Chapter 640 --640
Sitting on the ruined mattress was not a highly trained assassin in stealth gear. It was Camian. And to make matters entirely worse, he was fully dressed in a bright, scandalous red robe.
Heena aggressively rubbed her temples, a migraine instantly forming. She had seen countless "white lotus" and "green tea" manipulators in her various lifetimes, but she had never, ever met someone with this level of sheer, unadulterated audacity.
"Did you literally break through my roof to assassinate me?" Heena asked, completely baffled.
Instead of answering logically, Kavianlooked at her, his eyes welling up with massive, pathetic tears. He clutched the red silk of his robe like a wronged maiden and burst out crying.
"You can’t do this, my lady!" Kavian sobbed hysterically, his voice trembling with sheer soap-opera melodrama. "How could you?!"
The entire room froze.
The twenty Vanguard generals, who were fully prepared to bathe the room in blood, slowly lowered their swords. Their bloodthirsty expressions instantly morphed into the wide-eyed, gossip-hungry stares of village aunties.
All twenty-two pairs of eyes in the room slowly turned to look directly at Heena. The unspoken judgment was deafening: Oh my god, the bride is cheating on her wedding night!
Samuel slowly turned his head to look at her, raising a single, incredibly dangerous eyebrow.
"What are you guys looking at me for?!" Heena yelled, throwing her hands in the air. She glared down at the weeping man on her ruined bed. "What the heck did I even do?!"
The gears of capital gossip instantly began grinding at maximum speed. To the outside world, this didn’t look like a failed assassination. It looked exactly like the terrifying Vanguard Madam had a secret, tragic, underground lover who had literally broken through the roof to stop her wedding night.
Hovering near the ceiling hole, the System pulled out a digital bucket of popcorn, entirely thrilled. "Oh, this is going to be good."
The deafening silence that descended upon the ruined bridal chamber was absolute. The only sound was the cold winter wind howling through the massive, gaping hole in the roof, and the pathetic, dramatic sniffles coming from Kavien, who was still clutching a piece of the red silk bedsheet like a wronged maiden.
In the doorway, the civil scholars looked like they were about to collectively ascend to heaven from the sheer, unfiltered magnitude of the gossip. Their eyes darted from the half-dressed, terrifying Vanguard Madam, to the barefoot genius scholar, to the crying man in black sitting on their marital bed.
"I knew it," one of the elderly civil officials whispered loudly to his colleague, completely unable to contain himself. "The military faction has absolutely no morals! A secret underground lover crashing the wedding night!"
Beside them, Kael and the Vanguard generals slowly lowered their weapons. Kael looked at the massive hole in the ceiling, then looked at Heena with a deeply disappointed, heavy sigh.
"Madam," Kael rumbled, his scarred face deadpan. "If you wanted to take a concubine, you could have just brought him through the front gates. The roof tiles are incredibly expensive to replace in winter."
"He is not my concubine!" Heena roared, her sociopathic calmness completely shattering. The veins in her forehead throbbed so violently she thought the blood clot was actually going to burst right then and there.
On the bed, Kavien let out another loud, theatrical wail, throwing his hands over his face. "How can you deny me in front of everyone?! You told me I was your favorite! You said my services were irreplaceable!"
The scholars practically gasped in unison. ’Irreplaceable services!’
Hovering near the broken rafters, the System was literally rolling in the air, clutching its digital stomach as it laughed so hard it was glitching. "Host! Host, how can you cgeat shame on ypu!"
Heena’s hands curled into fists. She took a deep, terrifying breath, turning to Samuel. "Give me your sword. I am going to butcher him."
But Samuel didn’t hand over the sword.
The genius scholar stood perfectly still. The slight, amused smirk he had been wearing moments before was entirely gone. His golden eyes locked onto Kavien with a dark, suffocating, and completely unhinged killing intent that made the temperature in the room instantly drop by ten degrees.
"A secret lover, Wife?" Samuel murmured, his voice so dangerously soft it sent a shiver down the spines of the battle-hardened generals at the door. "And one who dresses like a budget roof-tiler?"
Samuel slowly raised the broadsword, the heavy steel catching the flickering red candlelight. He took a slow, menacing step toward the bed. "No, Wife. You rest. I will handle the pest extermination."
Kavien, who had been thoroughly enjoying his Oscar-worthy performance, suddenly felt the absolute, paralyzing aura of death locking onto him. He peeked through his fingers and saw the towering, half-dressed scholar approaching him with the cold, calculated eyes of a butcher.
Kavien’s dramatic tears instantly vanished.
The sheer, unadulterated audacity of this man was enough to give Heena a secondary aneurysm.
Kavien looked up at her through his messy hair. Honestly, Heena had always thought he was the ugliest, most useless piece of scum on the planet. But she had to admit, dressed in tragic black stealth gear, with real tears streaming down his face, his acting was Oscar-worthy. If he wasn’t such a treacherous, irredeemable jerk, she might have actually applauded the performance.
Instead of backing away from Samuel’s lethal broadsword, Kavien suddenly scrambled forward, diving past the blade and desperately grabbing the hem of Heena’s white inner robes.
"My lady!" Kavien wailed, his voice cracking with absolute, devastating heartbreak. "Just because you had to get married for political power, you throw me away like garbage?! I don’t care about the title! If you want, I can just be your nameless mistress on the outside! I will never even step foot inside this household! Please, my lady!"
Heena stared down at him, her eye twitching so hard it physically hurt. "Have you gone completely psychotic?!"
In the doorway, the civil scholars immediately began whispering furiously, their eyes lighting up with scandalous validation. ’See? The military faction is utterly depraved!’
Hovering near the ceiling, the System was still clutching its stomach, projecting digital emojis of broken hearts. "Host! Host, how could you cheat on your wedding night? Shame on you! Oh, the drama!"
"Wait, you absolute idiots!" Heena shouted, pointing an accusing finger at the crying man on her floor. She looked at the crowd of gossiping scholars and suspicious generals. "Look at his face! This is Kavien! My ex-fiancé! I kicked him out of this estate myself! If I actually loved him so much, why the hell would I make him an underground mistress when I could have just made him the official master of the house?"
The crowd paused. The civil officials squinted at the man on the floor. After living in the Vanguard estate as the presumptive young master for years, Kavien was a known face in the capital.
"Ah..." one of the older scholars muttered. "That actually makes perfect logical sense."
Seeing he was losing the narrative, Kavien immediately doubled down. He clutched his chest, shouting with a grievance so profound it could move mountains.
"You lied to me!" Kavien cried, pointing a trembling finger at Heena. "You told me you didn’t want to throw me out! You said you only kicked me out because your grandmother hated me! You told me you had no other choice!"