Chapter : 1397

  "I didn't write that," Lloyd said quickly, raising his hands in surrender. "I didn't know about that. My mother is... proactive. I know it's a mess, Faria. With Rosa staying, and Amina... I know you don't want to be part of a circus."

  "Who said I didn't want to join the circus?" Faria asked.

  Lloyd blinked. "What?"

  Faria stepped closer. She wasn't yelling. She was smiling. It was a dazzling, determined smile that made Lloyd want to hide under his desk.

  "Lloyd, you are a genius," Faria said. "But you are blind. Do you think I care about politics? Do you think I care if the Ice Queen sits in the corner or if the Princess schemes in the tower?"

  She leaned over the desk, invading his personal space.

  "I am an artist," Faria declared passionately. "I understand composition. A painting needs contrast. Rosa is the cold blue. Amina is the deep purple. But you..." She poked him in the chest. "You are the canvas. And you are missing the red. You need the fire. You need me."

  Lloyd stared at her. "You... you're okay with this? With the... plurality?"

  "Okay with it?" Faria laughed. It was a bright, bell-like sound. "I am counting on it! I don't want to manage your estate. Let Rosa do the math. I don't want to run your spy network. Let Amina play her games. I just want you."

  She slammed her hand on the letter again.

  "Your mother sees it," Faria said. "She knows we fit. So, stop stalling. The letter is sent. My father is thrilled. The only one dragging his feet is you."

  She looked him dead in the eye.

  "So," Faria asked, her voice dropping to a husky whisper. "When? When do we make it official? Next month? Next week? I can have a dress ready by Tuesday."

  Lloyd’s mind reeled. He had expected anger. He had expected an ultimatum to choose her instead of the others. He was prepared for that fight.

  He was not prepared for enthusiastic acceptance.

  "Faria," Lloyd stammered. "I... I have assassins hunting me. I have a corporation to run. I am currently married to a woman who freezes things when she's annoyed and engaged to a woman who uses treaties as love letters. It's dangerous!"

  "I like danger," Faria grinned. "And I love you. So, stop making excuses."

  She grabbed his collar and pulled him close.

  "I am not asking you to choose only me," she said fiercely. "I am telling you that you will marry me. I don't care about the order. First wife, second wife, third wife... it doesn't matter. As long as I am your wife."

  She let him go and smoothed his lapel.

  "Fix your schedule, Lloyd," she commanded. "Find a date. Because I am not going to be the only one left out of the history books. I'm joining the team. Deal with it."

  She turned and marched out, looking triumphant.

  Lloyd sat back down. He put his head in his hands.

  Rosa wanted to keep him. Amina wanted to acquire him. And now Faria was demanding to be added to the roster immediately. And his mother was acting as the recruitment officer for his own harem.

  He wasn't trapped by conflict. He was trapped by agreement. Everyone agreed he should be married to everyone. Except him. He just wanted a nap.

  "This is worse," Lloyd whispered. "This is so much worse than them fighting. They are... organizing."

  He looked at his desk. Under the letter, under the frost, was a blueprint. It was the schematic for the Aegis suit.

  "Yes," Lloyd said. A desperate idea formed in his mind. "Work. Work is safe. Machines don't want to marry you. Machines don't have fathers who are Marquesses."

  He stood up. He grabbed the blueprint. He grabbed his coat.

  "I'm going to the lab," he announced to the empty room. "And I'm not coming out until I build a robot that can understand women. Or until the heat death of the universe. Whichever comes first."

  He ran out of the study, dodging servants and shadows, fleeing towards the one place where he was still the master of his fate: the cold, logical, beautiful sanctuary of his manufactory.

  Lloyd burst into the dining room that evening like a man with his hair on fire. The family was gathered for dinner. Arch Duke Roy sat at the head, looking grim. Duchess Milody sat to his right, looking serene and plotting. The empty chairs for Rosa and Faria felt like accusations.

  "I have an announcement!" Lloyd shouted, slamming his hand on the table. The silverware jumped.

  Everyone looked at him.

  "Is it about the elephants?" Roy asked hopefully. "Are they leaving?"

  Chapter : 1398

  "No," Lloyd said. "It is about national security. It is about the fate of the world. It is about... science."

