Chapter : 561

She picked up the charcoal stick again, her fingers tracing idle, meaningless patterns on the page. She thought of her mother’s words, the shocking, pragmatic advice that had echoed in her mind for weeks. Polygamy… a secondary wife… a consort… that position is very much open for applications.

Faria felt a hot flush creep up her neck at the memory. It was a scandalous thought. A demeaning thought. To be a ‘secondary’ anything. She was Faria Kruts, a master of her art, the proud daughter of a great house. She would not be second to any woman. Especially not to a woman like Rosa Siddik, a creature of ice and silence, a political necessity in a loveless marriage.

And yet… the thought, however much she tried to dismiss it, lingered. A small, persistent, and deeply, profoundly, unsettling whisper in the back of her mind. To be a part of his world, of his vision, of the incredible, revolutionary future he was so clearly building… even as a secondary partner… would it not be a life more vibrant, more meaningful, than a lifetime of being the primary wife to some dull, predictable, southern lord?

She let out another, frustrated groan, slamming her sketchbook shut. This was madness. She was thinking like a lovesick girl in a bad romance novel, not like the proud, independent artist she was. She had to get him out of her head.

She stood up, pacing the length of the rose-lined path, her movements sharp, agitated. She needed a distraction. A challenge. Something to occupy her restless, and increasingly treacherous, mind.

It was in that moment of agitated contemplation that she sensed a new presence in the garden. A subtle, almost imperceptible, drop in the ambient temperature. A quiet, chilling stillness that seemed to suck the warmth from the air, that made the cheerful buzzing of the honeybees falter and cease.

She turned. And her heart gave a sudden, hard, and deeply, profoundly, unwelcoming, thud.

Standing at the entrance to the rose garden, a silent, elegant, and utterly out-of-place figure, was Rosa Siddik.

She was a vision of cool, northern perfection, a pocket of winter in the warm, sun-drenched southern garden. She was dressed in a simple but exquisitely tailored gown of a deep, almost black, blue silk that seemed to absorb the light, a stark, elegant contrast to the vibrant, almost chaotic, colors of the rose bushes. Her face, as always, was concealed by the delicate, silver-threaded veil, her posture a study in perfect, icy composure. She stood perfectly still, an obsidian-eyed queen surveying a foreign, and perhaps slightly distasteful, territory.

Faria’s own internal turmoil was instantly, ruthlessly, suppressed, replaced by a surge of pure, instinctual rivalry. The Ice Princess. Here. In her garden. What in the name of the ancestors was she doing here? The Ferrum and Kruts estates were separated by a two-day journey. A visit from the new wife of the Ferrum heir was not a casual social call; it was a significant, and entirely unannounced, political event.

Faria schooled her own features into a mask of polite, aristocratic cool, her own artistic agitation locked away behind the familiar armor of her noble bearing. She walked slowly towards her unexpected guest, her own movements now a deliberate, graceful counterpoint to Rosa’s icy stillness.

“Lady Rosa,” Faria greeted, her voice a cool, melodic chime that held no hint of her earlier inner chaos. She offered a perfect, shallow curtsy, a gesture of respect between equals. “An unexpected… and I must say, deeply surprising, pleasure. What brings the new lady of House Ferrum so far south, and to our humble gardens?” The words were polite, but the underlying question was sharp as a shard of glass: What do you want?

Rosa inclined her head, a minute, almost imperceptible gesture of acknowledgment. Her obsidian eyes, visible above her veil, swept over Faria, a cool, analytical assessment that seemed to take in every detail, from the charcoal smudge on her cheek to the faint, lingering flush of her earlier agitation.

“Lady Faria,” Rosa replied, her voice the familiar, cool, and utterly emotionless monotone that Faria had heard at the Summit. It was a voice that was not just quiet; it was… empty. A perfect, polished void. “My presence is a matter of… formal necessity. The Duchess Milody has dispatched me with a gift for your mother, the Marquess-Consort, as a token of her esteem and her continued wishes for your brother’s recovery.”

