Episode-615
Chapter : 1209
Rosa’s departure was a quiet, anticlimactic affair, a footnote in the grand, chaotic opera of recent events. She did not seek a final, dramatic confrontation. She did not leave a note. She simply… left. Her silver-haired form was seen entering a carriage of the Siddik house, and the carriage was seen rolling away towards the south. The end of their story was not an explosion; it was a quiet, mutual, and utterly final cessation of hostilities.
To the outside world, it was a perfectly natural and logical development. With her mother, Lady Nilufa, now miraculously recovered and in need of her daughter’s care, Lady Rosa’s return to her family estate was a matter of filial duty. The gossiping courts of the North saw it as a temporary arrangement, a brief and understandable separation in a marriage that had, from its inception, been a cold and distant political contract.
Even within the walls of the Ferrum estate, her absence was barely a ripple. Arch Duke Roy Ferrum, his mind consumed by the monumental task of preparing his duchy for a two-front war against a demonic cult and a rival kingdom, saw her departure as a minor, and strategically irrelevant, logistical matter. His son’s wife was gone. The alliance with the South was now… complicated. It was a problem for a future date, a variable to be dealt with after the more immediate, existential threats had been neutralized.
Duchess Milody, the master of the house’s more subtle, internal games, noted her daughter-in-law’s departure with a quiet, and deeply satisfied, smile. The first, and most significant, obstacle to her own grand, matrimonial plans for her son had just politely and voluntarily removed itself from the board.
And Lloyd… Lloyd felt nothing.
He had expected her departure to be a final, twisting turn of the knife. He had expected a sense of loss, of anger, of a final, bitter closure. But there was nothing. Rubel’s poisonous words, followed by her own, damning confession, had done their work too well. The part of him that could have felt something for her, the foolish, hopeful, and now utterly dead part of his heart, had been cauterized. Her absence was not a void; it was simply a state of being. The room was quieter. The air was less charged. The equation of his life had one less, very complicated, variable. It was a relief, but a relief that felt as empty and as tasteless as ash.
He threw himself into his work with a renewed, and almost manic, focus. The war was coming, and he would be ready. The ghost in his heart was dead. Now, there was only the mission. He spent his days in his manufactory, overseeing the mass production of his new, bolt-action rifles, the first whispers of a new and terrible age of warfare. He spent his nights in the time-dilated sanctuary of his Soul Farm, a silent, relentless hunter, grinding for power, honing his skills, and preparing himself for the inevitable confrontation with the smiling, bored demon, Beelzebub.
His life was once again a simple, clean, and brutally logical equation. Power in. Power out. All other variables had been eliminated.
It was into this new, cold, and ruthlessly efficient state of being that a new, and utterly illogical, variable was unceremoniously dropped.
A royal summons.
It arrived not as a polite letter, but as a formal, and very public, declaration. A contingent of the King’s own Lion Guard, their golden armor a brilliant, sun-like intrusion into the grim, martial grey of the Ferrum estate, arrived at the gates. They carried a single, scroll-sealed dispatch, and they would deliver it to no one but the Arch Duke himself.
Lloyd was summoned to his father’s study. He found the Arch Duke standing by the window, the royal scroll open in his hand, his expression one of profound, and deeply irritated, confusion.
“The King sends his regards,” Roy began, his voice a low, rumbling growl. “He also sends his congratulations on our victory at Ashworth. He is… pleased with our handling of the ‘internal matter’.”
“That’s good to hear,” Lloyd replied, his own tone flat. He knew this was just the preamble. A royal summons of this magnitude was not for simple pleasantries.
“He also sends his formal invitation to the Crown Prince’s wedding, which is to be held in one month’s time,” Roy continued, his gaze still fixed on the scroll, as if trying to decipher a particularly obtuse and poorly written battle plan.
“A wedding,” Lloyd stated, the word feeling foreign and utterly irrelevant in his new, martial world. “How… festive.”
Chapter : 1210
Roy finally looked up from the scroll, and in his eyes, Lloyd saw the same, baffled irritation. “Yes. A wedding. A grand, state-sponsored affair to celebrate the union of the Crown Prince Linkon and the Princess Arisa of Muramasa. A symbol of the kingdom’s unity and strength in these dark times.” He paused, his jaw tightening. “And he has a request. A command, more accurately.”
He held the scroll out to Lloyd. “He has requested your presence.”
Lloyd took the scroll. The language was flowery, full of the usual courtly platitudes. But the final sentence was a sharp, clear, and utterly bizarre blade.
…and it is Our Royal Will that Lord Lloyd Ferrum, in recognition of his unique and demonstrable talents in matters of both innovation and execution, shall be granted the singular honor of overseeing the logistical and practical preparations for this most auspicious event.
Lloyd read the sentence once. Then twice. He looked up at his father. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words slow and deliberate. “I seem to have forgotten how to read. Did that just say he wants me to be his wedding planner?”
“That is the gist of it, yes,” Roy confirmed, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
The silence in the room was profound. Lloyd simply stared at the scroll, his mind, a magnificent, analytical engine that could process the tactics of gods and demons, struggling to compute this single, ludicrous piece of data.
It was an illogical puzzle of the highest order. He was a lord from a grim, military house in the North. He was a man of commerce and war. He was the architect of a new industrial age, the commander of a secret army of assassins, a hunter of devils. His idea of “event planning” usually involved calculating kill zones and arranging supply lines for a siege.
Why in the seven hells would the King of Bethelham choose him to plan his son’s wedding?
“It makes no sense,” Lloyd said, the words a simple, factual statement. “There are a hundred lords in the capital, men who have spent their entire lives mastering the art of the courtly spectacle. Why me?”
“That,” Roy said, his voice a low, frustrated growl, “is the question I have been asking myself for the past hour. It is either a test, a joke, or the King has finally, and completely, lost his mind.”
Lloyd’s mind, however, was already moving past the ‘why’ and onto the ‘what now.’ This was a royal command. It could not be refused without causing a catastrophic political insult, an insult they could ill afford in the face of the looming war.
He was trapped. Trapped by a piece of illogical, and utterly baffling, royal whim.
A slow, tired, and deeply sarcastic smile touched his lips. He had just extricated himself from one complicated, emotional, and utterly draining matrimonial entanglement. And now, the King himself was about to drag him, kicking and screaming, into another one.
“So,” Lloyd said, letting the scroll fall from his fingers onto the desk. “When do I start picking out flowers?”
The look on his father’s face, a mixture of grim sympathy and a shared, profound sense of the universe’s cosmic, and deeply unfunny, sense of humor, was the only answer he needed.
The journey to the capital was a swift, and deeply surreal, affair. Lloyd traveled in a simple, unmarked carriage, accompanied only by Ken Park. He had refused the grand, formal procession that his new, and deeply ridiculous, role demanded. If he was going to be a wedding planner, he was going to do it on his own terms.
He spent the journey in a state of cold, analytical focus, trying to deconstruct the King’s bizarre command. He ran through a dozen different theories, each one more unlikely than the last.
Was it a test of his loyalty? A way to see if he would bow to the Crown’s will, even in a matter so far outside his own expertise? Possible, but inefficient. There were simpler ways to test a man’s loyalty.
Was it a political maneuver? A way to publicly elevate him, to show the court that he was the King’s new favorite, a rising star to be reckoned with? Plausible, but the role of ‘party planner’ was hardly a position of fearsome authority. It was more likely to make him a target of ridicule than respect.
Was it a trap? A way to draw him to the capital, to mire him in the petty, soul-crushing intricacies of courtly life, to neutralize him as a military threat by turning him into a glorified butler? This was the most likely, and most depressing, possibility.