Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

’She thinks she has to be perfect, that if she makes a mistake, or acts her age, I will abandon her. She is carrying the emotional burden of an adult because she is terrified.’

The realization was a dagger to his heart.

He stood up, unable to remain seated.

He began to pace the length of the study like a caged panther.

The situation in the Iron Marches was only exacerbating his panic.

For the past three days, they had been forced to endure the ”hospitality” of Duke Reginald Voran while Kaelus audited the industrial ledgers.

This meant that Seraphina was frequently exposed to Voran’s biological daughter, Lady Drusilla.

Drusilla was an absolute, unmitigated terror.

She was a hurricane of spoiled entitlement wrapped in heavy brocade.

She demanded things, shrieked when she didn’t get her way, and treated the servants like footstools.

And she had made it her personal, petty mission to make Seraphina’s life miserable.

Just yesterday, Kaelus had been observing from a second-story balcony as Seraphina walked through the indoor iron-gardens.

Seraphina had stopped to look at a rare, blooming fire-lily.

Drusilla had aggressively waddled over, hip-checked Seraphina out of the way, and shrieked, ”Don’t look at my flowers, you ugly stray! Go look at a rock!”

Kaelus’s hand had immediately dropped to his hilt where he usually keeps his sword.

He had been a fraction of a second away from leaping off the balcony and freezing Drusilla into a permanent garden gnome.

But he stopped, waiting to see what Seraphina would do.

He had waited for his daughter to cry out.

He had waited for her to yell back, to throw a handful of dirt at the brat, or best of all, to run to him, tears in her eyes, demanding that her terrifying father exact bloody vengeance.

She did none of those things.

Seraphina took a step back, looked at the shrieking Drusilla with a bored expression, dusted off her navy dress, and walked away without uttering a single word.

She had yielded the territory with the calm, chilling rationality of a seasoned diplomat walking away from a screaming toddler.

It was unnatural and too mature.

’She is giving up,’ Kaelus thought, running a hand through his raven hair, ruining its usual sleek perfection. ’She is constantly surrendering her rights because she thinks she doesn’t deserve to take up space. The book is right. She is suffering from mental exhaustion.’

A heavy, frantic knock echoed against the study doors.

Kaelus instantly dropped his hand, smoothed his hair, and banished the book into a hidden drawer of the desk.

He cleared his throat, restoring his expression to its usual mask of frozen, aristocratic disdain.

”Enter,” he commanded.

The doors opened to reveal Sir Lucas, Sir Boris, and Sir Gallahan.

The three legendary commanders slipped into the room and immediately closed the doors behind them, locking them securely.

They looked like men who had just returned from a harrowing reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines.

”Report,” Kaelus ordered, his voice tight.

”It is worse than we feared, Your Grace,” Sir Lucas grimaced, pulling off his heavy helmet and wiping sweat from his brow. ”We conducted a covert observation of the Lady Seraphina in the East Wing playroom these days, as you instructed.”

”And?” Kaelus pressed, leaning over the desk.

”The target, Lady Drusilla, initiated a hostile engagement nearly every hour,” Gallahan spoke, his golden eyes filled with deep distress. ”Lady Seraphina was just sitting there peacefully and playing simulation utilizing wooden blocks. Lady Drusilla entered the perimeter, kicked the blocks over, and loudly declared that Northern architecture was ’stupid and smelly’.”

Boris let out a low, rumbling growl that shook the floorboards. ”I nearly threw my hammer through the wall, Your Grace. It took both Lucas and Gallahan to restrain me.”

”What was Seraphina’s reaction?” Kaelus demanded, his heart hammering in his chest. ”Did she cry? Did she demand the blocks back? Did she strike the orange brat?”

”Negative on all fronts, Your Grace,” Lucas sighed, rubbing his scarred chin. ”Lady Seraphina... she simply looked at the ruined blocks, looked at Lady Drusilla, and sighed. She then picked up a book on advanced magic and began reading it in the corner. She completely ceded the play zone.”

Kaelus closed his eyes, leaning heavily against the mahogany desk.

The crushing weight of fatherly depression hit him like a physical blow.

”She is reading magic books,” Kaelus whispered, the despair evident in his voice. ”She is just six years old, and she is reading magic books to avoid conflict.”

”It is highly concerning, Your Grace,” Gallahan agreed solemnly. ”A child of her age should be launching a screaming, tear-soaked counter-offensive. She should be demanding that you, her father, smite her enemies with glacial fury. Her emotional regulation is far too advanced. It is unnatural.”

”It is my fault,” Kaelus confessed, the admission torn from the deepest, most vulnerable part of his soul. He looked at his three commanders, abandoning his pride. ”I brought her into a world of assassins and politics. I told her she was a pawn. I made her believe that her survival depends on absolute, silent obedience. She does not know how to be a child because I do not know how to be a father.”

The three knights stared at their Liege Lord.

The terrifying Reaper of the North, a man who bowed to no god, was currently experiencing an existential crisis of parenting.

”Do not despair, Your Grace,” Boris rumbled gently, stepping forward. ”We simply need to retrain her instincts. We need to teach her that it is fine to be unreasonable. We need to encourage the childish selfishness within her.”

Kaelus looked up, a glimmer of desperate hope in his violet eyes. ”How? The book states that ingrained repression requires intense, corrective spoiling. But whenever I try to offer or give her things, she only takes exactly what she needs, not more or less than that. She never asks for anything too much or things that she doesn’t need.”