The Weight of Legacy

Hildegard couldn’t sense Affinities—they had confirmed that a while ago. Even before a certain forester had started to make a habit of telling her to stop assuming no one would be a threat to her, Malwine had been sufficiently paranoid to have Adelheid run a few tests. While the old butler could tell what Adelheid was doing when they were face to face, she’d never notice it when the girl started playing around with shadows in a corner.

Still, Malwine had steered clear of getting too into working on her Mana Source values during the meditation hour of their lessons. Now that was out the window—if she could get away with spending even more time on growing her Control, when she was expected to meditate anyway, she couldn’t exactly talk herself into finding an excuse not to.

She did start actually napping during naptime, though. Despite her best efforts, tiredness continued to catch up to her, and she’d learned the hard way that trying to use [Implacable] to further extend her training time seemed to actively hurt [Riffle In Excelsis]’s progress.

Therefore… When Hildegard said today’s naptime would have to be postponed, she was more than a little bit peeved.

Staring daggers at the woman’s back as she and Franziska walked behind her, Malwine grumbled. Adelheid being Adelheid, she’d just disappeared. Presumably, she’d show up if whatever was going on ended up being interesting.

They followed Hildegard to one of the outer seating areas, though not the exact one where she recalled sitting for Matilda’s party. Their home was somehow small enough that it barely looked like a manor whenever she snuck a glance at it from all the way over at Veit’s hut, yet large enough that it was like there were just… way more places popping up each time she checked.

She was probably just in need of a map—and very much not in the mood to consider alternatives.

Most of the family was already there. Anselm was in a corner, looking ready to leave at the first excuse he got—Adelheid would have been proud. Thekla and Abelard only had eyes for each other, though they did periodically look over the indeterminate patio décor object that Kristian was obscuring by virtue of just lounging there.

Despite Veit’s assurances that Abelard sucked at detecting things, Malwine made sure to stay as far away from him as she could manage. Her mortal classmate followed, looking quite out of place as she and their teacher were the only outsiders in the gathering.

Kristoffer was running up, holding on to Paul’s hand as he dragged the boy behind him. That was curious enough. At 24, Katrina’s third son was finally starting to look like an adult instead of a perpetual teenager. He even had a bigger beard than Kristian now. Of all of Beryl’s siblings to remain in the family home, Kristoffer had become the one Malwine saw the least. According to Hildegard, he’d found something to do in Beuzaheim, but she’d yet to get any more details than that.

She couldn’t exactly blame her uncle—the poor guy probably just saw an out and jumped at the chance to spend less and less time near the family and its near-intrinsic troubles.

Neither Alaric nor Matilda were anywhere to be seen.

Malwine was so unused to seeing this many family members in the same place outside of mealtimes that her eyes narrowed.

Who is up to what now?

It was just objectively suspicious, with everyone looking both tense and suitably confused as to just why they had gathered here—the type of thing that’d happen when someone did something, and a family meeting had to be called.

She squinted at Kristian. It was probably him.

“I must ask something,” Kristian started, nevermind that Bernie was absent. “Have any of you seen your sister?”

“…Which one?” Kristoffer countered.

Thekla looked around and flinched, seeming to realize all save herself were entirely absent. She waved lightly, as if to ensure anyone who might be looking for her noticed she was there.

“Who else isn’t here? Matilda, obviously,” Kristian scoffed. Clearly, whatever ego boost he got from surpassing level 300 had been enough to erode what little sense of decency she’d thought her grandfather had developed over the past years.

Not to mention… Malwine had to suppress a sigh. Even with Hildegard’s intervention, the matter of whether Adelheid was ever around seemed to continue being a background thought for everyone, at most. It’d been the butler herself who’d summed the problem up for them when they’d last talked about it.

If Adelheid wasn’t there, she probably actually was, and if she genuinely was elsewhere, she could probably take care of herself. Wherever she was.

