Rosa stared down at him, her expression initially one of cold triumph faltering as she registered his unbroken gaze, his impossible smile. Her face remained largely unreadable, a carefully cultivated mask of noble indifference, but Lloyd, hyper-focused, caught the faint widening of her eyes again. The subtle shift in her posture, a slight tensing of her shoulders. The crushing pressure remained constant, pinning him like an insect under a collector's thumb, yet he refused to look away, refused to yield the silent, intense battle of wills being waged between them. He saw the flicker of surprise again, stronger this time, morphing into disbelief and perhaps a sliver of… grudging confusion? This defiant reaction wasn't in the script. This wasn't the weak, easily intimidated, perpetually apologetic Lloyd Ferrum she knew, the boy she had dismissed and walled off so effectively. This was… unexpected. Annoying. Intriguing?
Time seemed to stretch, measured not in seconds but in the pounding of blood in Lloyd's ears and the violent trembling of his supporting limbs. The pressure held, a relentless test of his physical and mental limits. His muscles screamed, threatening to give out completely. Black spots danced at the edges of his vision. Still, he kept smiling, kept meeting her gaze. You can break my posture, his eyes seemed to scream silently across the charged space, but my will is my own.
Then, as abruptly, as shockingly as it had descended, the pressure vanished. Gone. Instantly.
Lloyd gasped, sucking in a huge, shuddering lungful of suddenly light, blessedly normal air. The release was so sudden, so total, that his over-strained body almost pitched forward onto his face. He barely caught himself with his hands splayed on the soft carpet, head hanging low as he greedily drew in breath after breath. He stayed on one knee for a long moment, simply breathing, allowing his heart rate to slow from its frantic rabbit-like pace, waiting for the violent tremors racking his limbs to subside into mere shakiness. The world slowly swam back into focus.
Silence descended upon the room once more, but it was a different kind of silence now. Thicker, charged with unspoken questions and disrupted expectations. Rosa hadn't moved from her cross-legged position on the bed, a queen upon her silken throne. But the icy fury in her eyes had completely dissipated, replaced by a cold, calculating curiosity that was almost more unnerving. She studied him, really studied him, with an intensity she hadn't bothered with before, perhaps not since their disastrous, silent wedding night. Her gaze tracked his slow, deliberate movements as he finally pushed himself back to his feet, his legs still feeling decidedly shaky, like newborn foal's legs.
He brushed off the indentations the carpet had left on his knee, taking a precious moment to compose himself, to push the lingering physical discomfort and the adrenaline surge aside. He straightened up fully, meeting her questioning gaze once more. The smile returned to his face, softer now, tinged with the weary resolve of someone who had weathered a significant storm.
"Why?" she asked finally, her voice quiet but carrying an unexpected intensity. It lacked the earlier sharpness, the dismissive edge. It held a genuine note of inquiry, a subtle crack in her usual armour of carefully constructed indifference. "Why didn't you leave when I told you to? Why didn't you… break? No one, of your strength" she added, almost to herself, her brow furrowing slightly, "withstands my pressure like that without consequence."
Lloyd took a steadying breath. He felt oddly drained, yet strangely invigorated. He had faced her power, her disapproval, and hadn't folded. It was a small victory, perhaps, but a significant departure from his past.
"Because," he began, his voice steady now, clear despite the recent ordeal that had left him gasping on the floor. He met her intense gaze without flinching. "I made a promise. Implicitly, perhaps, but a promise nonetheless, when I first entered. A promise to respect your space. To comply with your clearly expressed request not to… approach you." He made a small, deliberate gesture encompassing the vast expanse of the bed, acknowledging the physical boundary she had established and which he had, until his ill-fated compliment, respected. "And I have upheld that, Rosa. Out of respect for your wishes, freely given, even if I find them… regrettable."