Chapter 218: The Man’s Shadow
The two of them quietly made their way to the drawing room. A fireplace crackled softly in front of them, its warmth slowly driving away the cold that had followed them up from the basement.
The room itself had changed considerably since Delilah last saw it. Gideon had expanded what used to be an ordinary sitting room by merging it with the old bar area, turning it into a much larger space furnished with comfortable sofas covered in premium wolf fur that made the entire room feel surprisingly warm despite the snowstorm raging outside.
Neither of them spoke at first.
Delilah quietly poured the freshly brewed lavender tea into two porcelain cups, the soothing aroma gradually filling the room as the steam drifted lazily toward the ceiling.
Just as Gideon reached for his cup, she slipped a small bottle of vodka from her jacket pocket and casually poured a generous amount into her own tea.
He raised an eyebrow.
"I need this after everything that happened today," she sighed before giving a bitter smile. "And after remembering one of the most idiotic decisions I’ve ever made."
She slowly took a sip, closing her eyes for a brief moment as the warmth of the tea mixed with the burning taste of alcohol.
Gideon picked up his own cup and took a drink before letting out a quiet sigh.
"You’re not wrong. It really was an idiotic decision. What I don’t understand is... didn’t you ever notice the warning signs? Leon abandoned you and Summer once already. Worse, when everything went wrong, he chose to save himself and you instead of his own daughter."
He shook his head. "I understand loving someone despite their flaws, Delilah. I really do. But I still can’t understand that choice."
Delilah remained silent for a long time. Her eyes never left the worn book resting on the coffee table between them, its cover already faded from years of use.
"He wasn’t always like that, Gideon."
Her voice was almost drowned out by the sound of the fire.
"Or maybe... I simply didn’t know any better."
She leaned back against the sofa. "You know I grew up as an orphan. I never had anyone to teach me what love was supposed to feel like. When someone gave me even a little attention, it felt like the greatest kindness in the world."
A quiet laugh escaped her lips.
"Looking back now... maybe that’s exactly why Leon chose me. I was a naïve woman with nowhere else to go. Someone easy to love, easy to manipulate and even easier to keep beside him because I had no one else."
She slowly shook her head. "He could disappear whenever he wanted, lie to me whenever he wanted and always come back knowing I’d still be waiting."
Gideon frowned. "But he left you once, and you still survived."
"I survived. That doesn’t mean I was fine." She looked deep into his eyes.
"I had to become strong because Summer needed a mother. I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart. Then Leon came home... and for the first time in years, I finally allowed myself to rest because I truly believed he would never leave us again."
Another quiet silence settled between them.
Gideon leaned back against the sofa while watching the snowstorm outside gradually become heavier. He still couldn’t understand her completely, perhaps because his own experience had been the exact opposite.
His father had never become a better man.
In Gideon’s memories, the man who was supposed to protect his family had only become crueler with time, turning the house into a place filled with fear instead of warmth.
Maybe that was why he had stopped believing people could truly change. Once someone crossed a certain line, he simply assumed they would do it again.
He quietly finished the last sip of his tea before placing the empty cup back on the table.
"Anyway... Let’s stop talking about that bastard before he ruins perfectly good tea. One thing still bothers me, though. How are you so certain Leon might be behind all of this? You revealed that theory in front of everyone knowing full well they’d blame you for it. That’s not something you’d normally do."
Delilah remained silent for a long time. Her eyes never left the dancing flames inside the fireplace as if the answer had been hidden there all along, waiting for her to gather enough courage to say it aloud.
"It’s more selfish than you think," she finally murmured. "I simply couldn’t keep that secret any longer."
Her voice remained calm, but Gideon could hear the exhaustion buried beneath every word.
"That day was supposed to be the day Leon died. I remember it better than any other day in my life. The Order of the West managed to corner him. They wounded him so badly that everyone believed there was no way he could survive, and after the battle ended, they allowed me to approach his body one last time because they were certain he was already dead."
She paused. "But when I held him... I heard his heartbeat. "It was weak. So weak that I almost convinced myself I had imagined it. But it was there. Leon was still alive."
Delilah closed her eyes. "I lied to them. I told them he had already died, and after they left... I left him there."
Gideon remained silent.
"I know what you’re thinking, that he might’ve died anyway. Maybe he bled to death after everyone left. But this is Leon we’re talking about."
A faint, bitter smile appeared on her face.
"He spent his entire life walking into places where normal people would’ve died within minutes. He wrote encyclopedias about aberrants because he insisted on studying them in their own habitats. I’ve seen him survive situations far worse than the injuries he suffered that day."
She let out a long breath. "So no... I’ve never truly believed he died."
Another silence settled between them before Gideon finally spoke.
"And the parasite?"
Delilah’s expression gradually became more serious. "The parasite is the real reason I started suspecting him. Parasitic aberrants don’t evolve the same way ordinary aberrants do. Their appearances may change, their bodies may become larger and their survival strategies more sophisticated, but their biological nature doesn’t."
She slowly looked at Gideon. "They still follow the same principles they followed before the apocalypse."
"The fungi still infect through spores. The nematodes still seek suitable hosts. The parasitoids still reproduce by completing their life cycle inside another organism."
"Even the parasite living inside the King of Senduro Highland is simply an evolved version of something that already existed before civilization collapsed."
She shook her head. "But hijacking an entire mycorrhizal network?"
She leaned back against the sofa before letting out another exhausted sigh.
"No parasite in the old world evolved to control a fungal communication network connecting an entire ecosystem. That isn’t how evolution works for parasitic aberrants."
"Their evolution modifies what already exists, it doesn’t suddenly create an entirely new infection strategy with multiple biological systems working together so perfectly."
"And Leon..." She lowered her eyes. "...was one of the very few scientists brilliant enough to even imagine creating something like that."
Gideon finished the last sip of his tea and set the empty cup down.
The more he thought about it, the more Delilah’s theory made sense.
She wasn’t accusing her husband out of guilt. She had reached that conclusion through years of studying parasites alongside Leon. If even someone with her knowledge believed the parasite had been engineered, then it wasn’t something he could ignore.
More importantly...
The parasite and Henry’s ability weren’t so different when viewed from another angle.
Both had achieved something that should have been impossible.
One had created a parasite capable of controlling an entire mycorrhizal network. The other had somehow managed to command an S-rank aberrant. Different methods, perhaps, but the idea behind them was disturbingly similar.
Control.
Gideon’s expression darkened. If Leon was truly behind the parasite, then he was even more dangerous than the Chaos Children or the Children of Eden.
Leon was only human. A human brilliant enough to achieve the impossible through knowledge alone.
He let out a quiet breath just as someone knocked and pushed the door open.
Jade stepped inside. Her face was calm as always, but the coldness in her eyes told him she had already noticed what had happened.
"The Greenwardens have arrived, they’re examining Jace in the medical tent and asked for all of us."
Delilah stood immediately. "I’ll stay here, you should go."
Gideon nodded. There was no reason to argue over little things. They left the drawing room together, but after only a few steps down the corridor, Jade stopped.
She folded her arms and turned toward him. "So... you comforted her."
"Yes."
She stared at him for a moment before letting out a quiet, disbelieving laugh. "Really, Gideon? After making me kneel just to earn your forgiveness?"
His brows furrowed. "I never asked you to kneel. It was your decision to do that."
Her arms tightened across her chest. "You refused to see me. You ignored every proposal my men brought you and shut down every conversation. Kneeling was the only thing left."
"What Delilah did was far worse than what I did." Her voice held more frustration than anger now. "If her theory is true, then everything happening traces back to Leon... and she hid that for years
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