Chapter 408: Chapter-408
The voice was not loud, but it carried the crushing weight of a collapsing mountain. The Marquis finally stepped forward, his cold, indifferent eyes locking onto Heena. He didn’t look angry. He just looked profoundly disappointed, like a god looking down at a defective creation.
"Put the sword down," the Marquis ordered. His tone left absolutely no room for negotiation. "You are making a disgrace of yourself and this family."
For a split second, Heena felt a sudden, violent phantom pain in her chest. It was the original Seera’s lingering trauma—a deep-seated, terrifying instinct to drop to her knees and beg for her father’s approval.
But Heena just ruthlessly crushed that feeling under her heel.
She stood up completely straight, lifting the heavy broadsword with ease, and met her father’s icy glare with a look of pure, burning defiance.
"A disgrace, huh?"
Heena slowly looked up at the clear blue sky, letting out a long, incredibly heavy sigh. Deep inside her mind, the very last, fragile thread of her patience violently snapped.
She lowered her head, her dark eyes completely dead as she looked at Samuel.
"Do it."
Before anyone in the courtyard could even take a breath to react—before the Marquis could blink or the Marchioness could utter another word—Samuel moved. He didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t need to.
Moving with blinding, terrifying speed, Samuel lunged forward. His massive hand clamped down on the back of Kavien’s neck like a vice. With a single, brutal downward motion, he slammed the First Groom’s face directly into the hard stone floor of the courtyard.
*CRACK.*
"AGH! AAAAH!" Kavien shrieked in absolute, blinding agony, his hands flying up to clutch his face as blood immediately began pooling beneath his nose and forehead.
And of course, how could the Marchioness let her precious son-in-law scream alone?
"What are you doing?!" the mother screamed, her voice reaching a pitch so high it could shatter glass. She lunged forward, but the terrifying aura radiating from Samuel kept her completely frozen in her tracks.
Heena slowly turned to look at her mother, completely dropping the polite, aristocratic facade. There was no more fake sweetness, no more mocking respect, and absolutely zero pity left in her gaze.
"What?" Heena demanded, her voice flat and dripping with pure disgust. "Did both of you go completely senile or something?"
The entire courtyard was stunned into absolute silence. The servants stopped breathing. The guards widened their eyes.
"This courtyard," Heena stated loudly, gesturing to the sprawling bamboo-filled estate around them, "belongs to my grandmother. She gifted it to me when I was twelve years old. So, in every legal and literal sense, this is *my* house."
She turned her dead eyes away from her mother and locked them directly onto the towering figure of the Marquis.
"And you," Heena said, her tone devoid of even a single ounce of filial respect. "Just because everyone bows to you and calls you ’Marquis’ all day... did you completely lose your mind on the battlefield, you old man?"
The collective gasp from the servants was audible. Calling the Marquis of the estate a senile "old man" to his face was tantamount to treason within the family hierarchy.
The Marquis’s face, usually as cold and immovable as a glacier, instantly turned a violent shade of red. His absolute authority had just been thoroughly and publicly shattered. He clenched his fists at his sides, stepping forward with a terrifying pressure.
"You dare to talk to me like that?!" the Marquis roared, raising his hand as if he were actually going to strike her.
Heena didn’t even flinch. She just casually raised her own hand, cutting him off before he could even finish his sentence.
"Don’t you dare shout at me like that," Heena warned smoothly, not a hint of fear in her voice. "And besides... it is not me who is saying this. It is her."
Heena simply pointed a slender finger over their shoulders, directly toward the courtyard gates.
The Marquis froze. He slowly turned his head.
Standing at the entrance of the courtyard, leaning heavily on her carved wooden cane, was the Grand Madam. Her ancient eyes were burning with an anger so profound and terrifying that the temperature in the courtyard seemed to drop ten degrees.
The Marquis’s domineering aura completely vanished. He instantly lowered his head, his shoulders dropping in sheer panic. "Mother... you..."
The grandmother didn’t even look at Heena. She looked at the Marquis as if she were staring at a piece of rotten trash.
"I used to hear the commoners shouting in the streets," the grandmother began, her voice raspy but echoing with absolute, crushing power. "They used to say that a mother would have been better off giving birth to a piece of bacon instead of a useless child."
She slowly hobbled forward, her cane clicking sharply against the stone.
"Looking at you right now," the grandmother spat, her eyes narrowing with pure venom. "I really think I should have given birth to a piece of bacon instead of you. At least then, I would have had enough to eat for a second and actually enjoyed it."
The Marquis stood completely paralyzed. He had never, in his entire life, seen his mother this furious. He opened his mouth to speak, but the grandmother slammed her cane against the ground, silencing him instantly.
"If you dare to raise your fucking hand at my granddaughter," the Grand Madam snarled, completely discarding her noble vocabulary in her blinding rage. "Or if you dare to loudly shout at her ever again... I promise you, I will beat the shit out of you myself."
She took another step closer to her towering, terrified son, pointing a weathered finger right in his face.
"And after I am done," she continued ruthlessly, "I will call your father back from the borders, and he will literally kill you. As your parents, we will publicly declare you an unfilial, treacherous son. And do not worry about us—we will not spend a single second in jail for doing it."
The Marquis stood frozen, his broad shoulders trembling under the crushing, absolute authority of his mother.
For a man who commanded legions on the battlefield and ruled the estate with an iron fist, being publicly dressed down and compared to a piece of bacon in front of his own servants was the ultimate, world-shattering humiliation. The violent red color in his face rapidly drained away, leaving him deathly pale.
He slowly lowered his raised hand, his fingers twitching helplessly. He bowed his head. "Mother... I was merely..."
"Shut your mouth!" the Grand Madam snapped, her cane striking the stone floor again. "Did I give you permission to speak? Every time you open your mouth, you just prove to me how completely useless you are!"
Seeing her husband utterly subjugated, the Marchioness panicked. She looked down at Kavien, who was still rolling on the ground, whimpering and clutching his bleeding, broken nose.
"Mother-in-law!" the Marchioness cried out, tears of genuine distress pooling in her eyes. "Please, you must look at reason! Seera has gone completely mad! She ordered her guard to brutally assault Kavien! He is a recognized groom of this house! Look at him, he is severely injured!"
