Chương 280: 57. Dire News 3

Inside the command tent, I threw the flap back and tossed the slip onto the table. The paper skidded across maps and ledgers with a small sound that somehow made the whole tent feel quieter. Ignicia and Olivia came in behind me. Adeline had followed as far as the entrance, but one glance at Olivia was enough — she stepped back outside without a word and held the threshold, not crossing it. Good. She knew exactly when to be present, and when not to listen.

I didn't have the bandwidth to care about the details right now. I planted both hands on the table and looked at the slip.

"The Margrave of the East is dead." The air in the tent seemed to press down an inch. Olivia reached for the slip at once. Ignicia didn't move. She simply stood at the side of the table, and the look she gave me went dark and quiet. I gritted my teeth and kept going.

"My two idiot brothers — the moment they heard the Margrave was dead, they panicked and pulled straight back into House Rosa's Thornhold." I pressed my finger hard into the eastern stretch of the map.

"And this is at least a day old." Olivia's eyes swept the contents fast, her brow already knitting. I let out a cold, short breath, not quite managing to keep the heat out of my own voice.

"For all we know, Yanxia's troops are already climbing the Eastern Wall." Two seconds of silence. Not because anyone hadn't understood — precisely because everyone had, and that was exactly why those two seconds weighed what they weighed. With the Margrave dead, the rhythm he'd been holding together had snapped. And with those two fools sealing themselves in, this wasn't just a matter of them being a disgrace.

The area around Fort Louis was supposed to absorb flank support for the Eastern Wall and manage the internal relay nodes. The moment the people in charge there shut the door, they'd effectively pinched off half the artery running from the interior to the Wall. Not a simple retreat. A self-inflicted collapse dragging the rear nodes, the troop routes, the resupply chain, and everyone's morale down with it. Olivia finished reading, looked up, and her voice came out even quieter than before.

"What do you intend to do?" She asked it steadily. She wasn't rushing to hand me an answer. Wasn't trying to talk my anger back down with some my lord, please calm yourself. She simply set the choice on the table and let me be the one to say it. I stared at the map, forcing the surge back down a notch.

"The gate's not something we can count on today." At least, not entirely, I added silently. The worksite was still recalibrating, and Randall's people weren't frauds. But the eastern front didn't need "maybe stable tomorrow." It needed someone pressing the line now. So the line couldn't be abandoned — it had to keep being fixed. But we couldn't just sit here waiting for it, either. I looked up at Ignicia.

"If we fly straight there from Three Rivers Fortress — can we make it?" She didn't answer immediately. Just lifted her eyes.

"Destination?" I leaned over and pressed a finger to the map.

"Here."

"Fort Louis." Ignicia followed my finger, sweeping the surrounding terrain, river lines, and wind patterns with two unhurried seconds of attention — not performing deliberation, but not answering carelessly either. After a moment, she nodded.

"Possible." Her knuckle tapped the route once.

"Half a day." I didn't answer right away. I just kept looking at the mark for Fort Louis, feeling the fire in my chest slowly turn over again. Once we're at Fort Louis...

"First, we restore discipline." Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. The words came out almost on their own. My voice was cold — cold enough that even I could hear this wasn't a purely tactical statement anymore. Olivia didn't speak right away. Her gaze rested on the map for a beat, then dropped, very lightly, to my waist. I followed her eyes down and only then noticed my hand resting right beside the rope I almost never took off.

It wasn't much to look at. Not something worth showing off. Just a length of rope that had once been shoved into my hands, along with the words: "to give you your last shred of dignity." I'd kept it on ever since. Not out of sentiment. Because some things are ugly enough that you need to keep them — so that if your life ever starts looking halfway decent, you don't forget how you were once thrown out like garbage. Olivia drew her gaze back and spoke, her tone as level as ever.

"Does my lord intend to restore military discipline..." A brief pause.

"... or settle a family matter first?" The words were very soft. Which was exactly what made them so precise — like a clean, bloodless blade slicing open the knot in my chest and holding it up for me to look at myself. I snapped.

"They brought this on themselves!" The words were out before I'd decided to say them. The tent went still. I hadn't realized my own voice had climbed that high — but once it broke free, there was no pulling the rest of it back down.

