The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 671

Chapter 671 Lost Memories

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He would have fled this hushed sitting room the instant the clock struck–two hours felt like a prison sentence.

If Gavin had not insisted that the child’s presence could steady his splintering mind, he wouldn’t have met the child at all. People still repeated the legend in Jexburgh’s marble corridors: five years ago, when the wife he loved vanished without a trace, Julius nearly slipped into unbridled madness.

“You have to see this child several times a week,” Gavin had told him, voice low but unyielding. “Otherwise, Julius, I fear you really will lose hold of yourself.”

“And if I do go mad,” Julius had answered, his tone chillingly calm, “perhaps someone can end it with a single bullet and be done with me.”

Gavin’s face had drained of all color. “Are you insane? Do you truly wish for death that badly?”

“You kept saying I loved Quinn Bridger so much I had no reason to live without her,” Julius murmured, eyes flat. “If that is true, did it never cross your mind that I might choose to die with her the moment she was gone?”

Gavin’s lips parted. It took him a long, trembling breath to whisper, “No–no, it never did.”

“Interesting,” Julius said, a thin smile carving across his features. “Seems I did not love her quite as passionately as you all believed. If that is the case, why force hypnosis on me at all?” In those induced trances, he had erased every feeling, every memory of Quinn. Now, everything he knew of her came second–hand, as rumors swapped over brandy.

“It was your request,” Gavin reminded him softly. “You begged for the hypnosis yourself.”

His own request? The thought coiled around Julius‘ mind like smoke. If he had not cared for Quinn so deeply, why had he begged to bury the pain? Yet if his devotion had been absolute, why had he not died beside her?

How deeply did I really love that woman?

Across the room, Zara stood, shoulders squared, unwilling to concede defeat as she studied Julius. Power in Jexburgh gathered at his feet, yet he remained icily remote, almost inhuman.

The manor’s staff whispered that he had once loved his wife beyond reason, that her disappearance had pushed him to the brink of lunacy.

But watching him now–this man carved from frost–Zara could not imagine what Julius

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Chapter 671 Lost Memories

might look like when he was in love.

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“Very well, I’ll excuse myself now,” Zara said, pitching her voice into a gentle hush. She had nearly reached the door when she pivoted, as if struck by a sudden thought. “By the way, Mr. Whitethorn, I heard Mr. Wooley on a call just moments ago. Something he chose not to trouble you with–surely a minor issue, nothing more.”

Julius‘ gaze flicked toward her–cold, surgical, devastating.

A shiver slammed through Zara. She felt as though every scheme she cherished lay naked beneath that stare.

She dared not linger another heartbeat. Gathering her skirts, Zara slipped from the room in hurried silence.

“Your birthday is approaching,” Julius said, turning to the child. “Tell me–what would like?”

you

Raina flinched, the question slicing through her. This was not truly her birthday at all, but the date the Whitethorn family had once expected their own infant daughter to arrive.

Fabian had explained it long ago: the predicted delivery day of the real Whitethorn girl–lost before birth–had been enshrined as the child’s official birthday.

That date now belonged to Raina, the living stand–in.

On her own actual birthday, no one cared, yet on the Whitethorn girl’s day, she was pampered like a princess, drowning in blessings and boxes tied with silk ribbon.

But Raina understood, better than anyone, that none of it was hers.

“Anything you choose for me, Mr. Whitethorn, I will love,” she answered, her voice small and obedient.

Everyone knew she served as the late daughter’s shadow. Everyone also knew she would never become the genuine article, because Julius had never allowed her to call him her father.

Julius regarded the child with a detached sweep of his eyes, finding her dull.

If my real daughter were alive, would she be this hopelessly dull? Or would she blaze–louder, brighter, lifting every room the way, just like…

His skull throbbed again, as though some buried memory churned beneath a lid of stone, desperate to claw its way into daylight.

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12:43 Sun, Jan 4.

Chapter 671 Lost Memories

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