Chapter : 1713
"Good," Milody said. "That gives us a window. A small one." She began to pace again, her heels clicking rhythmically on the stone floor. "We cannot announce an illegitimate child. It would destroy Mina’s reputation instantly. She would be a pariah. The child would be barred from inheritance, a permanent stain. And you, Lloyd... the 'Saint of the Coil,' the 'Hero of the North'... you would be branded an adulterer and a fool who cannot control his own house."
She stopped and looked at Nilufa. "We have to legitimize the child. There is no other way to protect the alliance between Ferrum and Siddik."
"Legitimize?" Nilufa shook her head. "How? They are not married. The child was conceived while he was married to Rosa. The math does not work, Milody. The calendar is a cruel witness."
"We change the calendar," Milody said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Or rather, we obscure it."
She looked at Lloyd, her eyes hard. "Here is the reality. You are a man of imnse power. You are vital to the King. The King will not care about your bedmates as long as you provide him with weapons and victories. But the Court... the Court cares about propriety. They care about the appearance of order."
She took a deep breath. "We cannot hide the pregnancy forever. Mina will show. So, we must control the narrative of the conception."
Lloyd felt a surge of unease. "Mother, I am not going to lie about my child’s parentage."
"You will do whatever is necessary to ensure that child doesn't grow up as a social leper!" Milody shot back, her voice cracking like a whip. "You want to be a father? Then start by protecting your offspring from the wolves you invite to dinner."
She turned to Mina. "How far along are you?"
"Three months," Mina whispered. "Maybe four."
Milody nodded, performing ntal calculations. "Good. You are small. We can hide it for another month, perhaps two with the right corsets and illusion magic. That gives us ti."
"Ti for what?" Lloyd asked.
"Ti to rearrange the board," Milody said. "We cannot claim the child is Rosa's. That would be too easily disproven if she ever returns, and it would be a cruelty beyond asure to claim a child from a barren womb. No. The child must be Mina's. But it cannot be a bastard."
She looked at Lloyd, her expression unreadable. "You must marry her. Imdiately."
"I intend to," Lloyd said. "That was always the plan."
"No, you don't understand," Milody cut him off. "I don't an a grand wedding next year. I an now. Within the month. A quiet ceremony. We will claim... we will claim that your marriage to Rosa was annulled privately months ago. That she left due to 'spiritual incompatibility' or so such nonsense. We will backdate the courtship with Mina. We will say you found solace in each other during the crisis with Nilufa's health."
Nilufa looked up, her eyes narrowing. "You want to rewrite history? You want to erase my daughter's marriage to pave the way for her sister?"
"I want to save your house from scandal, Nilufa!" Milody retorted. "If this gets out, House Siddik looks weak. It looks like you cannot control your daughters. It looks like your family is a chaotic ss. But if we fra it as a tragic romance? A shift of alliances? Then it becos a story the bards will sing about, not a joke the drunkards will laugh at."
She softened her tone, reaching out to take Nilufa’s hand. "I know it is hard. I know it feels like a betrayal of Rosa. But Rosa is not here. Mina is. The child is. We have to protect the living."
Nilufa stared at Milody’s hand, then at Mina’s tear-stained face. She looked old, tired, and defeated. Finally, she nodded, a slow, jerky motion. "For the child," she whispered. "Only for the child."
Milody squeezed her hand, then turned back to Lloyd. "It is settled. We spin the story. Rosa left months ago. You and Mina fell in love while caring for Nilufa. The wedding will be small, private, ostensibly out of respect for the 'recent separation.' And the child... the child will be born 'prematurely.' It happens. People will whisper, but they will not have proof."
Lloyd felt a wave of nausea. It was a solid plan. It was logical. It was efficient. And it was built on a foundation of absolute, utter deceit. He was erasing Rosa from the narrative of his life, replacing her with a convenient fiction to cover his own mistakes.
"It feels... wrong," Lloyd muttered.