"What did they give me when they threw me out?" I grabbed the rope at my hip, my knuckles going white around it.

"A broken sword. Ten debased silver coins—" The rope swung once in my grip.

"And this. My 'last shred of dignity,' they called it." I stared at it and felt my chest go tight. Not with grief. Not with self-pity. Something closer to a fire only now, far too late, finally catching.

"If I hadn't run into Jessi and the others on the road, I'd have been left to rot in a ditch." I could hear my own breathing gone ragged by the time I finished. Neither of them spoke right away. Ignicia stood off to the side. She didn't try to console me, didn't interrupt.

She simply watched, quietly, her eyes deep and still — as if confirming, for the first time, that beneath the version of me who usually talked back with a smirk and shrugged off getting pushed around, there was a place that had never once been touched. Olivia watched too, her expression unchanged, but she didn't press any further either. After a moment, I forced the surge back down — not all the way, but enough. I let go of the rope, let it drop back against my hip, and exhaled, long and slow.

"Olivia."

"Yes." Her voice was as steady as ever. I looked up at her.

"Who is the head of this house?" The tent went almost unbearably quiet after that. Olivia didn't answer right away — not from hesitation, but as though the answer carried too much weight to deliver carelessly. Then, clear and even:"You are." She held my gaze and finished it.

"Lord Cedric." I closed my eyes. The fire hadn't gone out. It had simply stopped trying to climb my throat, and settled, heavier, back into my chest. I opened my eyes and tapped the edge of the map once.

"I don't like arguing." I said it slowly.

"This stops here — for now." Then I looked at Olivia.

"Not because I'm letting it go. Because military orders come first. Family law comes second." Something shifted, very quietly, in Olivia's expression. Not surprise. More like a small, silent nod of approval settling into place. I went on.

"Prepare a light transit line toward Fort Louis immediately. I want the fastest possible detachment ready — supplies, personnel, medics, clerks, and a full transfer-of-command manifest."

"The worksite keeps working the gate. No stopping. The moment the short-range link holds, main force and materiel move forward on the original dual-line plan."

"And pull every current troop roster and supply ledger we have on Thornhold, Fort Louis, and the Eastern Wall flank line. All of them." Olivia nodded, without a single unnecessary question.

"Understood." I held her gaze.

"This side is yours." She inclined her head.

"You have my word." This time she didn't leave right away. She refolded the dispatch, gathered the charts and supply records on the table into her arms, and only then turned to go. Not driven out by my temper. She'd taken the order and gone to set in motion the one thing she did better than anyone. That was exactly how it should be. When the flap fell shut, it was just Ignicia and me left in the tent. Quiet enough to hear the lamp wick burning. I stared at the map for a long while before I finally heard her speak.

"Cedric—" I didn't look up. Just asked, tired.

"Are you here to tell me not to kill them too?" Ignicia was quiet for a beat. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed — not the loud bark from earlier, but something short and quiet, carrying a trace of something genuinely amused.

"No." I looked up at that. She stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the table, red eyes settled on me.

"I'm just a little surprised."

"By what."

"First time I've seen you this emotional." I looked at her and let out a dry laugh of my own despite everything.

"Yeah." My hand drifted back to the rope at my hip without my deciding it should.

"I'm a little surprised myself." Ignicia's eyes followed the motion, her voice flat.

"Seems that rope bothers you more than I gave it credit for." I didn't deny it. There wasn't anything to deny. Some things you wear long enough that you convince yourself you've made peace with them. Then one day they get pried open alongside everything else — an urgent dispatch, a collapsing defensive line, two useless brothers sealing themselves inside a keep — and you find out the fire was there the entire time. You'd just been sitting on it. Ignicia didn't push it further.

She glanced at the map and pulled the conversation cleanly back to business.

"So then, Cedric." Her fingertip tapped Fort Louis once.

"We move at dawn?" I let out a breath, eyes back on the map.

"Yes." No hesitation this time.

"Have Lei Lian get the Yinglong Guard ready." The moment she heard it, the corner of Ignicia's mouth lifted — the exact look of a dragon that had finally been given permission to move.

"Leave it to me." She turned and walked out.