Chapter : 1275

She had to fix it. She had to begin the impossible, and very necessary, work of seeking his forgiveness. Of rebuilding the bridge she herself had so thoroughly and so spectacularly burned.

But her feet were frozen. They were two blocks of lead, anchored to the marble floor by the sheer, crushing weight of a decade of self-imposed silence, and a lifetime of proud, aristocratic conditioning.

She was a queen. And queens did not beg. Queens did not apologize. Queens did not show weakness.

But she was no longer a queen. Not really. She was just a girl. A very foolish, very heartbroken, and very, very frightened girl, who had made a terrible, and perhaps unforgivable, mistake.

She watched him across the hall. He was surrounded now. His new, and very formidable, court of queens. The fiery, passionate artist, Faria, whose adoring gaze was a constant, and very sharp, pain in Rosa’s own, treacherous heart. The brilliant, analytical princess, Amina, whose quiet, conspiratorial smile as she spoke to him was a testament to a shared, intellectual intimacy that Rosa had never known. And the warrior princess, Isabella, whose own, grudging respect for him was a new, and very interesting, and deeply, profoundly, and inconveniently, developing story.

He was the sun, and they were the planets, all of them caught in his new, powerful, and very bright, gravitational pull.

And she… she was a distant, cold, and forgotten moon, watching from the darkness.

She took a breath. A deep, shuddering, and very difficult breath. She took a single, and very small, step.

And then, a new, and very loud, and deeply, profoundly, and almost comically, distracting event occurred, and her moment, her fragile, newborn resolve, was shattered.

The attention of the entire, glittering hall, which had been a hundred different, whispered conversations, suddenly converged on a single point.

On a small, raised dais at the far end of the room, a man had just appeared.

It was Lloyd.

He had somehow, in his usual, ghostly, and infuriatingly subtle way, slipped away from his adoring court of queens and had taken the stage.

He was not in his formal, ducal uniform. He was back in the simple, dark, and utterly unassuming attire of a palace servant. He stood beside a strange, and very interesting, new object. A large, black box on a tall, three-legged stand, with a strange, glass eye on the front of it.

He looked, once again, like a humble, and slightly out-of-place, innovator. A tradesman, about to demonstrate his new, and probably very boring, invention.

He cleared his throat, and a new, and very different, kind of silence fell over the hall. It was a silence of a polite, and slightly bored, curiosity.

"Your Majesties," he began, his voice a calm, clear, and utterly, infuriatingly, and captivatingly, confident thing. "My lords, my ladies. Forgive this humble interruption to your festivities. My name is Lloyd Ferrum. And I am, as some of you may know, a decorator."

A few, polite, and slightly condescending chuckles rippled through the crowd.

"And as a decorator," he continued, his smile a quiet, knowing, and deeply, profoundly mischievous thing, "I have always been troubled by a single, fundamental problem. The fleeting, ephemeral nature of beauty. A beautiful face. A perfect, sunlit afternoon. A moment of pure, uncomplicated joy. These are the most precious things in the world. And they are, by their very nature, temporary. They are ghosts. Memories. We try to capture them, in paintings, in songs. But the copies are always imperfect. The memory always fades."

He patted the strange, black box beside him. "Until now."

He was not just a decorator. He was a showman. A master of the stage. And his audience, the entire, glittering, and very powerful, nobility of two kingdoms, was now in the palm of his hand.

Rosa stood, frozen, her own, personal, and very tragic drama utterly, and completely, forgotten. She, like everyone else in that hall, could only stare, a silent, captivated, and utterly, completely, and absolutely, and against her will, and deeply, profoundly, and inconveniently, impressed spectator at the magnificent, terrible, and utterly brilliant theatre of Lloyd Ferrum.

Lloyd stood on the dais, a humble, and deeply, profoundly, and almost comically, unassuming figure in the face of the glittering, jewel-encrusted sea of nobility. He had their attention. The entire, collective, and very powerful focus of two kingdoms was now fixed on him, and on the strange, black, and deeply uninteresting-looking box that stood beside him.

