Then came the tedious hours pretending to absorb Master Elmsworth's droning lecture on… something about grain storage logistics. Lloyd spent most of it mentally redesigning the Ducal granaries based on Earth-standard silo technology and calculating potential spoilage reduction percentages. He earned no System Coins for it, sadly. Apparently, internal monologues on agricultural engineering didn't qualify.
Evening descended once more, blanketing the estate in darkness. And once more, Lloyd found himself exiled to the sofa, the oil lamp lit, the same heavy, leather-bound volume open on his lap. The graphite stick was back in action, scratching away in the margins. Same scene, different night.
Across the room, in the shadowed expanse of the bed, Rosa stirred again. Not just a flicker this time, but a distinct shift. He didn't look up, sensing the change in the room's subtle energy field. He kept his eyes fixed on a particularly dense chapter regarding guild membership inheritance laws.
Okay, focus, Lloyd. Don't get distracted by the potentially homicidal Ice Queen noticing your weird study habits.
But he could feel her attention. It wasn't the crushing weight of her Spirit Pressure, thank the gods, but a focused, almost analytical awareness directed his way. He could practically hear the logical gears turning in her mind. Observation: Subject engaged in prolonged study of single text. Variable: Text appears mundane ('Guild Commerce'). Anomaly: Duration and intensity inconsistent with subject's previously observed academic diligence. Hypothesis: Purpose unclear. (It was Lloyd jokes)
The silence stretched, but this time it felt different. Less empty, more… charged. Like the pause before a question is asked.
Then, her voice, cool and crisp, cut through the quiet.
"What is that?"
It wasn't shouted, not laced with the fury of yesterday, nor the sharp impatience of the morning before. Just a direct, almost clinical inquiry. Delivered, he noted with mild amusement, without her even bothering to turn her head fully towards him. Efficiency, even in curiosity.
Lloyd looked up, letting a hint of mild surprise show. An initiation of conversation? Unprecedented. "This?" He tapped the cover of the book. "Business studies. Specifically, local guild structures and established trade theories. Thrilling read, I assure you." His tone was light, deliberately downplaying the intensity of his focus.
He waited, expecting the conversation to end there. A grunt of acknowledgment, perhaps, followed by a return to the usual frosty silence.
Rosa didn't respond immediately. He heard another faint rustle of sheets, perhaps her adjusting her position slightly. Then, her voice again, still cool, still detached.
"Study is necessary."
It was a statement of fact, delivered with the finality of a mathematical proof. A standard platitude, likely offered more to conclude the interaction than to genuinely encourage him. The unspoken assumption hung in the air: he was dutifully absorbing the required knowledge, however dull, like any responsible heir should. Memorizing rules, understanding precedents. The proper, accepted way.
Lloyd felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips, the eighty-year-old cynic enjoying the setup. He resisted the urge to chuckle aloud. Oh, this was too good.
"Necessary, yes," he agreed easily, matching her calm tone. He paused, letting the agreement settle for a beat before gently pulling the rug out from under her assumption. "But I'm not really reading it, Rosa."
He saw her head finally turn fully towards him in the dim light, though her expression remained shrouded in shadow.
"Not in the way you mean," he clarified, his voice dropping slightly, conspiratorially. He tapped a heavily marked section of the page with his graphite stick. "I'm marking where the theories are outdated." He paused again, adding the final, crucial piece. "Or just plain wrong."
Silence. Not the earlier tense silence, nor the merely quiet silence. This was a silence born of pure, unadulterated confusion.
He could see her face more clearly now as she leaned forward slightly, peering at him through the gloom. The usual icy composure was still there, the carefully controlled mask firmly in place. But behind it, something had shifted. Her brows, usually smooth or drawn together in a frown of regal disapproval, were now pinched in a slight, questioning furrow. Her dark eyes, narrowed slightly, weren't conveying anger or disdain, but a look of intense, analytical puzzlement. Like a master mathematician encountering an equation that simply refused to balance, defying all known axioms.
Wrong? Her expression seemed to scream silently. Marking established texts as… wrong? Why? What is the utility in finding fault? One learns accepted principles. One applies them. One does not waste energy dissecting foundational texts for theoretical flaws.