Free Web NovelChapter 83: Chapter 83: Stunned
Chapter 83: Stunned
—ARIA—
"You..." Cynthia shakily whispered with one hand pressed tightly against her reddened cheek. Her eyes were wide, fixed on me as though I had transformed into someone entirely unfamiliar, someone she could no longer control. "You...hit me?" She asked in disbelief.
I looked straight into her eyes and replied. "Yes, and I will gladly do it again."
The silence that followed was immediate and suffocating.
It was as though even the air itself had stiffened, refusing to move between us.
Cynthia’s expression twisted sharply. For a brief moment, she just stared at me, as if trying to reconcile the Aria she thought she knew with the one standing in front of her now.
Perhaps in her mind, I was still supposed to be the same girl who smiled at her from the first time she walked into this household. Perhaps she thought I never meant what I said back at father’s office when I decided I would step down. But that version of me had already begun to fade the moment I realized I had nothing to gain by running away.
Cynthia’s breathing grew sharper. "How dare you?" she hissed, her voice cracking at the edges.
There was no elegance left in her tone now, no carefully curated softness.
Whatever mask she had worn before had long since shattered. "Do you even understand what you have done?"
A small, humorless laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. Even I was briefly surprised by it. The sound did not belong in this tense, suffocating atmosphere, and yet it came anyway, uninvited and almost absurdly light.
Because suddenly, the situation felt ridiculous.
She had burst into a servant’s room in the middle of the night, accused me of disgrace without evidence, invoked laws and divine punishment as though she were already standing above judgment itself, and now she was acting as though I had committed an unforgivable crime by punishing her with a slap?
"You should be asking yourself that question," I replied quietly, tilting my head slightly as I studied her.
That seemed to ignite something in her.
Cynthia took a step forward to protest but my hand rose almost instinctively, which made her stop almost immediately.
It was instantaneous.
Her entire body froze as though someone had locked her in place. The confidence that had been pouring out of her only seconds ago vanished so quickly it was almost satisfying to witness.
Her eyes dropped briefly to my raised hand, then flickered back to my face. The realization that I would not hesitate again seemed to settle into her bones all at once.
A faint smile tugged at the corner of my lips.
So she did learn something after all.
"Take another step," I said evenly, my voice almost light, almost pleasant in contrast to the sharpness of the situation. "I dare you."
Cynthia’s pupils widened slightly and hesitated.
I could feel Ren’s presence behind me.
He had not spoken since the confrontation escalated, but I was aware of him in a way that felt grounding. He was protective, as though even without words, he was prepared to stand between me and anything that tried to harm me. That awareness alone was enough to keep my breathing steady, even as everything else in the room threatened to spiral further out of control.
Honestly, if someone had told me months ago that I would be standing here threatening Cynthia in a servant’s quarters after kissing Ren, I would have assumed they had lost their mind.
Yet here we were.
Before I could decide whether that realization was amusing or deeply concerning, the tension in the room shifted again, this time far more violently than before.
Cynthia’s composure finally snapped completely.
"You bitch," she spat, her voice rising. "You’re finally showing your true colors. And yet you still act like some innocent little sheep in front of Father, and somehow he only ever speaks your name!"
The words were no longer controlled. No longer calculated.
Whatever mask she had been wearing had shattered beyond repair. Her foot came down hard against the floor in frustration, the sound echoing through the room as she clenched the fabric of her skirt tightly in her fist, trembling with pure, uncontrolled rage.
Then her gaze snapped toward Ren, who had remained silent the entire time, standing just slightly behind me with an unsettling calmness that seemed to irritate her even more.
"I will take everything that should be mine," she continued, her voice shaking now with an emotion far more dangerous than anger. "And when that happens, I will have your head, Aria Valen. And your precious little servant too....he’ll be nothing but a toy I can break whenever I please. I’ll make sure of it. You—"
The moment the words left her mouth, something inside me broke cleanly.
My hand moved before my thoughts could catch up.
The sound of the slap cracked through the room with such brutal clarity.
Cynthia’s head snapped to the side as she stumbled backward, her breath catching in her throat. The impact echoed not just in the room, but in my own body as well, my palm stinging from the force I had put into it.
But I barely felt it.
My hand trembled, suspended in the air afterward, not from hesitation but from the sheer intensity of my anger.
My lips quivered slightly as I fought to restrain myself from following through with something far worse, my chest rising and falling too sharply as my pulse thundered in my ears.
For a moment, I did not even recognize my own expression.
Cynthia slowly turned her head back toward me, her eyes wide with shock, as though she had never once considered that I would actually be this mad. She staggered again, more from disbelief than from the force itself, her fingers twitching near her cheek.
And then I lifted my hand again.
The gesture alone was enough to make her freeze in place.
But suddenly, the door behind Cynthia creaked open further.
And then everything stopped.
Including me.
Including Cynthia.
Including Ren.
For a brief moment, it felt as though time itself had paused just to observe the scene.
I was standing with my hand still raised.
Cynthia was frozen mid-turn, her expression caught between fear and desperation. Ren was behind me, tense and alert, ready for anything.
But in the doorway, framed by dim corridor light, stood three men I absolutely did not want to see right now.
Sebastian Blackwood.
Matthias Sinclair.
Ezekiel Rowe.
Sebastian’s gaze flickered first to my raised hand. Then to Cynthia’s face. Then slowly, deliberately, back to me.
Matthias looked like he had walked into a situation he could not possibly interpret in a normal way, while Ezekiel merely crossed his arms, his expression unreadable but faintly amused, as if he were already mentally categorizing this as "Aria-related chaos."
Cynthia immediately reacted the moment she saw them.
Everything about her demeanor changed. It was as if a switch had been flipped inside her.
The trembling outrage disappeared, replaced instantly by her very calculated emotions.
Her eyes widened, tears gathering almost on command, her shoulders subtly dropping into a posture that suggested fragility rather than fury. It was astonishing how quickly she adapted.
"Your Grace!" she cried, voice breaking just enough to sound convincing. "Please!"
She rushed toward the doorway, nearly stumbling in her haste, her movements perfectly timed to appear distressed but not ungraceful. It was a performance. A very practiced one. And in another life, I might have almost admired how naturally she slipped into it.
"Your Grace," she repeated, reaching desperately toward Sebastian, her voice thick with emotion. "Please help me. Aria—"
Sebastian’s expression did not change. He simply looked at her for a long moment, as though assessing the situation with the patience of someone watching a particularly complicated play unfold.
Then his gaze shifted again, past her, toward me.
And then he smiled.
That was when my instincts screamed that something was wrong.
"Oh dear," Sebastian said lightly, his tone far too casual for the situation at hand. "I believe we may have arrived at a rather inconvenient moment." fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Cynthia blinked, momentarily thrown off.
Matthias blinked too.
Even Ezekiel tilted his head slightly, as though trying to determine whether Sebastian was being serious or deliberately cruel.
Then Sebastian looked directly at me.
His smile widened.
"You can proceed, sweetheart."
The room went silent again.
But this time, it was different.
The tension has been broken.
Ren and I, even Cynthia were in complete shock.
My brain refused to process what I had just heard.
I blinked.
"I’m sorry," I said slowly, because surely I had misheard him.
Sebastian, however, only gave me a thumbs-up.
A literal thumbs-up.
As though I were a student mid-performance in a competition he had personally entered me into.
"You are doing a great job," he added encouragingly.
Cynthia made a strangled sound in front of him.
Before I could form a coherent response, Sebastian gently placed a hand on Cynthia’s shoulder, turned her around and pushed her back into the room.
Then he closed the door.
The sound of the latch clicking into place echoed far too loudly.
For several seconds, no one moved.
I slowly turned to look at Ren, then toward the closed door. Then toward Cynthia. Then back again. My mind attempted to catch up with reality, failed, attempted again, and failed even harder.
"What... just happened?" I finally asked aloud.
Cynthia looked like she was about to collapse from sheer disbelief and she ended up having no response at all.
Even I...was stunned.
