Chapter : 963
The three-day journey south was an exercise in profound, almost suffocating, silence. Lloyd and Rosa traveled in the same carriage, a space of opulent leather and polished wood that felt as vast and empty as a forgotten kingdom. They did not speak. They did not look at each other. They were two celestial bodies trapped in a shared orbit, governed by the cold, unyielding laws of political gravity, their paths parallel but never intersecting.
Lloyd spent the time immersed in his books, the dense, academic texts on spiritual paralysis a perfect and legitimate shield against any unwanted interaction. He was not just reading; he was absorbing, analyzing, cross-referencing this world’s flawed, mystical understanding of medicine with the cold, hard, biological certainty provided by his own impossible powers. He was preparing for a diagnostic battle, sharpening his mind for the delicate, dangerous work ahead.
Rosa, for her part, was a statue carved from ice and silver. She spent the entire journey in a state of deep, silent meditation, her posture perfect, her expression a mask of serene, unbreachable composure. But Lloyd, his senses now subtly attuned to the shifting currents of spiritual energy, could feel the storm that raged beneath her calm exterior. Her power was a contained blizzard, a maelstrom of hope, fear, and a decade of carefully suppressed grief, all churning within the perfect, crystalline cage of her self-control.
They were not traveling as husband and wife. They were not even traveling as allies. They were two soldiers from different armies, marching towards the same battlefield, each with their own weapons, their own strategies, and their own profound, unspoken doubts.
Their arrival at the Siddik estate was like the breaking of a spell. The moment the carriage passed through the grand, sun-bleached gates of the southern manor, the heavy, oppressive silence was shattered by a whirlwind of pure, unadulterated, and joyfully chaotic energy.
“He’s here! He’s really here!”
A small, dark-haired projectile launched itself from the manor’s main entrance, a blur of motion that outpaced the formal, welcoming party of household staff. It was Yacob, Rosa’s twelve-year-old brother, his face alight with a look of pure, incandescent hero-worship. He skidded to a halt before the carriage door, his eyes wide with an awe that was almost religious in its intensity.
Before Lloyd could even fully process the boy’s presence, Yacob had yanked the door open and was practically vibrating with excitement. He did not even seem to register his sister’s presence. His entire universe, in that moment, was focused on the legend who had just arrived at his home.
“Lord Lloyd!” he gasped, his voice a breathless, high-pitched torrent of words. “Is it true? Did you really face your treacherous cousin in the tournament, a man who cheated with a live blade, and defeat him with a power no one has seen in a hundred years? The bards in the capital are already singing songs about it! They’re calling you the ‘Silent Lion of the North’!”
Lloyd, who had been mentally preparing for a tense, formal reception, was completely and utterly blindsided. He could only stare at the boy, his mind a blank slate.
Yacob, taking his stunned silence as a confirmation, pressed on, his story gaining momentum. “And the soap! The AURA elixir! Is it true you invented it yourself from simple herbs and oils? My friend’s father is a merchant, and he says it’s the most valuable commodity in the kingdom, that you built an entire empire in a single month! He says you’re not just a warrior, but a merchant king!”
The onslaught of praise was relentless, a barrage of exaggerated, folkloric truths that left Lloyd feeling profoundly, deeply awkward. He was a commander, a strategist, a man who dealt in the cold, hard currency of power and influence. He had no protocol for dealing with… a fan. He managed a clumsy, tight-lipped smile and a vague, noncommittal nod, hoping the boy would run out of steam.
It was then that another figure emerged from the manor, stepping out onto the sun-drenched portico. The whirlwind of Yacob’s energy seemed to falter, the boisterous joy of the moment instantly giving way to a more formal, respectful quiet.
It was a woman. She was dressed in the severe, practical robes of a household administrator, her dark hair pinned back in a tight, efficient bun. She was, in every superficial way, the very image of pragmatic, no-nonsense authority.
And she had Rosa’s face.
Chapter : 964
Lloyd froze. The air in his lungs turned to ice. It was not just a similarity. It was not a family resemblance. It was a perfect, absolute, and utterly impossible replica. The same high cheekbones, the same elegant line of her jaw, the same dark, intelligent eyes that held a universe of unspoken thoughts. The only difference was the warmth. Where Rosa’s beauty was a thing of cold, crystalline perfection, this woman’s was a thing of warm, living, breathing humanity. There were fine lines of laughter and concern at the corners of her eyes, a softness to her mouth that spoke of a life lived, not just endured.
His mind, his magnificent, fortress-like mind, which had withstood the horrors of two lifetimes of war, which had faced down gods and devils without flinching, was shattered by the simple sight of her face. A wave of pure, agonizing recognition, a ghost of a memory so profound and so deeply buried that he had forgotten it even existed, rose up and struck him with the force of a physical blow.
Mina.
In his first life, in the cold, three-year winter of his political marriage to the silent, untouchable Rosa, it had been her. Mina. The elder sister. The pragmatic, sharp-tongued, and secretly kind-hearted widow who had managed the Siddik household with an iron will and a weary, compassionate heart. She had been the one who had seen the lonely, frightened boy behind the mask of the Ferrum heir. She had been his confidante. His ally. The one person in that cold, southern fortress with whom he had forged a genuine, profound connection. She had been… his friend.
The memory was a knife in his soul, a brutal reminder of the only genuine, warm relationship he had managed to build in that life, a relationship that had been ripped away by the same assassins who had taken everything else. He had thought he had buried that ghost, that he had encased that part of his past in the same cold, hard steel as all the others. He was wrong.
Seeing her now, alive, real, her face a perfect, painful mirror of the past, was a form of torture more exquisite than any physical pain. The general, the part of him that was pure, unyielding survival, roared to the surface. It ruthlessly, brutally suppressed the wave of pain, the flood of memory, the agonizing ghost of a lost warmth. It took the raw, screaming agony of his soul and locked it away in the deepest, darkest dungeon of his mind.
He forced a polite, formal, and utterly meaningless smile onto his face. He smoothed the front of his tunic, his movements a masterpiece of controlled, artificial calm. He had to speak. He had to act. He could not let her see the ghost in his eyes. He had to be Lord Ferrum, the powerful, confident, and slightly aloof husband of her sister. He had to be a stranger.
He stepped forward, out of the carriage and into the warm, southern sun, preparing to greet the one woman in the entire, vast, and terrible world he had never, ever wanted to see again.
The silence that fell over the courtyard was thick with the weight of unspoken history, a history that only one person in attendance was aware of. Yacob, his heroic narrative interrupted, looked between his elder sister and his new brother-in-law with a child’s simple curiosity. Rosa, who had finally emerged from the carriage, stood beside Lloyd, a silent, silver-haired specter, her own gaze fixed on her sister with a cool, unreadable neutrality.
Mina’s dark, intelligent eyes were focused on Lloyd, her expression a complex mixture of surprise, curiosity, and a pragmatist’s careful assessment. She was seeing not the awkward, withdrawn boy she remembered from his wedding, but a man. A man who carried himself with a new, quiet, and unshakeable authority. A man whose eyes, though polite, held a depth, a weariness, that seemed utterly at odds with his youth.
Lloyd knew this was the critical moment. The first move in a new, and agonizingly painful, chess match. He could not allow a moment of awkward silence. He could not allow Mina the chance to speak first, to set the terms of their interaction. He had to seize the initiative, to establish the new reality of their relationship before the ghost of the old one could materialize between them.