Chapter : 1193

Pia stared at her, her face a mask of pure, horrified disbelief. She had been a sleeper agent, a girl trapped by a threat against her family. But she had been dormant, a forgotten weapon. And now, the beautiful, terrifying, and untouchable Lady of the house was giving her a direct, and undeniable, activation order.

"But… my lady…" Pia stammered, tears welling in her eyes. "Lord Lloyd… he has been so kind to me. To all of us. And Jasmin…"

"Lord Lloyd’s kindness is irrelevant," Rosa cut her off, her voice a sliver of pure, forged ice. "Your friend Jasmin’s feelings are irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is your sister’s continued health and safety. Do you understand me?"

Pia could only nod, a silent, tear-streaked puppet whose strings had just been brutally and expertly pulled.

"You will acquire the plans tonight," Rosa commanded. "You will leave them at the designated dead drop. And then, your service will be concluded. Your family will be safe. This will be the end of it."

It was a lie, of course. For a pawn, the game was never over until it was removed from the board. But it was a necessary lie, a final, gentle push to ensure the completion of the task.

Rosa turned and walked away, leaving the girl weeping silently amongst the roses. She did not look back. She had done it. She had sacrificed Pia to secure the final key to her mother’s cure.

It was a brutal, monstrous, and utterly damning act of betrayal. And it was, for Rosa, the first, small, and terrible step on a new and unexpected path. The path away from the devils she had served for so long.

Her first act of freedom was a final, and absolute, act of damnation.

The aftermath of Pia’s confession was a scene of profound, silent horror. The study, which had been a war room, became a funeral parlor. The victorious, righteous anger of Lloyd’s team had evaporated, replaced by a shared, sickened grief. They had not just unmasked a traitor; they had borne witness to the heartbreaking, tragic story of a girl who had been a prisoner her entire life.

But for Rosa, who had been observing the entire, magnificent drama unfold from a hidden observation panel her handlers had installed in the adjoining room, the scene was something else entirely. It was a psychic shockwave that shattered the sterile, logical world she had so carefully constructed for herself.

She had given the order. She had known the probable outcome. In her cold, dispassionate calculus, Pia had been a necessary, and acceptable, sacrifice. A pawn to be traded for a queen. Her mother.

But the reality of it… the raw, visceral, and horrifying reality of it… was a thing her logic had not, and could not, have prepared her for.

She had watched, through the one-way glass, as Lloyd, the man she had been systematically betraying, had offered the girl not a sword, but a choice. Not an execution, but a path to redemption. He had offered to save her family. He had offered her a place under his protection.

And in that moment, a profound, and deeply unwelcome, crack had appeared in the fortress of her soul. He was a better person than she was. A better person than she could ever hope to be.

Then had come the curse.

The spidery, black mark that had appeared on Pia’s neck was a familiar, sickening sight. It was a failsafe. A "curse of silence." A standard-issue piece of demonic hardware used by the Seventh Circle to ensure the loyalty of its disposable assets. She knew what it was. She knew what it did.

And she watched, frozen, as the man she had been sent to destroy, the man she had just betrayed, had roared into action. She had watched as he had unleashed a power she had never seen, the mythical, terrible Black Ring Eyes of his mother’s line, in a desperate, futile attempt to save the very girl she had just condemned.

He had fought for her. He had tried to save her.

And he had failed.

The sight of Pia’s life being extinguished, the final, shuddering gasp, the light in her eyes going out… it was not a strategic loss on a map. It was a murder. A gruesome, horrifying murder that had happened right in front of her. A murder for which she was the primary architect.

For the first time in five years, since the day she had sold her heart to a demon, Rosa Siddik felt something.

Chapter : 1194

It was not a flicker. It was a flood.

Guilt.

It was a foreign, agonizing, and utterly alien emotion. It was a poison for which she had no antidote. It was a hot, corrosive acid that began to eat away at the cold, logical foundations of her entire being.

This was not a clean, simple transaction. This was not a pawn being sacrificed. This was a girl. A girl who had been humming amongst the roses just days before. And she had killed her. As surely as if she had held the blade herself.

The sterile, logical contract she had made with Bael, the deal that had been her North Star for half her life, was suddenly revealed for what it truly was. Not a business arrangement. But a pact with monsters. And in serving them, she had become a monster herself.

She saw the man she had betrayed. The man who had shown her nothing but a quiet, almost maddeningly patient, gentlemanly respect. The man who slept on a sofa to give her the space she had so coldly demanded. The man who had never touched her, never pushed her, never demanded anything of her. The man whose fundamental, unshakeable decency was a silent, constant, and now unbearable, reproach.

The contrast between his quiet honor and her own deep, profound, and now undeniable dishonor was a physical blow. It knocked the very air from her lungs.

The cold, logical fortress of her soul, the beautiful, impenetrable ice palace she had built to survive her own grief, did not just crack. It was obliterated. A tsunami of pure, raw, and terrifyingly human emotion crashed over her, and she was drowning in it.

The grief for Pia. The horror at her own actions. The shame. And a new, and even more terrible, emotion: a profound, soul-deep, and utterly illogical admiration for the good, decent, and honorable man she had been so methodically trying to destroy.

Overwhelmed by this new, terrible, and beautiful agony, by the return of a heart she had thought long dead, Rosa did the only thing she could. She fled.

She fled the observation room, fled the manufactory, fled the ghost of the girl she had murdered. She ran, a silent, silver-haired specter of grief and guilt, back to the cold, empty sanctuary of her rooms at the Ferrum estate.

She stood in the center of her pristine, perfect, and now suffocatingly lonely suite, and for the first time in five long, cold years, the Ice Queen wept.

It was not a quiet, noble sorrow. It was a raw, ugly, and soul-shattering storm of tears, a decade of suppressed grief and a lifetime of new, terrible guilt, all pouring out in a single, unbroken, and agonizing flood.

The machine was broken. The fortress had fallen. And in the ruins, a new, and very, very dangerous, resolve was beginning to form.

She would break her deal with the devil. Not for strategic gain. Not as a political maneuver. But for a single, simple, and utterly irrational reason.

Because it was the first right thing to do in a very, very long time.

The days following Pia’s death were a quiet, personal hell for Rosa. The ghost of the girl she had condemned haunted her every waking moment. The sight of Jasmin’s hollowed-out, silent grief was a constant, stabbing reproach. And the image of Lloyd, his own quiet anger forged into a new, cold, hard resolve, was a source of both profound shame and a new, and deeply unsettling, admiration.

She had to act. The passive, observational role she had played for so long was no longer tenable. She was no longer a spy; she was a penitent, and her penance required action.

Her first move was a declaration of independence. She sent a single, coded message to her handler, Jager. It was two words.

CONTRACT TERMINATED.

It was a childish, naive, and utterly futile gesture, the equivalent of a fly telling a spider it no longer wished to be part of the web. She knew they would not simply let her walk away. But it was a necessary first step. A line drawn in the sand of her own soul.

Her second move was far more dangerous. She had to confront the architect of her damnation. She had to face the demon.

She knew Bael would not come to her. He was a creature of shadows and secrets, and the Ferrum estate was now on high alert, a fortress of steel and suspicion. She had to go to him.