Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

The image struck Seraphina with the force of a physical blow.

She saw him.

Kaelus, the terrifying Reaper, standing alone in the freezing snow, bleeding, watching the only family he had left drive away because they thought he was a villain.

He had sacrificed his humanity, his youth, and his happiness to build a safe world for them, and their repayment was abandonment and disgust.

Tears, hot and fast, spilled over Seraphina’s eyelashes, tracking down her cheeks.

”They are bad people, waaahhhh...” Seraphina cried, her childish voice cracking with intense indignation.

She wiped her face aggressively with the back of her hand, smudging tears into the fabric of her dress. ”They are blind! Papa Duke isn’t a monster! He’s the best! He sits in a chair for three days holding my hand! He buys sugar dragons for me! He wraps his coat around people so they don’t get cold! How could they not see that?!”

The knights stared at the sobbing, furious child.

The heavy, tragic atmosphere of the room suddenly cracked, broken by the unadulterated purity of her righteous anger on their liege’s behalf.

Sir Lucas, the hardened, scarred veteran, felt his own throat tighten painfully.

He stood up, walking over to the chaise lounge, and gently, awkwardly patted her on the head.

”We know, My Lady,” Lucas said gruffly, his voice thick with emotion. ”The Vanguard knows exactly what kind of man he is. That is why we would follow him into the fires of the Abyss with a smile on our faces. He is a king who bleeds for his people.”

”But he’s lonely now,” Seraphina sniffled, looking up at the towering knight. ”He doesn’t have a family anymore. Just a big, empty, cold castle.”

Gallahan rose from his chair and knelt beside the chaise lounge.

He offered her a clean linen handkerchief, a warm, soft smile finally returning to his handsome face.

”He was lonely, My Lady,” Gallahan corrected gently, wiping a tear from her cheek. ”It’s just a past tense. He does not have an empty castle anymore. He now has you.”

Seraphina blew her nose loudly into the handkerchief, her dark eyes looking at the three knights.

”Is that why he adopted me?” she asked, her voice small. ”Because he was lonely? But he said I was just bait. Because I’m useful, he bought me along with him. If I wasn’t, he would’ve taken another child for sure, right?”

Sir Boris suddenly let out a booming, thunderous laugh that shook the dust from the library shelves.

The sudden shift in tone was so abrupt it gave Seraphina whiplash.

”Bait!” Boris roared, slapping his massive thigh. ”By the Light, he actually told you that? The emotionally stunted fool! Bait!”

Lucas snorted, shaking his head, a genuine grin breaking through his scars. ”The Duke possesses the genius of a god and the emotional vocabulary of a brick wall, My Lady. Yes, at first, it was like that to him. But now, ’Bait’ is the only logical excuse his brain could formulate to justify doing something completely irrational.”

Seraphina blinked, thoroughly confused. ”Irrational?”

Gallahan leaned in close, his golden eyes sparkling with mischief.

The tragic historian had vanished, replaced by a gossiping, conspiratorial uncle.

”My Lady, I am going to tell you a secret,” Gallahan whispered loudly, looking around the empty library as if checking for spies. ”A secret guarded more fiercely than the Bastion’s mythril vaults. If His Grace knows we told you this, he will hang us from the battlements by our toes!”

Seraphina immediately leaned forward, entirely captivated, the tears drying on her face. ”I won’t tell! I swear on the sugar dragon!”

Gallahan nodded solemnly, accepting the sacred oath.

”Duke Kaelus von Nacht, the Reaper of the North, the most terrifying warlord on the continent,” Gallahan proclaimed, pausing for dramatic effect, ”has an absolute, chronic, incurable weakness for small, cute, fluffy things!”

Seraphina stared at him. ”...What?”

”It is true!” Boris grunted, leaning forward eagerly to spill the tea on his terrifying boss. ”You remember his warhorse? Ruin? The demonic beast with glowing red eyes that bites the heads off other horses?”

Seraphina nodded slowly. ”Yeah. He’s very big.”

”Do you know how the Duke acquired him?” Lucas asked, grinning wickedly. ”During a raid on a demonic stronghold ten years ago, we found the beast’s nest. Ruin was just a foal back then. A tiny, wobbly, terrifying little demon horse that was just given birth to. We were supposed to execute it when the Duke walked over, lifted his sword... and then the foal sneezed. A tiny little puff of black smoke.”

”He sheathed his sword instantly,” Gallahan cackled. ”He picked the demonic foal up, tucked it under his arm, and carried it all the way back to the Bastion. He hand-fed it goat’s milk from a silver bottle for six months. If anyone looked at the foal funny, the Duke threatened to freeze their eyeballs.”

”That’s not all,” Boris added, getting into the spirit of the gossip. ”Two years ago, we were clearing out a bandit camp in the southern woods. In the middle of the burning camp, the Duke stopped dead in his tracks. We thought he had spotted an assassin. No. He had spotted a stray, orange kitten hiding under a wagon.”

Seraphina gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. ”Did he save it?!”

”He didn’t just save it,” Lucas groaned, rubbing his face in exasperation. ”He stopped the military operation. He wrapped the filthy, flea-bitten creature in his own expensive cape. He carried it back to his command tent and ordered Dr. Thorne, our chief combat surgeon, to treat its leg. The kitten now lives in the Duke’s private study. Its name is Sir Pawsington, and it sleeps on classified military documents. The Duke refuses to move it.”

Seraphina’s mind was completely shattered.

The image of the terrifying, brooding Archduke of the North, the man who had frozen an assassin’s vocal cords without blinking, sitting at a desk and gently petting a three-legged kitten named Sir Pawsington, was too much.