I'm a Immortal Tavernkeeper, But My S-Rank Daughter Doesn't Know That!

"I didn’t love you, Victor. Not in the romantic sense, you might have thought. I wanted something more... pragmatic. I wanted a child of my own."

Victor didn’t seem surprised. "A child?" He asked.

"Yes. I wanted the blood of a hero, someone with his abilities, combined with my magical talent. I imagined that together we could create an incredibly powerful individual, someone who could change the world. That’s why I’ve always pursued you, always tried to get close to you romantically, despite all your rejections, and I’ve continued with that desire."

He felt a weight in his chest as he heard these words. A part of him had always known, but hearing the naked truth was different. "I knew it, Luísa. That’s why I never accepted your advances. Because I already had someone else in mind, someone I truly loved."

She lowered her eyes, the shame clear on her face. "Aluella. I knew about her. And I feel terrible to this day that I tried to steal you away from her." Victor sighed.

Victor sighed. "In the end, I don’t think that even if we had stayed together, even without love, I would have gotten what I wanted."

Luísa frowned. It was the first time Victor had said something like that to her.

"Did you want something? I always thought you were more of a free person."

"And I always tried to be. I didn’t want to take on too much responsibility. But I was getting older and life was going faster and faster. I thought I needed a way to slow things down."

The magenta-eyed mage crossed her arms. "Don’t tell me that having a family started to seem like a good idea, even in this hostile world."

Victor nodded. "Aluella and I had been together for a few months, and we were sure we’d be together forever. One complemented the other. Then we started trying to get pregnant. We tried for about a year and didn’t succeed."

Luísa put her hand to her mouth in shock. "Does that mean that while you were trying to have a child with Aluella, I was trying to steal it from her? Shit, I didn’t know that."

"Nobody outside our group knew. I believed that if our enemies knew that we were so close, it could put the others in danger... Anyway, Aluella started to feel guilty and pressured, so after this whole year of trying, we decided to visit a friend of ours: Karla Astorio."

"A heroine and a saint. In fact, there was no one better for you to consult." Luísa agreed and sat back in the chair.

"Karla investigated Aluella and revealed what we didn’t want to hear. The problem wasn’t that Aluella couldn’t get pregnant. It was me. Because I use black magic, my body changes quickly and imperceptibly in many ways. In other words, because of my weakness, I could never have a child. That’s why I suddenly left and disappeared from the map."

"Wow, Victor, I had no idea you went through that. I mean, I thought it had something to do with Aluella, since she only stayed in Klento for a short time after you left."

"I got away from it all. I got as far away as I could. Ironically, in Serenity, fate gave me the opportunity to be a father. It gave me Wanda. At first I thought it was some kind of joke the gods were playing on me, so I tried not to get attached to her, but it was impossible."

"So why did you decide to stay in Serenity?" Luísa asked. "There were several better and safer places to raise her than on the edge of the Dark Continent."

"At first it was to keep Wanda safe, away from my battles and my enemies, because I could protect her from the monsters of the Dark Continent. But it turned out to be more than that. It brought a peace I didn’t know I needed. Soon, I began to see Serenity not as an exile, but as a home."

Victor’s eyes shone with a mixture of longing and pain.

"But no matter how much I wanted to escape, my past always found a way to catch up with me, and she became a hunter to help people."

Luísa observed Victor. "Is that why you left Serenity?"

"Yes, Wanda was missing, and I had to find her. I followed leads and found her in Kozáni, then came here to talk to Mari about my curse."

A silence fell between them, filled with unspoken feelings and painful memories. Luísa broke the silence, her voice soft, almost a whisper. "And Aluella? Have you seen her again?"

Victor shook his head negatively. "After we discovered that I was the problem, Aluella encouraged me to stay together, but I couldn’t deprive her of her great dream of becoming a mother."

Luísa looked down, her heart heavy with the revelations. "I’m sorry, Victor. If I had known... maybe things could have been different. I could have offered you a place to stay instead of leaving."

"There’s no point in thinking about what might have been," Victor said, his voice firm. "What matters is what we do now."

They fell silent again, the tension between them gradually easing.

"We’ve all made hard choices." Victor said. "But now we have a chance to do something right, so I think it’s best if we just stay friends."

Luísa smiled, but her smile was tinged with a resigned sadness. The flame of ambition that always burned in her magenta eyes seemed softer now, almost extinguished. She leaned forward, her fingers playing absentmindedly with the embroidery on the chair she was sitting in.

"I agree, Victor. Just friends. Even if I wanted to have a child now, I’d have to give up all the power I’ve cultivated over the last few years."

Victor raised an eyebrow in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Luísa sighed, straightening up in the chair and holding up the blindfold that had been over her eyes. "My magic, Victor. All the power I possess today, the ability to see without really seeing, comes from a vow of chastity. I gave up romantic love, the possibility of a family, to achieve this magical potential."

Victor frowned as he absorbed this new information. "So you sacrificed your personal life for power."

"Yes," she replied, her tone heavy with regret. "When I chose this path, I thought I was making the right choice. You were gone, and I didn’t want to have a child with a nobleman to gain a title or with a good knight to have good offspring. It had to be you. I believed that the power I could gain would be more important than anything else. But now that I look back, I wonder if I made the right choice. I don’t age as fast as the others. There will come a time when everyone I know will be dead and I will still be here, with no children, no family, and only power."

Silence fell over them again, heavy with the confessions and revelations they had shared.

Victor looked at Luísa, seeing not only the powerful magician she had become, but also the woman who had sacrificed so much for that power.

"You will not be alone, Luísa."

"How can I not?"

"I can’t promise to be here, because I will probably die soon, but Wanda will be. I’ll ask her personally to come and visit you. She’s an elf, she’s still practically a child and she’ll live much longer than you."

Luísa’s eyes widened and tears almost came again, but this time she could hold them back. However, she had a sadder look on her face than Victor had expected.

"What is it, Luísa? Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it’s not that. I’m honored to have someone I know in the future, but there’s something else you need to know, Victor," she said with a transparent tone of concern.

Victor, still sitting, leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Luísa. He felt a knot forming in his stomach, anticipating another revelation.

"What is it, Luísa?"

She slowly turned to face him, her expression grave. "There is a prophecy, something I discovered some time ago in the ancient texts of the Grimoire of Vôllendar. He is a prophet wizard who wrote long ago of the coming of heroes from another world, summoned and sponsored by the gods, who would save our world from the demons."

"I know about the Grimoire, but most of it was lost."

"Yes, but they found more volumes in old dungeons and so more pages."

"And there’s another prophecy?"

"Yes, and this one is about you and your destiny."

Victor frowned, confused. "Prophecy? What kind of prophecy?"

Luísa hesitated for a moment before continuing. She seemed to choose her words carefully, as if each one carried an immense weight.

"Victor, the prophecy says that after the heroes defeat the demons, there will be few of them left, and those who survive will be given divine tasks." She paused and took a deep breath before continuing. "One of these heroes will be responsible for adopting an elf child, a girl. This girl will be responsible for leading the elves through the next millennium, the new queen of the elves. So if there is no other hero who has adopted an elf..."

"I know. That means Wanda is..."

"Yes, this prophecy is probably about her."