"I won't make any excuses," he said, "because what I decided then was the right decision to make as a Herman."
Nine years ago, on a rainy day, the situation had been beneficial to him.
Three hooded figures had performed a ritual around a glowing scroll. The scroll lifted off the table, burning with intense purple light, and a mage reported that they had successfully tracked her location through the blackmail letter.
He had scoffed at the audacity of it — kidnappers using magic to contact the Hermans, as though they were peers doing business.
He raised his hand.
"Raise the black flag of refusal. There will be no negotiation with criminals."
The Shadow Knight Order rode out, their horses throwing up water in the rain.
Even after ignoring the blackmail, he had thought — he remembered thinking it — that they could still find her.
Two hooded figures found the room. There were bodies all over the wooden floor. One of them was a young man with a sack tied over his head.
"No survivors," a subordinate reported, and left him standing there, grimly turning over what he was looking at.
Was it truly a relief, he wondered, that Sophia was not among the dead?
He stood in the pouring rain and furiously ordered his troops to investigate, to mobilise, to search.
Somewhere in the chaos a voice went up urgently: the child was alive, and she had to be found.
He had looked distraught then, because there was one person who could not be allowed to learn that they had lost Sophia.
"I am ashamed of the arrogant man I was," he told her now. "You were always precious to me. To Theo as well. Neither of us ever gave up."
There had been a report, months later, that the young Herman princess had been found — a silver-haired girl, her hair dyed to match.
He had sighed with frustration when he understood what it meant. By refusing to search openly, he had let the information leak, and now every swindler in the empire had a daughter to sell him.
His orders about the imposters were brutal. The fake child was to be sent away to an orphanage.
Sophia listened to all of it, and thought about her own dream of giving children a better future.
"All my magic," he said. "All my power. In the end none of it was any use in finding you."
She listened in complete silence. The winged sword on his uniform caught the light as he breathed.
"Do you understand the meaning of the coral stone in your necklace?"
"Yes," she said quietly.
Then the Grand Duke of the Herman Duchy knelt down in front of her.
He took her hand. He thanked her for coming back safely, and he asked her for a second chance, and he swore solemnly that this time he would protect her until the very end.
The territory's greatest villain, the rival of the imperial family, knelt on the floor and asked a child to forgive him.
Sophia was inwardly stunned. How had this formidable man gone so soft?
She was also, humiliatingly, choked up, and she reminded herself of her own vow: never again to be deceived by the handsome facade this family put on things.
His gloved hands drew gently on the chain of her necklace, straightening it. He kept speaking, earnest, both hands moving.
"I'm sorry, Sophie."
She trembled, cursing her own weakness with everything she had.
He pulled her into a warm and gentle embrace, and the tears she had been holding came anyway.
"Don't cry," he said softly.
Time passed.
A slightly older Sophia carried a stack of books through a sunlit hall, and sat down at her desk, and wondered whether she could truly bring herself to trust the Hermans.
The three of them filled her thoughts — grandfather, father, brother. She looked straight ahead with determination and considered what it actually meant to have a family.
Then she put her head around a doorway.
"Are we studying magic beasts today?"
Ian looked up, smiling. He was indeed studying magic beasts. Sophia explained that she was preparing for her lessons, and declared his timing perfect.
"Ta-da."
He presented a plate of small animal-shaped snacks for them to share.
"Did you make these?"
"I did." He hesitated. "Do you not like them?"
She liked them enormously. She noticed, though, that his father never ate with them, and wondered whether the relationship was strained.
"Is it because your dad cooks?"
Ian became instantly flustered and denied it, then worried aloud that she was judging him with old-fashioned ideas about it, and Sophia looked so horrified at the suggestion that he gave up.
"I just find it a little awkward," he admitted.
Sophia grabbed his arm, grinning, and hauled the panicking boy off to study with his father.
They came into the study and surprised the long-haired man at his desk. He stammered a welcome and offered them cookies, and Ian found the entire interaction extremely amusing.
The flustered man offered to fetch less sweet cookies right away.
Ian held up both hands and insisted he was fine.
Tea, then?
Ian declined again, and Sophia let out an amused sigh into her sleeve.
One week had passed since Sophia was acknowledged as a direct descendant and began staying at the main palace.
Since she became a Herman, she reflected, one thing had changed significantly.