She gestured slightly, and from the shadows behind her, a figure emerged. It was Rosa’s personal handmaiden, the stern-faced Laila, who carried a small, elegantly wrapped casket of dark, polished wood.

Chapter : 562

It was a perfect, unassailable, political justification for her presence. A gesture of goodwill between two great houses. Faria knew she could not question it. But she also knew, with a certainty that was pure, feminine instinct, that this was not the real reason Rosa was here. The gift was a pretext. A cover for some other, more personal, more direct, purpose.

“My mother will be deeply honored, of course,” Faria replied, her own voice a mask of polite gratitude. “She is currently in conference with my father and the healers. But I will ensure she receives the Duchess’s generous gift immediately.”

The two young women stood there for a long moment, in the silent, fragrant rose garden, a tableau of polite, aristocratic formality. Two powerful, beautiful women, bound by their connection to a single, enigmatic man, circling each other like two wary, elegant predators, their conversation a game of chess played with veiled words and hidden intentions.

Faria, never one for prolonged, meaningless pleasantries, decided to force the issue. She was tired of the games, of the secrets. She was an artist, a creature of passion, and the cold, unreadable enigma before her was a direct affront to her very nature.

She looked at Rosa, at the perfect, silent, untouchable facade. And she thought of Lloyd. Of his warmth, his humor, his brilliant, unconventional mind. She thought of the cold, loveless cage of a marriage he was trapped in. And a surge of something—pity, frustration, a fierce, protective indignation on his behalf—welled up within her.

“He is a remarkable man, you know,” Faria said suddenly, her voice losing its polite formality, becoming sharp, direct, a deliberate, provocative statement.

Rosa’s obsidian eyes, which had been fixed on some distant, middle point, snapped back to her, a flicker of something—surprise? annoyance?—in their dark depths.

“I beg your pardon?” Rosa’s voice was a whisper of ice.

“Your husband,” Faria clarified, her own gaze now sharp, challenging, refusing to back down. “Lord Lloyd. I had the honor of… collaborating… with him recently. On a project.” She gestured vaguely. “He possesses a mind unlike any I have ever encountered. It is brilliant. It is innovative. It sees the world in a way that is… truly revolutionary. And he has a warmth, a humor, a passion… it is a rare and powerful thing.”

She took a step closer, her voice dropping, becoming more intense, more personal. “He is a man of incredible vision, Lady Rosa. A man of hidden depths. A man who is, I believe, destined for greatness.” She paused, her amethyst eyes locking with Rosa’s obsidian ones, a direct, undeniable challenge. “He is your husband. Do you even see the man he is truly becoming? Or,” she finished, her voice a quiet, cutting whip-crack of passionate frustration, “are you too lost in your own perfect, frozen, ice palace to even notice?” The gauntlet had been thrown. The battle of the queens had just begun.

—

The silence that followed Faria’s words was not just the absence of sound; it was a weapon. It was a cold, heavy, and deeply intimidating silence, wielded by Rosa Siddik with the same effortless, absolute mastery with which she wielded her immense Spirit Power. She simply stood there, a still, veiled figure in the heart of the sun-drenched rose garden, and let Faria’s passionate, impertinent, and deeply, profoundly, personal words hang in the air, to wither and die in the arctic chill of her disapproval.

Faria felt a flicker of her own fiery confidence waver under the sheer, oppressive weight of that silence. She had thrown down a gauntlet, yes. She had spoken her truth, a truth born of her own genuine admiration for Lloyd and her fierce, almost angry, frustration at this woman’s apparent indifference to him. But now, in the face of this absolute, unreadable stillness, she felt a sudden, unwelcome prickle of doubt. Had she gone too far? Had she misjudged? Had she, in her passionate defense of the man who had so captivated her, just made a terrible, and very powerful, enemy?

For a long, agonizing moment, she thought Rosa would not deign to respond at all, that she would simply turn and glide away, her silence the most profound, most cutting, dismissal of all.

But then, Rosa spoke. And her voice, when it came, was not a shout of anger, not a hiss of fury. It was worse. It was a sound of such pure, chilling, and utterly, comprehensively, condescending calm that it made the hairs on the back of Faria’s neck stand on end.