That Prince Is A Girl The Vicious King's Captive Slave Mate novel Chapter 357

Chapter 357
“Huh?”

High Lord Herodis was still smiling. How could he not? He had not heard that name in so long, he was not even certain he’d heard it correctly now.

“Process it,” the Grand King said mildly, folding his arms across his chest. “I will wait.”

“Process what? I do not understa—”

And then it struck him. He called me Gustazlion. Dragaxlov.

Herodis went pale. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re speaking of Your Grace.”

“Oh, you do.” King Daemonikai’s voice was quiet, but implacable. “The Oracle told me of a youngling who buried his heritage beneath another name. Who wore a new life simply to survive.”

Herod’s back went ramrod straight. “I do not go by that name. In fact, I have not been addressed by it in over two millennia. It does not exist to me.”

“Perhaps it’s time it starts meaning something to you again.” The Grand King walked to the nearest couch, lowering himself onto it. Crossing his legs, he added, “The Northern Throne needs its ruler.”

“With all due respect, my Grace, I must decline,” Herod said flatly.

He felt no anger in him as he said it. No pain, no bitterness.

The old resentments had faded long ago—lost somewhere a thousand years past, when he had stopped caring about his ancestors’ crimes or their legacy.

Time did, in the end, heal certain things.

“I expected as much,” King Daemonikai said, nodding slowly. “You buried that part of your life so deep you never once tried to resurrect it. Not even when the Dragaxlov elders died.”

“Never once did it cross my mind,” Herod answered truthfully. “Were it not for the Oracle, it would have remained a faded past. One that feels as if it never belonged to me at all.”

Herod blinked, clearing the cloud of memory. “But their bond… it severed. She never meant for that to happen. At first, it only went dormant, but through grief—and the way she fled, making certain never to be found—it eventually broke.” Sadness was clear in his voice. “I suppose my father must have been heartbroken. Felt betrayed. That’s likely why he never came for her, not even after he returned from the war.”

There was only the hush.

King Daemonikai nodded slowly. “Thank you for sharing that.” He turned to the door but then paused. Again.

“I will say this now—not as a Grand King, but as someone who holds your best interests at heart. As one whose female has told him the kind of male you are. How deserving.”

Herod looked up, meeting the king’s softened gaze.

“I understand your hesitation, but I ask that you truly consider this,” he said. “I imagine you feel as though your life is behind you. Your bondmate is gone. Your son is grown, accomplished, living a life of his own. And so you ask yourself—what is left? Why take on the weight of the Northern Throne? Why endure the politics, the endless teachings, the burden of leaving behind everything you have known to reclaim an old name?" the grand king's eyes bored into him. "Why move into the fortress, re-learn the ways of governance, train again in the arts of war two thousand years too late, memorize the sacred texts that guide our rulers, and submit to the rituals required before you are crowned?”

Herod swallowed hard. How did the male know exactly what was in his mind?