Chapter : 1307

Her gaze, the same unnerving, all-seeing gaze of the Black Ring Eyes that Lloyd himself possessed, swept over them. It was not a casual glance. It was a full-spectrum diagnostic scan. She took in the scene with a single, comprehensive instant: Lloyd’s slumped, exhausted posture, a man who had clearly surrendered; Rosa’s fierce, proprietary stance, a warrior who had just planted her flag on conquered territory; the palpable, crackling tension that was a physical presence in the air between them. Milody’s serene smile widened by a fraction of an inch. She had not just observed a moment; she had downloaded the entire, chaotic data file of their confrontation.

" Rosa," Milody said, her voice still a warm, gentle melody, "you look pale. The excitement of the evening must be taking its toll. Perhaps a quiet walk in the rose garden would be… restorative."

It was not a suggestion. It was a command, a masterful, and utterly non-negotiable, dismissal.

Rosa, for the first time, hesitated. Her gaze flickered from Milody to Lloyd, a silent, internal war raging in her eyes. The newly crowned empress of his soul was being challenged by the established matriarch of his house. For a heartbeat, Lloyd thought she might refuse, that the balcony would become the site of a cataclysmic clash between two goddesses.

But the old disciplines held. Rosa was still, at her core, a creature of logic and political calculation. She understood the power dynamics at play. A public defiance of the Duchess would be a catastrophic error. With a final, lingering look at Lloyd—a look that was a promise, a warning, and a vow—she gave Milody a low, respectful curtsey.

"You are kind to think of me, Your Grace," she said, her voice once again the cool, perfect instrument of the Ice Queen.

Milody’s smile did not waver. She gently but firmly took Rosa’s arm, her touch that of a concerned elder guiding a beloved child. "Of course, my dear. We must take care of our treasures."

The word "treasures" was a beautiful, exquisite, and utterly merciless piece of verbal artistry. It simultaneously acknowledged Rosa’s value while subtly reframing her as a possession, an asset of the house, not an independent power.

As Milody led Rosa away, she glanced back over her shoulder at Lloyd. Her eyes, for a fraction of a second, held not maternal concern, but the cold, satisfied gleam of a fellow grandmaster who had just executed a flawless move. Your board is a mess, my son, her gaze seemed to say. Allow me to clean it for you.

Lloyd was left alone on the balcony, the sudden silence a roaring void. He was no longer a participant in the game, but a spectator. The two most powerful women in his life were now engaged in their own private, high-stakes negotiation, and he, the supposed prize, had been unceremoniously sent to the sidelines. He felt a profound, and deeply unsettling, sense of relief. The battle for his soul was, for the moment, being fought by someone else. He was a king who had just been saved by his queen regent, and he was not entirely sure how he felt about it.

In a private, moonlit alcove of the royal rose garden, surrounded by the intoxicating scent of night-blooming blossoms, Milody delivered her masterstroke. She did not raise her voice. She did not accuse. She spoke with the gentle, sorrowful tone of a mother delivering a heartbreaking but necessary truth.

"My dear child," she began, her hand still resting on Rosa’s arm, a gesture of false intimacy. "You are a magnificent woman. Powerful, intelligent, beautiful. A true queen of the North."

Rosa remained silent, her own defenses raised, waiting for the inevitable blade.

"But this marriage," Milody continued, her voice laced with a profound, theatrical sadness, "it has been a failure. A tragic, noble, and utterly predictable failure."

She released Rosa's arm and began to pace, her movements a slow, graceful dance of calculated empathy. "It was a contract, a political necessity. You, a daughter of the South, were brought here as a shield, a partner for a son I believed to be… less than he was. You performed your duty with admirable, stoic grace. You were a perfect fortress of ice."

Chapter : 1308

She stopped and turned, her eyes filled with a look of profound, almost pitying sympathy. "But the world has changed, my dear. My son is no longer the man you married. He is not a boy in need of a shield. He is a supernova, a force of nature. And a supernova," she concluded, her voice a soft, final, and utterly brutal judgment, "cannot be contained by a fortress of ice. It will either melt it, or be extinguished by it. And I," she added, her maternal warmth hardening into the unyielding will of a matriarch, "will not allow my son’s fire to be put out."

