sign of our team that went missing and no one in the Northern Vales has given us any solid information to work with.  If our targets were indeed in those Vales, they’re probably long gone by now.”

“That’s… unfortunate…” Valeria said, unsure if she meant it or not.  They had arrived in Aeterna when she was barely an infant to kill a boy her age and his father, a job that had never sat well with either her or Justin.  But Lord Kamran had given them this job personally, and they had no ground to stand on to defy him.

“I know, sweetheart,” Justin said, understanding Valeria’s concerns.  “I know, it’s an ugly business, but it has to be done if we’re ever to go home and see your mother again.  It has to be done.”  Justin’s face twisted in grief, but his conviction to see the job finished remained unshaken.

“So, I’m guessing the real reason why you came to the capital was for this?” Valeria asked.  The letter she had received from her father several days prior only said that he had been asked by August to be one of his followers and that he’d accepted.  No mention had been made of their real mission, just in case the letter was somehow intercepted.

“Yes,” Justin affirmed as he simultaneously released his magic senses to ensure that they were alone.  Once he was certain of their privacy, he continued, “It took us a dozen years since we arrived in this Kingdom to find these scant few clues, even after I killed Kyros Raime.  If we’re going to get this job done in any reasonable amount of time after this most recent failure, I’m going to need to enlist more of the locals and to do that, I’m going to need more influence than a single Exarchate will buy me.”

“I understand,” Valeria said, her flat tone masking a bitter undercurrent.  “I look forward to the day you finish so that I can finally meet Mother.”

Justin smiled sadly at his daughter and said, “Your mother loves you, and I know that she’d be proud in ways that no language that has ever existed could ever express.  You two are separated by circumstances, not by choice, otherwise there would be no way she ever would’ve let me raise you alone.”

Valeria nodded, having heard these things from Justin many times before.  She had never known her mother, so there wasn’t enough emotional attachment there for her to feel too depressed, but the sense of having lost something before she even had a chance to learn what it was hit her hard.

“W-When we get her back…” Valeria began to ask, her voice quivering with suppressed sadness and bitterness, “what are you going to do?”

Justin stared at his daughter, his smile frozen on his face.  He had long thought about what he would do once he got his wife back, but he had yet to find a suitable course of action.  The most practical thing would be to thank Lord Kamran and then return home with his family intact; Kamran was a man who was far above Justin, and the latter had little ability to harm him in any way.  However, Justin was also a proud man, and he couldn’t let the man holding his wife as a hostage get away with it, even if she was being well cared for.

“I… I don’t know yet,” Justin answered honestly.  “We will have to get the lay of the land when we return to the Nexus.  Right now, though, it looks to me like there’re few options we are capable of taking.”

“I understand,” Valeria replied as she composed herself.  “Sorry, Father, I shouldn’t have asked such a childish question.  I will do what you need me to do when the time comes.”

Justin bitterly chuckled and nodded.  “I appreciate the sentiment, little one, but I pray to the Great Lord that you never have to have Lord Kamran as your enemy.  If there is action that should b- that can be taken, then I will be the one to take it.  No one else.  I don’t want to endanger my family by doing something stupid.”

Valeria frowned slightly, but she nodded in acknowledgment.  She sighed as her eyes turned toward a nearby window.  She loved her life in the Bull Kingdom.  She had friends, she had a job that she enjoyed, she even had a boy that she felt warm and fuzzy about, but she knew that her time here was limited.  She could spend another year here, or she might get fifty or a hundred years, but she knew that, eventually, she’d have to leave.

As she was sitting there, quietly thinking about her uncertain future and when that particular sword would fall, she heard the bubbly voice of Asiya shouting out her greetings as she returned home.

Valeria quickly wiped the frown off her face and said to Justin, “Time to meet the host, then!”

Justin agreed, and their conversation about such sensitive topics was over.  At the very least, they now had some time to spend as a happy father-daughter pair, and they were going to make the most of it while they could.

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