Chapter 527: Chapter-527
He cleared his throat, mimicking the old woman’s deep, commanding tone perfectly.
"You are the new master of the inner household, Samuel. You are her husband. Therefore, you must also deal with it. You see this old general sitting in the courtyard? I have been dealing with this absolute idiot of a man for my entire life. I have cleaned up his messes, managed his reputation, and stopped him from burning down the capital a dozen times. Now, you have married into the Vanguard. You have an idiot of your very own to manage. So deal with it. Go buy a mountain. Go buy all the silk in the capital. Spend my granddaughter’s money until the merchants weep with joy. Just please, please, please... make sure those two idiots do not start a bloodbath."
The carriage fell into a profound, suffocating silence once again.
Grandpa Marcuset sat completely frozen on the bench. The invincible Vanguard General, the terror of the empire, was currently staring blankly into space, his entire ego thoroughly dismantled by a woman who was currently hundreds of miles away.
"She... she called me her idiot," Grandpa whispered, his voice cracking with a bizarre mixture of profound betrayal and weirdly romantic awe.
Heena didn’t say a word.
If her life had been a web novel, this would have been the exact moment the author brutally subverted the ’brilliant female lead’ trope to remind the audience that the true mastermind was the elderly matriarch playing 4D chess behind the scenes.
She had thought she was manipulating the Emperor. She had thought she was outsmarting the Prime Minister. She had thought she was maintaining an iron grip over her sham of a husband.
But in reality? Grandma Marcuset had simply handed Samuel the unlimited credit card and told him to go distract the public so her "thick-headed granddaughter" didn’t accidentally commit high treason.
Samuel leaned back against the cushions, crossing his arms with an utterly unapologetic, smug expression.
"So, as you can see, Wifey," Samuel purred, looking incredibly pleased with himself. "I wasn’t wasting your money at all. I was simply fulfilling my solemn, marital duty to the Vanguard family. I was managing my idiot."
Heena slowly turned her head. She looked at his incredibly handsome, completely punchable face.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t summon the System. She simply closed her eyes again, leaned her head against the rattling wooden wall of the carriage, and let out a long, slow breath.
"Driver," Heena called out, her voice devoid of all hope. "Take the long way back to the estate. I need to rethink my entire existence."
Heena slowly turned her head, fixing Samuel with a glare so chilling it could have frozen the hot summer air outside the carriage.
She pointed a single, black-leather-clad finger directly down at the wooden floorboards beneath their feet.
"Call me an idiot one more time," Heena whispered, her voice dangerously soft and completely devoid of mercy, "and I will personally pry these floorboards up and bury you directly underneath this moving carriage, you damn bastard."
Samuel, possessing at least a baseline instinct for self-preservation, instantly snapped his mouth shut. He offered her a tight, polite smile, smartly deciding that silence was the only thing keeping him breathing.
Satisfied, Heena sat back against the plush velvet cushions.
Internally, however, the storm in her mind was still raging. She had to begrudgingly admit—strictly within the absolute privacy of her own thoughts—that her grandmother’s strategy was actually brilliant. A massive, harmless financial commotion in the prime district was the perfect cover for the Vanguard’s aggressive political maneuvers today.
But there was absolutely no way she was going to give this shopaholic hostage an ounce of credit for it.
If she praised him, or even let it slip that she thought his idea was smart, he would undoubtedly take it as official permission to go on another solo spending spree. Heena was acting like a wealthy heiress, but the truth was, she wasn’t a bottomless pit of gold! The Vanguard’s wealth was tied up in estates, military logistics, and paying their soldiers. If this idiot decided to buy another mountain next week, she was legitimately going to have to start taking on side jobs as an errand girl just to feed the household. So, no thanks. His ego would receive absolutely zero validation from her.
As the initial shock wore off, a new, massive headache began to throb behind her eyes.
The public commotion.
Until today, Samuel’s presence in the Vanguard estate had been a relatively quiet affair. Heena had specifically wanted him to remain a hidden, low-profile hostage. In fact, she had already formulated a flawless, foolproof plan to indefinitely delay their arranged marriage. She had fully intended to quietly bribe a high-ranking priest from the temple to publicly declare that their horoscopes were a disastrous mismatch, citing that their destinies clashed and marrying would bring a curse upon the empire.
It was the perfect excuse to force her grandparents to back down without losing face.
But now? That plan was completely obliterated into ashes.
Because of this massive spectacle, every single noble, merchant, and spy in the capital now knew exactly who Samuel was. Worse, this shameless bastard had deliberately pranced around the most crowded street in the city, loudly and affectionately calling her ’Wifey, Wifey, Wifey’ in front of hundreds of gossiping noblewomen!
Now, the entire capital firmly believed they were a deeply devoted, aggressively romantic couple. If she tried to throw him out or cancel the wedding now based on a ’horoscope mismatch,’ the high society would tear her apart. Those bored, drama-starved aristocrats would accuse the Vanguard of playing with the young master’s heart, and she would probably end up being thrown into the cold palace just to appease the public outrage over her "cruelty."
’Well,’ Heena thought with a heavy, internal sigh. ’The milk is already spilled. Let’s just face it head-on and deal with the consequences later.’
She turned her head, her gaze drifting back to the man sitting beside her.
Samuel was looking out the carriage window, watching the capital roll by. The warm afternoon breeze slipped through the velvet curtains, gently ruffling his dark, perfectly styled hair. The golden sunlight caught the sharp, aristocratic angles of his handsome face, illuminating the soft, remarkably peaceful smile resting on his lips.
For a brief moment, Heena felt a sharp, unexpected pang of genuine melancholy tight in her chest.
She looked at him and remembered exactly who he was supposed to be. In the original trajectory of this world’s fate, Samuel was the ultimate, tragic villain. He was destined to be consumed by darkness, manipulated by the royal family, and eventually destroyed in a bloodbath of his own making.
By pulling him into the Vanguard estate, she had completely derailed his destined fate. She had saved him from the initial plotline, but in doing so, she had dragged him directly into her own terrifying, high-stakes political war.
Heena closed her eyes, the cool energy of the Aura Stone pulsing against her wrist, reminding her of the ticking clock hanging over her own head.
Her body was a failing vessel. She was severely sick, surviving purely on sheer willpower, borrowed soul vitality, and the System’s interventions.
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