Chapter : 1271

The aftermath of the battle in the garden was a masterpiece of silent, professional efficiency. Under Annalisa’s cold, crisp commands, the ghost brigade moved with a practiced, almost ritualistic, grace. The bodies of the fallen Curse Knights were discreetly, and very quickly, removed. The scorch marks on the lawn and the blood on the gravel paths were cleaned and covered. Within an hour, the garden, which had been a brutal, moonlit abattoir, was once again a place of serene, idyllic peace. The prisoners were secured, their minds broken and their secrets extracted. The royals were safe, whisked away to a more secure, and less… traumatizing, location. The crisis was over. The board was reset.

And in the new, and very clean, and profoundly unsettling quiet of the garden, a new, and much more dangerous, game was about to begin.

Lloyd had not moved. He stood by the fountain, a solitary, unassuming figure in the simple, dark uniform of a palace servant. He was watching the cleanup, his expression one of a quiet, professional satisfaction, the look of a commander whose troops had just performed a flawless, textbook operation.

He was waiting. He knew she would come.

And she did.

Princess Isabella dismissed her own, now utterly redundant, Royal Guard with a single, sharp gesture. She walked across the pristine lawn, her movements no longer the fluid, predatory grace of a huntress, but the stiff, deliberate, and slightly unsteady steps of a person walking on a ground that is no longer solid.

She stopped a few feet from him. She did not speak for a long time. She simply stood there, her arms crossed, her face a pale, beautiful, and utterly unreadable mask in the soft, silver light of the twin moons. But her eyes… her eyes were a raging, chaotic storm of a hundred conflicting emotions.

There was anger. A deep, profound, and very personal anger at having been so thoroughly, and so publicly, deceived.

There was awe. A reluctant, grudging, and utterly undeniable awe at the sheer, terrifying, and magnificent scale of the power she had just witnessed.

And there was something else. Something new. Something she did not yet have a name for. A raw, vulnerable, and deeply, profoundly, and almost childishly, human curiosity.

“The fire,” she finally said, her voice a low, quiet, and slightly trembling thing. It was not the voice of a princess. It was the voice of a girl who has just seen a ghost. “I saw the fire.”

Lloyd simply nodded, a silent, patient acknowledgment. He would not lie to her. Not anymore. The game of masks was over.

“It was the same,” she continued, her voice now a whisper, a confession of her own, magnificent folly. “The same as at the Academy. The same as the White Mask.”

She looked at him, and in her eyes, he saw the dawning, terrible, and beautifully clear light of the truth finally, irrevocably, breaking through the clouds of her own, self-constructed conspiracy.

"My secret brother," she said, the words a soft, self-mocking, and deeply bitter sound. "The ghost of House Ferrum. The hidden, warrior-prince, trained in the shadows while his weak, useless brother was paraded before the world as a decoy."

She let out a short, harsh, and utterly mirthless laugh. "I was so proud of myself," she whispered, her gaze now distant, lost in the memory of her own, glorious, and utterly pathetic, miscalculation. "I thought I had uncovered a grand, multi-generational conspiracy. I thought I was a brilliant, perceptive player in the great game. I was going to expose you. I was going to drag your family's secret into the light."

She finally looked back at him, and her eyes were now shining with a mixture of unshed, angry tears and a new, and very dangerous, kind of clarity. "But there was no secret brother, was there?" she asked, the question not a question, but a final, soul-crushing statement of fact. "There was no conspiracy. There was no ghost."

She took a step closer, her voice now a low, intense, and deeply, profoundly, and almost pleadingly, personal hiss. "There was only you."

Lloyd, who had faced down gods and demons without a flicker of emotion, found himself, for the first time, in a battle he did not know how to fight. He could have met her anger with his own, cold, and dismissive sarcasm. He could have met her awe with a display of his own, arrogant power.

But he could not fight this. This raw, beautiful, and utterly, heartbreakingly, vulnerable demand for the truth.

The game was over. The masks were off.

