Chapter : 1301

  His words were cold and practical, the logic of a doctor explaining why a limb must be removed. And the most terrible part was that she understood. As a woman who had dealt with dangerous court politics her whole life, she saw why the move was brutally necessary. Rosa had been allowed to hope. That hope, given his impossible political problems, had become a poison. This was the only cure.

  "I understand," she whispered back. The words tasted like ash in her mouth. Her heart ached with a deep, burning pity for her sister. But her mind, the cold, logical part she got from her father, could not deny that his strategy was correct.

  They continued to dance, moving in a silent, graceful circle around a black hole of unspoken tragedy. She could feel the warmth of his hand on her lower back, a steady, solid presence. She could smell the faint, clean scent of his AURA soap, mixed with the northern smell of pine and cold steel. He was so real, so solid, so different from the ghosts that were now part of her own life.

  "I have decided to formally ask for a divorce from Rosa," he said. It was not a confession, but a simple, unemotional statement. "The contract did its job. It is time for it to end."

  The finality of his words felt like a heavy weight in her chest. The small, secret, and very disloyal part of her that had come to life at his crazy suggestion on the balcony was now completely gone. "I see," she managed to say. Her voice was a perfect, empty echo of his own coldness.

  "After the way she treated you… the years of coldness… she is not worthy of you," Mina heard herself say. The words were a surprising and fiercely loyal defense of the man who had just destroyed her family. The contradiction made her feel dizzy and sick. "But still… it makes me sad. For her. For the girl she used to be. For what could have been."

  "Some things are not meant to be," he replied, and the tiredness in his voice sounded ancient and endless. "Some stories are sad from the very first page."

  The music started to build towards its end. The notes from the violins were like a final, crying goodbye. The dance was almost over. The show was almost finished. And in that last moment, something inside Lloyd seemed to break.

  He looked at her. His eyes were no longer those of a soldier or a planner, but of a desperate, drowning man. The control, the masks, all the layers of pretending—they all fell away. All that was left was a raw, bleeding honesty that was more shocking than any show of power.

  "Mina," he began, his voice dropping to a low, intense whisper. It was not a political move. It was a prayer, a confession, and a terrible, beautiful question he had no right to ask. "If a time comes… when your time of sadness is over… when you feel ready to open your heart again…" He paused, his gaze holding her, trapping her. "And if I were the one to ask… if I came to you, not as a lord, but as a man… would you accept?"

  The world did not just stop. It broke into pieces.

  The music, the lights, the whispers, the very air she was breathing—it all disappeared. There was only his face, his eyes filled with a lifetime of pain and a single, desperate spark of hope, and the impossible, world-breaking question hanging between them.

  A huge wave of pure, hot anger crashed over her. How dare he? The pure, monstrous arrogance of it. To destroy her sister with one hand and offer her a kingdom with the other. He was a king of ruins, asking her to be his queen.

  But then, the anger was gone, washed away by a second, stronger wave. A memory. The sound of a silver flute on a rainy night. A song so full of loneliness that it had spoken to the deepest, most secret parts of her own sad soul. He had not just played a song; he had shown her his heart, and it was as broken and lonely as her own.

  The anger and the sadness fought inside her. It was a huge battle that left her feeling empty and shaking. She was angry at him for his cruelty. She was sad for her sister. She felt sorry for the lonely man in her arms. And she was scared of the small, disloyal, and completely crazy part of her that wanted to say yes.

  She could not say yes. It would be a betrayal of her sister, her family, and her own honor.

  Chapter : 1302

  She could not say no. It would be a lie to the man who had just shown her the raw, true version of his own broken soul.

  The music ended. The final note hung in the air, a perfect, sad, and unanswered question. Mina just stared at him. Her face was a perfect, beautiful mask of calm that hid the disaster raging inside her. She had not given him an answer. She had given him a silence that was worse than any refusal, and more hopeful than any acceptance. The dance was over. The real torture had just begun.

  The fancy glass doors of the balcony closed behind him with a soft click. The sound was a final end to the disaster he had just created. The warm, golden light of the ballroom was gone. Now, there was only the cool, silver light of the moon. Lloyd stumbled forward and grabbed the cold marble railing. He held on to it like a drowning man holding a piece of a wrecked ship. The city of Bethelham spread out below him, a shining, uncaring blanket of a million small lights.

  His mind was a loud, chaotic fire. He felt drunk, a dizzying, sick feeling that had nothing to do with the one beer he had hours ago. This was a mental drunkenness, a storm of emotions so strong it had broken the cold, logical part of his mind. The general, the planner, the man who was always ten steps ahead, had been completely and terribly defeated. Not by an enemy army, but by a ghost.

