David didn't hesitate, stepping out of the shadow to Leo's right. The boy's head snapped toward his location in an instant, his tense muscles relaxing visibly once he recognized who it was.
"Greetings, Sir David," he greeted politely. That had always been his way, David mused. Where Ezekiel was both sly and domineering, Leo was polite and almost humble in his day-to-day life. It was hard to believe that both of them shared the same humble origins.
Ezekiel seemed like the spitting image of a noble-born scion, adorned with all the etiquette and prestige of birth, whereas Leo carried himself with a deferential air when interacting with others.
Though David knew all too well that this tame side of Leo didn't extend to every facet of his personality. In battle, the boy was an absolute beast. He had a knack for sniffing out every oh so tiny weakness and exploiting it to the utmost. Almost like a wolf or a bloodhound.
"Do you have business with my brother?" Leo asked when David didn't speak for a while.
David looked at the blond boy for a moment, his thoughts complicated. "You advanced?"
The question was redundant. From the first moment Leo had appeared, David had sensed it. The disturbance in the Mana around him was no longer at the level a True Mage could cause, but that of a newly advanced Grand Mage. One who still had to learn how to control his new power. Likely, his advancement had happened no more than an hour ago.
Leo confirmed it without hesitation. "Just now, yes."
David stared into Leo's amber eyes. "How?"
Leo shook his head slowly. "It's not my secret to share, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't."
David frowned. "The Memory Sealing Ritual? Did your brother make you take it?"
Leo's lips curled slightly at the edges. "...Something a bit more extreme than that."
David's mood sank. He had always been outspoken about his dislike of such restrictions, especially when placed on one's closest circle. The fact that Ezekiel even demanded his own brother undergo such a restriction didn't sit right with him.
"...You seem upset," Leo said.
There it was again, that uncanny ability to sniff out even the slightest fluctuation in mood. David had been certain he had not let anything show, but somehow, the boy had still managed to read his thoughts.
"How curious," Leo said, almost to himself. "It doesn't bother me, the affected party, but it seems to bother you, who has nothing to do with the matter."
David snapped out of his thoughts, focusing fully on the boy in front of him. "It's a matter of principle, I suppose."
Leo tilted his head. "And what principle is that?"
"Trust."
Leo remained silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. And when he finally spoke, his words seemed almost unrelated to the previous topic.
"My brother revealed some things to me. Important things. They included some of his secrets, and also his plans for the future."
David listened carefully. He realized that Leo must have a reason for telling him.
"In the end, he asked me if I was willing to join his cause, for good." Here, Leo paused for a moment, as if reliving it. "You know what I asked him then? I asked him if he would kill me if I didn't agree."
David was shocked. Had the relationship between them always been so hostile?
"He said no," Leo revealed a moment later, allowing David to breathe easy. But that only lasted until Leo's next words. "I was disappointed at that, honestly."
"...Disappointed," David repeated. "About your brother expressing care? Expressing trust?"
Leo shook his head. "Can he afford it? Can he afford to trust me that much? Or anyone, for that matter?"
David wanted to say something, but the words would not come.
"Maximillian," Leo continued, "was my savior. A man of true principle, a man who never failed to stand up for what he believed to be right. To the very end, he remained faithful to those principles. He never failed them even once."
David nodded. That was an accurate description of his late master.
"But the same could not be said about the people who followed him."
"What... do you mean?"
Leo's gaze turned hard. The way he looked at David even seemed to carry a hint of hostility. "Are you going to act as if you don't know? As if you didn't watch it all unfold?"
David's brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"After we fled the empire, the household was in shambles. Our only refuge, the estate in Tradespire, was on the brink of being seized as well. Do you remember, Sir David?"
David remained quiet. He still remembered that time vividly. A time when even he wasn't sure if the household would survive. He couldn't help but sigh at the memory. "We've come a long way since then..."
Leo shook his head. "Not us. Zeke. It was he who carried us through those times. Nobody else."
Before David could utter any protest, Leo continued. "There were no oaths that bound people to the household, no hidden assets, no secret treasures, no shadow army, no backup plans. The entire household was built upon Maximillian's back, built on his strength and character."
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David listened in silence, knowing deep down that what Leo was saying was true.
"You allowed it all to unfold. You and the others," Leo said. "You so-called pillars of the household had nothing better to do than test him over and over again. And for what? How many of them still left in the end? Seventy percent? Eighty?"
Leo shook his head in disgust. "Maximillian was an honorable man, of that there is no doubt. But he failed his household terribly. And worst of all, he failed Zeke."
There was a moment of silence before Leo continued.
"Victor Windtänzer, the man who betrayed Maximillian, was among his best friends, was he not?" Leo asked. However, it was clear that the question was rhetorical. They both knew it was the truth.
"And yet, you expect Zeke to trust blindly?" Leo's voice remained level, despite the bite in his words. "Are you so eager to see the same tragedy repeat itself? Are you going to hold on to those same principles once more after Zeke has also died? Maybe you are going to tell Maya next that she should trust people more?"
David's temper finally flared, and with it the shadows all around the corridor. "Are you accusing me of something, boy?"
Leo didn't back down. "Yes, I am. I'm accusing you of being foolish. Foolish and idealistic."
The standoff grew even more tense when Leo's Mana began to flare in response to David's threatening posture. Though it was no more than a drop in the ocean compared to David, Leo was clearly unafraid of escalating matters. It might have been because he didn't believe that David would actually hurt him, but a deeper part of him sensed that the true reason was something else.
At that moment, a projection appeared between them. It was a stunning woman with snow-white hair and blue eyes. Akasha.
"Stop this at once, or I am going to send someone to break this up."
