Episode-882
Chapter : 1763
Lloyd didn't care about their fear. He sat at a wooden table that was sticky with old spills. His face was pale, his eyes surrounded by dark circles from weeks of sleeplessness. He looked like a corpse that had forgotten to lie down.
He was bored.
It was a strange, hollow kind of boredom. For the last seven days, he had been hunting. He had tracked down three of Viscount Rubel’s lieutenants. He had walked into their hideouts. He had asked them where Rubel was. When they didn't answer, he had used the iron in their blood to stop their hearts or used the metal buttons on their coats to crush their throats.
It had been easy. Too easy.
"Inefficient," Lloyd muttered to himself.
He was cleaning his fingernails with a small iron nail he had pulled out of the table. He wasn't using his hands to move the nail. The small piece of metal floated just above his fingertips, spinning and scraping under his command. It was a small exercise to keep his mind sharp, to keep the "Black Box" in his head from cracking open and letting the grief out.
If he stopped calculating the magnetic spin of the nail, he might remember Mina’s face. And if he remembered Mina’s face, he might start screaming and never stop.
"Where are you, Rubel?" Lloyd whispered. "Stop hiding. Come out and die so I can sleep."
The heavy oak door of the tavern creaked open. A gust of wind blew in, carrying dead leaves and the freezing mist of the storm.
A small figure stepped out of the rain.
It was the girl. The orphan. The one Lloyd had found in the alleyway weeks ago. She looked terrible. Her dress was little more than a rag, soaked through and caked with mud up to her knees. Her hair was a matted mess of tangles, and her small face was streaked with dirt and tears.
She stood in the doorway, shivering violently. Her teeth chattered so loud it was audible across the silent room.
Lloyd didn't look up immediately. He sensed the iron in the buckles of her shoes. He sensed the small, rusty knife she had hidden in her pocket for protection.
"You're late," Lloyd said, his voice flat. "I ordered the vengeance combo meal days ago. The service here is terrible."
The girl—who was not a girl at all, but the ancient entity Mammon in a perfect disguise—let out a choked sob. She rushed forward, her bare feet slapping against the dirty floorboards. She threw herself down at Lloyd’s feet, grabbing the hem of his cloak with desperate, shaking hands.
"Lord Lloyd!" she wailed. "I found it! I found the truth!"
Lloyd’s eyes narrowed. The spinning nail hovered still in the air. He looked down at the child. He saw a victim. He saw a reflection of his own helplessness. It was exactly what Mammon wanted him to see.
"The truth?" Lloyd asked. "I know the truth. Rubel killed her. I just need to find him."
"No!" the girl cried, shaking her head wildly. "Rubel was just the knife! He was just the hired hand! I found out who paid him! I found out who told him where the cabin was!"
The air in the tavern suddenly grew heavy. The iron nails in the floorboards began to vibrate, creating a low, humming sound that made the other patrons cover their ears.
"Speak," Lloyd commanded.
The girl reached into the lining of her rags. Her hands were trembling so much she almost dropped the object. It was a piece of parchment. It was crumpled, stained with water, and smelled of garbage, as if it had been retrieved from a waste bin.
"I... I was hiding in one of Rubel's supply wagons," the girl stammered, selling the lie with the skill of a master actor. "I heard him laughing. He threw this away. He said... he said he didn't need it anymore because the deal was done."
She placed the parchment on the table and smoothed it out.
Lloyd looked at it.
It was a map. It wasn't a rough sketch drawn by a bandit. It was a professional cartographer’s work, drawn with expensive ink on high-quality vellum. It detailed the forest perfectly. It marked the secret paths, the hidden bridges, and the patrol routes.
And right in the center, circled in red ink, was the location of the hidden cabin.
Lloyd’s heart stopped. He recognized the handwriting. He had seen that precise, elegant script on a hundred documents back at the estate.
Chapter : 1764
But it was the seal in the bottom right corner that shattered his world.
Pressed into the red wax was a crest. It wasn't the Ferrum hammer. It was a shield with two crossed staves and a crown of frost.
The seal of House Siddik.
Lloyd stared at the seal. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The humming sound in the room grew louder, higher pitched, like a scream trapped in metal.
"Rosa?" Lloyd whispered. The name felt like broken glass in his mouth. "No. That... that makes no sense. Why?"
He looked at the girl, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and confusion. "Why would she do this? Mina was her sister. She loved her."
The girl sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She looked up at him with big, innocent eyes that held a deep, poisonous pity.
"She was jealous, my Lord," the girl whispered.
"Jealous?"
"I heard the soldiers talking," the girl lied, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "They said the Ice Queen couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand that you loved the 'weak' sister. She couldn't stand that you were happy with someone else."
Lloyd flinched. The words hit a nerve he didn't know he had. He remembered the dinners where Rosa sat cold and silent. He remembered how he had ignored her to laugh with Mina. He remembered the look in Rosa’s eyes—was it sadness? Or was it hate?
Mammon, seeing the crack in Lloyd’s armor, drove the wedge deeper.
"It wasn't just love," the girl continued. "It was power. She's a Siddik, Lord Lloyd. They are ambitious. She wanted the Ferrum lands, but she didn't want you to be strong. She wanted you broken. She wanted you to be a puppet she could control."
Lloyd gripped the edge of the table. His fingers dug into the wood. The iron nails inside the table shot upward, ripping through the oak and twisting into jagged spikes around his hand.
"She sold Mina," the girl hissed. "She gave Rubel the map. She traded her sister's life to get you all to herself. Think about it, my Lord. Who gains the most? Rubel is on the run. The Ferrum family is dead. Rosa is the only one left standing in the fortress. She has the army. She has the money. And now... she has you."
Logic.
It was twisted, sick logic, but it was logic. Lloyd’s mind, currently operating like a cold machine, latched onto the explanation. It fit the data. Rosa had tried to stop him from leaving. Rosa had tried to keep him close. Rosa was the one currently in charge of the estate.
"She knew," Lloyd said, his voice trembling with a fury colder than the storm outside. "She told me the letter was a fake. She told me not to go. She was playing both sides."
"She wanted to be the hero," the girl added softly. "She wanted to save you from the mess she created, so you would be grateful to her forever."
Lloyd stood up.
The wooden table exploded. It didn't just break; the iron nails inside it expanded and twisted so violently that the wood turned into sawdust.
The patrons of the tavern scrambled for the door, knocking over chairs in their haste to escape. The pressure in the room was suffocating. Every metal object—tankards, candle holders, the iron hinges on the windows—began to rattle and shake.
Lloyd didn't scream. He didn't cry. His face settled into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred.
"Where is she?" Lloyd asked.
"In her fortress," the girl said, looking down to hide a small, cruel smirk. "She is preparing to declare herself the Regent of the North. She thinks you are dead, or broken."
Lloyd turned toward the door. The metal hinges ripped out of the frame, and the heavy oak door fell outward into the mud with a dull thud.
"She thinks wrong," Lloyd said.
He walked out into the rain. The water soaked him instantly, but he didn't feel it. The blood in his veins was boiling, pumping liquid iron through his body. He wasn't walking like a man anymore. He was walking like a weapon that had finally found its target.
The girl—Mammon—stayed in the dry warmth of the tavern. She watched him march away into the darkness. She picked up the forged map from the ruins of the table and carefully folded it.