“I thought she was with your wife?” Anselm shot his father a glare. Seeing him use that tone when speaking of Bernie actually caught Malwine off-guard.

Damn. That’s one way to talk about your ex. Who is also your stepmother.

“She was,” the voice of the woman in question came from behind where Malwine stood. “I haven’t the faintest clue where she has gone, however—and it should be impossible for her to be outside of the estate. I can sense that much.”

Malwine found she couldn’t focus on the implication there, or even on the fact that they’d somehow managed to lose track of Matilda now.

Because in Bernie’s arms was a bundle that looked suspiciously like a baby.

Benedikt! Finally! Malwine almost cheered before her brain caught up to her. Wait. Shouldn’t Benedikt be like, four now? I don’t think I was that small when I was four in this life.

Adelheid clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead, though. Standing between Malwine and Franziska as if she’d always been there, her little sister pointed at Bernie. “Is that Benedikt? Are you finally going to stop hiding Benedikt?”

In a reaction wholly uncharacteristic for him—and probably for any high level—Kristian’s eyes widened and he fell backwards, leaving the object he’d been using as a seat to teeter in place for a moment before stabilizing. It turned out to have been a planter.

“No, my girl,” the mother who barely paid any attention to her told Adelheid. “This is your new sister, Gertraud. She is finally ready to start adapting to being outside her room.”

Again, the detail of ‘adapting to being outside’ somehow being a thing got glossed over as Malwine’s turn to be baffled arrived.

“New sister?” Adelheid eyed the bundle suspiciously.

Almost immediately, a head poked out from within the blankets. Gertraud’s eyes were the same pale green-blue of her mother and sister, though she seemed to have darker hair. Not quite as pitch black as Bernie’s, but close enough for the difference to be negligible.

Damn. Why’d she have to be… cute? Malwine scrunched her nose up. She’d never been one to be particularly fond of little kids, in either life. But, apparently, she wasn’t immune to being distracted from her frustrations by how Gertraud was curiously watching them all.

It was strangely adorable.

Kristian had managed to get back up and dust himself off—Malwine somehow suspected her grandfather intended to pretend the past minute never happened. “Your new sister, yes. We decided the time was right for all of you to meet her.”

From a cursory glance around the room, Malwine could tell reactions were… mixed. Anselm appeared to be short-circuiting, while the rest of the siblings exchanged visibly nervous glances.

It was ultimately Kristoffer of all people—not any of the younger children—who couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Another one?”

“If we can meet Gertraud,” Adelheid voiced the name out, as if it were unfamiliar to her—maybe it was—clearly unwilling to drop the matter entirely, “why haven’t we met Benedikt yet?”

“She may seem little still, but Gertraud was particularly eager to meet you all,” was Bernie’s unconvincing non-answer, all the while the infant in question silently eyed her mother.

“I thought you were going to stop at ten!” Kristoffer blurted out. From the looks he got, that might have been a personal assumption, not something Kristian and Bernie had stated. Probably.

His comment got Malwine nodding along, though. Damn, he’s right. They’re eleven now. I need to update the tree. Ever the best at focusing on the right priorities, she turned to her guardian. “Bernie, what was Gertraud’s birthmonth?”

Bernie seemed to latch on to the question like a lifeline, as it was basically the first response to her announcement that seemed neither negative nor judgmental. “The Cold. Why?”

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“Because I like knowing everyone’s birthmonths!” Malwine repeated her eternal excuse. “And on which year was she born?”

“5804.”

Malwine pouted. She hadn’t even noticed Bernie had been pregnant this time around. Granted, she’d been spending so much time split between Hildegard’s lessons, whatever passed for ‘playtime’ with Adelheid, and chasing down Veit, that she hadn’t been interacting with her guardian much at all.

Kristoffer shouted something else, but Malwine paid it no mind as she went to update her family tree panel. She didn’t even disagree with the assessment that eleven kids was a bit much—and that was coming from someone who, as the widow, would have considered couples with 15-plus kids to be excellent sources of information.