Reincarnated in the Royal Family with a Plunder System-Chapter 53: The spicy meeting between Old Friends

The air between them was thin and sharp, as if the room itself had turned against them. Eleanor stood facing Lysandra, her posture languid but her soft blue eyes stripped of all warmth, like winter skies over frozen graves. To Ryan, watching from the side, the woman before him seemed a stranger wearing his aunt’s familiar face. A shiver crawled up his spine. Eleanor had always been mischievous, playful even—but this Eleanor? She was a blade sheathed in silk.

"Long time no chat, Lysandra," Eleanor said, voice lilting with an old, mocking melody.

Across the table, Lysandra dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, a movement too precise to be casual. Her fingers curled the cloth like a noose tightening around a throat. Her painted lips quivered, though her voice stayed steady. "Long time no chat, Elle."

Eleanor’s fingers, pale and slender, lifted lazily to inspect her manicured nails. A smirk tugged at her mouth. "Don’t call me that name," she said lightly, almost bored. "Remember, I’m not your little assistant anymore. I’ve graduated from fetching your coffee, wouldn’t you say?"

A muscle twitched at the corner of Lysandra’s jaw. Her eyes, usually a cool purple, hardened into shards of granite. She straightened her spine, the queen regaining her throne. "Eleanor. Why have you come back into my life?" she asked, her voice low, almost a growl. "What do you want?"

Eleanor tilted her head, almost sweetly, her earrings catching the light as she moved. "Your life?" she echoed, a chuckle slipping past her lips like a knife slipping between ribs. "Don’t flatter yourself, Lysandra. I don’t recall ever making your life my focus."

Lysandra’s hand slammed against the polished wood of the table, rattling the cutlery. Ryan flinched.

"Ryan is my son!" Lysandra snapped, voice trembling with barely checked fury. "My flesh and blood! Your reckless actions nearly got him killed! What is this if not you messing with my life?"

The accusation hung in the air like a guillotine.

"Ryan’s life is not your life. He is not you." Eleanor’s smile thinned into something feral. "And he would have been killed?" she repeated, dragging the word out like a song.

She flicked a smiling glance at Ryan, then Sera. "With me around, he was safer than he ever was at home. But," she leaned closer, voice dipping into a conspiratorial whisper, "we all know who would’ve really put him six feet under... if things had gone differently in the long gone past."

Lysandra paled. Her hands, once so poised, now clenched into trembling fists in her lap.

Ryan, desperate to defuse the explosion he saw brewing, raised a hand. "Come on, Aunt. Don’t drag up ancient history. Mom made one mistake when she was basically a baby herself. I’ve forgiven her, so let’s not—"

Before he could finish, Eleanor seized his cheek between her fingers and pinched hard enough to make him wince.

"Cheeky brat," she teased, though her tone carried an edge. "Be careful who you side with, darling. If you keep cozying up to your mother, you might find your poor auntie doesn’t think you’re so cute anymore."

Ryan’s cheeks burned red. The attention, playful or not, was far too much with everyone watching. He wished he could shrink into the floor.

Across the room, another tension flared like lightning.

Silver eyes—sharp, unblinking—met Eleanor’s cold blue ones. Without hesitation, Seraphina lunged forward and clamped a hand around Eleanor’s wrist.

"Aren’t you a little old to be trying to seduce my brother, you bitch?" Sera hissed, her voice low and dangerous.

For a moment, the room froze.

Then, almost lazily, a vein throbbed on Eleanor’s forehead. With a flick of her wrist, there was a crackle—something like static in the air—and Sera stumbled back, gasping, her hand falling limp at her side.

"Who are you to stop me from caressing him? Did he refuse me? No? Then shut up." Eleanor ruffled Ryan’s hair. "Some dogs bark, some bite. Some just whimper. Ryan, your sister is clearly the less obedient type. Yet, there is no bite force in those cute little fangs of hers. At most, she is funny. Won’t you say she is funny?"

Sera’s chest heaved.

Ryan’s expression darkened, his boyish embarrassment vanishing like mist. Without a word, he moved to support Sera, a protective hand at her back. He didn’t even spare Eleanor a glance.

Their bond hummed, invisible but tangible.

’You alright?’ he sent mentally.

’Yeah, Ry,’ Sera replied, pain sparking through the link. ’This bitch is venomous. I don’t even know what she just did.’

’It’s just Aunt’s slightly overblown pride. Nothing more,’ Ryan soothed, though unease gnawed at his gut.

Eleanor, observing the silent exchange, only lifted an eyebrow, her smile calm and inscrutable. Across from her, Lysandra allowed a small, secret smile to bloom. No matter what else had gone wrong, her children’s loyalty to each other was unshakeable. That, at least, was hers.

Meanwhile, Ryan had had enough.

He stepped between the three women, holding his hands up like a weary peacekeeper. "Alright, listen up," he said, voice louder than before. "Aunt. Mom. You wanna rip each other apart, fine. But can you leave me out of it?"

Lysandra’s sharp gaze locked onto him. "Ryan," she said, her voice brooking no argument. "Sit down. Listen to your mother. Don’t waste time trying to defend an outsider."

