Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

He was an absolute, emotionally stunted, blind idiot.

Across the carriage, the soul of Mira, the cynical artist who had survived a cold world, the rational reader who understood political maneuvering, was blown to pieces.

’Modify the contract?!’ her mind wailed in shock. ’Return me to Myer?! After the blood brand?! After he sat by my bed for three days holding my hand?! After he threatened an Archdemon for looking at me?! He thinks... he thinks I’m a piece of tactical equipment he can mail back to the manufacturer because the weather is getting rough?!’

Her intellect attempted to formulate a rational, cutting response.

She wanted to explain that she wasn’t afraid of the fire-Archduke.

She wanted to explain that Julian’s Holy Light gave her a headache.

She wanted to deploy a ’verbal riposte’ to dismantle his cowardly self-loathing.

But she couldn’t.

Because the absolute rejection contained within his words completely bypassed her consciousness and hijacked her six-year-old biological nervous system.

To a six-year-old orphan who had been abandoned by her true parents, who had spent five years being treated as unwanted, invisible garbage... Kaelus’s ’efficient reallocation of resources’ did not sound like a noble sacrifice.

It sounded like: I don’t want you anymore. You are but a broken toy. You are a bad pawn. I am throwing you away.

The rejection sensitivity of the child’s brain detonated.

An overwhelming, suffocating tidal wave of pure terror of becoming an orphan again and a sense of betrayal, heartbreak flooded her bloodstream with cortisol.

Her chest seized so violently she felt as though her ribs were snapping.

Seraphina did not deploy a clever riposte.

She did not act cute.

She inhaled a ragged, shuddering breath that filled the silent cabin.

And then, the Mushroom completely melted down.

”NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The shriek that erupted from her small throat was not the polite, calibrated fake-crying she used to manipulate Julian Myer.

It was an explosive, ear-splitting, acoustic weapon of pure, devastated despair of a toddler.

The volume of the scream literally rattled the magical lamp in the ceiling, causing the internal faerie fire to violently flicker.

Kaelus von Nacht whipped his head around, completely breaking his stoic vigil at the window, his violet eyes wide with a paralyzed shock.

He looked at her.

Seraphina was not sitting politely.

She had thrown herself off the velvet bench, landing squarely on the floorboards right in the middle of her paper ducks.

Her tiny body was curled into a tight, trembling ball of absolute misery.

Her face was already a saturated, blotchy, violent shade of crimson.

Giant, hot tears were literally spraying from her dark eyes, streaming down her cheeks in rivers to soak into the silver-threaded wolf hem of her gown.

”Are you throwing me away in the garbage?!” Seraphina shrieked hysterically, her small fists violently pounding against the plush velvet floorboards.

Her nose was running a massive, glistening snot bubble expanding and popping at her nostrils. ”Did I do something bad?! Am I broken?! Why are you giving me back to the shiny man?!”

”S-Seraphina!” Kaelus scrambled out of his leather chair, his heavy mythril armor clattering loudly against the desk, entirely stripped of his cold, mechanical persona.

His face went pale as a sheet of paper. ”No! By the Light, child, calm yourself! I am not—”

”YOU SAID I WAS YOUR DAUGHTER!” she wailed, her childish voice cracking into a high-pitched, devastated, and completely breathless squeak.

She rolled onto her back, kicking her short leather shoes aggressively in the air, throwing a full-scale, unhinged, point-blank six-year-old tantrum. ”You cut your thumb! You put the wolf picture on my arm! You promised you wouldn’t leave me in the dark! And now you want to mail me to Oakhaven like an old cabbage! I don’t want the extra butter! I don’t want the mundane kids! I only want my Papa!”

She was hyperventilating wildly.

Her small chest heaved in rapid, short, violent, wet gasps.

She was crying so hard that her undeveloped lungs couldn’t process the oxygen intake.

Her face began to turn a terrifying, mottled shade of purple.

”Hah... hah... P-Papa... you’re... you’re abandoning me...” she choked out, her entire small body convulsing with the force of her absolute heartbreak.

Outside on the narrow ledge of the Spire of Granite, the concussive acoustic wail penetrated the mythril plating of the carriage.

The massive warhorses reared in sudden, rabid panic, their iron-shod hooves striking sparks off the granite ledge.

”HALT THE CONVOY!” Sir Lucas roared, his broadsword materializing in his hand instantly.

The carriage ground to a jarring stop.

Before Kaelus could even reach down to gather the hyperventilating, purple-faced child off the floorboards, the heavy iron latch of the carriage door was explosively opened from the mythril frame.

CRASH!

The heavy reinforced door was torn off its hinges and tossed carelessly into the mountain fog.

Sir Lucas and Sir Boris wedged their heavily armored frames into the doorway, their faces twisted in expressions of rabid, homicidal panic.

Sir Gallahan literally dived through the gap between their legs, landing squarely on his knees on the carriage floorboards, his white cape swishing.

The three legendary commanders looked at the scene.

They saw the weeping, hyperventilating, purple-faced child thrashing among the crumpled origami ducks.

And they saw Duke Kaelus von Nacht standing over her, encrusted in dark mythril armor, his face pale and staring in paralyzed shock.

The knights’ brains instantly processed the visual data and arrived at a single, accurate, mutinous conclusion.

The emotionally stunted, tyrannical barbarian just broke the Mushroom.

”YOUR GRACE, JUST WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER NOW?!” Sir Boris roared directly into the Archduke’s face, entirely abandoning his rank, his war hammer vibrating in his hand. ”Did you threaten her?! Did you audit her toys?! What monstrous filth did you spew from your mouth, Lord Kaelus?!”

”I will court-martial you myself, Your Grace!” Sir Lucas snarled, stepping forward and aggressively shoving his mythril shoulder directly against the Archduke’s breastplate, physically wedging himself between Kaelus and the child.