  He took a deep breath. He had rehearsed this speech in the hallway. It had to be convincing. It had to be terrifying enough to make them leave him alone.

  "The attack on Ramos," Lloyd said gravely. "The Golem. The laser. It revealed a critical weakness in our defenses. We are vulnerable. If the enemy attacks again with a weapon of that magnitude, we will be wiped out."

  "We have the army," Roy said.

  "The army is flesh!" Lloyd countered. "Flesh burns. Flesh breaks. We need steel. We need magic. We need... Project Aegis."

  "Project Aegis?" Milody asked. "What is that, dear?"

  "It is a top-secret, hyper-thaumaturgical, kinetic-response initiative," Lloyd babbled, using the biggest words he could think of. "It involves advanced rune-scripting and heavy metal alloy synthesis. It is dangerous. It is volatile. And it requires my absolute, undivided attention."

  He looked at his parents with wide, manic eyes. "I cannot be disturbed. I cannot attend tea parties. I cannot discuss weddings. I cannot deal with envoys. If I lose focus for even one second, the mana-core could destabilize and turn the entire estate into a smoking crater."

  Roy frowned. "A crater? That sounds bad."

  "Very bad," Lloyd nodded. "Catastrophic. So, for the safety of the family, and the kingdom, I must seclude myself. I am moving into the manufactory. I will live there. I will eat there. I will sleep there. Do not knock on the door. Do not send letters. Do not send wives."

  He grabbed a bread roll from the table. "I am taking this for sustenance. Goodbye!"

  He turned and ran. He didn't wait for permission. He didn't wait for questions. He sprinted out of the dining room, down the hall, and out the front door.

  A carriage was waiting. Ken stood by the door. He looked at Lloyd's frantic face.

  "To the manufactory?" Ken guessed.

  "Drive, Ken!" Lloyd shouted, diving inside. "Drive like the wind! Before they realize I just made up half those words!"

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Ken climbed onto the driver's seat and snapped the reins. The carriage lurched forward.

  Inside, Lloyd slumped against the cushions. He felt a wave of relief wash over him. He had done it. He had created a bubble. A sanctuary.

  "They won't follow me," he thought. "Mother won't risk an explosion. Father respects 'national security'. And the wives... well, they probably think I'm crazy. Crazy is good. Crazy keeps people away."

  He looked out the window as the estate faded into the distance. He saw the lights of the main house. It looked warm. It looked inviting. But it was a trap.

  "Sorry, everyone," Lloyd whispered. "But I can't fix your problems. I can only fix machines."

  He clutched the bread roll. It was squished. It was a sad dinner. But it was a dinner of freedom.

  "To the lab," Lloyd said. "To the quiet. To the work."

  The manufactory was dark and silent when Lloyd arrived. He unlocked the heavy iron door with a key he kept around his neck. He stepped inside and breathed in the smell of oil, sawdust, and ozone.

  It was the best smell in the world.

  He locked the door behind him. He engaged the three deadbolts. He activated the magical wards. He dragged a heavy crate in front of the door just to be sure.

  "Safe," Lloyd exhaled.

  He walked into the main workshop. It was a cavernous space filled with tables, tools, and prototypes.

  "Master Lloyd?" a voice called out.

  Alaric, the perfectionist alchemist, poked his head out from behind a pile of gears. "You are here late. Did you forget something?"

  "I am moving in, Alaric," Lloyd announced. "Prepare a cot. And coffee. Lots of coffee."

  Borin, the explosive expert, popped up. "Moving in? excellent! Does this mean we can test the high-yield capacitors at 3 AM?"

  "Yes," Lloyd said. "We can test everything. We are going to work until our eyes bleed."

  Lyra, the pragmatist, walked over with a clipboard. "If you are staying, we need a schedule. And a budget increase for food."

  "Done and done," Lloyd said. "Now, clear the main table. Bring out the Package."

  The three alchemists moved quickly. They cleared a large table in the center of the room. Lloyd reached into his spatial inventory. He focused his will.

  The Golem Heart appeared on the table.

  It pulsed with a soft, amber light. It was beautiful. Complex. And terrifying.

  "Behold," Lloyd said. "The brain."

  He then pulled out another box. The Lilith Stones from Zakaria.

