Return of the General's Daughter-Chapter 573: The Vengeful Spirit

Ziva’s gaze lifted, drawn by instinct, and met Lara’s across the widening threshold of the hall. For a single, suspended heartbeat, the world seemed to still. Lara smiled, and she offered back a small smile carved from brittle courtesy, lowering her head in a curtsy that was more ritual than respect — a shield disguised as grace.

"Ziva."

Landor’s hand tightened at her waist, possessive and alert. He felt the subtle shift in his wife’s demeanor before he ever saw it — the way her body went rigid, the way her breath slipped shallow and thin.

"Is something wrong?"

She denied it with the faintest shake of her head, though the denial tasted like ash. She allowed herself to be drawn forward, letting Landor guide her through the towering doors of the banquet hall.

Inside, firelight from the candelabra and the afternoon sun spilled across the marble floor.

And the first thing she saw was not the grandeur of the hall nor the opulence of the golden throne at the far end of the hall.

What she saw was her brother.

He stood before her uncle-in-law like a drawn sword thirsting for blood. The hatred carved into his face was not subtle — it was raw, unmasked, blasphemous in its ferocity. It rolled from him like heat from an open furnace, and Ziva felt its burn from across the cavernous hall. It was not merely rage.

It was damnation.

In that terrible instant, understanding cleaved through her. She saw herself clearly — and she recoiled.

How proudly, how foolishly she had spoken in defense of the man who had butchered their parents. How lightly she had dared to breathe the word forgiveness into a wound that had never stopped bleeding. What kind of daughter, a sister, she was to dare soothe the hands that had drowned her family in blood?

She was an idiot. That was what she had been.

Her fingers curled around Landor’s, tightening as though the bones themselves might crack. Beside her, Landor went utterly still — a man who sensed war in the air long before the first sword was drawn.

And then, Lara moved.

She stepped forward and stood beside Netser with the quiet certainty of a woman born to command. Her hand closed around his arm — not gently, but with firmness, with familiarity.

Logan, who was standing beside himl, lifted a hand and rested it against his brother’s shoulder, a measured pressure that spoke of battles weathered side by side.

Lara leaned in. Her lips brushed the air beside Netser’s ear, and she whispered.

Ziva did not hear the words. but she only saw the effect.

It was as if a blade had been sheathed, as if an erupting volcano suddenly calmed.

The fire in Netser’s eyes was extinguished, smothered behind walls of iron discipline. His mouth reformed into the flawless mask of civility so prized in courts and palaces. When he turned to greet his uncle, his voice was smooth, respectful — a courtesy honed by necessity, not sincerity.

Ziva stood frozen in place.

She had known her brother all her life. She knew his temper — wild, bright, unrestrained. He was a merchant by trade, not a soldier wrought from obedience. When angered, his emotions lived too close to the surface, too honest to hide. She even wondered how he could have become a successful merchant.

Truth slowly coiled around her heart.

How powerful, truly, was Lara? Ziva thought.

All she needed was a touch...a whisper...and her brother has been undone and remade.

What kind of woman could command a man’s fury as though it were a bridled beast?

And what price did such power demand?

...

The instant Netser’s gaze faced that man, the world did not merely shift — it bled.

Color drained from the gilded walls, the burnished chandeliers, the sea of jeweled silks and polished marble. All of it was swallowed by a violent, suffocating red. The present shattered like fragile glass.

He no longer saw the man who had once been welcomed as family, the uncle who had dined at their table and smiled beneath their roof — his father’s best friend, and his best friend’s uncle.

Instead, he saw his father on his knees.

Bathing in his own blood that spilled across the cold stone like an offering to death.

He saw his mother — not as she had been in life, but at death’s door, engulfed by roaring, ravenous flames. Her screams lost to the crackling hunger of fire and her form disappearing into a cathedral of smoke and embers.

His hand moved without thought. Instinct, older than reason, drove it.

He reached for the familiar weight of a sword that was no longer there — his fingers closing around nothing but empty air. For one fractured heartbeat, his body did not understand it was unarmed. It only understood that he should kill and have his vengeance.

"Netser, there is the right time and right place for revenge." A calm but gentle voice carried to him from his side and sobered him up when he felt he was drowning in the myriad of hatred and rage.

Before the madness could fully claim him, something grounded him: a firm, familiar hand.

Lara’s fingers closed around his arm. The touch was not soft, yet it was comforting — it was an anchor thrown into a raging sea. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"Netser," her voice came, calm as winter steel, gentle as a whispered command. "There is a right time, and there is a right place for revenge."

The words did not soothe him. They reined him in.

He felt the hatred still clawing at his chest, still howling in his skull, but it lost its claws. It dulled from a feral scream into a caged snarl.

He let out a deep breath as though he had surfaced from deep, black water. Slowly and painfully, the red color turned back into gold. The lively sound returned — murmured aristocratic laughter, the soft music of stringed instruments, the careful cadence of courtly voices.

The mask settled over him as smoothly as silk over steel. His spine aligned, his breathing evened, and his expression became something the court could trust: composed, polished, untouchable. Whatever fire had lived in his eyes was buried deep enough to look like a serene sea.

When he turned, he did so with practiced grace.

"Greetings, Deputy Minister," he said, his voice level, courteous, refined.

There was a pause, and then he tilted his head.

"Or rather, I should say... Prime Minister Musni."