Fang Yuan met Lin Zhaoyue's predatory gaze, the pressure of the Saberfangs' auras like a physical vise.
He forced his voice into a tone of icy disdain, pulling his captured hand back just enough to emphasize the point, though her grip remained iron.
"A marriage sealed in blood and ruin before our dying enemies?" he challenged, his words sharp as shards of ice.
"Is this how the future Matriarch Fang wishes her authority recognized? A hasty oath in a graveyard, witnessed by corpses and captives?" He paused, letting the image of the pulverized Lin Xukong and kneeling Gu father and son duo sink in.
"Your name deserves more than this. Let us return to the ancestral hall. Marry me there, before our living clan elders and the city's nobility... or let them whisper forever that you forced me at saber-point." There, he thought, the cold calculation settling in like frost.
