Chapter 121: Chapter 121: Mariana’s Breakdown

“Calm yourself, little girl,” Sapphira said with a faint smile. “This Queen is not stealing your husband from you. This is a strategic bond with Adonis Kingsbane to reassure the Dragon Race that he will never abandon the dragons or betray their faith.”

“Nonsense!” Mariana shouted. “If you do not have faith in him, why should he trust you? This whole thing is a carefully planned sham. You greedy woman must have been charmed by my husband and now want to steal him from me. I understand everything perfectly.”

She turned to look into Adonis’s eyes.

“Am I not right, Adonis? You agree with me, don’t you? You do not want this witch hanging around your neck, right? Tell them. Tell them you only belong to me.”

Adonis was honestly in a dilemma.

For him, it was far more beneficial to accept Sapphira as another wife, as his growth depended directly on the women around him. The stronger the woman he formed a bond with, the more Harem Force he would be able to generate.

But he could not say these things to Mariana, could he?

She might feel he was betraying her.

He also did not want to limit himself to one woman. Millia was already his, and more women would surely join this Harem in the future.

But how was he supposed to convince her of that?

“Why are you silent, hubby? Tell them you would not want anyone but me,” Mariana urged, her expression growing visibly anxious with every passing second of his silence.

Was her worst fear finally coming true?

“I… I—”

Sapphira interrupted before he could finish:

“He already knows what he wants, human girl. So it would be better for you to accept him as the man he is.”

Mariana finally began to tear up.

“No, you are lying. My Adonis is not that kind of person.”

“He is,” Sapphira said, stepping between them and looking directly into Adonis’s eyes. “And there is nothing wrong with it. Strong men like him deserve more than one partner and more than one foundation to stand upon.

But if you are so determined to be selfish about it, then this Queen will agree to be his concubine while you remain the main wife.”

She met Mariana’s gaze. “Consider me generous in this regard. But I am doing all of this solely for my dwindling race,” she added with quiet conviction.

The Elders and Dragon Lords nodded in approval.

“That is correct. Our Queen has never allowed a man to touch her, nor has she participated in any kind of breeding ritual in all her years. For her to marry the Heir is nothing short of an enormous personal sacrifice for the Dragon Race.”

“You, human girl, should stop complaining.”

“Roar! Accept the reality, Princess of the West. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement. Your partner will always remain yours. This is merely a matter of formality.”

Adonis could sense the jealousy simmering beneath some of the Dragon Lords’ voices within that cacophony. It was natural, he supposed. Sapphira was extraordinarily beautiful, and she had chosen no one to bond with for centuries.

Many of them had likely harbored quiet fantasies regarding her over the centuries, nursing those thoughts in silence and without any realistic expectation. And now they were standing in the Ancestral Hall watching their Queen willingly offer herself in marriage to a human boy.

The most infuriating part, for every single one of them, was that they could not object.

Mariana stood in the middle of the Ancestral Hall, her pink eyes moving between Sapphira and Adonis with the expression of someone waiting for a contradiction that was not coming.

The silence from Adonis stretched one second too long.

That was all it took.

“I see,” she said.

Her voice had gone very quiet. This was the quietness of something folding inward.

“Maria,” Adonis said.

“No.” She shook her head once, quickly, the way people shake their heads when they are trying to keep something from reaching their eyes.

“No, it is fine. I understand. I am being selfish. Everyone keeps saying so.” She laughed, and the sound of it was wrong,

“I understand perfectly.”

Then she turned and walked out of the Ancestral Hall.

Not running. Walking. With her back straight and her chin level and her hands at her sides, the particular controlled exit of someone saving the falling apart for when there are no more eyes on them.

The moment she crossed the threshold and the corridor swallowed her, the walking became running.

The sound of her footsteps faded rapidly, and then the hall was simply quiet.

Adonis stood where he was for a moment, looking at the doorway she had gone through.

Sapphira moved to stand beside him, not close enough to crowd but close enough that her voice could be low.

“She is still young,” she said quietly. “Give her time to understand. What she feels is real and it deserves to be honored. But I am sure she will eventually find her way through it.”

Adonis said nothing. He looked at the doorway a moment longer, then turned and followed.

—

She did not open the door that first day.

He knocked twice, said her name once, and received silence in return. Not the aggressive silence of someone making a point, but the deep, waterlogged silence of someone who had pulled themselves entirely inward and was not yet ready to surface.

He sat down outside her door with his back against the wall and stayed there.

Then, a dragon maid passed him twice, glancing at him with wide uncertain eyes, clearly unsure what the correct protocol was for finding the Progenitor’s Successor sitting on the corridor floor outside a guest room. She settled on saying nothing and moving quickly.

The second day was the same.

Claudia brought him food at some point and set it beside him without comment. She looked at the closed door, then at him, then back at the door.

“She will open it,” Claudia said.

“I know,” he replied.

“You do not have to sit out here.”

“I know that too,” he said again.

Claudia looked at him for another moment, then picked up the untouched food from the previous visit, replaced it with fresh, and left without further commentary.

Occasionally he heard movement from inside the room. Small sounds. Shifting.

Once, very briefly, something that might have been crying and might have been something else entirely, muffled enough by the door that he could not be certain.

He pressed the back of his head against the wall and looked at the ceiling and said nothing, because there was nothing to say through a closed door that would not make it worse.

The third night came with cold.

The Land of Dragons ran warm during the day as the draconic energy that saturated the earth and air keeps the temperature comfortable even at altitude. But the nights, particularly at this elevation of the palace, carried a different quality entirely, a deep, ancient cold that came down from somewhere above the clouds and settled into stone and bone with patient thoroughness.

He felt it first in his hands, then gradually in his shoulders, then in a persistent, spreading way through the rest of him. He pulled his robe tighter and did not move from the wall.

“Open the door once, Maria. I have something important to say.”

No response.

Somewhere past the midpoint of the night, when the cold had fully committed to its presence and the corridor was lit only by the faint luminescence of the palace walls, he heard the sound.

Click.

A lock turning.

The door opened.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep