Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 187 --187

Let’s look at them properly.

’’Kieran’s mother’’ was at the far end, and God, this woman. Even Heena — who did not impress easily, who had met heads of state and generals and people who moved empires — found herself genuinely interested every time she studied this woman’s file.

She’d been a princess. Small kingdom, yes, but the real thing. She had been part of a political arrangement — her kingdom needed protection, Duke Valen’s house needed the alliance — and she had crossed a border with her staff and her composure and whatever she’d had the sense to bring, and she had arrived in a house that did not deserve her and had proceeded to become the most immovable thing in it.

Sophisticated was the polite word. ’Formidable’ was the accurate one. The kind of woman who didn’t raise her voice because she didn’t need to, who had outlasted thirty years of her husband’s various disasters by being simply, structurally ’better’ than all of them.

Duke Valen had tried many things across those thirty years. Various approaches. Various moonlights. Various schemes.

Every single one had broken on her.

Kieran’s rage — that controlled, military-straight wall he put between himself and everything he actually felt — Heena had always half-assumed came from his father’s coldness.

But standing here, watching his mother be immovable even now, she was revising that assumption.

’He learned stillness from you,’ Heena thought. ’He learned that showing it means losing.’

She filed that away.

’’Lucian’s mother’’ was near the window and had produced a small book from her sleeve — Heena genuinely did not know where it had come from, it was like a magic trick — and was pretending to read it. Pretending, because her eyes moved every eight seconds to check the room and her grip was too tight on the spine.

Scholar. A real one. Lucian had gotten his entire mind from this woman — the precision, the cataloguing, the way he approached every situation like a text he needed to annotate. He had never once seemed to realize it was inherited.

’’Adrian’s father’s wife’’ stood slightly apart from the other three, and Heena’s gaze lingered.

This one had required the most careful letter.

Because her situation was — Heena kept looking for the right word and not finding one that was both accurate and bearable. Her own sister had been the love of Adrian’s father’s life. The moonlight. The real one. She had died young, from a health complication that should have been survivable and wasn’t, and Adrian’s father had never properly buried that grief — he had just carried it forward into everything that came after.

And then, in the elegant indifference of political arrangement, this woman had been married to the same man.

He was faithful. Technically. No affairs, no outside relationships, every box checked. He simply had never been fully ’there.’ Part of him was still somewhere twenty years back, sitting with someone who was gone.

This woman had lived inside that her entire marriage. Had built a life in the space his absence left. And her face right now was composed the way a face gets composed when thirty years of practice has made the expression automatic.

Heena felt a clean, cold anger on her behalf and set it aside firmly. ’That one is a private conversation,’ she thought. ’Just her and me, no audience.’

’’Damien’s stepmother’’ stood in the center of the group — youngest of the four, barely forty, military general’s daughter from the south, and you could tell. Not because she was harsh but because she had the posture of someone raised to ’solve’ problems rather than endure them indefinitely. She had married Remington when he was apparently handsome and briefly capable of loyalty, had watched that capability slowly evaporate, and had been managing the fallout ever since.

She also had her own moonlights to deal with at home, because Remington’s self-control was somewhat inconsistent and always had been, which meant she’d arrived here already stretched thin. She kept glancing at the door with the expression of a woman who had three other things she needed to deal with before noon.

’Good,’ Heena thought. ’She wants this over. She’ll be the first to make a decision.’

’’’

Now the two moonlights.

Because of course there were moonlights. Look at the sons. Look at the fathers. The apple had not fallen far from any tree in this entire family tree.

’’Kieran’s father’s moonlight’’ was a maid.

Not a courtesan. Not a noblewoman who had navigated her way into his orbit through ambition or circumstance. A maid. Specifically — and this was the detail that had made Heena set down her coffee and stare at the ceiling for thirty seconds when she’d first read it — a maid from Kieran’s mother’s own homeland. Part of the household staff the princess had brought with her when she’d made that border crossing thirty years ago.

Duke Valen had, at some point in the last three decades, started an affair with a woman his own wife had brought from home.

Heena had sat with that information for a moment. Just as a matter of basic respect for how spectacularly terrible it was.

And Kieran’s mother had kept the woman in the household. For thirty years. Had not dismissed her, had not sent her home, had simply continued existing in the same house as both of them with that impeccable, impossible composure.

Whether that was extraordinary dignity or the most controlled revenge in the history of this empire, Heena still hadn’t decided. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe it was just what survival looked like from the inside.

Right now the maid was standing in front of Kieran’s mother with wet eyes she was barely holding together, and Kieran’s mother was doing the look.

Anyone who had ever been on the receiving end of ’the look’ from a woman who had been a princess knew exactly what the look was. It was complete. It was a full assessment from top to bottom that measured, filed, concluded, and communicated all of those conclusions without a single change in expression.

"Not even a greeting to the Duchess," Kieran’s mother said.

Refined. Unhurried. The voice of a woman who had once had an entire kingdom use her correct title and had learned to carry its absence differently in every room since.

"You are really something."

The maid’s jaw tightened.

She looked up.

"Your Highness," she said.

And there it was.

Not ’Your Grace.’ Not ’Duchess.’ Not the title that was correct, that thirty years of marriage had made hers by right.

The system tilted its head, confusion written all over his face as he stared at Heena.

"Host...?"

Then, as if something finally clicked—though clearly not the right thing—he let out a laugh. Loud. Careless.

"Hah! Look at her. How foolish. She’s still calling her Your Highness instead of Duchess. Does she not even know how to use the proper title? Who even addresses someone by their former rank?"

The words had barely settled in the air before Heena’s fist landed squarely on his head.

A sharp thud echoed.

"Ah—!" He clutched his head instantly, eyes watering as he bent slightly, wincing.

"Host—!"

There were actual tears in his eyes now.

Heena stared at him, her expression darkening, patience thinning to a thread.

"For God’s sake... if you weren’t my system, I would’ve chopped you into pieces by now."

Her voice wasn’t loud—but it carried weight. The kind that pressed down.

"Are you really that dumb?" she continued, her gaze sharp as a blade. "You still don’t understand? She’s mocking her."

The system froze.

"...Huh?"

Heena let out a slow breath, like she was restraining herself from hitting him again.