Just as quickly as she had appeared, her form vanished again. From beginning to end, she had not looked at either of them. However, the threat had worked. The fight drained from David the moment he remembered where he was and who he was facing. He didn't even know why he had become so riled up in the first place.
"Was that all you wanted to say?" he asked calmly.
Leo shook his head. "One more thing." His expression remained just as calm as it had throughout their conversation. "When you see Zeke up there, I want you to look at him closely. Look at him and remember what I told you."
David frowned. Look at him? It hadn't even been a full day since he had last seen his young lord. What could have happened since then? How much change could have occurred in such a short span of time?
However, Leo seemed in no mood to explain anything else. With a nod that was just as polite as at the beginning, he walked past and soon disappeared around the bend at the end of the corridor.
David remained rooted to his spot for a moment longer. Somehow, he had an ominous feeling when he looked at the stairway leading to the highest floor. But waiting would not change anything. And the one thing David couldn't be accused of was being a coward.
He took one last breath to steady his nerves before ascending the stairs. Before he could even knock, the door swung open. David found Zelkara on the other side. Her presence came as no surprise. The Pureblood seemed to live on Zeke's floor these days and was seldom spotted anywhere else.
She nodded at him and stepped to the side. "He is waiting for you in the study."
David nodded and approached the room. This was far from the first time he had been here, and he knew the layout quite well. The study was one of the bigger rooms on the floor. David reached it after only a few steps.
He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, he noticed that his heart was racing strangely. There was no real reason to be nervous, was there? It must have been because of his encounter with young Leo.
"Come in," the words reached him as he still stood frozen in front of the door. As it turned out, his young lord had long since noticed him.
David's hand fell to the doorknob, twisting it lightly. He pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Ezekiel von Hohenheim was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, his back toward the door. At his entry, the boy rose, slowly straightening. Strange, David thought as he noticed that he had to tilt his neck. When had his young lord gotten so tall?
Ezekiel turned slowly. Even in the dim surroundings of his study, those golden eyes seemed to catch the light.
"Did you need something?"
David remained quiet. He hadn't thought much of it at first, but now that he was actually standing in front of him, Leo's words came to mind again. And so, for the first time in a while, he simply looked at his young lord.
Ezekiel had grown tall over these past few years, now towering over him by almost half a head. He couldn't be called a giant, but he had grown tall enough to tower over everyone who wasn't.
His hair had grown to reach his shoulders, and he wore it in a loose knot behind his head, leaving the rest to fall freely. It was a mixture of elegance and leisure, a hairstyle that would not be out of place in any company.
Next, David inspected Ezekiel's face. The lines of it had grown sharper, his cheekbones more pronounced. His nose was so straight it looked like a blade. But the most prominent feature on his face were definitely those eyes. Golden, glowing orbs that seemed to pierce straight into him.
David had once heard a saying that a person's eyes were the truest mirror of their essence. For some reason, those words came to mind the moment he met Ezekiel's gaze. He found himself hoping that they weren't true.
"Say..." David said after a moment of silence. "How old are you now?"
Ezekiel's expression didn't change. There was no flicker of emotion, no surprise at the doubtlessly strange question that had emerged instead of a greeting. He simply answered.
"I am eighteen."
David continued to stare, mulling over the number in his head. Eighteen years old. What had he been doing at that age? That should have been when he was still enrolled at the academy, wasn't it? Wasn't that the year he had begged his father to arrange a marriage with that girl he'd liked? What was her name again? Naira? Nina? He still remembered how cruel it had felt when his father refused, telling him he should stop setting his sights on her because her father was an Archmage.
...Her father was an Archmage.
The words echoed strangely in his mind. That was the same level he was at right now, wasn't it? And yet, Ezekiel stood before him with utter calm. No, it was more than that. There was no awe in his young lord's eyes, not even a hint of reverence. It was as if he didn't even regard David's strength as something worth noting.
David realized it in that moment. An Archmage, a being that had made his own father back down from seeking a marriage arrangement, was nothing in Ezekiel's eyes.
And how could it be?
The boy had faced Archmages before, even killed some of them. How could he feel any awe when he had stood before a Progenitor Beast and made it flinch? For fuck's sake, the boy was on a first-name basis with both the King of the Dead and the Tree of Life.
...He was eighteen years old.
His thoughts stopped at that moment.
Looking at his young lord as if seeing him for the first time, he realized what Leo had meant. Ezekiel was incredible. He possessed a strength and maturity that were simply unbelievable for his age.
But more than pride, David felt a completely different emotion. He felt a deep sense of shame. This time, the reason for that feeling was abundantly clear.
How much hardship had it taken for his young lord to grow this strong?
How badly must everyone have failed him for him to grow up this much?
His throat went dry at the thought. They had all failed him. The guards, the elders, himself, and even Maximillian. When the sky collapsed, there had been nobody to hold it up for this child.
Instead, beneath that weight, he had grown strong enough to carry it himself.
And yet David still dared to preach of principles? Still dared to speak of freedom? It was like a warden preaching to the imprisoned about the unfairness of the bars.
All of a sudden, David began to understand Leo's anger. He recalled what the boy had said to him. What would he actually do if his guidance, his preachings of trust and camaraderie, actually got Ezekiel killed in the end? What would he tell the boy's parents? What would he tell his sister? What would he tell himself?
As he continued to look into his young lord's unusually steady eyes, a new determination began to grow in his chest. He had failed this child enough. He would not fail him again.
His decision to come here had indeed been right. It had not taken more than a single look at him before he knew the path forward.
David's voice was filled with certainty when he spoke his next words.
"I have a favor to ask, Lord Hohenheim."