Chapter : 1714
"It feels like politics," Milody corrected him. "Welco to the mud, my son. You wanted to play the Great Ga? This is the price of admission. You don't get to be the white knight and the happy father. Pick one."
She walked to the door, her posture rigid. "I will begin drafting the announcents. I will speak to the priests. You have one job, Lloyd. Keep Mina hidden. Keep her healthy. And for the love of the Gods, do not get anyone else pregnant."
She opened the door, then paused, looking back at him. Her eyes were not angry anymore, just sad. "You are a great man, Lloyd. You are building a world I could never have imagined. But you leave a lot of wreckage in your wake. Try to build sothing that lasts this ti."
She swept out of the room, leaving a vacuum of silence behind her.
Lloyd looked at Mina. She was trembling. He sat beside her, pulling her into his arms. She buried her face in his chest, sobbing quietly. He held her, staring at the empty fireplace. He had won. He had secured his future, his child, and his love. But as he sat there in the darkening solar, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had just lost sothing irretrievable. The ghost of Rosa seed to stand in the corner, watching him with cold, grey eyes, silent and accusing. He had saved the situation, but he had done it by burying her mory in a shallow grave of lies.
The silence in the solar following Duchess Milody’s departure was not peaceful; it was the heavy, pressurized silence of a submarine diving too deep. The plan was set. The lie was constructed. But the emotional debris was still scattered all over the room, sharp and dangerous.
Lady Nilufa sat perfectly still, her hands resting on her knees. She was staring at a spot on the rug, her eyes unfocused. She looked like a woman who had just watched her house burn down and was trying to decide which piece of ash to pick up first. Mina was still in Lloyd’s arms, her breathing hitching in small, ragged gasps. Lloyd felt the weight of her against him—warm, living, real. But his mind was elsewhere, dragged back to the frozen north, to a town square encased in ice, and a woman with hair that had turned from silver to black and back to white.
He knew he couldn’t leave it like this. The lie Milody had concocted—that Rosa had left quietly due to "incompatibility"—was a shield for the public. But here, in this room, with Rosa’s mother, a lie of omission felt like a knife in the back. He owed Nilufa the truth. Or at least, as much of the truth as she could survive.
"Lady Nilufa, I an mother-in-law," Lloyd said that for the first ti. His voice was rough, like gravel grinding together.
Nilufa blinked, slowly raising her head. Her eyes were dark pools of sorrow.
The bitterness was subtle, but it stung. Lloyd accepted it. He deserved it. "I need to tell you... about Rosa. About why she really left."
Mina stiffened in his arms. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with warning. Don't, her expression pleaded. Don't make it worse.
But Lloyd shook his head slightly. "You deserve to know. Not the story we will tell the court. The truth."
Nilufa’s gaze sharpened. The grieving mother vanished, replaced by the matriarch who had survived a decade of cursing. "Tell ," she commanded.
Lloyd extricated himself from Mina and stood up. He walked to the window, looking out but seeing nothing. "It wasn't a simple disagreent. It wasn't just... us drifting apart." He took a breath, steeling himself. "Rosa ca to find . She tracked to Serrum Town."
"Serrum Town?" Nilufa frowned. "Why there?"
"I was working," Lloyd said. "Trying to build the distribution lines. Trying to... forget. She found in the square." He paused, the mory of the black blizzard assaulting his mind. "She knew about Mina. She knew about the child. She figured it out before anyone else."
Nilufa closed her eyes. "She always was the smartest of us. The most observant."
"She was angry," Lloyd continued. "Beyond angry. She was... broken. We fought."
"Fought?" Nilufa asked sharply. "You struck her?"
"No," Lloyd said quickly. "We fought with power. She... she lost control. Her Sovereign power, the ice... it reacted to her grief. She nearly froze the entire town." He turned to face Nilufa. "It wasn't a tantrum, Lady Nilufa. It was an explosion. She attacked . She tried to kill ."
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