Chapter – 40
It was fortunate there was no gavel in the courtroom.
Elena looked as though it would not have been strange for her to strike Viretta down in righteous fury. Her expression was terrifyingly cold.
But Viretta, long accustomed to such frigid stares, did not shrink back.
She pressed her attack without hesitation.
“It’s simple. Contrary to your expectations, your daughter cannot become an outstanding mage.”
“What did you say?!”
“She opens with a strike! Blue corner, Ms. Viretta! Red corner, Lady Elena, about to explode! It’s hard to stay calm when it’s about your child!”
Viretta waited for the announcer to finish his commentary before turning to face Elena, who stood beside her.
“I’ll be clear. Lucy cannot become an outstanding mage. It will be difficult for her to become a mage at all.”
“Watch your tongue. What do you know about my daughter?”
“Oh! A clean hit! Blue corner Viretta Medledge scores the first point!”
Elena’s murderous glare—sharp enough to tear Viretta apart—miraculously softened. Her anger now had two targets: Viretta and the announcer.
The announcer endured the killing intent of a battle mage while still clutching his wooden funnel. His professionalism moved the hearts of the spectators.
“She can’t.”
“She can! Lucy will become a great mage. I’ll raise her to be one!”
“And why do you think that?”
“What do you mean why? You wouldn’t understand—you don’t have children. A mother believing in her child is only natural.”
“That’s not belief. That’s desire. Lucy is three years old. She hasn’t shown anything yet.”
Viretta’s tone toward Elena was cold beyond measure.
To a stranger, her face might appear expressionless. But to those who knew her, it was astonishingly frigid.
Elena, in contrast, was visibly flushed with anger.
An insult to one’s child cuts deeper than an insult to oneself. Being forced to listen to her daughter being disparaged before her eyes, Elena glared at Viretta as though she were an enemy.
She barely remembered that this was a courtroom and forced herself to moderate her tone.
“Fine. We don’t know yet. But I believe in my daughter and will do my best. Not just Lucy—my second child, my third—if they are my children, I will believe in them unconditionally and devote myself to making them exceptional mages.”
“And if they can’t?”
Viretta cut her long speech short with a single question.
“What if she can’t even become a mage, let alone an outstanding one?”
“I believe in my daughter.”
Elena gripped Lucy’s small hand tightly as the child clung to her leg with a soft whimper.
Viretta continued relentlessly.
“That’s not belief. If she can’t?”
“Lucy can do anything. Even if she doesn’t become a mage, there will be something she’s good at. Managing spellbooks, perhaps—”
“What if she can’t?”
“Why do you keep saying that? Are you saying my daughter is inadequate?”
“If she is?”
Elena no longer ground her teeth. She stared at Viretta coldly, refusing to be dragged along by her relentless questioning.
Her eyes were blade-sharp, as though to say, Let’s see how far you’ll go.
“What if she resembles you physically—a perfectly ordinary woman—but inherits the count’s timid personality and dislike of fighting?”
The count swallowed unconsciously at the chilling atmosphere.
Even the chatterbox announcer fell silent.
Viretta did not stop. She accelerated.
“What if she grows up to be nothing more than a somewhat pretty, quiet lady?”
Such ladies filled the salons of high society—front and back, left and right.
Daughters raised carefully in wealthy households, nine times out of ten, became ordinary ladies.
“What if she has no remarkable talents, marries a decent man who earns well, and lives as a noblewoman raising children?”
Of those, perhaps seven would marry a man capable of providing comfortably and live ordinary lives.
“What if she avoids marriage and children altogether, misses her chance, and ends up living alone in some remote house on the inheritance you leave her?”
By now, Elena trembled with fury but said nothing.
She was intelligent enough to understand the outline of what Viretta was implying.
“Do you realize that the future I’m describing is far more likely than her becoming an outstanding mage?”
Viretta did not consider society ladies to be useless or inferior.
They were simply ordinary women from comfortable families.
Just as boys from wealthy houses might dream of becoming valiant knights in childhood, only to grow into ordinary gentlemen.
Not exceptional—but not inadequate either.
“There are brilliant people and extraordinary people in this world. But most are simply ordinary. To achieve something remarkable—that’s what’s rare. Truly precious.”
Viretta Medledge knew well what it meant not to be extraordinary. In the radiant kingdom of merchants, she had always been among the unremarkable.
“My grandfather, Kalin Medledge, was the fourth of seven siblings. The others achieved not even a quarter of what he did.”
A genius of investment and trade who built the Medledge Merchant Company with his bare hands.
“My father, Cadellan Medledge, was the second of five siblings. The rest ruined businesses several times over.”
A genius of politics and manipulation who rooted the company deep into the nation’s economy.
“My siblings number four. Aside from my third sibling, Dylan Medledge—who barely earned a passing mark—the rest were told firmly they would never inherit the company.”
Her younger brother was greed incarnate, a born merchant.
“All Medledge children receive lavish investment, as we never know what talents they may possess. But only one in ten turns out to be worth it.”
Viretta was among those who were not “worth it.”
She had learned trade, accounting, magic, appraisal, scholarship, martial arts—and mastered them all—but not to the level her father desired.
To be fair, Cadellan Medledge loved his children.
He spent lavishly on his extravagant eldest, eccentric second, and lazy fourth. He intended to provide for them in old age. He scolded Viretta and sighed because of her—yet still selected the finest husband candidate for her.
She never doubted that her father loved her.
“You assume your child will ‘naturally’ achieve greatness. Do you know how much of a burden that is?”
Yet he had been disappointed.
Born as Kalin’s granddaughter and his daughter, Viretta had been saddled with expectations she never asked for—and found wanting.
“If failure comes from oneself, it must be endured. But failure imposed by others is cruel.”
From Viretta’s perspective, nothing was more unfair.
She had never wanted to become a brilliant merchant—yet she had to endure pitying glances for failing to do so.
And was she alone?
Iola was a lawyer, a proud student of the Royal Academy of Mathematics, a swordsman capable of leading a hundred soldiers, and a mage of considerable skill.
Yet he carried guilt for not fulfilling his parents’ wish that he become a distinguished mercenary.
His engagement to her had been born entirely from a desire to repay his parents.
“Defying a parent’s expectations is painful for a child. Yet you refuse to acknowledge, to the very end, the possibility that your child may simply be ordinary.”
Though her words were cold, the message was not entirely bleak.
Someone as great as herself could crush hollow expectations and move on with a song. She was destined for superstardom.
But other children in similar positions might not be so fortunate. Viretta worried for Lucy.
“Until now, these trials have centered on the parents. But that must change! This is about Lucy’s custody. We must think from her perspective!”
Saving a pitiful child in peril—that was the role of a hero.
And before Viretta now stood a child who seemed destined for misfortune.
As a woman who dreamed of being a hero, she could not step back. Money and land were at stake—but even if they were not, she would have stepped into this fight.
“For Lucy to be happy, under whose care should she grow up? Obviously under the count! If she grows up under you, Elena, she’ll feel guilty for being ordinary!”
At last, Viretta turned from Elena to the judge.
The spectators, who had been holding their breath through the fierce exchange, began whispering their own thoughts.
“Hmm… Hm…”
The judge absorbed Viretta’s argument—centered on Lucy—with visible surprise, yet slow comprehension.
“I see… There is merit in that. This is not merely a divorce trial. A child is involved.”
The judge nodded and lifted his gavel.
In that moment—
Viretta changed the paradigm of custody trials in Philion.
