My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 7

Chapter : 13

He took a single, measured half-step closer, closing the distance slightly but still maintaining a respectful buffer. His expression turned serious, the last vestiges of the strained smile fading. "But I am also a man," he stated, the words simple but firm. "And a Ferrum, for whatever that name is worth in your eyes." He paused, letting the weight of his next words sink into the charged silence between them. "And I will never back down from something I've said, retract a statement honestly given, or allow myself to be intimidated into compliance, simply because someone dislikes my words and applies forceful pressure to silence me."

He locked his eyes directly onto hers, holding her slightly bewildered gaze. "You asked me to leave because you didn't like my compliment – a cheap flirt, perhaps, but sincerely meant in its own awkward way." A flicker of his earlier humour returned, self-deprecating this time. "Then, you tried to force me into submission with Spirit Pressure because I didn't immediately obey your command like a whipped cur. I respected your first request regarding physical space and boundaries. I will not," he declared, his voice hardening slightly with conviction, "bend to the second under duress."

He held her gaze for another long moment, letting the challenge, the unexpected declaration of principle, and the sheer novelty of his resistance hang heavy in the air between them. He saw the flicker of calculation in her eyes now, the sharp mind behind the icy facade processing this new data, reassessing the variables.

"You may not like what I said," he concluded quietly, his voice dropping slightly but losing none of its firmness. "You may find my presence irritating. You may wish I remained silent and invisible on that sofa forever. But I meant the compliment, Rosa. And I won't be bullied, spiritually or otherwise, into pretending otherwise."

He stood there, legs still slightly unsteady but his resolve firm, waiting for her response. He had thrown down a gauntlet, not of aggression, but of self-respect and refusal to conform to the pathetic role he had played in their first life. The next move was hers.

The residual tension in the room was thick enough to spread on toast. Lloyd stood there, legs mostly steady now, breathing even, the aftermath of Rosa’s spiritual assault still humming faintly in his nerves like phantom vibrations. He had weathered the storm, refused to yield, and asserted a boundary based on principle rather than fear. It was a significant departure from the script of their first life together, a deviation that left an uncertain silence hanging between them. Rosa, still perched on the bed, regarded him with that unnerving, calculating curiosity, the icy disdain momentarily shelved in favor of cautious reassessment.

Part of Lloyd, the weary, eighty-year-old part that craved simplicity and perhaps a quiet cup of tea, urged him to cut his losses. He’d made his point. He’d survived the pressure test. He hadn't folded like cheap laundry. Maybe now was the time for a strategic retreat. Go for that walk, clear his head, maybe check if Fang had digested the small mountain of chicken without exploding. Facing this beautiful, powerful, and thoroughly infuriating young woman felt like trying to negotiate peace with a glacier – exhausting and potentially pointless.

Just leave, the pragmatic voice whispered. Consolidate the minor victory. Live to annoy her another day.

He actually took a half-turn towards the door, the impulse to escape the charged atmosphere strong. But then, he stopped. Another thought, sharp and insistent, cut through the weariness. He had her attention, didn't he? For the first time, perhaps ever, she wasn't just looking at him, but seeing him as something other than an inconvenient political necessity or a weakling to be dismissed. This unexpected crack in her icy facade, this flicker of genuine curiosity born from his defiance, was an opportunity. An opening he hadn't had before.

He turned back slowly, facing her fully once more. The calculating look in her eyes sharpened slightly at his renewed attention. He wasn't leaving. Good. Or bad. She hadn't decided yet.

He searched for the right words, discarding the easy platitudes, the cautious probes. No, if he was going to deviate from the script, he might as well rip the whole damn thing up. He needed answers, context. Understanding the 'why' of their situation was just as crucial as gaining power or feeding poultry to undernourished spirit wolves.

"Why?" he asked, the single word cutting through the lingering silence. His voice was quiet again, devoid of challenge, but infused with a genuine, searching quality. He wasn't demanding, he was inquiring.

