Chapter 868: Comfort [Bonus - ]

Chapter 868: Comfort [Bonus Chapter]

The scissor doors of the Zenith IVR closed with their familiar airtight thud, sealing out the hum of the city and wrapping them in the warm leather-scented quiet of the cabin.

Silas set the plush maid-duck carefully on the center console between their seats with its orange beak pointing straight at the glowing dashboard.

He started the car with the purr vibrating softly through the frame, and guided it out of the parking structure onto the quiet elevated expressway.

The night had deepened, and the streetlamps cast long rhythmic pools of golden light across the asphalt as they drove toward the northern ridge.

Martha sat with her head resting back against the leather headrest and her chestnut hair spilling softly over the charcoal cashmere.

Her small hands were folded in her lap, and her eyes were half-closed as she watched the city skyline drift past the tinted glass.

Her fingers kept drifting toward the duck, adjusting its bonnet, smoothing its apron, as if she couldn’t quite believe it was real.

A soft quiet sigh escaped her lips.

“Master Silas…?” Martha said, and her voice carried a fragile unhurried stillness that felt strangely intimate in the dark cabin.

“Yeah, Martha?” Silas replied, his eyes on the empty lanes ahead and one hand resting easily at the top of the wheel.

Martha looked down at her lap with her fingers smoothing the soft fabric of her new trousers.

“Tonight…” she began slowly, “I’d forgotten. I’d completely forgotten what it felt like to do something just because it made me happy…”

Silas didn’t interrupt.

He kept the car at a steady speed and let the hum of the tires fill the spaces between her words.

“When I was a girl, before everything got hard…” Martha murmured with a faint wistful smile touching the corners of her mouth, “I used to walk through the festival streets with my sisters… We’d look at all the stalls and listen to the street musicians and split one sweet bun between the three of us then came the lean years… and the bills… and the worrying.”

She paused with her gaze drifting to the little white duck on the console.

“I was married for a while, Master Silas,” she continued quietly. “My late husband… he wasn’t an unkind man, but work and illness wore him down to nothing. He worked twelve hours a day at the factory, and when he came home, he was too tired to even talk. He never took me on dates… We never walked through a night market, never ate skewers out of paper trays, and we certainly never stopped to play games under neon lights.”

A soft blush touched her cheeks in the dim amber glow of the dashboard.

“Our life was just one chore after another. Work, eat, sleep, worry about the next bill… And once he got sick, even that turned into hospital hallways and medicine receipts.”

She turned her head against the headrest and looked at Silas’s profile, at the strong steady line of his jaw, the dark hair falling over his brow and the broad shoulders under the leather jacket.

“Today…” Martha whispered as her voice trembled faintly, “I enjoyed myself far too much, Master Silas. Wearing such beautiful clothes… eating greasy food by the canal… laughing until my ribs hurt over a toy… It felt like a dream that belonged to someone else. Someone far luckier than me.”

Silas glanced sideways at her, and his expression softened.

Without taking his eyes off the road for more than a second, he reached over and laid his hand on top of her folded ones.

His palm was warm and his thumb brushed slowly across her knuckles as Martha stopped breathing for a moment.

“It belongs to you, Martha,” Silas said, his voice low and certain. “Every second of it… And quit talking about yourself like you’re some old relic who wandered into the wrong life. You’re thirty-one… You’ve got a whole lifetime ahead of you, and I plan on making sure you enjoy as much of it as I can manage.”

Martha looked down at his hand covering hers with her lips curving into a shy flustered smile as she bit her lower lip.

’He keeps doing this,’ she thought, her heart fluttering like a trapped bird. ’He keeps saying these things like they’re nothing… and then he touches my hand like it’s nothing… and I can’t breathe…’

“You’re far too generous, Master Silas,” she murmured.

“I’m being selfish, actually,” Silas said. “I like seeing you smile… It’s a good look on you.”

“M-Master Silas…!”

He grinned and gave her hand one last squeeze before returning it to the wheel, and Martha immediately missed the warmth.

She turned toward the window to hide her burning face and watched the glittering towers of the Upper Ward drift by, where the estates of powerful Lords sat glowing on the hillsides.

A quiet wistful thought slipped out of her before she could stop it.

“Sometimes… when I watch you command the wind,” Martha said softly, “I wonder what the world looks like through your eyes… To feel magic moving under your skin… to know you can protect the people you love with your own two hands…”

She paused, then let out a soft self-deprecating chuckle and waved her small hand through the air.

“It’s a silly thought, of course,” Martha laughed, shaking her head at herself. “I was born without any talent for it… And besides, I’m far too old for that sort of thing. Magic belongs to the young ones… My job is to keep the kettle boiling.”

Silas’s hands tightened slightly on the leather wheel, and he went completely quiet.

The cabin fell into a thoughtful silence with only the soft hum of the engine between them.

Silas kept his eyes on the road as the Zenith crested the lower ridge, but his mind was racing.

’Far too old…?’

A faint golden ring stirred behind his iris.

As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Martha was an ordinary woman with no magic potential, too old to awaken and never going to become anything more than what she was but Silas didn’t answer to the rest of the world.

He was the Lord of Blessed Land.

Deep within his territory, past the misty mountain passes and the clear springs, sat resources that most people couldn’t even imagine and above all of that, he had his UP… enough of it to change the tier and potential of anything he poured it into.