  He had done it again. He had seen Mina’s face, and he had lost control.

  It was a huge failure of self-control, a mistake he could not forgive. He had spent months, years in this new life, carefully building a wall around his heart. He buried the memories of that other world under tons of duty, plans, and the need to survive. He had used his past life like a book of facts, a source of knowledge for his plans, not a painful wound to look at again.

  But seeing Mina tonight… it was not just a small memory. It was like she had come back to life completely. The wall around his heart had not just been broken; it had been destroyed. It was turned to dust by a huge wave of sadness he thought he had gotten over long ago.

  He closed his eyes, and the memories, as sharp and clear as broken glass, cut through him.

  He was not in the Royal Palace. He was in a dusty, sunny training area, listening to the familiar sound of swords hitting each other. Mina, her hair in a simple braid, had sweat on her forehead. Her smile was bright and competitive as she beat him for the third time that morning. Her laugh, which sounded like clear, running water, echoed in the small, simple room they shared. It was a rare moment of peace in a world full of war.

  He was on a rare day off, walking through a busy market, holding her hand tightly. He remembered the smell of roasting nuts and spices. He remembered the feeling of her fingers in his as they talked. They were not talking about battle plans, but about the color they would paint the walls of the small house they dreamed of buying after the war. It was a quiet, simple, and beautiful future that had been their light in the darkness.

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  He was in a field hospital. The air was thick with the smell of medicine and death. He was holding her hand. Her skin was cold, and her breathing was weak and difficult. He was watching the life leave her eyes. She had been killed by a random piece of an exploding shell, a meaningless act of violence in a war that had taken everything. He was making a desperate, silent prayer to a god he did not believe in, a prayer that was not answered.

  The sadness was not a memory. It was a real thing, a heavy weight on his chest that made it hard to breathe. The love he had felt for her, a love he had carried like a secret, holy wound for over fifty years in that other life, had exploded tonight. Its force had destroyed his reason, his control, and his very idea of who he was.

  He had looked at Mina Siddik, a woman he barely knew, a woman who was his wife’s sister, and he had seen a ghost. A beautiful, loved ghost. And in a moment of pure, complete madness, he had proposed to her. He had not been asking a living woman to marry him. He had been kneeling at a grave, begging a memory to come back to life.

  Chapter : 1303

  A rough, hateful laugh tore out of his throat. The sound was raw and broken in the quiet night. He was a fool. A huge, world-changing, and completely doomed fool.

  He had just done something incredibly cruel. He had publicly shamed Rosa, the woman who had, in her own strange, broken way, become his partner. He had then taken Mina, a sad widow herself, and used her as a stand-in for his own selfish love for a dead person. He had not offered her a future; he had tried to trap her in his past.

  The political problems were a small, secondary issue. The insult to House Siddik, his father's anger, the chaos in the court—it was all just noise. The real disaster was the human one. He had taken two women who had, against all expectations, started to trust him, and he had betrayed them both in the deepest and most unforgivable way.

  He was a monster. He had always known it, deep down. He was a weapon, a tool made in the fires of war. But he had let himself believe, for a short, foolish moment, that he could be something more. He had allowed himself to feel, to hope, to connect with others. And this was the result. A pile of ashes. A line of broken hearts. A deep, and very personal, ruin.

  He gripped the railing, his only support in a world that was spinning. He was a man who had controlled gods and built empires. But tonight, on a quiet, moonlit balcony, he had been beaten. Not by a sword or a magic spell, but by the one enemy he could never escape: himself.

  The cool night air, which at first felt good, now felt like it was choking him. Lloyd pushed himself away from the railing. The smooth, cold marble was wet with sweat from his hands. He began to walk back and forth, like a trapped general whose battle plans had just been burned. The soldier inside him, the cold, logical part that had been his shield and his sword for two lifetimes, was desperately trying to take back control. It was trying to assess the terrible damage and create a new plan.

  But how can you make a plan to fight a wound in your own soul?

  His mind was usually a clean, effective machine for thinking. Now it was a muddy, chaotic mess. Every time he tried to think logically, a new wave of guilt or a fresh, painful memory would stop him.

  Assess the damage, the general whispered in the back of his mind. Analyze the results.

  The results were a complete disaster.

  First, Rosa. He had taken the delicate, new trust that had grown between them on the mountain—a thing of impossible, amazing beauty—and had crushed it. He had not just broken her heart; he had proven her deepest, most bitter belief about the world to be true: that feelings are a weakness, and trust is a weapon other people use against you. He had proven she was right. The thought was a new kind of pain.

