Chapter 516: Kobold: That's Right, It's Me!
"Mother!"
"Shut up! I have no child like you!"
Watching Hogg bury himself in Euten's arms, putting on an affected expression and oozing with fake sweetness, Guilliman nearly ground his teeth to dust. I was here first. Why is Mother treating him like this?
"Mother, wake up! This bastard isn't Curze. His name is Hogg, a Primarch who sprang from who-knows-where. Everything he does is despicable. Don't let him fool you!"
Guilliman couldn't get another word out. Lady Euten was staring at him with icy eyes, her gaze revealing the utmost disappointment and regret. Even Dorn, a big lemon of a man with poor social skills, could see it.
"I know he isn't Curze, but his love and respect for me seem genuine. Perhaps, as you said, he sprang from who-knows-where, but I can tell he was raised well, just like my Guilliman once was.
"And the idea that he's deceiving me is laughable. No matter how he might fool me, could he ever be like the one who abandoned his brother to die, watched Curze perish without lifting a finger, and plunged the Imperium into ten thousand years of turmoil?"
Lies didn't hurt people; the truth was the blade that cut deepest. Whether or not she had fallen, to Guilliman, Lady Euten was still the great mother who had personally lifted him from his gestation pod.
An unhappy childhood took a lifetime to heal. Those who had already endured pain would cling desperately to even the smallest scrap of happiness.
Guilliman fell silent. Just as he hadn't been able to explain to Euten ten thousand years ago why he was late, when it came to his mother, he was nothing but a child running after her. He couldn't, and didn't want to,