’Maybe we can do something in Blessed Land for her…?’ Silas thought, his fingers drumming slowly against the wheel. ’Like creating a mana core or something…? Clean out her body with the spring water first, then build a foundation from scratch… It doesn’t have to make her a fighter. Just enough so she never feels that tired again… Enough that she can light the stove with a flick of her finger and keep her body young for a long, long time…’

It was possible… With everything piling up in Blessed Land, it might even be easy but he didn’t say a word out loud.

Silas wasn’t the kind of man who made big promises before he knew he could keep them.

’Well I’m not cruel, plus I could ask Thor for some ideas then go to Asgard…’

He wasn’t going to hand her false hope or overwhelm her with talk of cores and spring water while she was still recovering from eating street food in cashmere.

When the time was right and everything was ready, he’d just show her so for now, he let the thought settle into the back of his mind.

He turned his head, and a teasing smirk returned to his face.

“You know, Martha,” Silas drawled, his tone light and playful, “you really shouldn’t count yourself out so fast. You’re thirty-one, not eighty… If I decide you’re learning magic, you’re learning magic. I might just make you my apprentice and have you conjure your own firewood.”

Martha gasped and turned toward him with wide scandalized eyes.

“Master Silas! That’s completely improper! Housekeepers don’t conjure firewood with magic! It’ll ruin the chimney!”

“Then we’ll build a magic chimney,” Silas laughed. “Problem solved.”

“You’re too cheesy,” she pouted, though the sweet pink flush on her cheeks gave away how much she loved his teasing. “And who would cook for you while I’m off throwing fireballs at the hedges…?”

“You’d throw fireballs at the hedges…?”

“Only the ones the little ones keep hiding behind when it’s bath time,” Martha said, and then she covered her mouth as a giggle slipped out.

Silas laughed so hard the car drifted half a lane.

“Master Silas, the road!”

“I’m watching the road,” he said, still laughing as he straightened the wheel. “You’re the one who keeps distracting me.”

“I haven’t done anything…!”

“You’ve been doing things all night, Martha,” Silas said easily, and he didn’t explain what he meant.

Martha opened her mouth, closed it again and turned back to the window with her face burning.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

The duck sat between them with its spoon raised, the dashboard glowed soft amber and the city lights slid away behind them as the road began to climb.

Martha found herself watching him out of the corner of her eye.

The way his fingers rested so loosely on the wheel… the way the passing streetlights traced the line of his cheek and then left it in shadow again… the faint crease at the corner of his mouth that never quite went away, as if he was always halfway to smiling at something.

’He’s so handsome,’ she thought helplessly. ’It’s not fair… How is anyone supposed to sit next to him in a small car and think properly…?’

“You’re staring, Martha.”

Martha jolted so hard her seatbelt locked.

“I-I was looking at the… the road signs! On your side! There are very important road signs on your side, Master Silas!”

“Mhm,” Silas hummed, not even trying to hide his grin. “Read me one.”

“…Celestine Heights, next exit,” Martha mumbled, as the sign for their own neighborhood slid past right on cue.

“Wow. Very important…”

She smacked his arm lightly with the back of her fingers, and this time she didn’t freeze up about it at all.

The Zenith cruised along the quiet expressway with the city lights thinning out as the dark line of the northern ridge rose ahead of them against the stars.

Silas glanced at her again, his brow furrowing with mild curiosity.

“Speaking of secrets, Martha,” he said, tapping his fingers against the wheel. “You never did tell me what you spent your salary on this afternoon.”

Martha’s whole body went rigid.

The relaxed dreamy contentment drained out of her posture in a heartbeat, and her hands clamped together over the handbag in her lap until her knuckles went pale against the worn brown strap.

“I… oh…” Martha stammered, her voice dropping into a breathless guilty whisper. “Master Silas… it was… it was nothing important. Really. It was something silly… Something stupid, actually.”

Silas raised an eyebrow.

’It can’t be that stupid…’

He knew her finances well.

When she’d first started working for him, she’d been buried under her late husband’s hospital bills, and one of the first things he’d done once money started flowing in was pay off every last credit of it so she could finally breathe.

Her salary was entirely her own… She had no loans, no rent and no expenses living under his roof.

’Maybe she’s helping out family?’ Silas thought. ’Her sisters, maybe… or a relative somewhere who needed it…’

Martha was the kind of woman who’d give the coat off her back to a stranger.

If she’d gone into the city to send money to someone who needed it, he certainly wasn’t going to scold her.

“Martha,” Silas said gently. “You earned that salary. Every single credit of it belongs to you… If you needed to help out family, or if you bought something for yourself, you don’t have to call it stupid and you don’t have to hide it from me.”

Martha looked down at the handbag in her lap, and her lower lip trembled faintly.

A deep blush crept up her neck and spread across her cheeks, hotter and far more painfully bashful than anything she’d shown at the boutique or the claw machine.

“It… it wasn’t for family, Master Silas,” Martha whispered.

Slowly, with hands that shook so much the brass clasp rattled against the leather, she unlatched the handbag.

She reached inside and carefully drew out a small velvet pouch, then slid away the fabric to reveal a square jeweler’s case of deep midnight-blue velvet with a discreet brushed-silver clasp.

’Calm down,’ she told herself. ’Calm down, calm down, he said you don’t have to hide it… He said it himself…’

It didn’t help at all.

She turned in the leather seat with her knees pressed together and her head bowed so low that her chestnut hair veiled her face completely.

With two shaking hands, she held the little case out across the center console toward him, so carefully that her whole body trembled with it.

“H-here…” Martha whispered, holding out a small box.