Rosa stood in the fragrant silence of the rose garden, a statue carved from frozen moonlight. Milody’s words were not a physical attack, but they were more devastating than any blade. They were a quiet, surgical, and perfectly executed political assassination. The Duchess of Ferrum, with the gentle, sorrowful air of a mother protecting her child, had just declared her a liability, an obstacle, a thing to be removed.

"The marriage was a transactional arrangement, Lady Rosa," Milody continued as if she was talking to a stranger now as she added Lady before Rosa, her voice the calm, reasonable tone of a master negotiator laying out the final terms. "A contract for mutual political benefit. But the terms of that contract have been rendered obsolete by a change in circumstance. The asset—my son—has appreciated in value to a degree that no one could have predicted. The original partnership is no longer… equitable."

She was not speaking of love or betrayal. She was speaking the cold, hard language of power, the language that Rosa herself had mastered. She was using Rosa’s own logic, her own philosophy, as a weapon against her.

"For the good of both of our houses," Milody said, her gaze direct and unflinching, "the contract must be dissolved. It is a matter of strategic necessity. A clean, amicable separation, with all due respect and honor paid to House Siddik. It is not a punishment, my dear," she added, her voice softening once again into a tone of false, maternal mercy. "It is a kindness. A chance for you to return to your home, to find a more… suitable match."

The insult was exquisite in its cruelty. It was a masterpiece of political maneuvering, a checkmate delivered with a gentle, pitying smile. Milody was not just ending the marriage; she was erasing Rosa’s entire role in Lloyd’s transformation. She was reframing her as a relic, a thing of the past, a beautiful but useless antique that no longer had a place in the new world her son was building.

For a long moment, Rosa said nothing. Her mind, the brilliant, analytical engine that had seen her through a decade of grief and a pact with devils, was processing, analyzing, and recalibrating. She saw the flawless logic of Milody’s move. She saw the political necessity. She saw the cold, hard truth of her own failure. She had been so focused on her mission, on her mother, on maintaining her own icy fortress, that she had failed to see the most important strategic reality of all: the man she had dismissed as a pawn had become the king, and she had made no move to become his queen.

She had lost. She had been outplayed, outmaneuvered, and rendered irrelevant by a woman who played the game with a level of grace and ruthlessness that she could only admire.

A slow, cold, and utterly terrifying smile touched Rosa’s lips. It was a smile that Milody, for all her ancient wisdom and all-seeing eyes, had never seen before. It was not the smile of the Ice Queen, cold and distant. It was not the smile of a defeated political player. It was the smile of a goddess of winter who had just been reminded that a blizzard does not negotiate with the mountain. It simply… consumes it.

"You are a magnificent player, Your Grace," Rosa said, her voice a low, melodic hum that seemed to make the very roses shiver on their stems. "Your strategy is flawless. Your logic, impeccable."

She took a step closer, her presence no longer that of a supplicant, but of an equal. "But you have made one critical miscalculation," she continued, her eyes, those beautiful, frozen voids, now burning with a cold, blue fire. "You assume that I am a piece in your game. A fortress to be besieged, a contract to be dissolved."

She raised her hand, and a single, perfect, crystalline snowflake materialized in the warm night air, hovering between them, a beautiful, impossible jewel of pure, absolute power.

"I am not a fortress," Rosa whispered, her voice a promise of a coming ice age. "I am the winter. And the winter," she concluded, her gaze locking with Milody’s, a queen challenging an empress, "does not yield."

The snowflake dissolved. The game had just changed. Milody had come to assassinate a political liability. She had instead awakened a god. The quiet, moonlit rose garden had just become the first battlefield in a new, and far more terrible, war. A war between two queens for the heart of a kingdom, and for the soul of a single, impossibly complicated man.