Chapter 476. The Number of Options Had Just Dropped to Zero

Chapter 476: 476. The Number of Options Had Just Dropped to Zero

Catherine glanced up from her notebook at exactly that moment, an instinctive prickle at the base of her neck drawing her eyes toward him before she could consciously decide to look. What she saw made the fine hairs along her arms stand on end despite the stifling heat of the hall.

She had seen William angry before; she had seen him grind his teeth with suppressed fury after the banquet and pace the confines of a room like a caged lion after the conversation in the north wing. But none of that righteous rage looked anything like this.

This was not anger. Anger was hot; anger was loud.

This was something with the temperature of absolute zero. It was a stillness so profound it felt like the air around him had been vacuum sealed, leaving nothing but a predatory void.

Though she knew with absolute certainty that this coldness was not aimed at her, some ancient, primal part of her mind flinched, recognizing the presence of something that had long since transcended humanity.

Alden, for his part, noticed none of it. His arrogance was a fortress he had inhabited for too long.

His eyes swept over William once, briefly the dismissive glance of a man assessing a piece of furniture he had already decided was beneath his notice. The amusement in his face only deepened, stretching into a smirk that was as poisonous as it was condescending.

"And who is this," Alden said, tilting his head slightly as if inspecting an amusing insect, "standing behind the King like some rabid guard dog?"

"I’ve heard you’re something of a celebrity among the Academy’s students, Instructor Wade."

"A paragon of discipline, they say." He let out a derisive snort. "But this is not your place."

"This is a chamber of state, not a classroom."

"Sit down quietly, play your part, and let the important people speak."

William took one step forward.

It was not a large movement. There was no dramatic flourish, no theatrical stride. But something in the way his weight shifted, something in the sudden, terrifying economy of his motion, made every guard along both walls straighten instinctively.

Their hands twitched toward their weapons without them understanding why, a collective, unconscious recognition of a predator entering the circle.

When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, yet it didn’t carry like sound; it carried like a blade. It cut through the stale air and reached every corner of the cavernous hall with a clarity that felt unnatural, almost supernatural.

"You just made a very large mistake," William said.

His voice was flat, devoid of inflection, utterly terrifying in its calm. "Not because you engineered a disaster that killed innocent people."

"Not because you’re forcing a woman I love to marry the monster who destroyed her own family." His eyes locked onto Alden’s, and for the first time, the instructor’s gaze seemed to pierce through the prince’s aristocratic veneer. "But because you just said all of that to my face and you assumed I wasn’t going to do anything about it."

The silence that followed was absolute. It was the silence of a grave.

Even Lord Vane, who had sat through the entire confession with the unbothered stillness of a man discussing shipping manifests, went noticeably rigid.

For the first time since the meeting began, Vane’s calculating eyes flicked toward William, his pupils narrowing as he sensed the sudden shift in the room’s lethality.

Alden’s amusement curdled. The smirk didn’t just fade; it soured into something hard and ugly beneath the surface.

He had spent his entire life being the one who dictated terms, the one who smiled while others bled. To be threatened to be genuinely threatened by a man he had dismissed as a mere academic was an insult that burned worse than any accusation of treason.

He rose from his chair with slow, deliberate menace, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the armrests. His gaze was now fixed on William with venomous intent.

"Seize him," Alden commanded, his voice dropping to a cold, razor-edged snap that shattered the hush. "Seize this peasant immediately on charges of threatening the safety of a royal prince."

The Celestial guards hesitated for half a heartbeat, their eyes darting between the furious King and the unnervingly calm instructor, before the order took hold.

The air in the hall didn’t just tense; it shattered. As Alden’s order reverberated against the stone walls, the immediate reaction was a cascade of steel; every Celestial guard in the room reached for their weapons with instinctive, desperate speed.

But they were already too late.

The heavy oak doors at the far end of the hall didn’t just open; they were thrown aside with military precision.

Instead of the handful of ceremonial Delmore honor guards, the stiff, decorative figures that had escorted the delegation to every prior meeting, a tide of steel poured into the chamber.

Dozens of fully armored soldiers flooded in, moving in a tight, practiced combat formation that spoke of blood-soaked battlefields rather than palace pageantry.

They moved with a fluid, lethal discipline, their boots striking the stone in a synchronized rhythm that sounded like the heartbeat of an approaching executioner.

Their numbers alone dwarfed anything Delmore had shown during the entire diplomatic visit. This wasn’t an escort; it was an occupation force.

The speed with which they sealed every exit and took up positions around the perimeter told William everything he needed to know: they hadn’t come to negotiate. They had been waiting for this exact moment of confrontation to spring the trap they had laid weeks ago.

Alden’s cold smile returned with devastating force. Satisfaction radiated off him in waves, his posture relaxing as he realized he finally held every card.

He looked at the assembled Celestial officials not as peers, but as prey.

"Did you truly believe," Alden said, his voice dripping with theatrical cruelty, "that I would walk into enemy territory without proper preparation?"

"That I would risk my neck on the word of a kingdom I intend to dismantle?" He gestured dismissively at the guards who had come with them. "This entire delegation has been elite Delmore shock troops, disguised as ceremonial guards since the very first day we arrived."

"Every smile, every courtesy—it was all theater." His eyes locked onto William, gleaming with sadistic triumph. "I thought you deserved to know the truth before you die from your own pathetic stupidity."

Theron’s hands curled into white knuckled fists at his sides, his knuckles popping audibly in the silence. He looked like a man watching his kingdom burn in real time.

Beside him, Albert had gone deathly still, his lined face pale. William could almost see the gears turning behind Albert’s eyes as he frantically ran through every remaining diplomatic contingency, every treaty, every alliance only to find that every single door had been slammed shut and bolted from the outside.

The number of options had just dropped to zero.

Captain Roan, recognizing the hopeless mathematics of the situation, caught William’s eye from near the far wall.

With two of his most trusted men, he gave a single, sharp, silent gesture to the Celestial guards positioned around the room and an unmistakable order: ’Hold. Do not break formation. Do not throw lives away on a suicide charge.’

But William didn’t look like a man facing certain death. He didn’t look like a man trapped in a room with fifty armed killers.

Instead, the faintest smile touched his mouth. It wasn’t a smile of comfort or even hope; it was something darker, something hungry.

It was a small movement, barely more than a twitch at the corner of his lips, yet several of the more seasoned Delmore soldiers, who had killed hundreds in the trenches, felt something cold and primal crawl up the back of their necks. A deep, instinctive wrongness seized them.

’That smile,’ one soldier thought, his grip tightening on his sword hilt until his glove creaked, ’that’s not the smile of a victim.’

William’s inner voice was a low, steady hum of predatory focus.

’Let them come,’ he thought, his pulse slowing to a deadly, rhythmic crawl. ’Let them bring their numbers.’

’Let them bring their steel.’

’They think they’ve trapped a lamb in a den of wolves, but they’ve forgotten one thing.’

The coldness in his veins crystallized into a singular, violent intent. He wasn’t just prepared to fight; he was prepared to dismantle them.