“Lilia is… yes, she isn’t my child. She isn’t. I admit I slept with Chiara once. Just once. Then she told me she was pregnant, said it was mine, and I had no choice—yes, no choice but to raise her. But Chiara was bringing other men into the house, and there’s a high chance Lilia isn’t mine. So—!”
“Knight Leon, you should stop telling such obvious lies. It will only damage your position in this ruling.”
Asti’s voice cut through Leon’s frantic babble—quiet, flat, and sharp. Leon visibly choked on his words, as if he’d been pressed down by the weight of it.
Everyone in the room already knew Leon was lying. Only Leon was still flailing, desperate and ugly.
“I can prove that Lilia is your child,” Asti continued. “I’m here today as an adjudicator, but I was also one of the investigators assigned to Lilia’s case.”
Lilia’s investigator? Investigating what? I looked at Asti without meaning to, but he shot me a look that said, Don’t interrupt.
“Lilia’s mother, Chiara, is unmarried. That makes Lilia a provisional child born outside marriage—because her father is officially unknown. And because the state must determine whether such a child was conceived through adultery, I was tasked with the investigation.”
Leon’s face twisted. He looked like a man who couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and yet—some part of him seemed to accept that he had nowhere left to run.
“Children born outside marriage are reviewed every year to confirm eligibility for state support,” Asti said. “This is to prevent fraudulent claims. The formal examination is conducted when the child turns three. A newborn’s magic circuits are unstable, but by around age three they stabilize.
“First, we confirm the mother’s history. If she has been married before, the process is usually simple. If she is unmarried, we examine the child’s magic circuit and compare it to a likely father candidate’s circuit. If they match, the case is closed. If they don’t, investigation continues.”
Asti explained the system with calm precision.
If a mother has a marriage record, the father is often identifiable through the former husband, and the child’s origin can be confirmed quickly.
The difficult cases are those where the mother was never married.
A woman becomes an unmarried mother for countless reasons—she leaves, she’s abandoned, she chooses to give birth alone. But in those cases, the father may be impossible to name.
So the investigators cross-check magic-circuit records gathered during employment registration or medical treatment, and they hunt for matches little by little.
He said they managed to identify the origins of ninety-nine percent of children that way.
The remaining one percent were cases where the father had never gone through employment or medical care, or where the father was already dead, making verification impossible.
The extent of it made me uneasy. The country was thorough to a frightening degree.
“A quarter of a child’s magic circuit is inherited directly from each parent,” Asti added. “So if you subtract the mother’s pattern, the father’s imprint appears naturally.”
I understood.
Mother and child were typically registered at birth. That part, at least, made sense.
Asti laid documents on the table.
“This is Lilia’s magic-circuit chart. This is Chiara’s. If we subtract Chiara’s from Lilia’s, what remains is this.”
The quarter-pattern that surfaced was one I’d seen before.
Leon was a knight. He was injured often enough that he visited physicians regularly.
I’d seen that same pattern then—again and again.
Some part of me had wished, stupidly, that it would be different.
That Chiara would be cruel. That there would be some twist, some lie, something I could cling to.
But there wasn’t.
Lilia was Leon’s child.
The truth hit like a blade I couldn’t dodge, and I bit down hard on my lip.
Leon squeezed his eyes shut. His hands gripped his knees so tightly his knuckles went pale.
“Leon. Admit it.”
Captain Zain’s voice dropped low and heavy.
Leon’s shoulders jerked as if struck. His face went white. At last—like a man whose strength had finally drained away—he exhaled.
“Lilia is… my child,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry. Even though I had you, Sheila… I cheated. I had a child. I lived with them as three, saying it was an expedition…”
The room’s tension loosened just enough for me to take a proper breath again.
“But—but I never thought about divorcing you!”
He’d said it before. Even when confronted, he hadn’t planned to let me go.
So what, exactly, had he planned? To keep pretending? To keep moving between two lives and call it normal?
“Then what were you going to do about Lilia’s education?” I asked. “She would be treated as a child born of adultery. The cost would be outrageous.”
“T-that… I’d borrow it from you—”
For a moment, I genuinely couldn’t process what I’d heard.
Borrow from me.
Money I earned. Money I worked for. To pay for the education of his mistress’s child.
…Was he always this stupid?
Was he always this indifferent to my feelings?
While I stared at him, stunned, I heard something like a snap beside me.
Ameri stood up so fast her chair scraped. Her face was blazing red.
“I’ve been listening to you this whole time—what the hell is wrong with you? Are you out of your mind? Is your brain full of worms?
Why would Sheila ever have to pay for the education of your child that you made on your own? If it was for Sheila’s child, that would be one thing, but why should she spend the money she earned for a traitor like you?! Sheila is not your tool!”
“Ameri…”
Karl tried to pull her back down, telling her not to strain herself, but she shook him off.
I hurried to calm her too—her baby was more important than this.
But Ameri’s voice kept shaking the room.
“She’s been betrayed for over three years! You knew she wanted a child! She begged you to stop going on expeditions! And you ignored her while you played house somewhere else and wasted her time!
Sheila isn’t your convenient little helper! Give her back the years you stole!”
Her anger—hot and relentless—made my chest ache in a different way.
It was painful, but also… warm.
Because someone was furious on my behalf.
“Ameri… thank you,” I said softly. “It’s okay. That’s enough.”
“But, Sheila—”
I shook my head quickly.
I knew what she was about to say, and I couldn’t let it be spoken. Ameri realized it too, and bit down hard on her lip.
Tears overflowed anyway—rage and grief spilling out of her, helpless and honest.
That was enough.
I turned back to Leon.
“Leon. Divorce me.”
“Sheila! I—”
“Lilia needs a father, doesn’t she? She called you ‘Papa.’ She looked so happy clinging to you.” My voice stayed steady. “I won’t take you away from her. I don’t love you enough anymore to do that.”
Leon looked like he’d been shoved into a void.
His face crumpled, eyes trembling as if he might beg.
I didn’t want him back.
Not at the cost of a child’s smile.
Not at the cost of tearing apart what he’d already built.
I looked to Asti.
“Adjudicator—if Leon divorces me and becomes Lilia’s legal father properly, she won’t be treated as an illegitimate child, correct?”
“Sheila!” Leon shouted, desperate.
I didn’t look at him.
“If Leon and Chiara remarry and apply for legitimate-child recognition,” Asti answered evenly, “then Lilia will receive official certification. With that, her education will be fully supported by the state.”
I nodded once, then fixed my gaze on Leon.
“Leon. Divorce me. For Lilia’s future.”
Leon stared at me like a drowning man, eyes wet, reaching for something that was already gone.