Chapter : 1276

He was a master of the stage, a born showman who understood the fundamental grammar of an audience. He had created the silence. He had built the anticipation. And now, it was time for the reveal. The miracle.

“For centuries,” he began, his voice a quiet, conversational, and utterly captivating thing that seemed to draw every person in the hall into a shared, intimate space, “we have been slaves to the tyranny of the moment. Beauty, joy, a single, perfect instant… it is born, it lives, and it dies, all in the blink of an eye. We are left with nothing but the imperfect, fading ghost of a memory.”

He gently patted the black box, his expression one of a proud, and slightly eccentric, father showing off his favorite child. “This,” he announced, his voice taking on a new, and very dramatic, note of theatrical reverence, “is a memory-catcher. A Light-Catcher box.”

A few, confused, and slightly condescending murmurs rippled through the crowd. A memory-catcher? It sounded like something from a child’s fairy tale.

Lloyd’s smile was a quiet, knowing, and deeply mischievous thing. He knew that showing was always more powerful than telling.

“If I may,” he said, his gaze sweeping over the crowd before settling on a small, glittering group of noble ladies who were standing near the front, their faces a mixture of bored amusement and polite curiosity. “I require some volunteers. The Duchess of Thorne, perhaps? And her lovely daughters?”

The Duchess, a woman of formidable social standing and even more formidable a sense of her own importance, looked momentarily taken aback at being singled out. But the request, delivered with such a polite, and utterly confident, charm, was impossible to refuse without seeming churlish. With a regal, and slightly huffy, inclination of her head, she and her two beautiful, and very fashionable, daughters stepped forward.

“Excellent,” Lloyd said, his smile widening. “Now, if you would be so kind as to stand right… there. Yes, perfect. A little closer together. And… smile.”

The three women, who had spent their entire lives practicing the art of the polite, and utterly insincere, courtly smile, produced three perfect, and completely identical, examples of the form.

Lloyd, who was now hidden behind the black box, his head under a dark cloth, did not seem to be doing anything at all. There was a moment of absolute, and slightly awkward, silence.

And then, a flash.

A brilliant, silent, and utterly blinding flash of contained, white-hot light erupted from the front of the box. It lasted for less than a heartbeat, and it was not a chaotic, explosive thing, but a controlled, focused, and very deliberate pulse of pure, magical energy.

The three ladies cried out in surprise, their hands flying to their faces. The entire hall gasped, a single, collective, and very startled sound.

Lloyd emerged from behind the box, his expression one of a calm, and deeply satisfied, craftsman. “Thank you, my ladies,” he said, his voice a smooth, reassuring thing. “Your part in this little… experiment… is concluded.”

He then turned his back on them and began to fiddle with the side of the box. A small, slot-like opening was visible, from which he carefully, and with a great deal of theatrical concentration, extracted a thin, rectangular sheet of a strange, and very white, kind of paper.

He held it up, but it was blank.

A low, disappointed murmur went through the crowd. It was a trick. A simple, and rather unimpressive, flash of light. A child’s toy.

Lloyd, however, did not seem to be concerned. He took the blank sheet of paper and, with a flourish, submerged it in a shallow, crystal tray that was filled with a clear, and very pungent-smelling, liquid.

He swirled the paper in the liquid for a few, long, and very dramatic, seconds.

And then, a new, and very real, and utterly impossible, miracle began to occur.

An image began to appear on the paper.

It was not a clumsy, painted thing. It was not a charcoal sketch. It was a perfect, and utterly, impossibly, and breathtakingly, detailed image of the three noble ladies.

The image was not in color. It was a beautiful, and very strange, landscape of blacks, and whites, and a thousand subtle shades of grey. But the detail… the detail was a thing of pure, unadulterated sorcery.

You could see every individual strand of hair in the Duchess’s elaborate coiffure. You could see the intricate, lace-like pattern on her daughters’ gowns. You could see the faint, almost invisible, lines of boredom and aristocratic ennui around their perfect, smiling lips.