Free Web NovelEleanor's knuckles were turning white from gripping too tightly.
The fabric of the collar creased in her palm, emitting a faint tearing sound.
Margaret did not struggle.
She simply leaned quietly against the cold glass, her dark green eyes calmly fixed on the woman before her, who was a dozen years younger than herself.
The two stood in confrontation for half a minute.
Then Eleanor released her hand.
The movement wasn't violent, but it certainly wasn't gentle either.
She stepped back, her military boots making a dull thud on the floor, and casually smoothed the wrinkled collar of Margaret's uniform twice.
It was less like helping to tidy up and more like a silent declaration: 'I could hit you, but I choose not to.'
Margaret looked down at her collar, then looked up at Eleanor.
Two weeks.
A full two weeks had passed since that explosion.
The anger that should have erupted long ago already had.
The things that should have been smashed had already been smashed.
Those emotions had already receded like an ebbing tide, leaving behind something much harder to deal with.
Calmness.
And beneath that calmness, a firm, unshakeable stance, thoroughly chewed and digested.
It was too difficult to handle.
So difficult that Margaret had deliberately avoided her for two weeks.
Eleanor walked to the side of the oak desk and pulled out a chair to sit down.
Her movements were as natural as if she were sitting at her own dining table. freewebnovel.cσ๓
She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her greatcoat, shook the light snow from her shoulders, and rested her hands, clasped together, on the desktop.
"That's not what you told me back then."
She repeated herself.
But this time, there was no questioning tone in her voice.
It was merely stating a fact.
Margaret straightened up from the window, pressed her left hand against her aching shoulder blade, and walked over to sit on the campaign bed.
The two sat facing each other across the desk.
"You said you would guarantee her safety," Eleanor continued.
"Primarily teaching her to control ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) her power, gradually, in a controllable environment, using controllable methods."
"I said that."
"And then there was a massive crater on the Academy grounds."
"...Yes."
"And she was lying at the bottom of the crater."
After saying this, Eleanor did not continue.
She simply looked at Margaret.
There was no anger, no accusation, not even disappointment in her ice-blue eyes.
Only a very flat, very steady gaze.
But it was precisely this calmness and steadiness that was harder to withstand than any roar.
Margaret was silent for a few seconds.
She offered no defense, no explanation, and did not use the rhetoric she was so adept at to shift the focus.
"The design limit for the sealing classroom is sequence iv," she said.
"Pavela's power output broke the upper limit of Sequence V at that moment. The seal was pierced. That was my misjudgment."
She paused.
"If you want to hit me, now is a good time. My left shoulder injury hasn't healed, and I don't have much strength in my right hand. I won't be able to run from you either."
Eleanor glanced at her.
Two weeks ago, she might actually have struck.
But not now.
She had also learned the specifics of the accident.
Hitting a wounded person who had shielded Pavela with her life during an explosion was not her style.
"I didn't come here to hit you," Eleanor said.
"I came to tell you what we do next."
Margaret raised an eyebrow.
"Every training session Pavela has, every time she uses her power, every situation that might lead to a loss of control—I want to know beforehand, not afterward."
"Reasonable."
"If another crater appears, no matter how small, I will personally take her away from your classroom, regardless of whether you are a Major General or a Marshal."
"Also reasonable."
Eleanor's fingers tapped the desktop unconsciously twice.
Then they stopped.
The words she didn't say were far more numerous than those she did.
For instance—
She actually didn't want Pavela to step onto any battlefield again.
Just like Irene.
No, even more so than Irene.
Irene at least grew up in a peaceful environment. Her longing for the battlefield was romantic, unverified, and had room to be corrected by reality.
But Pavela was different.
Pavela had already been there.
She had already crawled on that frozen earth soaked in blood for nearly a year.
She had endured everything capable of crushing an adult soldier with a body not yet sixteen years old.
The needle marks on her back, the improperly healed ribs, the nightmares every night, the cold sweat that drenched her when she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night.
Enough.
It was truly enough.
If it weren't for that damned Path of the Tower power needing control.
If Pavela were just an ordinary girl.
Eleanor wouldn't even let her set foot inside the Royal Knights Academy.
She would take Pavela back to Victoriana, let her live in the safest manor of the Schwartz Family, hire the best doctors to treat her old wounds, let her wake up naturally every day, drink hot tea, eat cake, be drowned in Victoria's chatter, be surrounded by Cecilia's quiet companionship, and be infected by Irene's smile.
Let her slowly, bit by bit, piece back together what the battlefield had crushed.
But reality did not allow it.
She was a Destroyer of Sequence V.
The erosion of the Path of the Tower would not stop spreading just because she hid in a mansion.
So Eleanor compromised.
She agreed to let Pavela come to Eisenburg, agreed to let Margaret teach her, agreed to let her enter that so-called'Special Teaching Program.'
The prerequisite was safety.
The prerequisite was controllability.
The prerequisite was 'never letting her get hurt again.'
But all the prerequisites were shattered.
Shattered in a twenty-meter-diameter crater.
These thoughts churned through Eleanor's mind, but not a single word escaped her lips.
She just sat there, hands clasped, expression calm.
Margaret looked at her.
She looked for a while.
"You're thinking that if you could, you would rather lock her up in the Schwartz manor in Victoriana, right?"
Eleanor did not deny it.
"I understand," Margaret said, her tone lacking its usual teasing quality.
"But you also know that's unrealistic."
"Why is it unrealistic?" Eleanor responded calmly.
"The Schwartz Family has operated in Victoriana for two hundred years."
"Two hundred years of connections, two hundred years of resources."
"If necessary, my mother could ensure the Security Bureau's investigation report mysteriously disappears before it even reaches the Director's desk, and she could mobilize retired officers from three different Orders to any location within twenty-four hours."
The Family could withstand the Imperial Security Bureau, withstand political turmoil, and withstand everyone who wanted to use Pavela.
Margaret didn't rush to rebut.
She just looked at Eleanor, a rarely seen seriousness in her dark green eyes.
She opened her mouth.
Then her peripheral vision caught something.
Outside the window.
Margaret's head snapped toward the window.
In the distance.
In the direction of the Old Town.
A mass of scarlet light was blooming within the curtain of snow.
Immediately followed by a mass of faint blue light.
Margaret stood up.
Her movement caused the chair to slide back half a step, emitting a harsh scraping sound.
She recognized those two lights.
The latter certainly should be appearing there.
But the former, and that feeling seeping out from the bone that made the very air feel dry and brittle—
It shouldn't be there!
That was Pavela!
She absolutely should not be there!
Eleanor also stood up.
She didn't need Margaret to explain what the red light was.
She had seen it in Victoriana.
She had seen it in the explosion crater too.
Both turned their heads simultaneously.
Their gazes met in the dim room.
Margaret's dark green eyes conveyed: See? What did I tell you.
Eleanor's ice-blue eyes held no emotion.
Purely clear.
But Margaret understood that kind of clarity.
It was the look Eleanor got when she pressed all her emotions beneath a layer of ice.
Outside the window, the snow began to cover everything again.
The direction of the Old Town had already returned to darkness, as if nothing had ever happened.
