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Chapter 877: The Long-Forgotten Hometown

“He changed his name?” Roland frowned. “What happened?”

“Probably found it easier to merge with another family than manage his own domain alone.” William looked mildly surprised that Roland was paying any attention to a minor noble. “Keeping up a respectable life costs more than most people expect. If you lack the knack for running an estate, your domain becomes a liability rather than an asset.”

“Could he have been forced? Someone pressuring him to give up his land?”

The Earl considered this carefully. “Not… very likely. I’ve seen the man at a few banquets — never spoke to him at length, but that Gilen who changed his name seemed content with the Somis. No sign of coercion that I could see. If you want more specifics, I can send for Viscount Dott Somi—”

“That’s fine.” Roland cut him off, relaying Nightingale’s whispered instructions. “I was just curious. It doesn’t matter. Though — the Gilen doesn’t appear to be here tonight?”

He had assumed Nightingale would have recognized her brother Hyde if he’d been among the guests.

The old lord pressed a hand to his chest in apology. “My fault, I’m afraid. I follow tradition with the invitations.”

Roland understood at once. Even though the Gilen had changed his surname and attached himself to the Somis, the old invitation list had never been updated to include him. Silver City’s booming mining trade had made it something like the City of Glow in texture and pace, but people here measured a man’s worth in wealth and operational power, not in titles and old reputations. The Earl’s answer, in its own oblique way, confirmed how thoroughly the Gilen name had faded from people’s memories.

Roland knew that Hyde had inherited his father’s viscountcy after Nightingale left Silver City. To see him reduced to this — attached to another house, not important enough to warrant an invitation — was its own kind of bleak.

He returned to camp. As soon as he drew the tent curtains, Nightingale materialized from the Mist and spoke first, her tone slightly too careful to be casual.

“Your Majesty — I should make clear that I have no interest in prying into Hyde’s affairs. When I left Silver City, I severed all connection with the Gilens. Please trust me.” A brief pause. “I was just… a little surprised, that’s all.”

Roland suppressed the urge to needle her. He had learned, over time, that Nightingale’s obstinacy was a force of nature — and that poking it served no one. He cleared his throat instead and nodded with deliberate gravity. “I know. You never lie to me about things like this.”

“You don’t believe me.” She caught it immediately, her ability reading the mocking undercurrent in his voice. “No — you don’t believe me at all.”

He took a breath, cleared his face of everything, and looked her directly in the eyes. “I believe you.”

This time, the sincerity landed. A flush crept into her cheeks. She turned away. “I was just surprised,” she said, quieter. “I have nothing to do with the person who betrayed me.”

Roland could have said it was natural to feel something for a brother, regardless of what he had done. He decided not to. Instead: “Why surprised?”

“The Somis had a good relationship with my father.” Nightingale’s voice went lower still. “After he died, they visited often — came to the old Gilen mansion to see me. But when my family found out I was a witch, old Gilen forbade any contact. I didn’t expect Viscount Somi would be the one to take Hyde in.”

Roland had lived in this world long enough to read the implication plainly. When two houses had been close, the natural thing for the stronger to do was help the heir of the diminished house rebuild — a noble gesture, warmly spoken of, sometimes sealed with a marriage. What you did not do was invite the heir to abandon his name entirely.

Changing surnames meant the end of the Gilen bloodline. The end of the viscountcy. The title would dissolve.

Since Roland was already abolishing feudal rights, the noble status itself was no longer what mattered. But from a traditional noble’s perspective, asking an heir to relinquish his family name was a far worse injury than stealing his property outright. It was not something a family bound by genuine friendship would do.

“If something seems wrong to you, look into it,” Roland said. He settled at the desk and unrolled the latest parchment — the population registers and financial summaries for the district, his standard first task in any new city. “Sylvie and the God’s Punishment Witches are here. I’ll be safe inside the camp. You don’t need to stay close.”

Nightingale hesitated. “But… the Gilens’ business is nothing to do with me.”

“It was your father’s domain. You’re more involved than you admit.” He set the parchment down briefly. “Besides — the house you grew up in is in that territory. The Church isn’t hunting you anymore. Go. See it.” He didn’t add: all of that land belongs to the kingdom now. He left that thought unspoken.

Something in the phrase the old mansion where she grew up seemed to reach her. After a long silence, she nodded. “All right. But you have to promise to signal me before you leave the camp. I won’t be long. I’m not going to do anything.”

“Agreed.”

He watched her step back into the Mist. There was something almost strange about it — this feeling that he was pushing her back toward a place she had spent years fleeing. But he believed the old damage of her family could only be faced, not avoided. Avoidance solved nothing.

If he was honest, Nightingale was still, in some ways, a little too young to have learned that yet.

She left at dawn, moving east along the main street of Silver City.

She remembered it as a grand mansion. A farmland ran close to the two-story building, wide enough to lose yourself in. A brook descended from the deep forests and wrapped around the fields — she had hunted crabs there in summer. To the east lay a ravine, deep and cool, where her family had believed a gem mine was hidden. They had promised her the largest stone from it as her dowry.

Not until she left Silver City with the Witch Cooperation Association had Nightingale understood how small the Gilen domain really was. By any objective measure, it was a knight’s holding at best — no larger than what a minor retainer might expect. A single brook for water, which meant the farmland could never truly expand. The gem mine was almost certainly a family legend, and even if it weren’t, they’d never have had the capital to develop it.

The place had not changed much. The farmland looked a little smaller, perhaps, or that was just her eyes grown used to other landscapes. But the familiarity of it returned with a physical suddenness, layering something warm and faintly painful over what she saw.

Somewhere in this walk, Nightingale found herself understanding what Wendy had once meant: erasing the nightmares of the old days doesn’t mean abandoning the past.

When she drew near the mansion, she stopped.

She had expected to find it empty. Perhaps crumbling. Instead it stood not only intact but enlarged — the original structure extended and refurbished, the whole property clearly maintained by someone with money and purpose. Through the yard gate, she could see a crowd of people: poorly dressed, some of them ragged enough to pass for beggars. Servants moved among them, passing out porridge. The crowd offered thanks in small, grateful gestures.

Relief distribution, then.

At the far end of the yard, near the mansion entrance, a man stood watching the scene with a composed, beneficent smile. His clothing and bearing were unmistakably aristocratic — every detail of posture and dress signaling a well-bred gentleman at ease with his own authority.

As Nightingale had half-known she would, she recognized him.

Hyde Gilen.

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