Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Chapter 377: Joining hands?(2)

In the end, he was right once again, Shahab mused with a faint smirk as his measured steps echoed through the grand halls of the royal palace. The polished marble gleamed under the soft light of chandeliers, and at his approach, servants and guards alike paused to bow and step aside, their deference as automatic as the tides. @@novelbin@@

Two decades ago—well, to be fair, twenty years ago still placed him in his early forties, so calling himself "young" might have been generous—he had dared to dream of his grandson claiming the throne from his son-in-law. A son-in-law who, by all accounts, was a walking disaster in royal garb.

The man had been a calamity of contradictions: insatiably greedy yet perpetually broke, brimming with grand ambitions but woefully lacking the talent to achieve even the smallest of them. He had somehow managed to alienate half the nobility through a combination of arrogance and ineptitude, reducing his court to a den bootlickers, who never dried up of complimenting to spit on him.

Yet, no matter how colossal a failure his son-in-law proved to be, Shahab found himself repeatedly cleaning up the man's messes, scrambling to salvage dignity and stability after every one of his reckless attempts to prove he was something more than a pretender. The years dragged on, and with each one, it became increasingly clear that another son would not be born to carry the family's legacy.

At last, Shahab was forced to accept a bitter reality. Ormund , Arkawatt's brother would take the throne, so the best he could achieve was to have his son marry his grandaughter.