  "And the nerves," he added.

  Chapter : 1399

  He looked at his team. They were eccentrics. They were weirdos. They didn't care about politics or weddings. They only cared about making things work.

  "Listen to me," Lloyd said. "We have a puzzle. A 500-year-old puzzle. We need to connect this ancient, sentient rock to these modern, programmable crystals. We need to build a bridge between the magic of the past and the logic of the future."

  "Impossible," Alaric muttered, adjusting his spectacles. "The resonance frequencies are incompatible."

  "Difficult," Lloyd corrected. "Not impossible. We are Ferrum engineers. We eat impossible for breakfast."

  He took off his coat. He rolled up his sleeves. He grabbed a wrench.

  "Borin, start calibrating the mana-siphons. Lyra, map the rune sequences on the Heart. Alaric, get me a schematic of the Aegis neural web."

  The team scrambled. The workshop came alive. Sparks flew. Steam hissed. The sound of hammers and chanting filled the air.

  Lloyd stood over the Golem Heart. He activated his [All-Seeing Eye]. The layers of the stone peeled away, revealing the intricate web of energy inside. He saw the dormant consciousness of Elisa. He saw the logic gates carved by Anubis.

  "Hello again," Lloyd whispered to the stone. "Let's see what you can do."

  He felt a deep, profound peace settle over him. This was simple. This was binary. Input and output. Cause and effect. There were no ambiguous emotions here. No angry spouses. No political traps. Just pure, clean engineering.

  He picked up a stylus and began to trace a new circuit. The world outside—the demands of the Envoy, the tears of Rosa, the anger of Faria—faded away. They ceased to exist.

  Here, in the circle of light under the workshop lamp, Lloyd Ferrum was not a lord or a husband or a pawn. He was a maker. And for the first time in weeks, he was happy.

  He worked through the night, the scratching of his stylus the only sound in his universe, building a shield to protect himself from a world that demanded too much of his heart.

  The cliffhanger hung in the air like the smoke from Borin's soldering iron: Could he solve the riddle of the Heart before the real world broke down his door? Or would his sanctuary become his tomb when the war finally came knocking?

  Lloyd didn't know. And right now, he didn't care. He had a robot to build. And that was enough.

  Lloyd stood in the center of his manufactory, surrounded by the hum of machinery and the smell of ozone and oil. It was his favorite smell. It smelled like progress. It smelled like not having to talk to people about feelings. But he had a problem. He had the Golem Heart—the ancient, sentient rock that was supposed to run his giant robot suit—but he didn't understand it completely. It was like trying to read a book written in a language that hadn't been invented yet.

  He needed a translator. And he knew exactly who that translator should be.

  "Alaric," Lloyd called out to his head alchemist. "I am going to make a hire. A consultant."

  Alaric looked up from a bubbling beaker. "A consultant, sir? We have the best minds in the duchy right here. What kind of consultant?"

  "An archaeologist," Lloyd said. "Someone who speaks 'dead genius'. Prepare a workspace. A nice one. With a comfortable chair and maybe some flowers. Not roses. Roses imply romance. Maybe daisies. Daisies imply 'we are just studying rocks'."

  Lloyd sat down at his desk and drafted a formal letter. He wrote it carefully. It had to look official. It had to look like a boring, academic request so that no one in his house—specifically the three women currently plotting his demise—would suspect anything.

  To Lady Mina Siddik,

  Regarding the structural analysis of Anubis-era Artifacts...

  He sent the letter via a runner. Then, he waited. He paced around the workshop. He adjusted the lighting. He felt nervous, which was annoying. He was Lloyd Ferrum. He fought demons. He shouldn't be nervous about a study date.

  When Mina arrived the next morning, she looked like she was going to a funeral for a library. She was wearing a severe grey dress and carrying a stack of books that probably weighed more than she did. But her eyes were bright. She looked at the manufactory not with confusion, but with hunger.

  "So," Mina said, dumping her books on the table Lloyd had prepared. "This is where the magic happens."

  "This is where the science happens," Lloyd corrected. "Magic is just science that hasn't had its morning coffee yet. Welcome to the sanctuary, Mina."