Ryan’s mouth twisted. "Mom... she had my best interests at heart—"

"Best interests?!" Lysandra’s voice cracked like a whip. She slammed her palm onto the table again, louder this time. The silverware jumped.

"Throwing an unawakened, fragile boy into a Giant-infested forest? That’s what you call ’best interests’? What was the plan, Eleanor?" she snarled. "Toughen him up by shattering his bones? Teach him resilience by drowning him in trauma?"

Her voice shook with emotion, raw and sharp.

Ryan’s heart thudded. He opened his mouth to defend Eleanor—but froze.

Because suddenly he realized something.

Lysandra was speaking as if Ryan had stayed that fragile, helpless boy... but he wasn’t. Not anymore.

He had new skills. A class. Power humming beneath his skin, quiet and lethal. How had she not noticed? After everything that had happened—how Sera had tracked him without fail, how he’d survived against impossible odds—it should’ve raised alarms.

Yet Lysandra’s fierce maternal worry blinded her.

Her underestimation of her son made her a bit tunnel visioned.

Weird, Ryan thought. Really weird. Mom is a bit too smart to miss it without anyone making the truth blurry.

He glanced toward Sera, who was now steady on her feet, glaring daggers at Eleanor.

She covered for me, not revealing anything to mom.

Ah, my love.

Now, he was a lot more calm.

With Sera on his back, what can’t he do?

Ryan leaned back in his chair, the heavy tension wrapping around him like chains. He crossed his arms, watching the two intense women in front of him with an unreadable gaze. They weren’t fighting about him—not really. He could see it now, so clearly it almost made him laugh.

They were using him as a stand-in. A mirror to project everything they couldn’t say directly to each other.

Mom and Aunt Elle. Two storms from different seas, clashing again and again with him at the center.

Ryan dragged a hand through his hair and exhaled quietly. "You know," he started, voice calm and almost detached, "you’re not actually mad due to me. Either of you. Yes, I am sure mom is resentful of aunt because she was terrified after I got abducted. But I think, mom was, deep down, certain of my safety"

"Eh, why?" Eleanor questioned in bafflement.

"Why? Because she trusts you aunt."

Three pairs of eyes shifted to him at once, the pressure spiking like the room itself had narrowed.

"You’re mad at your selves, and resentful of the other one that they did not help you when it mattered," Ryan said, meeting their stares with something cold and soft, a mirror of Eleanor’s earlier expression.

They listened.

"You’re just using me as an excuse to vent all the things you don’t want to admit. Mom, you feel like Aunt Elle betrayed you back then. Aunt Elle, you must feel the same. You think Mom abandoned her humanity for research, as well."

They listened carefully.

"Yet, both of you know you weren’t completely right even though you both weren’t completely wrong either." His voice was steady, stripped of anger. "But neither of you knows how to say it. So instead, you fight through me. You vent this hidden, tangled frustration through a twisted rivalry."

Silence fell, crackling at the edges.

Sera’s hand found his under the table and clenched tightly, her nails digging in just enough to ground him.

That comforted him.

Lysandra’s lip trembled slightly, but her face steeled itself. She opened her mouth, then shut it.

Eleanor was silenced as well.

This was the power of words; power to silence others with much more voice than you. Truth speaks louder than all the hidden agendas, truth, once revealed, cannot be broken by lies and hiding covers.

Eleanor and Lysandra looked at each other, years of mutual resentment shimmering hot between them. They, whatever they were in the past, now hated each other to the bone.

After a long moment, Lysandra said with a trembling calmness, "Then tell me, Eleanor... what did you do with the half of Ryan’s soul you took?"

The table shook faintly.

Ryan’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept his face composed. Across from him, Eleanor’s lips curled into the faintest, slyest smile—so quick that only Ryan, who was watching for it, could catch it.

She had given it back a long time ago. Slipped it back into him without fanfare, without warning, during one of the quiet moments when no one was looking.

A secret between a few. Ryan, Eleanor, and Sera. Only they knew about it all.

Eleanor leaned back in her chair, her tone breezy.

"Oh, that little trinket?" she said lazily. "Wouldn’t you like to know?"

Lysandra’s eyes darkened, her fingers gripping the edge of the table so tightly that the wood groaned.

Ryan fought back a grimace. He wanted to surprise his mother later—when he was strong enough to stand before her not as a boy she had to protect, but as someone she could finally rely on. As someone who could walk beside her. It was not yet time.

For now, he would keep the secret.

Sorry mom, but let me be selfish at times.

Meanwhile, Sera’s grip on his hand tightened under the table, almost bruising. Her silver eyes never left Eleanor, her expression guarded and furious. She could feel it—the strange, subtle bond between Ryan and Eleanor that no one else could really explain.

She hated it.

Hated how her brother’s loyalty, so pure and fierce, was being shared with someone who had hurt their family once.

But Ryan just squeezed her hand back, a silent promise: Trust me. I know what I’m doing.

Eleanor flicked a glance at Seraphina’s clenched fists and gave a small, amused hum.

The war between them had only just begun.

And Ryan?

He was turning out to be more than just the simple boy she raised. In her opinion, the best talent Ryan had was not his Plunder Sucker class, but his intuitive talent to see through people and their heart.

He has courage, the little guy. To say the truth in a room full of women.