Episode-849
Chapter : 1697
"I am killing you, Lloyd! Do you understand? I am ending it! Does that not matter to you? Does your life not matter?"
She squeezed. Her fingers were stronger than steel, reinforced by the magic of the Winter Sovereign. She could have crushed a stone pillar with this grip. She could have bent an iron bar.
But she didn't crush his throat. Not yet. She applied just enough pressure to cut off the air, just enough to threaten, just enough to demand a response.
She wanted him to fight.
She needed him to fight.
If he fought back, if he summoned his fire or his lightning, if he tried to stab her or blast her away, it would mean something. It would mean he cared enough to survive. It would mean he had some passion left, even if that passion was hate.
Hate was a connection. Hate was hot. Hate was an emotion that tied two people together. If he hated her, she still existed in his world.
But Lloyd did not fight.
He hung there, pinned to the ancient stone wall of the tower by thick spikes of ice that pierced his sleeves and trousers. His feet dangled inches off the floor. His arms were limp at his sides.
He didn't claw at her hands. He didn't gasp for air. He didn't try to summon a spirit.
He simply looked at her.
His eyes were open. They were that strange, beautiful black color that she had fallen in love with months ago. But they were disturbing. They were placid. They were calm. They were the eyes of a man watching rain fall on a windowpane, bored and detached.
"Fight back!" she shrieked, shaking him violently.
Her thumbs pressed deeper into his windpipe. She felt the cartilage shift.
"Use your fire! Use your lightning! Break me! Hurt me! Do something!"
The wind howled around them, a chorus of mocking ghosts. It whipped her black hair into her face, blinding her for a second, but she didn't let go.
"Why won't you fight for me?" she begged, her voice cracking, losing its terrifying edge and replaced by raw anguish. "Why won't you hate me? Why won't you love me? Why are you so empty?"
She stared into his eyes, searching for a spark. A flicker of fear. A flash of anger. Anything.
Silence.
The lack of resistance was more painful than any counterattack he could have launched. It was the ultimate rejection. It was a silent statement that screamed louder than words: You are not worth the effort. You are not worth the energy it takes to lift a hand.
It said that he had already checked out. He was already gone. He had left the building, leaving his body behind as a parting gift for her to destroy.
The pressure in Rosa’s chest became unbearable. The narrative she had built in her madness—that this was a grand tragedy, a passionate, violent end to a doomed romance—was crumbling. This wasn't a tragedy. It was a farce. She was screaming at a wall. She was trying to murder a ghost.
"Please," she whispered, leaning her forehead against his.
Her skin was freezing cold, radiating the chill of death. His skin was warm, but fading. Her black tears fell from her eyes, tracking through the white makeup on her face, and dripped onto his cheeks. They froze there, staining his face like dark scars.
"Please, Lloyd. Just once. Say my name like you mean it. Say you regret it. Say you love her. Say anything."
She waited.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
The wind roared. The massive bronze bell above them groaned as the gale pushed against it.
But from Lloyd, there was nothing. No breath. No word. No struggle.
Rosa pulled her head back, looking at him again.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prick at the edges of her rage.
His face was changing. The healthy color was draining away, replaced by a greyish, bluish tint that crept into his lips. His eyelids fluttered, then drooped halfway.
He was dying.
She was actually doing it. She was extinguishing the light of the only star in her sky. She was crushing the life out of the man she had sworn to protect.
And still, he did not blink.
A horrible, creeping realization began to crawl up her spine. It started in her stomach and worked its way up to her throat. It wasn't that he was stubborn. It wasn't that he was stoic. It wasn't that he was playing a game of chicken.
It was that he wasn't there.
"Lloyd?" she said, her voice trembling.
Chapter : 1698
She released her grip slightly. Just a fraction of an inch.
His head didn't stay up. It lolled forward, heavy and loose, his chin coming to rest on his chest. It moved like a puppet with its strings cut.
She stepped back, her hands shaking. The black ice sword she had dropped earlier lay shattered on the floor, glistening like broken glass.
"No," she whispered. "No, don't play games. Don't pretend."
She grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
"Wake up! Look at me!"
The body swayed under her hand, heavy and lifeless. The head bobbed sickeningly.
The madness that had been fueling her, the hot, black rage that had driven her across the kingdom and turned her into a monster, suddenly hit a wall of absolute, freezing terror. The red haze of anger evaporated, leaving her standing in the cold clarity of what she had done.
"I... I killed him," she whispered.
The thought didn't bring satisfaction. It didn't bring the peace she thought it would. It didn't bring a sense of justice or closure.
It brought an apocalypse.
She had done it. She had destroyed the one thing she wanted to keep. She had frozen the moment, just like she wanted, but the moment was a corpse.
She stared at his hands. They hung limp at his sides.
Those were the hands that had healed her mother when no doctor could. Those were the hands that had built an empire from dirt and scrap metal. Those were the hands that had held hers at the altar. Those were the hands that had touched Mina.
They would never move again. They would never build another machine. They would never hold a pen. They would never hold a child.
The blackness in her hair began to recede. It bleached out like ink dissolving in water, turning from void-black to grey, and then back to her natural, shimmering silver. The corruption couldn't sustain itself in the face of such absolute, crushing grief. Her rage required a target, an opponent. It couldn't survive in the vacuum of his death.
Her eyes cleared. The abyssal black drained away, revealing the terrified, wet grey eyes of the woman beneath the monster.
She reached out, trembling, to touch his cheek.
It was freezing.
Not with the cold of her magic. She knew the feel of magical cold; it was sharp and biting. This was different. This was the cold of meat. This was the cold of an object that no longer held a soul.
"Lloyd?" she whimpered. "Lloyd, please. I didn't mean it. I just wanted... I just wanted you to see me."
There was no answer. Only the wind, whistling through the empty arches of the tower.
The reality of the situation crashed down on Rosa with the weight of a collapsing mountain.
He was dead.
She had killed him.
The realization stripped her bare. The Ice Queen, the Sovereign, the spy, the warrior—all those layers were incinerated in an instant, leaving only a frightened, broken girl standing in the snow.
She fell to her knees in front of him. She didn't care about the dignity of her station. She didn't care about the mud on the floor.
She grabbed his limp hands, rubbing them frantically between her own, blowing warm air onto them, trying to spark some heat back into the cooling flesh.
"Wake up," she begged, her voice high and thin. "Please, wake up. I'll go. I promise, Lloyd, I'll go. I'll sign the papers. I'll give you the divorce. I'll leave the country. You can have her. You can have the baby. You can have the house. You can have everything."
She pressed her face into his palm, wetting it with her tears.
"Just breathe," she sobbed. "Just take one breath. Don't leave me like this. Don't make me a murderer."
She pressed her ear to his chest. She held her breath, straining to hear the familiar, strong rhythm of his heart. She remembered the sound of it. She used to fall asleep listening to it.
Silence.
No heartbeat. No rhythm. No life. Just the hollow echo of her own sobbing breath bouncing off his ribs.
She looked up at his face. His eyes were still open, staring past her, staring at the grey sky, staring at nothing. The emptiness in them wasn't indifference anymore. It was absence. The light was gone. The golden fire was extinguished.
A scream built in her throat. It started deep in her diaphragm, a ball of pressure that expanded until it tore her vocal cords.
"NO!"
She grabbed his shoulders and pulled.