Episode-258

Words : 1552 Updated : Oct 3rd, 2025

Chapter : 515 The dream, which had once been a distant, unsettling tableau, had become a battlefield. A battlefield for him. And he was utterly, completely, helpless, caught between two ancient, powerful, and utterly incomprehensible, forces. The tension became unbearable. The silent scream of the crimson man, the cold weight of the blue sorrow—it all reached a crescendo, a single, silent, breaking point. And the dream, the entire fragile, beautiful, terrifying reality of the void, shattered. With a gasp that was a raw, tearing sound, a sound of a man being ripped back into the world of the living, Lloyd’s eyes snapped open. He was staring at a ceiling. A familiar, but somehow distant, ceiling of dark, polished wood, its familiar patterns seeming strange, alien. His body was a symphony of pain. Not the sharp, acute agony of a fresh wound, but a deep, resonant, full-body ache, the feeling of every muscle having been strained to its absolute breaking point, of every nerve ending having been set on fire and then slowly, painstakingly, extinguished. He felt... drained. Hollowed out. A vessel that had been filled with a storm and then emptied, leaving only the memory of the thunder. He took a breath, the air in his lungs feeling cool, clean, real. The scent was not the ozone and molten metal of his ruined study. It was... lavender. And the faint, almost imperceptible, scent of his own rosemary soap. His mother’s chambers? No, that wasn’t right. This was... His mind, sluggish and fog-bound from the deep, healing unconsciousness, slowly, painstakingly, began to process his surroundings. The feel of the sheets against his skin—not the rough linen of a sickbed, but the impossibly fine, cool silk of the highest quality. The weight of the blanket over him—a thick, soft, down-filled comfort. The gentle, almost imperceptible, rise and fall of the mattress beneath him. He turned his head, the movement slow, stiff, his neck muscles protesting with a dull ache. And his world, which had already been shattered and rebuilt a dozen times in the past few weeks, shattered again, this time into a million, tiny, quiet, and absolutely, comprehensively, terrifying pieces. He was not on the floor of his study. He was not on the lumpy, judgmental sofa. He was in his own bed. The massive, four-poster, and until this very moment, entirely forbidden, bed. And he was not alone. The realization was a jolt of ice-cold adrenaline, sharper and more effective than any smelling salts. It sliced through the lingering fog of his unconsciousness, through the deep, resonant ache in his bones, and brought the world into a sudden, stark, and terrifyingly sharp focus. He was in the bed. Their bed. The vast, continent-sized expanse of silk sheets and goose-down pillows that had, for the entirety of his second marriage, been the exclusive, undisputed territory of the Ice Queen herself. He had spent more time contemplating its carved mahogany posts from the distant, lonely shore of the sofa than he had ever spent contemplating his own future. It was a symbol of their cold, detached arrangement, a silent, powerful testament to the chasm that separated them. And he was in it. He lay perfectly still, his heart, which had been beating with a slow, recovery-induced rhythm, suddenly beginning to hammer against his ribs like a trapped bird. He didn’t dare to move. He didn’t dare to breathe. His senses, already heightened by his bond with Fang Fairy, went into overdrive, scanning the immediate environment for threats. And the primary threat was lying less than two feet away from him. Her back was to him. A slender, elegant line under the silken sheets. Her dark, raven-black hair, unbound and glorious, was a river of midnight silk spread out across the pristine white pillows. He could see the faint, graceful curve of her shoulder, the serene, steady rise and fall of her breathing. She was asleep. A deep, peaceful, and utterly, terrifyingly, close sleep. Lloyd’s mind, which had coolly faced down assassins and calmly calculated the destruction of his enemies, went into a state of pure, unadulterated panic. How? Why? What in the name of all the gods and devils was he doing here? His last memory was of his own power erupting, of fire and ice warring for his soul, of a vortex of agony and encroaching darkness in his study at the manufactory. Had he been moved? By whom? By his mother? By Ken? It was the only logical explanation. He must have been unconscious, feverish, and they, in their wisdom or their pity, had placed him here, in the only available bed in his designated quarters. Chapter : 516 But the logic did little to quell the frantic, screaming alarm bells in his head. This was a violation of the treaty. A crossing of a sacred, unspoken border. He was behind enemy lines, deep in the heart of the Ice Queen’s frozen territory. And he had no idea what the rules of engagement were in this new, terrifyingly intimate, theater of operations. He slowly, carefully, tried to extricate himself. He moved with a stealth that would have made Ken Park proud, lifting his arm from the sheets with the slow, agonizing precision of a man defusing a bomb. The silk rustled, the sound a deafening roar in the silent room. He froze, his gaze fixed on the still, sleeping form beside him. She didn’t stir. Her breathing remained deep, even. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Okay. Stage one complete. Now, for the tactical withdrawal of the rest of his body. He began to slide his legs towards the edge of the bed, his movements so slow, so measured, that he was practically moving at a glacial pace. He imagined the headlines: ‘Ferrum Heir, Slayer of Goblins and Creator of Revolutionary Soap, Defeated by a Creaky Mattress Spring’. A tragic, if slightly comical, end. He was halfway there, his feet just touching the cool, reassuring wood of the floor, when a new, utterly unexpected, and deeply, profoundly, irrational impulse seized him. It was a thought so alien to the cold, pragmatic strategist, so at odds with his carefully cultivated emotional detachment, that it felt like a foreign invasion in his own mind. He looked at her. At the elegant line of her shoulder, at the soft, vulnerable curve of her neck where her dark hair had parted. She looked... peaceful. Not the cold, analytical statue from the waking world, but a young woman, lost in sleep. For a fleeting, insane moment, the chasm between them seemed to shrink. She was not the Ice Princess. She was not his political partner. She was just... Rosa. His wife. The girl who shared his name, his home, his life. The girl whose own quiet, hidden sorrows he was only just beginning to guess at. And he felt an urge. A simple, human urge, one that had been buried under layers of grief, of cynicism, of three lifetimes of loss and war. An urge to connect. To offer a simple, silent gesture of... something. Comfort? Apology? Acknowledgment? He didn’t know. He only knew that he wanted, with a sudden, aching intensity, to reach out. To gently, carefully, place his hand on her shoulder. A simple touch. It was a monumentally, catastrophically, stupid idea. The memory of her icy rejection in the hallway, the sting of her furious “Do not touch me!”, was still fresh. The risk of her waking up, of her unleashing that terrifying Spirit Pressure, was immense. The Major General screamed at him to abort, to retreat, to stick to the mission parameters of silent, tactical withdrawal. But the other part of him, the part that had been so long dormant, the part that remembered the simple, profound comfort of a shared touch, a quiet moment of connection... that part was stronger. Slowly, his heart pounding a deafening, treacherous rhythm against his ribs, he began to reach out. His hand, pale and trembling slightly in the soft morning light, moved through the air, crossing the invisible, sacred boundary that separated their two worlds. The inches felt like miles. His fingertips, tingling with a mixture of terror and a strange, hopeful anticipation, were just about to make contact with the warm, living silk of her nightgown, with the fragile, human reality of her shoulder... And then, her eyes fluttered open. The world stopped. Her obsidian eyes, no longer veiled, no longer shielded by icy composure, were hazy with the soft, unfocused vulnerability of sleep. They blinked once, twice, adjusting to the light, to the unexpected sight of her husband, his face inches from hers, his hand outstretched, frozen in a gesture of impossible, terrifying intimacy. Time seemed to stretch, to warp, to hold them both in a single, silent, and utterly, comprehensively, agonizing moment of suspended animation. He was caught. Utterly, completely, and humiliatingly, caught. His hand hovered, a testament to his own foolish, impulsive, and probably about-to-be-fatally-misinterpreted, moment of weakness. He saw the sleepiness in her eyes vanish, replaced in an instant by a dawning, sharp, and utterly, comprehensively, panicked awareness. He saw the subtle, instinctive tensing of her muscles, the gathering of her power, the silent, terrifying preparation for a defensive, and probably quite destructive, strike.

Episode-258

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