Chapter : 905
The scenario was equally bleak. He would be expected to stay in Zakaria. He would be given a title, a palace, a staff. He would become a fixture of the royal court. He would be, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner. A very wealthy, very powerful, and very well-cared-for prisoner, but a prisoner nonetheless. And every day, he would be living a lie, a lie that would become more and more complex, more and more dangerous, with every passing moment.
And then, there was the small, inconvenient, and ice-magic-wielding detail of his wife. Rosa. The news of his betrothal to a foreign princess would eventually reach her. He tried to imagine her reaction. He pictured her in their shared, silent suite, receiving the news from a trembling servant. He pictured her cool, emotionless face, her unreadable, arctic-blue eyes.
And he knew, with a certainty that was as cold and as hard as a glacier, that she would not just be angry. She would not just be insulted. She would raise an army. She would march south. And she would burn the entire kingdom of Zakaria to the ground, not out of passion, not out of jealousy, but out of a pure, cold, and beautifully logical assessment that a profound, and very public, breach of her marriage contract was an act of political aggression against House Ferrum that could only be answered with absolute, overwhelming, and annihilating force.
So, acceptance was not an option either. It was just a slower, more elaborate, and infinitely more chaotic form of suicide.
He was in a perfect, beautiful, and utterly inescapable checkmate. Every possible move, every single path forward, led to his own, spectacular, and deeply ironic destruction.
He looked up from the floor, his mind now a serene, and almost peaceful, void. He had reached the end of strategy. He had reached the end of logic. All that was left was a single, simple, and profoundly liberating truth.
He was, for lack of a better term, completely and utterly screwed.
And in that moment of absolute, perfect, and glorious defeat, he felt a strange, and very familiar, sensation. It was the feeling he always got in the heart of a battle that was hopelessly, catastrophically lost. It was the feeling of a man who has absolutely nothing left to lose. And it was the most liberating, and most dangerous, feeling in the entire world.
He looked at the Princess, at the Sultan, at the two brilliant, smiling architects of his magnificent doom. And for the first time since he had entered the throne room, he smiled. It was not the humble smile of the doctor. It was not the sad smile of the martyr. It was the genuine, tired, and deeply, deeply amused smile of a man who has finally, and completely, understood the punchline of the universe’s greatest joke.
The game was not over. It had just entered a new, and infinitely more interesting, phase. The phase where all the rules are thrown out the window, and the only thing that matters is who is still standing when the smoke clears. And he, Lord Lloyd Ferrum, was a survivor. It was the one, single thing he was truly, truly good at.
The throne room of the Zakarian Royal Palace had become a theater of the absurd, and Lloyd was the unwilling star of a comedy he had not auditioned for. He stood on the vast, marble Go board, a man whose entire, carefully constructed universe had just been revealed to be a practical joke of cosmic proportions. He had been outmaneuvered, outplayed, and was now, apparently, engaged. To a princess. Who was also his best friend. The situation was so profoundly, breathtakingly ridiculous that his brain was struggling to find the appropriate file for a crisis of this specific, and deeply bizarre, nature.
His mind, in a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of control, seized upon the one, single, glaring flaw in this entire, insane, matrimonial Rube Goldberg machine. The contract.
“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” he began, his voice a masterpiece of strained, almost hysterical, politeness, “I have read the official proclamation for the Jahl Challenge. I have, in fact, studied it quite extensively. And nowhere, in any of the twenty-seven sub-clauses, in any of the addendums, or in any of the fine, almost microscopic, print, does it mention that the grand prize is… well… her.” He made a small, vague, and deeply terrified gesture in the general direction of the Princess Amina.
Chapter : 906
The Sultan, who was clearly enjoying this far more than any sane, benevolent monarch should, leaned forward on his obsidian throne, a look of profound, almost paternal, amusement on his handsome face. “Ah, yes,” he said, his voice a low, rumbling purr of pure, unadulterated satisfaction. “The official proclamation. A magnificent work of public-facing legal fiction, is it not? A necessary, if slightly misleading, piece of administrative theater.”
