Chapter : 897
He was about to meet the lion in his den. Sultan Asad Ullah was not a man to be trifled with. The intelligence reports from his own past life, the memories of Major General KM Evan, had painted a picture of a ruler who was as brilliant as he was ruthless, a master of the long game, a man who had forged his kingdom’s prosperity in the fires of a brutal civil war and a series of cunning, and often treacherous, political maneuvers. He was a man who did not suffer fools, and who had a legendary, and very literal, graveyard for his enemies.
This was not a negotiation with a desperate, grieving father. This was an audience with a king, a king who held the power of life and death in the palm of his hand, and who was, according to his own daughter, both fascinated and deeply worried by Lloyd’s very existence. This was not a conversation; it was a test. A final, and likely fatal, examination.
Amina led him not to the grand, public throne room, a space designed for the theatrical performance of power, but to a smaller, more intimate, and far more dangerous chamber: the Sultan’s private audience hall. It was a room that was even more imposing than the public one, for it was here that the true, unvarnished business of the kingdom was conducted.
The room was a vast, circular space, its walls lined with dark, polished cedarwood that seemed to absorb all sound. There were no windows. The only light came from a single, massive, glowing orb of enchanted crystal that floated in the center of the domed ceiling, casting a cold, clear, and unforgiving light on the scene below. The floor was a mosaic of black and white marble, arranged in the pattern of a vast Go board. And in the very center of the board, on a simple, unadorned, and yet profoundly intimidating throne of solid, black obsidian, sat the Sultan.
He was exactly as Lloyd had seen him from a distance in the arena, and yet he was infinitely more. He was a man who radiated an aura of absolute, unshakeable, and almost casual authority. He was not playing the part of a king; he was a king, in the same way that a mountain is a mountain, or a storm is a storm. It was a simple, fundamental fact of the universe.
His piercing, intelligent black eyes, the eyes of a hawk that sees everything and misses nothing, were fixed on Lloyd from the moment he entered the room. It was not a hostile gaze. It was a gaze of pure, dispassionate, and deeply unsettling analysis. It was the gaze of a master craftsman, a grandmaster, examining a new, and very strange, piece that had just been placed on his board.
Amina led Lloyd to the center of the room, stopping a respectful twenty feet from the obsidian throne. She then performed a deep, graceful, and perfectly executed curtsy. “Father,” she said, her voice the clear, formal tone of the princess. “I have brought him, as you requested.”
Lloyd followed her lead, sinking into a deep, and profoundly humble, bow. He did not speak. In this room, before this man, silence was the wisest, and safest, course of action.
The Sultan did not respond immediately. He did not grant them leave to rise. He simply sat, his hands resting on the arms of his throne, and he watched. He let the silence stretch, letting the tension in the room build, layer by suffocating layer, until it was an almost unbearable weight. It was a classic, and very effective, power play, a simple, brutal reminder of who was in control.
Finally, after a moment that felt like a small eternity, he spoke. His voice was a low, calm, and deeply resonant baritone, a sound that seemed to hum with the very authority of the ancient stone around them.
He did not address Lloyd. He did not even look at him directly. His words were for his daughter, but his subject, his focus, the target of his profound, and deeply cryptic, statement, was unquestionably the strange, humble healer kneeling on his floor.
“Any man,” the Sultan began, his voice a slow, contemplative murmur, as if he were thinking aloud, “who can face the fury of the Jahl, who can command a power that can make the very mountains weep with fire, and who can do so before he has seen his twenty-fifth winter… is indeed a man of consequence.”
Chapter : 898
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in. He was not just acknowledging Lloyd’s power; he was confirming, with his own, absolute authority, that he, too, was aware of the challenger’s seemingly impossible youth. The mystery of the Princess’s knowledge was no longer a mystery; it was a shared, and very public, secret of the throne.
The Sultan then turned his gaze, for the first time, from his daughter to the still-bowing form of Lloyd. And his next words were a hammer blow of pure, unadulterated, and completely baffling confusion.
“And any man of such consequence,” he concluded, his voice a low, final, and utterly absolute decree, “is indeed… capable enough for her.”
Lloyd’s mind, which had been braced for an interrogation, for a threat, for a political negotiation, was completely, utterly, and catastrophically derailed. Her? Who was her? Was it a title? A position? A secret order? Was he being assigned to a new, mysterious mistress? Was he being inducted into a clandestine service?
His mind raced through a thousand different possibilities, each one more unlikely and more confusing than the last. He looked up, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated, and completely genuine confusion, his gaze flickering from the enigmatic, smiling face of the Sultan to the equally enigmatic, and now once-again veiled, face of the Princess. He was a master of a hundred different games, but he had just been thrown into a new one, a game whose rules, whose pieces, and whose very objective, were a complete, and deeply terrifying, mystery.
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The Sultan’s cryptic pronouncement was a perfectly crafted grenade of pure, calculated confusion. It was the move of a master player, a statement designed to shatter his opponent’s composure, to throw him completely off balance, and to seize absolute control of the conversation before it had even truly begun.
And it had worked perfectly. Lloyd, the man who was always a dozen steps ahead, the strategist who had an answer for every question and a contingency for every possibility, was, for the first time, completely, utterly, and truly… lost.
His mind, which had been a fortress of cold, hard logic, was now a chaotic battlefield of frantic, desperate speculation. Her? The word was a relentless, taunting echo. Was ‘her’ a code for a mission? A secret assignment to guard a high-value asset? Was the Sultan about to make him the personal protector of the Queen? Or perhaps he was being offered a position as a tutor, a mentor, for some young, talented, but as-yet-unknown royal scion?
The possibilities were endless, and each one felt more absurd and more inadequate than the last. The Sultan had not just thrown him a curveball; he had thrown him a ball that had dematerialized in mid-air and had reappeared behind him, humming a cheerful, mocking tune.
He looked to Amina, his eyes a silent, desperate plea for clarification, for a lifeline in this sea of royal, cryptographic nonsense. He saw, behind the thin, silk screen of her veil, that her eyes were crinkled at the corners. She was smiling. Not the cool, enigmatic smile of the princess, but the warm, familiar, and slightly mischievous smile of Sumaiya. She was enjoying this. She was savoring his confusion.
She then, with a grace that was almost cruel in its calm, stepped forward, a single, elegant step that placed her at his side. She was no longer just the princess; she was now the official translator, the designated interpreter of her father’s maddening, imperial will.
She turned to him, and though her face was hidden, her voice was a clear, melodic, and deeply, deeply amused instrument.
“My father, the Sultan,” she began, her tone the patient, slightly condescending one of a teacher explaining a simple concept to a very slow student, “is a man of… certain, traditional values. He believes that a man’s worth is not measured by the weight of his coin, or the length of his lineage, but by the strength of his arm and the courage of his heart.”
She paused, letting him absorb the simple, almost folksy, piece of royal philosophy.
“He also believes,” she continued, her voice now taking on a new, more serious, and far more world-altering weight, “that his only daughter, the heir to his throne, deserves a consort who is not just a political convenience, not just another foppish, blue-blooded peacock from a neighboring kingdom, but a man of true, and proven, substance. A man who is her equal, not just in station, but in will.”