Rosa tilted her head slightly, a silent prompt to elaborate.

Chapter : 14

"Why did you agree to this marriage, Rosa?" he clarified, gesturing vaguely between them, encompassing the opulent room, the invisible chasm separating them. "You didn't want it. That much has been painfully obvious since the moment I first stepped into this room on our wedding night."

He met her gaze steadily, refusing to be deterred by the coldness that began creeping back into her expression, like frost reforming on a windowpane. "Someone like you," he continued, his voice gaining a note of conviction, acknowledging the strength he had just experienced firsthand, "someone with your talent, your Spirit potential… your will…" He deliberately emphasized the last word, recalling the crushing pressure she had unleashed. "You're not the type to simply bow to political expediency without a fight."

He took another small step closer, driven by the need to make her understand the dissonance he felt. "Even under pressure from your family, and from the Arch Duke, from the whole damn system… you could have resisted. You could have refused. Someone with your capabilities, your potential strength, could have garnered support. There are factions, nobles, even elements within the Royal Court who might have backed a powerful, defiant young talent seeking to escape an unwanted union. You didn't have to marry me."

He let the question hang heavy in the air. It wasn't an accusation, but a puzzle he genuinely couldn't solve, not based on the fierce, proud, powerful young woman he was seeing glimpses of beneath the icy exterior. Why bind herself to him, the mediocre Ferrum heir, when she clearly despised the arrangement and possessed the nascent power to potentially defy it?

Rosa’s expression, which had briefly shown flickers of surprise and calculation, hardened completely. The curiosity vanished, replaced by a familiar mask of utter indifference, laced with a disdain that felt practiced, perfected. She looked at him as if he were something unpleasant she’d discovered stuck to the sole of her exquisitely crafted shoe.

"You," she stated, her voice dripping with a chilling condescension that made her earlier anger seem almost warm by comparison, "are not worthy to know."

The dismissal was absolute, final. A slammed door in the face of his attempt at understanding. It relegated him back to the status of an insignificant annoyance, unworthy of explanation, unworthy of consideration. The gap between them yawned wider than ever, seemingly unbridgeable.

Just after the dismissive words left her lips, something flickered past her head. It was infinitesimally fast, a momentary distortion in the air near the dark strands of hair that had escaped her usually severe hairstyle. It was like a mote of dust catching the sunlight, but brighter, hotter, leaving a faint, lingering orange afterimage that vanished almost instantly.

It was so fast, so subtle, that Rosa, wrapped in her disdainful pronouncement, didn't even seem to register it. Her cold gaze remained fixed on Lloyd, daring him to challenge her dismissal.

One lazy hand of Lloyd was pointing toward Rosa.

It wasn't a thread. It wasn't a trick of the light.

It was steel. A wire, finer than a human hair, impossibly thin, drawn from the very essence of his bloodline power. And it glowed with a faint, internal heat, the orange flicker the visual signature of the innate fire ability that ran deep within the true Ferrum lineage, allowing them not just to manipulate metal, but to shape and temper it with their will.

There, a grim satisfaction bloomed in Lloyd’s chest, pushing aside the sting of her dismissal. Let’s see if this is worthy of your attention.

His mind flashed back, unbidden, to a dark, dusty archive room deep within the Ferrum estate. Twenty-two-year-old Lloyd, reeling from the brutal, sudden assassination of his father, his mother, his younger sister Jothi. The weight of the Arch Duchy suddenly, terrifyingly, his. Desperate for answers, for strength, for anything that could help him survive the vipers' nest he'd inherited, he’d stumbled upon an ancient, leather-bound tome hidden behind a false panel (he was informed by his late father).

The Book of Ferrum: True Lineage.

Its pages, brittle with age, spoke not of the publicly known Ferrum Void Power – Iron Body, the ability to harden one's skin, and Iron Manipulation, the crude shaping of nearby ferrous metals. That, the book revealed, was a deliberate fabrication. A shield. A lie maintained for generations to protect the family from enemies who would covet their true strength.