Chapter : 1009
She began the impossible journey. She did not walk; she hauled. She dragged his dead weight and her own broken body out of the cave, out into the biting, merciless wind of the mountain dawn. She did not know the way. She had no map, no compass, only a vague, instinctual sense of down.
She did not remember the trip. It was a blur. A long, unending, and agonizing smear of pain, of cold, of a single, burning, and absolute focus. The world was a chaotic symphony of screaming muscles, of a leg that was a roaring fire of agony, of the rough, unforgiving texture of the black rock against her hands and knees. She fell. She got up. She fell again. She got up again.
There was only the weight of him, a constant, heavy, and strangely reassuring presence against her. There was only the singular, burning, and all-consuming objective that was a bonfire in the frozen wasteland of her soul: Get him home. Get him safe.
She was no longer a goddess of winter. She was a Valkyrie, and she was carrying her fallen warrior home from the battlefield, her own broken wings be damned.
Nearly twenty-four hours later, consciousness returned to Lloyd not as a gentle dawn, but as a jarring, violent jolt. His first sensation was not sight or sound, but a profound, soul-deep confusion. The world was… soft. Warm. The air did not smell of blood, and stone, and the cold, clean scent of death. It smelled of lavender, and old, polished wood, and the faint, almost imperceptible fragrance of roses.
He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was not the rough, grey stone of a cave roof, but the ornate, silken canopy of a four-poster bed, a bed so grand, so opulent, that it could have belonged to a king.
He turned his head, the movement a slow, stiff, and agonizingly painful process. His neck was a map of white-hot, searing agony. And his world, which had already been tilted on its axis, was now completely, irrevocably, and impossibly turned upside down.
He was in a bedroom. A magnificent, beautiful, and achingly familiar bedroom. He was in Rosa’s bedroom. His wife’s bedroom, in the heart of the Siddik estate.
A figure moved at his bedside, a gentle, concerned presence. A cool, damp cloth was gently dabbed against his feverish forehead. He looked up, his vision swimming, and saw the face of Mina, her dark, intelligent eyes filled with a mixture of relief, concern, and a deep, profound exhaustion.
And across the room, sitting silently in the familiar, uncomfortable, and ridiculously expensive armchair that had once, in another, colder world, served as his own bed in his own house, was her.
Rosa. Her magnificent, silver hair was unbound, a shimmering, liquid waterfall that cascaded over her shoulders. She was not meditating. She was not reading. She was simply… watching him. Her gaze was not cold. It was not indifferent. It was a thing of profound, focused, and utterly unreadable intensity. And in the depths of her dark, beautiful, and now terrifyingly familiar eyes, he saw not the frost of winter, but the quiet, dangerous, and all-consuming fire of a queen who had just returned from a war, and had brought her one, and only, spoils home with her.
Lloyd lay perfectly still, his mind a chaotic whirlwind trying to process the impossible, jarring new reality. The soft bed, the scent of lavender, the concerned face of Mina—it was all a sensory overload that contradicted the last, fragmented memories he possessed of bleeding out on a cold, stone floor. The logical part of his mind, the soldier’s brain, was screaming that he was in a compromised position, a wounded asset deep behind enemy lines. But the deeper, more primal part of him, the simple, exhausted man, was just profoundly grateful to be alive.
Mina’s touch was gentle, her movements efficient as she checked the bandage on his neck. “Welcome back to the world of the living, my lord,” she said, her voice a low, weary sound, but underscored with a genuine, palpable relief. “You gave us all… a considerable fright.”
Lloyd’s own voice, when he finally found it, was a rough, dry rasp, the sound of a rusted hinge. “How…?” he managed, the single word a universe of questions.
“Rosa,” Mina answered simply, as if that explained everything. And in a way, it did. “She carried you. She walked out of that gods-forsaken mountain with you on her back and the prize in her hand. The guards at the base camp thought they were seeing a ghost. A beautiful, terrifying, and utterly indomitable ghost.”
The image was so profoundly, impossibly at odds with the woman he knew that his mind refused to fully accept it. Rosa. The Ice Queen. A Valkyrie.
Chapter : 1010
He pushed himself up slightly, the movement sending a fresh, white-hot wave of agony through his neck and shoulder. He looked across the room, at the silent, silver-haired figure in the armchair. She was still watching him, her gaze unwavering, her expression a perfect, unreadable mask. There was no triumph in her eyes, no pride. Only that same, quiet, and deeply unsettling intensity.
He had expected… something. A word of acknowledgment. A flicker of shared understanding after the hell they had just endured together. He received nothing. Only her silence. A silence that was no longer cold and empty, but was now filled with a new, and infinitely more complex, weight.
The door to the bedroom opened, and a team of household servants entered, their movements silent and efficient. They brought with them trays of steaming broth, fresh bandages, and vials of potent, fragrant healing salves. The formal, ordered world of the Siddik estate was reasserting itself, a stark, civilized contrast to the primordial, lawless chaos of the mountain.
Mina oversaw the proceedings with her usual, no-nonsense efficiency. She was the administrator, the pragmatist, the one who brought order to the chaos. But as she worked, as she gave her quiet, precise commands to the staff, Lloyd saw the deep, purple shadows of exhaustion under her eyes, the fine, new lines of worry etched around her mouth. She had clearly not slept since their return.
After he had been tended to, after he had managed to force down a few spoonfuls of the warm, nourishing broth, Mina dismissed the servants, leaving the three of them once again in the quiet, charged space.
It was then that she did something that, in its own way, was as shocking as Rosa’s impossible feat of strength. She pulled a small, straight-backed chair to his bedside, sat down, and looked at him, her usual, professional mask giving way to a look of genuine, profound, and almost painful sincerity.
“Lord Ferrum,” she began, her voice quiet, her gaze direct. “On behalf of my house, I… I wish to offer you our deepest, and most sincere, apology.”
Lloyd could only stare, his confusion mounting. An apology? For what? For him almost getting himself killed saving her sister?
“When the news of your… collapse… at your own estate reached us,” she continued, her words a clear, difficult confession, “my father… he made a political calculation. He saw it as a sign of a potential weakness in your house, a moment for caution rather than support. He forbade me from traveling to offer our aid. It was a decision of cold, pragmatic, and utterly shameful logic. We failed in our duty as your allies. As your family.”
She looked down at her hands, which were clenched tightly in her lap. “And then… you came here. You came to us, in our moment of greatest need, and you offered not calculation, but… hope. You walked into the very jaws of hell for my mother. For my sister.” She looked up, and her dark, intelligent eyes were shimmering with a film of unshed tears. “You have shown the House of Siddik a lesson in honor that we had, it seems, forgotten. And for that, we are eternally, profoundly, in your debt.”
The apology was not just for her. It was for her father. It was a formal, profound, and deeply humiliating admission of their own failure.
He, Lloyd Ferrum, the man who had been a political pawn, a piece to be managed and contained, was now a proven, terrifying, and absolutely indispensable asset. He was not their equal. He was their savior. And he was, whether he wanted to be or not, the one who now, silently, and absolutely, held all the power. The fact of it, the immense, terrifying weight of it, hung in the quiet, formal, and now utterly transformed room.
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The morning after his return to consciousness was a surreal, disorienting experience. Lloyd found himself a prisoner in a cage of silken sheets and solicitous care, a wounded soldier being tended to in the heart of what had once been enemy territory. The Siddik household, which had always been a fortress of cold, formal indifference, had transformed into a bustling, efficient hospital, and he was its sole, and most perplexing, patient.