Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

But before Kaelus could reach them, Seraphina acted.

She looked at the torn paper in her hand.

She looked at the crumpled dragon on the floor.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t look at Kaelus for help.

Seraphina looked up at Lady Drusilla.

Her soul fully aligned with the arrogant, spoiled persona of the Northern Heir.

Her dark eyes went completely, terrifyingly cold.

”You ripped my dragon,” Seraphina stated.

Her voice wasn’t a childish whine.

It was a quiet, chilling declaration of fact.

Drusilla, suddenly feeling the crushing weight of the silent Vanguard watching her, tried to maintain her bluster. ”It was stupid anyway! You’re just a stray! I can buy a hundred paper—”

Seraphina didn’t let her finish.

Moving with a sudden speed that made Sir Lucas’s assassin-heart swell with pride, Seraphina reached forward.

She didn’t hit Drusilla or pull her hair.

Seraphina grabbed the pigeon-egg ruby pendant hanging around Drusilla’s neck.

With a yank, Seraphina pulled it off.

SNAP!!

The heavy gold chain broke.

Seraphina ripped the priceless, generational heirloom directly off the Heiress of the Iron Marches’ neck.

Drusilla shrieked in shock, stumbling backward.

Seraphina looked at the massive ruby in her hand.

She looked at Drusilla with an expression of pure disdain.

Then, without breaking eye contact, Seraphina turned her hand over and dropped the priceless ruby onto the iron cobblestones.

She lifted her small leather shoe and stomped directly onto the gemstone, grinding it into the dirt.

”Your rocks are stupid,” Seraphina said coldly, perfectly mimicking Kaelus’s terrifying, arrogant sneer. ”And your vibes are garbage, too. Do not touch my things again, orange girl.”

Drusilla stared at the crushed necklace in the dirt.

Her brain completely short-circuited.

She inhaled a deep breath, preparing to unleash the mother of all tantrums.

”DRUSILLA! SILENCE!”

Duke Voran arrived, panting and terrified, grabbing his daughter by the shoulders and clamping a hand over her mouth.

He looked at the crushed ruby, but he didn’t care.

He looked up at Duke Kaelus, who was now standing directly behind Seraphina.

Voran braced himself for execution.

Kaelus looked at the torn paper dragon.

He looked at the crushed ruby.

He looked at the orange girl crying into her father’s hand.

And then, he looked down at Seraphina.

The Archduke of the North did not scold her.

He did not tell her to apologize for destroying a priceless heirloom.

A beautiful smile spread across Kaelus’s face.

He reached down and gently placed his hand on top of Seraphina’s head, his violet eyes glowing with pride.

”Well executed, Seraphina,” Kaelus praised her, his voice carrying perfectly across the silent courtyard, dripping with arrogance. ”A proportional response. Though next time, aim for the kneecaps. Sir Boris will instruct you.”

”I will, Papa,” Seraphina nodded solemnly.

”Voran,” Kaelus barked, looking at the trembling Duke. ”Add the cost of the paper to my audit. I believe a single sheet of Bastion parchment is worth approximately three of your rubies. You can mail me the difference.”

Without another word, Kaelus swept Seraphina up into his arms, turning his back on the humiliated Lord of the Iron Forge.

As they walked toward the mythril carriage, the knights of the Black Bastion erupted into cheers, slamming their swords against their shields in a thunderous salute to their tiny, terrifying, spoiled Sovereign Heir.

Seraphina rested her head on Kaelus’s shoulder, a smug, satisfied smile on her face.

’Parenting books are stupid,’ she thought happily, watching the smoke of the Iron Marches fade into the distance. ’Tantrums are exhausting. But casual property damage? I can definitely get used to that.’

The mythril carriage rolled away from the smog-choked basin of the Iron Marches, the deafening, rhythmic CLANG of the trip-hammers slowly fading into the distance, replaced by the soothing, rhythmic clatter of fifty heavy warhorses on paved stone.

Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was a mixture of triumphant arrogance and serene domesticity.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht was sitting in his high-backed leather chair, looking smug.

He had successfully audited a corrupt industrialist, shattered the man’s dignity, and watched his daughter assert dominance over an obnoxious heiress.

From Kaelus’s perspective, Seraphina had completely embraced her role as the Heir to the Sovereign of the North, crushing a priceless ruby with the cold, apathetic grace of a seasoned tyrant.

But as Seraphina lay on her stomach on the velvet floorboards, happily kicking her heels in the air while drawing a lopsided picture of a horse, she harbored a secret.

’He thinks I just threw a tantrum,’ Seraphina thought, a secretive, mischievous little smile playing on her lips. ’He thinks I just wanted to break her shiny rock to prove a point.’

The soul residing within the six-year-old body was incredibly pragmatic.

She knew how to play the game.

She knew that acting like a spoiled, untouchable brat was the exact aesthetic Kaelus had wanted to see.

It proved she wasn’t a fragile, easily bullied victim.

But Seraphina was also a person who had died alone, lived in a miserable orphanage, and understood the crushing weight of despair.

No matter how loud, obnoxious, or aggressively orange Lady Drusilla had been, she was still just an eight-year-old child.

A child who was being actively fed upon by three parasitic gremlins born from the ambient misery of her father’s slaves.

Even if Kaelus made some reforms that allowed the measury to be lessened a lot.

If left alone, those low-level curses wouldn’t have just made Drusilla throw tantrums.

Over time, they would have burrowed deeper, feeding on her life force, slowly plunging the girl into a state of permanent, wasting sickness that no normal doctor could cure.

She would have withered away, a victim of her own father’s corrupted legacy.

Seraphina couldn’t just walk away and let a kid die.

She wasn’t a Saintess, but she wasn’t a monster either.

So, when she had reached out and grabbed that massive, pigeon-egg ruby pendant, it hadn’t been a simple act of petty theft.

In that microsecond of physical contact, Seraphina had opened the floodgates of her Supreme Dark Core.