“Misleading?” Lloyd repeated, his voice a squeak of pure, incredulous disbelief. “Your Majesty, with the greatest of respect, omitting the fact that a contest is, in fact, a bridal trial is not ‘misleading’! It is a trap! It is a grand, royal, and deeply, deeply unethical bait-and-switch!”
“Details, details,” the Sultan said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The true prize, the matrimonial clause, was, of course, hidden. It was a secret addendum, known only to myself and the highest echelons of the royal court. It was a failsafe, a way to ensure that the ultimate prize of my daughter’s hand was not offered up to just any common brute with a strong sword arm and a lucky streak.”
Lloyd stared at him, his mind a sputtering, short-circuited mess. “So, you are telling me,” he said slowly, carefully, as if explaining a complex concept to a very small, and very powerful, child, “that you deliberately concealed the true nature of the prize? That is… that is profoundly dangerous! What if some truly evil person had won? A tyrant? A demon-worshipper? What if a man of profound and unassailable villainy had, through some fluke, defeated the Jahl? Would you have just handed your daughter, and your kingdom, over to him?”
The Sultan’s smile widened. It was a brilliant, beautiful, and utterly terrifying expression. It was the smile of a man who held all the cards, who owned the table, and who had, in fact, invented the game itself.
“Of course not,” he said, his voice a cheerful, almost musical, statement of absolute, tyrannical power. “If some unsavory character had won, I would have simply changed the hidden reward to something more appropriate. A lifetime supply of pickled figs, perhaps. A very nice horse. I am the Sultan, Doctor. The rules are the rules only because I say they are. The hidden reward is hidden precisely so that I, and only I, can decide what it is, based on the quality of the victor. And you, my dear boy… you are a victor of the very highest quality.”
The final, beautiful, and absolutely horrifying piece of the puzzle clicked into place. The entire contest, the entire grand, epic, and life-altering event, was not governed by sacred laws or ancient traditions. It was governed by the simple, arbitrary, and utterly unassailable whim of the man sitting on the throne. The prize was not the prize. The prize was whatever the Sultan felt like giving to the winner on that particular day.
Lloyd’s entire, brilliant, and now deeply, deeply ironic, strategic framework collapsed into a pile of smoking, pathetic rubble. He had been playing a complex, three-dimensional game of chess, while the Sultan had been playing a simple, elegant, and unbeatable game of Calvinball.
He felt a sudden, overwhelming wave of dizziness. He put a hand out to steady himself on a nearby, and sadly non-existent, piece of furniture. His knees felt weak.
Amina, who had been watching this exchange with the quiet, detached amusement of a scholar observing a particularly fascinating, and slightly cruel, psychological experiment, seemed to decide that her new, and very confused, fiancé was on the verge of a full-blown, public collapse. She stepped forward, her movements a fluid, graceful flow.
“Father,” she said, her voice a gentle, chiding, and deeply unhelpful melody, “I believe you have… broken… our guest. Perhaps you could refrain from any further revelations of your own casual, despotic omnipotence for a few moments, and allow the poor man to breathe.”
She turned to Lloyd, her expression, he was sure, a mask of profound, and deeply insincere, sympathy behind her veil. “He is a bit much, I know. You get used to it. Eventually.”
Lloyd could only stare at her, his mind a complete and utter blank. He had come to this city seeking a simple, technological resource. A few, specific, and very useful magical rocks. And now… now he was engaged to a princess, he was the son-in-law-elect of a whimsical, all-powerful tyrant, and he was the proud, new, and deeply, deeply unwilling co-owner of a matrimonial Lilith Stone mine.
The full, breathtaking, and almost poetically beautiful weight of his own, magnificent, and self-inflicted predicament finally, and completely, crashed down on him.