Chapter : 951
The question was a gut punch, a direct, unfiltered blast of emotional shrapnel that bypassed all of his defenses. His mind, the magnificent, cold engine that could process multi-layered political threats, command mythical beings, and build empires from mundane chemistry, completely and utterly short-circuited. He could only stare, dumbfounded, his mouth slightly agape, a fish on a hook.
She saw his stunned silence not as confusion, but as guilt, and pressed her assault, the dam of her frustration and hurt finally breaking. “I like you, Lloyd Ferrum,” she said, her voice now trembling with a mixture of anger and a raw, painful vulnerability. “I thought that was… obvious. Was I not clear enough? I sought you out. I followed you from the capital to this cold, northern fortress. I offered my art, my time, my… friendship. I listened to your revolutionary, insane, brilliant ideas. I laughed at your terrible, infuriating jokes. I thought… I thought you understood.”
She took another step, closing the distance between them until she was standing directly before him, close enough for him to feel the heat radiating from her, to see the shimmer of unshed tears in her furious eyes. “What was all of that to you?” she demanded, her voice dropping to a raw, broken whisper. “All those hours in the pavilion. The late-night suppers. The debates over light and shadow. The shared dream of building something beautiful. Was it just a game? A pleasant diversion? Was I just another asset to be deployed? Another tool in your grand, magnificent, and utterly selfish design?”
The questions hammered at him, each one a blow he was utterly unprepared to counter. He was a general on a battlefield he had no maps for, facing an emotional blitzkrieg that had shattered his front lines, bypassed his fortifications, and was now laying siege to the very citadel of his soul. His strategic mind, his greatest weapon, was useless. There was no logic here, no calculus, only the raw, undeniable, and terrifying truth of her pain.
He was trapped. He was a man caught between a glacier that had just shown a flicker of impossible warmth, a volcano of political matrimony that threatened to consume his entire world, and now, this. A wildfire. A beautiful, brilliant, and utterly heartbroken wildfire that was threatening to burn his entire, carefully constructed world to the ground. And for the first time in a very, very long time, Lloyd Ferrum had absolutely no idea what to do. He opened his mouth to speak, to offer an excuse, a defense, a lie. But no words came out. There were no words for this. There was only the roar of the fire in her eyes and the cold, terrifying certainty of his own monumental, catastrophic failure.
Lloyd’s silence was a confession, a void that Faria’s righteous fury rushed to fill. The hurt in her eyes was now alloyed with a sharp, cutting disappointment. She had offered him her heart, or at least a significant and fiercely guarded piece of it, and he had treated it like a piece on a game board.
“I know what you are,” she continued, her voice regaining its strength, the tremor of vulnerability being replaced by a cold, hard anger. “I have seen the other masks you wear. The cold-blooded merchant who would sell a feeling, an ‘Aura,’ to the highest bidder. The ruthless commander who dissects a battle with the dispassionate eye of a surgeon. I was not naive. I knew you were more than the charming, awkward innovator you showed to me. I knew you were dangerous.”
She let out a short, bitter laugh, a sound devoid of all humor. “But I thought… I thought that what we had, that spark of creation in the pavilion, was real. I thought that, for you, I was not just another political variable. I thought I was… Faria.” The way she said her own name was a lament, a tribute to a possibility he had so casually discarded.
“I heard the whispers from Zakaria,” she said, her voice dropping again, becoming a conspiratorial, venomous hiss. “A mysterious challenger. A fire demon. A victory that defied the very laws of magic. I knew it was you. Who else could be so audacious? So impossible? I defended you. To my father, to my mother, to anyone who would listen. I told them you were not just a clever merchant, but a hero. A man of substance. A man who was changing the world.”
Chapter : 952
She shook her head, a look of profound, self-directed disgust on her face. “And how am I repaid for my loyalty? I learn from the court gossips, from the snickering ladies-in-waiting, that my hero, my brilliant collaborator, has won himself a princess. A second wife. An alliance that secures his power, a move of perfect, cold-blooded strategic genius.”
She finally looked away from him, her gaze fixed on a tapestry on the far wall, as if she could no longer bear the sight of his face. “I am a Kruts,” she said, her voice now a flat, empty monotone. “My father is a Marquess. Our house is ancient and powerful. We were a viable option. We were a good option. An alliance of art and industry, of southern fire and northern steel. It would have been a partnership of equals. It would have been… magnificent.”
She finally turned back to him, and the tears that had been shimmering in her eyes finally broke free, tracing silver paths down her flushed cheeks. But her gaze was not one of sadness. It was one of pure, unadulterated fury.
“But you didn’t even ask,” she whispered, and the whisper was the most devastating blow of all. “You didn’t even give me the courtesy of a choice. You made your calculations. You weighed your options. And you decided that I, that my house, that everything I offered, was not worth the effort. You erased me from the equation without even a single word.”
She wiped at her tears with the back of her hand, a gesture of angry impatience. “So I ask you again, Lloyd Ferrum. What am I to you? What was I ever to you?”
The raw, bleeding honesty of her question finally broke through the static in Lloyd’s mind. The general, the engineer, the strategist—they all fell silent, their cold logic useless against this onslaught of pure, human pain. In their place, a different part of him, a part he rarely acknowledged, a part that was just a man, finally found its voice.
It was not a clever voice. It was not a strategic voice. It was a clumsy, stumbling, and profoundly honest one.
“I…” he started, the word feeling thick and clumsy in his mouth. “I am an idiot.”
The simple, unadorned confession was so unexpected that it seemed to stun her into silence.
“You are… a variable,” he continued, falling back on the familiar language of strategy because it was the only one he had. “A passionate, brilliant, and terrifyingly unpredictable variable that I… did not know how to calculate. Everything I have done, every move I have made since I… changed… has been a calculation for survival. A cold, hard equation of risk and reward. You… you were not part of that equation. You were… art. You were chaos. You were a fire that I was afraid would burn my perfectly constructed battle plans to ash.”
He looked at her, and for the first time, he was not seeing a political asset or a beautiful woman. He was seeing the friend he had made in the pavilion, the woman who had challenged him, inspired him, and made him laugh.
“It was not a game,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “What we had in the pavilion… it was the most real thing that has happened to me in a very, very long time. It was a refuge from the war. And I was a coward. I was afraid of it. I was afraid of… you. So I did what I always do. I retreated to the familiar territory of politics and strategy, of alliances and power. I made a move on a different chessboard because I was too afraid to play on yours.”
He took a step towards her, mirroring her earlier advance, his own expression now one of profound, genuine regret. “I am sorry, Faria,” he said, and the words were not a tactic; they were a surrender. “I was a fool. A coward. And I hurt you. And for that, I am truly, deeply sorry.”
He stood before her, his defenses down, his soul bared. He had offered no excuse, no justification. Only the simple, unvarnished, and humiliating truth. He had been afraid. The great and powerful Lord Ferrum, the commander of demons, the slayer of gods, had been afraid of a single, brilliant, passionate woman. He had answered her question. And now, he could only wait for her judgment.