Chapter : 673

Pia looked up, her face a mess of tears and mascara. Her eyes, wide with terror and desperation, latched onto him. “It started years ago. Before I even came to the capital. My family… we are… we were… members of a minor house in Altamira. House Elara. A small, forgotten branch, with no power, no influence. We held a small parcel of land near the border.”

This new piece of information sent a fresh ripple of shock through the room. An Altamiran noble? Here, in their midst?

“When the border skirmishes began a decade ago,” Pia continued, her voice gaining a frantic, desperate momentum as the story poured out of her, “our lands were caught in the crossfire. My parents… they tried to remain neutral. They saw themselves as people of the border, not of either kingdom. But the Altamiran Crown does not tolerate neutrality. They saw it as treason.”

She took a ragged breath. “One night, they came. Agents of the Crown’s intelligence service. They didn’t kill us. They did something worse. They made us prisoners in our own lives. They relocated my parents and my younger siblings to a secure, undisclosed location deep within Eldoria. They are hostages. Their lives are the price of my… cooperation.”

She was a sleeper agent. Planted years ago, a long-term asset waiting to be activated. The sheer, cold-blooded patience of the Altamiran strategy was terrifying.

“They sent me here, to the Ferrum Duchy, with a new identity. A new history. My mission was to embed myself, to become a loyal, unremarkable worker, and to wait. For years, I did nothing but clean floors and serve tea. And then… then you came, my lord.”

Her gaze was pleading, desperate for him to understand. “You gave me a job. You gave me respect. You treated me with kindness. I came to admire you, to believe in what you were building. I prayed every night that they would never call on me, that they would forget I even existed.”

She let out another wrenching sob. “But they didn’t forget. When the AURA brand began to succeed, the order came. I was to report on everything. And when they found out about Project Brine, the threats became… specific. They sent me a picture, my lord. A picture of my little sister. They told me that if I did not provide the plans, I would receive her finger in a box the following week.”

The room was filled with a stunned, horrified silence. The cold, abstract concept of treason had been replaced by the raw, brutal, human reality of a family held under the threat of mutilation and death.

Tisha was now openly weeping, her heart breaking for the terrible choice Pia had been forced to make. Even Mei Jing’s cynical fury had softened, replaced by a grim understanding of the enemy’s monstrous methods.

“I had no choice,” Pia whispered, her voice a ghost of itself. “I swear to you, my lord. I never wanted to betray you. I respect you more than any man I have ever known. But they had my family. What was I supposed to do? What choice did I have?”

She looked up at him, her tear-filled eyes a raw, open wound of desperation and despair. She had confessed everything. She had laid bare the ugly, tragic story of her life as a reluctant spy. She had thrown herself at his mercy, a broken pawn in a game of monsters, hoping for a shred of understanding, a sliver of forgiveness.

Lloyd looked down at her, and for the first time, the cold mask of the General cracked. He saw not a traitor, but a victim. He saw a young woman who had been trapped in an impossible situation, forced to choose between two forms of damnation. And in his eyes, she saw not anger, but a deep, profound, and sorrowful pity.

Pia’s confession hung in the air of the study, a raw, ragged tapestry of fear and coercion. The story she wove was one not of greed or ambition, but of a daughter’s desperate love, twisted into a weapon by a ruthless, faceless enemy. The women in the room, who moments before had been staring at a traitor, now found themselves looking at a victim. The neat, black-and-white lines of guilt and innocence had dissolved into a murky, tragic grey.

Jasmin, who had been frozen in a state of shocked betrayal, was the first to move. Her loyalty to Lloyd was absolute, but her compassion was just as strong. She knelt beside the sobbing Pia, placing a hesitant, comforting hand on her trembling shoulder. It was a small gesture, but in the charged atmosphere of the room, it was a profound statement of forgiveness.

Chapter : 674

“They threatened your family?” Jasmin whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. “Your little sister?”

Pia could only nod, her body wracked with a new wave of sobs, this time not of fear, but of a strange, agonizing relief. To finally have the secret out, to have someone look at her with pity instead of contempt, was a release so profound it was physically painful.

Tisha, her own face streaked with tears, turned her pleading eyes to Lloyd. "My lord," she began, her voice shaky. "She was forced. This isn't… this isn't her fault. It's monstrous. What the Altamirans did is monstrous."

Mei Jing remained silent, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her expression was no longer one of simple fury, but of a cold, complex calculation. She was processing the new intelligence, re-evaluating the nature of their enemy. They were not just rivals; they were barbarians who used the love of family as a tool of torture. This was not a game of economics; it was a war with no rules, no honor. Her pragmatic mind was already formulating a dozen new, more ruthless counter-strategies. The enemy had revealed their willingness to stoop to any depth, and Mei Jing was now prepared to meet them there.

Lloyd remained kneeling before Pia, his expression a mixture of pity and a deep, simmering rage. He understood her dilemma perfectly. It was the classic intelligence service gambit: find a person’s most precious treasure and hold a knife to its throat. It was cowardly, effective, and utterly vile.

"You said they sent you a picture," Lloyd said, his voice quiet and steady, cutting through Pia’s sobs. "Do you still have it?"

Pia fumbled in the pocket of her apron, her fingers clumsy with grief. She pulled out a small, folded piece of parchment, its edges worn and soft from being handled a thousand times. She passed it to him with a trembling hand.

Lloyd unfolded it carefully. The picture was a crude but effective magical projection, a captured moment in time. It showed a small girl, no older than eight, with wide, fearful eyes and the same mousy brown hair as Pia. She was holding a single, perfect white rose, but her smile was forced, her expression tight with a fear she was too young to understand but old enough to feel. It was a picture designed to communicate a single, brutal message: We have her. She is alive, for now. Her continued existence depends entirely on you.

He stared at the image of the terrified child, and the last vestiges of his analytical detachment burned away, replaced by a cold, hard, and deeply personal fury. He had seen this kind of evil before, in his past life. He had fought men and women who used terror as a primary weapon, who saw civilians not as non-combatants, but as leverage. He had executed those people without a flicker of hesitation.

He folded the picture and handed it back to Pia. "You believe you have no choice," he said, his voice still quiet, but now laced with the chill of a winter tomb. "You are wrong. You made a choice born of fear, and fear is a cage. But there is always another choice."

He rose to his feet, turning to face the other women in the room. His aura had changed. The disappointed lord was gone. The cold interrogator was gone. In their place stood something else, something older and far more dangerous. The White Mask was not wearing his disguise, but his presence filled the room.

"What has been done cannot be undone," he declared, his voice ringing with an authority that made the very air vibrate. "Pia has betrayed our trust. She has compromised our operations. By the laws of this duchy, and by the rules of the war we are now fighting, the penalty for this is death."

A fresh wave of terror washed over Pia. Jasmin and Tisha gasped, their faces draining of all color.

"However," Lloyd continued, his cold gaze sweeping over them, "I have also learned that mercy can be a far more potent weapon than vengeance. And loyalty, once broken, can sometimes be reforged into something even stronger."

He turned his gaze back to the weeping girl on the floor. "Pia. You will not be executed. You will not be imprisoned. You will be given the one thing your enemies have denied you: a choice. A real one."