Chapter 77: Unmasked Emotions and Tainted Logic

Fukuro’s question hung in the damp air.

Madam Florianthum did not give him a straight answer. Instead, she smoothly dodged every single verbal arrow he fired. She adjusted her torn collar with a freezing, calm elegance, completely ignoring his frantic curiosity. Her silence was like a brick wall.

Inside Fukuro’s chest, his massive, desperate crush on her took a violent, catastrophic hit. She isn’t even looking at me, his brain screamed. I just risked my entire jawline for her, and I am getting the brick-wall treatment!

But on the outside, he tried to force his scrawny shoulders back to look like a hardened, no-nonsense interrogator. The sheer jealousy of another man...a slave, touching her skin made him push past his own terror. He launched into a fast, rapid-fire round of questions, desperately trying to sound tough.

"Was it planned? Did you look for him?" Fukuro snapped, his voice cracking slightly as his boots ground into the dirt. "A slave, Madam! A creature in rags! Why him?" He moved like a cop to get more out of guilty’s mouth.

"Why take such a massive risk for him? You let him touch you. You let him mark your skin! Is he a ghost from your past?" Looking at the silence that Florianthum possessed he finally hit the spot to ask about him thinking of this as a right moment.

"Tell me! I am the one risking my neck to cover for you. I have a right to know who he is!"

Florianthum listened, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. For a fraction of a second, her icy expressions cracked. A heavy, raw vulnerability showed in her face.

"He is a stubborn, arrogant nightmare," she muttered, her voice dropping into a quiet, honest whisper.

"He thinks he can see right through me. He acts like his chains change absolutely nothing about who he is. He stands there in rags, yet he looks down on everyone."

She paused and let out a slow emotional sigh.

"It is... infuriating."

Hearing her actually confess a feeling about the barefoot menace sent Fukuro’s internal world into an absolute tailspin. A nightmare?! She called him a nightmare with that look in her eyes! The kind of nightmare you don’t want to wake up from! Oh gods, my heart...

Driven by pure, frantic desperation to know just how deep this went, Fukuro took a reckless step too close. He puffed out his chest, his hands shaking as he prepared to demand the full story.

In a flash, the high-ranking soldier inside Florianthum woke up.

She snapped to her feet, her spine perfectly straight. The absolute power of her military rank flooded back into her. Fukuro froze mid-breath. His tough-guy facade shattered into a million pieces.

A sudden wave of cold dread hit him as his brain violently remembered: Oh right, she can have me executed. He had completely forgotten that this woman was a dangerous, high-ranking commander, not a girl he could cross-examine.

"Fix your posture, Fukuro," Florianthum commanded, her voice turning into a hard, frozen iron. "You have forgotten your place. Your tongue is running way past your rank."

She stepped forward, her shadow completely covering his scrawny frame.

"Grab your mop and get back to your desk," she said, her eyes pinning him to the spot.

"You will clean the military logs to the absolute letter. Then you will scrub this floor until the blood is gone."

Fukuro’s jaw dropped. The tough-guy act instantly evaporated.

"You are a cleaner here, Fukuro," she continued, her tone dropping into a deadly, quiet hiss. "Nothing more."

She leaned in slightly, letting the chill of the room settle between them.

"If I hear one more question leave your mouth, I will replace you by morning. I will leave you out in the cold. Do you understand your orders?"

Fukuro’s brain slammed into reverse. The crushed-puppy routine vanished, replaced by the instinctual panic of a low-tier worker who valued his neck. He snapped his heels together so hard the buckles on his boots clinked, his arm shooting up into a rigid, trembling salute.

"Understood, my Lordess," he choked out, his eyes locked straight ahead on the damp stone wall, completely terrified to look her in the face.

Madam Florianthum didn’t offer a nod. She simply slid off the edge of the heavy wooden table, her movements fluid and entirely unbothered by the gritty floor beneath her feet.

Without a single word, she turned her back on him, the torn fabric at her collarbone casting long shadows against her skin as she began walking toward the dark, arched exit.

Fukuro remained frozen.

He stood there like a statue carved from cheap plaster, holding the salute so tightly his fingers vibrated.

His eyes stayed glued to the damp masonry, his chest barely expanding as he forced his breathing to remain completely silent.

Then, the cold reality of the situation hit him like a bucket of icy water.

His eyes darted sideways. He realized exactly where he was; standing in the middle of a highly illegal, unmapped secret base with a compromised Lordess who was supposed to be faking an injury.

Through the corner of his lenses, he saw the dark hem of her dress already disappearing past the threshold of the room.

His rigid posture shattered instantly.

"Your Lordess, Madam, wait!" Fukuro cried out, his voice cracking violently as he dropped his salute and went scrambling after her. His boots skidded on the loose dirt floor, his arms flailing slightly to keep his balance as he bolted toward the dark corridor. "Please, wait!"

He caught up to her just as she entered the shadows of the hallway, panting as if he had just run a marathon.

"I told Governor Kerwon that I would take you through the private servant corridors!" Fukuro hissed in a frantic, stage whisper, waving his hands around to emphasize the sheer danger of what she was doing.

Madam Florianthum didn’t even slow her pace. She kept moving forward into the dim, chilly corridor, her chin held high as if the frantic clerk trailing behind her didn’t even exist.

"Then just tell them that I am conscious again,"

Florianthum cut in. Her voice was entirely flat, dripping with an icy indifference.

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The transition from the damp cellar to the main stone corridors happened in a blur of heavy, synchronized motion.

Cassius marched right at the flank of the elite messenger, his bare soles making absolutely no sound against the cold masonry.

Up ahead, the path was cluttered with lower-tier kitchen slaves scrambling to move heavy crates of supplies out of the way.

They weren’t fast enough. Without slowing his stride or breaking his rhythm, Kerwon’s massive, armored boot came down callously onto the hand of a kneeling boy who had tripped over his own rags.