  "Sanctuary?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Chapter : 1400

  "Yes," Lloyd said, gesturing to the heavy iron door. "Out there, in the main house, there are envoys with elephants. There are wives who freeze things when they are angry. There are princesses who play 4D chess with my life. But in here? In here, there is only the project. And us."

  Mina looked around the workshop. She saw the half-built limbs of the Aegis suit hanging from chains. She saw the glowing Lilith Stones. And she saw the Golem Heart, sitting on a velvet cushion like a crown jewel.

  "It is... peaceful," she admitted. "In a chaotic, loud, industrial sort of way."

  "Exactly," Lloyd grinned. "Now, put on these goggles. Safety first. We are going to poke a 500-year-old brain with a stick and see what happens."

  For the rest of the day, they didn't talk about politics. They didn't talk about marriage contracts or traitors or assassins. They talked about Anubis.

  "Look at this rune," Mina said, pointing to a microscopic carving on the Heart's surface. She was looking through a magnifying glass. "It is not standard script. It is a dialect from the pre-unification era. It means 'Flow', but it also means 'Thought'."

  "Flow of thought," Lloyd mused. "Like a data stream. Anubis wasn't writing a spell; he was writing code. He was programming the stone to process information like a river."

  "And this one," Mina continued, her finger tracing a spiral pattern. "It references the 'Star-Fall'. Elder Corin mentioned that. It connects the physical stone to the celestial energy."

  "The antenna," Lloyd realized. "That's the receiver for the wireless energy transfer. If I can tap into that, I don't need a massive battery pack. I can pull power from the ambient mana field."

  They worked for hours. They fell into a rhythm. Lloyd would propose a theory based on mechanics ("It needs a heat sink here"), and Mina would counter with historical context ("Anubis used water-cooling runes, not metal vents"). They argued. They debated. They drew diagrams on the chalkboard until it was covered in white dust.

  It was the most fun Lloyd had had in months.

  Around noon, Lyra, the logistics manager, brought them lunch. She looked at the two of them—heads bent together over a glowing rock, arguing about ancient grammar—and smiled.

  "You two look busy," Lyra said, setting down a tray of sandwiches.

  "We are solving the mysteries of the universe," Lloyd said, taking a sandwich without looking up. "Or at least, the mysteries of a very complicated paperweight."

  "It is not a paperweight," Mina corrected him, taking a bite of her own sandwich. "It is a masterpiece. Anubis was a poet."

  "He was an engineer," Lloyd argued. "Engineers can be poets. We just use metal instead of words."

  "That is the most romantic thing you have ever said," Mina teased.

  Lloyd froze. He looked at her. She was smiling. It was a genuine, relaxed smile. The tension that had defined their relationship since the carriage ride was gone. Here, surrounded by grease and gears, she wasn't the sister-in-law or the forbidden love interest. She was just Mina. The brilliant scholar. His partner.

  "Don't tell anyone," Lloyd whispered. "I have a reputation to maintain as a grumpy tyrant."

  "Your secret is safe with me," Mina said.

  They ate lunch in a comfortable silence. Outside the heavy doors, the world was complicated. Arch Duke Roy was probably yelling at the Zakarian envoy. Rosa was probably freezing a fountain. Amina was probably plotting to take over the world.

  But in here, the world was simple. It was just a puzzle waiting to be solved.

  "You know," Lloyd said, wiping crumbs from his chin. "Bringing you here was my best idea. Better than the soap. Better than the salt."

  "Better than the salt?" Mina laughed. "That is high praise. You love salt."

  "I do love salt," Lloyd admitted. "But salt doesn't know how to translate ancient dialects. You are definitely more useful than a mineral."

  "You really know how to compliment a lady," Mina rolled her eyes. But she looked pleased.

  Lloyd watched her go back to work. He realized that this—this quiet collaboration, this meeting of minds—was what he had been missing. He had power. He had money. But he had been lonely. Even with all the people around him, he had been intellectually lonely.

  Mina filled that void. She was the software to his hardware.

  "Okay, Librarian," Lloyd said, clapping his hands. "Back to work. We have a robot to build. And if we finish early, I'll let you blow something up."

  "Really?" Mina asked, her eyes lighting up.

  "Maybe a small thing," Lloyd amended. "Let's not get crazy."