  Second, Mina. He had gone to her, a woman already drowning in her own sadness, and had tried to make her support his own sadness. He had disrespected her mourning, insulted her honor, and turned her into a public show. He had taken her quiet respect for him and twisted it into a tool for his own selfish needs. The shame of it felt like a sickness in his stomach.

  Third, the political problems. He, the heir of House Ferrum, had publicly and brutally insulted the daughter of Viscount Siddik. The Viscount was a key ally in the south, and his support was vital for the coming war against the Devil Race. He had then followed this brilliant diplomatic move by making a shockingly improper proposal to her widowed sister. He hadn't just made a small mistake. He had made a huge, dramatic mistake that would cause massive problems.

  His father’s reaction would be explosive. The council would demand his punishment. The court, which had just started to see him as a hero, would now see him as a reckless, emotionally unstable problem. In the time it took to dance one waltz, he had destroyed months of careful, hard work.

  The general screamed for a plan, a way to fix the situation, a way to reduce the damage. But what could he possibly do?

  He imagined talking to Mina. 'I am so sorry, Lady Mina. It seems I confused you with my dead lover from a past life. It's a common and understandable social mistake. Can we just pretend it never happened?' The idea was so tragically ridiculous that it almost made him laugh.

  Chapter : 1304

  He was a walking disaster. His past life was not a strategic tool; it was a curse. It was a powerful, soul-deep poison that was ruining everything he touched in this new world. He was a danger to himself and, even worse, a danger to everyone around him.

  He stopped pacing and stood at the edge of the balcony. A deep, soul-crushing tiredness washed over him. He had fought so hard. He had pulled himself up from being average, had built an empire, had commanded gods. He had done it all with one single, burning goal: to survive, to protect his family, to build a fortress so strong that the sad events of his past could never touch him again.

  And here he was. Defeated. Not by an assassin’s knife or a demon’s fire, but by a memory. By a love that would not die.

  He was truly, and for the first time in this new, impossibly difficult life, completely and totally lost. He had no map, no plan, no clear goal. He was a general without a war, a king without a kingdom, a man without a future. He was just Lloyd Ferrum, a broken man standing on a lonely balcony, haunted by the ghosts of who he was, who he loved, and who he could never be again. The night was cold and silent, and for the first time, he felt a fear that was pure and total. It was the fear of a man who had finally looked into the deep emptiness of his own heart and had found nothing but ruins.

  "That was a foolish move."

  The voice was a shard of ice in the warm, festive air, a sound so cold and sharp it seemed to cut through the distant music of the orchestra. Lloyd froze, his hand halfway to a tankard of ale on a passing tray. The chaotic, self-loathing fog in his mind, a toxic brew of resurrected grief and fresh guilt, was instantly burned away by a new, more immediate, and far more dangerous emotion: a surge of pure, undiluted irritation that bordered on rage.

  He turned slowly. Rosa stood in the archway of the balcony, a silhouette against the golden light of the ballroom. She was a specter of winter, her silver hair a halo of moonlight, her eyes two chips of frozen, unreadable darkness. She had moved with an impossible silence, a ghost in her own right, and her presence was not a passive thing. It was a living, breathing storm of contained power, a pressure so immense it felt like the very air was growing heavy and thick around him.

  The sight of her, the last person in the universe he wanted to see right now, was like salt in a fresh wound. He was a man standing on the wreckage of his own emotional detonation, and she had arrived to conduct a clinical damage assessment.

  "You are lucky I did not freeze you where you stood," she continued, her voice devoid of its usual cold, clinical detachment. This was not the Ice Queen speaking. This was something else. Something older, colder, and far more dangerous. The polite, distant shell had cracked, and the raw, Sovereign-level power beneath was leaking out, a beautiful and terrifying aura of absolute zero.

  Lloyd’s exhaustion and grief curdled into a cold, hard anger. He was in no mood for her cryptic threats or her suffocating presence. "Is that what you came here for?" he snarled, his voice a low, dangerous rasp. "To deliver threats?"

  "I came," she said, taking a single, slow, deliberate step out of the light and into the shadows of the balcony with him, "to understand the strategic benefit of publicly discarding your wife in favor of her sister." The temperature on the balcony dropped by ten degrees. A delicate, beautiful filigree of frost began to form on the marble balustrade. "I have run the calculations a hundred times. There is no political advantage. There is no economic gain. There is only insult. It was a move devoid of logic. It was… emotional. Explain it."

  Her demand for a logical explanation for an act of pure, emotional chaos was so absurdly, so quintessentially her, that it almost made him laugh. Almost. The rage was still too raw.

  "I don't have to explain anything to you," he shot back, his voice dripping with a venom he hadn't realized he possessed. "My actions are my own. You and I have an arrangement, a contract. It does not give you the right to audit my personal life."