Chapter : 1272

And so, he simply, quietly, and with a weary, almost imperceptible sigh, gave her the one thing she had been hunting for all along.

The truth.

Or, at least, a small, and very carefully edited, piece of it.

He simply nodded.

The gesture, so small, so simple, so quiet, was a cataclysm. It was a confirmation of everything. It was the final, missing piece of the puzzle, the key that unlocked the entire, magnificent, and utterly insane mystery that was Lloyd Ferrum.

Isabella staggered back, as if she had been physically struck. Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with a final, dawning, and absolute understanding.

The failed student. The awkward professor. The party planner. The hero. The monster.

They were all him.

They were all just different faces, different masks, worn by the same, single, and utterly, terrifyingly, and magnificently, incomprehensible man.

She was a lioness who had finally, and with great, and very clever, effort, cornered the dragon.

And she had just, in that one, silent, terrible moment of revelation, realized that the dragon was far, far more magnificent, and infinitely, absolutely, and beautifully, more terrifying than she had ever, in her wildest, and most arrogant, imaginings, dreamed.

The silence in the garden stretched, a vast, empty, and very dangerous space between them. Isabella stood, her mind a silent, screaming whirlwind, trying to recalibrate her entire understanding of the universe around this one, single, and utterly world-breaking new fact.

Lloyd was the White Mask.

The implications were staggering. The power. The deception. The sheer, audacious, and almost artistic genius of the long-form performance he had been giving. He had not just been hiding in plain sight; he had been dancing in it, a ghost in the heart of their world, and she, the great and powerful Princess Isabella, had been his most foolish, and most captivated, audience.

Her anger, her humiliation, her awe… they were all still there, a chaotic, warring triad of emotions in her soul. But a new, and far more powerful, feeling was beginning to emerge, a feeling that was a strange, and very dangerous, fusion of all three.

A profound, and deeply, and almost addictively, fascinating… respect.

She had been playing a game with a boy. And she had just discovered that her opponent was, in fact, a god. And the thought, as terrifying as it was, was also, in a strange, and very primal way, exhilarating.

“Why?” she finally whispered, the word a small, fragile, and utterly human thing in the face of the cosmic, incomprehensible reality of him. “The lies. The masks. The pathetic, weak, and utterly convincing performance of the failure. Why?”

It was the one, single piece of the puzzle that still did not fit. The power, she could now, grudgingly, accept. But the motive… the sheer, long-term, and utterly convincing commitment to the act of being a failure… it was a level of strategic, self-effacing patience that was beyond her comprehension.

Lloyd looked at her, and for the first time, he saw not a princess, not a rival, not a huntress. He saw a fellow player. A brilliant, if arrogant, mind that had, through her own, flawed, and deeply entertaining efforts, finally earned a glimpse behind the curtain.

And so, he gave her another piece of the truth. A small, but very significant, one.

"Because it was necessary," he said, his voice a quiet, simple, and utterly, brutally honest thing. "In the North, Your Highness, we have a saying. The tallest tree is the first to feel the woodsman’s axe. My family… has many enemies. Both within, and without. A brilliant, powerful heir is a threat. A target. But a weak, disappointing, and utterly unremarkable heir… he is an irrelevance. A piece that no one even bothers to watch. And a piece that no one is watching… is free to move anywhere on the board."

It was a masterclass in the philosophy of asymmetrical warfare, delivered in two, simple, and utterly chilling sentences.

Isabella simply stared at him, her mind, a sharp, tactical instrument, processing the beautiful, and utterly ruthless, logic of it.

He had not been hiding. He had been camouflaged. He had turned his own, apparent weakness into his greatest, and most absolute, weapon.

The revelation was a final, and very bright, light, illuminating the last, dark corners of the puzzle. His sudden, inexplicable rise. His quiet, terrifying competence. His alliance with her brother. It was not a series of lucky accidents. It was a plan. A long, patient, and brilliantly executed plan. And she, and the rest of the world, had only seen the final, dramatic, and very public, phase of it.