The Sinful Young Master - Chapter 74

Chapter 74: Meeting Belan again
Jolthar dismounted from Maelruth gracefully, his drake letting out a low growl as if sensing the tension in the air.
Villagers and tribesmen stared in awe at the sight of the drake, some whispering among themselves while others gawked openly.
Eran, who had been silent for most of the journey, muttered under his breath, “You sure know how to make an entrance.”
Jolthar ignored the comment, his gaze fixed on the castle gates.
As they approached the entrance, the guards stepped aside, their expressions neutral but watchful. A messenger led them through the halls, and the atmosphere grew heavier with every step.
When they entered the main hall, however, their strides faltered.
Belan was there.
Clad in a regal yet practical ensemble that blended elegance with ferocity, her presence dominated the room. Her dark hair cascaded down her back, and her piercing eyes glinted with a restrained intensity.
She stood at one side of the hall, her posture exuding confidence. Next to her was Lysandra, whose sharp features and calculating gaze made her seem every bit the tactician. Both women turned their attention toward the newcomers.
Jolthar’s breath hitched slightly, though he quickly masked his surprise.
Belan, of all people, was the last person he expected to see here. Her presence raised a hundred questions in his mind, but none that he dared voice immediately.
She hadn’t said a word since they entered. Her demeanour was strangely detached, her gaze steady but unreadable. Gone was the fiery sharpness he remembered; in its place was a reserved coolness that unsettled him.
Eran, oblivious to the tension, stepped forward and addressed the Jarl, who sat stoically on his throne. “We were sent by the Kaezhlar clan to address your request, my lord.”
The Jarl, a robust man with a braided beard and stern eyes, nodded. “Good. But as you can see, the matter is already being… reviewed by others.”
Eran furrowed his brow. “I wasn’t informed that others were involved.”
“Neither was I,” Jolthar added, his tone sharper than intended. His eyes darted to Belan, searching for answers.
“Your ladyship, what are you doing here?”
She finally looked at him, her expression calm but distant. “I don’t owe you an explanation, Jolthar.” Her voice was measured.
He turned to Jarl and asked him, “You owe us an explanation, I presume.”
The Jarl leaned forward slightly. “It ended up that way, and I didn’t intend to call them.”
The vagueness of his answer only deepened Jolthar’s suspicion. He glanced back at Belan, but she had already turned her attention elsewhere, as if dismissing his presence altogether.
There was silence pervading the space as Jarl and others stood still.
Both groups were at odds here; it was clearly visible to tribe people.
Amidst this maelstrom of conflict, Sgard stood as a solitary figure of profound brokenness. His internal landscape was a terrain of unhealed wounds, memories that burned like brands against the delicate fabric of his soul.
The recent disappearance of his mother, had ripped open wounds long thought scarred over, revealing the raw, trembling vulnerability of a child who had known abandonment intimately.
He was feeling wrecked since his mother’s disappearance, and he saw his father doing nothing about the situation as he saw him always holed up in the shrine. The women and girls were being kidnapped daily, and the no one in the tribe was able to do anything.
Jarl had not informed anyone about his request to the Kaezhlar clan. So, Sgard asked his birth mother for help.
“You don’t understand,” Sgard’s voice emerged, a whisper that contained entire universes of pain. “Mother… she was everything. And then she wasn’t.”
The memories cascaded like fragments of broken pottery, each shard reflecting a different moment of profound loss. He was barely seven when Lysandra left for the Blue Rose Seragilo—a decision that had fractured his world with surgical precision.
One moment, he had been cradled in maternal warmth; the next—absolute, devastating absence.
“My father,” he continued, his words threading through layers of complicated emotion, “he tried to be strong. But I saw how her departure broke something fundamental in him. And in me.”
Jikun, his father’s wife, had been the unexpected sanctuary. Not his biological mother, but a woman whose heart knew no boundaries of blood. She had gathered the shattered pieces of a young boy’s heart, reconstructing his sense of belonging with patience that bordered on spiritual devotion.
“Jikun, my mother,” Sgard’s voice caught, a vulnerability so profound it seemed to make the very air tremble. “She was the one who held me when the nightmares came. When I would wake up screaming, believing my mother had forgotten me entirely.”
Lysandra momentarily trembled when she heard his words. Her eyes reddened with emotion as she clasped her hands.
The tribal elders spoke of destiny, of greater purposes that transcended individual pain. But for Sgard, such philosophical constructs meant nothing against the visceral memory of maternal abandonment.
“Every story I heard about my mother was a double-edged sword,” he revealed, each word a careful excavation of deeply buried emotional terrain. “Tales of her strength, her courage with the Blue Rose—they felt like additional betrayals. How could someone so celebrated have left her own child?”
Lysandra stood frozen, each word stabbing like a dagger into her heart. She knew that Sgard’s pain ran deep, and she struggled to find the right words to offer him comfort and understanding.
Sgard’s narrative was a symphony of unresolved trauma, of a child’s love that had been simultaneously a wound and a lifeline.
“When Lysandra returned,” he whispered, “I wanted to hate her. But love doesn’t work that way. Love is a complexity that defies logic, that survives even when rationality suggests it should have died long ago.”
“And I need her help finding my mother,” he stated. Lysandra felt her heart squeeze with pain when he referred to her as Lysandra.
The desert wind outside seemed to listen, carrying his words across landscapes of sand and memory, a testament to the universal language of familial complexity.