Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

”He spent the entire afternoon lurking by the window, watching his precious little mushroom run around the gardens with my boys. Every time she laughed at Castor’s jokes, Kaelus actually whimpered. I heard it! A legitimate, pathetic whimper!”

Alistair dropped his head into his hands; his neon-orange and lime-green pigtails, which he had still not been permitted to remove, were bobbing tragically. ”The Duchy is going to collapse. The military logistics are entirely dependent on a man who is currently suffering a jealous breakdown because his six-year-old played tag.”

Seraphina stood in the doorway, staring at the pathetic, monumental ruin of the Archduke.

Her heart gave a sharp, painful, incredibly guilty squeeze.

She had been so caught up in putting the Valen boys in their place and enjoying the fresh air that she had completely neglected her primary responsibility: managing the emotional fragility of her terrifying father.

She took a step forward, intending to run to his chair and immediately apply emergency emotional support hugs.

But before she could cross the threshold, Leonidas, emboldened by the wine and his rival’s catatonia, decided to drop a nuclear bomb onto the dining table.

”You know, Kaelus,” Leonidas boomed, wiping his mouth with a linen napkin, his amber eyes glittering with a sudden, wicked, entirely chaotic inspiration. ”Watching them play out there... it got me thinking. A true, visionary leader must always look to the future.”

Kaelus did not react, but the gray, miserable aura surrounding him seemed to darken slightly, sensing the incoming threat.

Seraphina froze mid-step, her dark eyes darting from Leonidas to Kaelus. ’Oh no. Don’t do it, Uncle Leo. Do not poke the frozen bear.’

”The Valen and Nacht bloodlines have been rivals for centuries,” Leonidas mused loudly, leaning back in his chair, gesturing grandly to where Seraphina stood flanked by his two sons. ”We argue over borders, we argue over tariffs, we argue over who has the better military. But look at that picture right there!”

Leonidas pointed a thick finger at the trio in the doorway.

”They get along perfectly! The boys clearly adore her. She has the brilliant mind of a general, and they have the raw firepower to back it up!” Leonidas threw his hands out, as if unveiling a masterpiece. ”Why fight when we can merge? A political alliance forged in the fires of matrimony! We should arrange an engagement! Seraphina can marry one of my boys when they come of age! The Northern and Southern Archduchies united under one banner! It’s brilliant!”

The silence that followed was not the quiet of a dining hall.

It was the absolute, breathless, and terrifying vacuum of space.

Alistair slowly lowered his hands from his face.

The beautiful aide stared at Leonidas with an expression of pure horror.

’He has killed us,’ Alistair thought, stepping slowly, backward away from Kaelus’s chair. ’The Fire Archduke has just actively triggered the end of the world. I must find a bunker. I must flee from the Capital!’

But before Kaelus could even process the words, a completely unexpected disaster occurred.

Seraphina, thoroughly disgusted by the very concept of pre-teen political marriage, opened her mouth to immediately and fiercely reject the proposal.

She didn’t get the chance.

”A-An engagement?!” Castor yelped.

Seraphina turned her head.

Castor, the loud, energetic, confident golden retriever of a boy, was completely frozen. His jaw was slack.

A violent, brilliant shade of fiery crimson erupted across his freckled cheeks, spreading all the way to the tips of his ears.

He looked down at Seraphina.

He looked at her dark, messy hair, her bright eyes, and the tiny, authoritative stance she had taken. He remembered the shadow-ducks, the terrifying brilliance she had displayed in the maze garden just a while ago.

Castor reached up, frantically rubbing the back of his neck, his amber eyes darting everywhere except her face.

He aggressively kicked at the marble floor with the toe of his boot.

”I mean...” Castor stammered, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, pre-pubescent squeak. ”I’m not... I wouldn’t be against it! She’s really cool! And she’s super strong! I wouldn’t mind sharing my fireballs with her! We could conquer the eastern forests together! It... it makes tactical sense!”

Seraphina’s jaw dropped.

’Are you kidding me? He’s actually considering it? You are a twelve-year-old child! Go play with a wooden sword!’

But the horror was not over.

On her other side, Pollux let out a sharp, choked gasp.

The edgy, brooding prince of darkness had gone completely rigid.

He pulled his long, auburn bangs down further over his eyes, desperately trying to hide his face. But the bangs could not conceal the massive, burning flush of pink that had utterly consumed his pale skin.

”A marriage of convenience is the same as a prison of the soul,” Pollux muttered, his voice trembling violently, attempting to sound dark and tormented but failing miserably.

He peeked through his bangs, his amber eyes locking onto Seraphina with a look of intense, awkward infatuation. ”It is a chain forged by society... However. Her darkness... it calls to me. The abyss within her is vast. I... I suppose I could endure the chains of matrimony, if it meant standing by the side of a true master of the void.”

Pollux swallowed hard, adjusting his collar nervously. ”I would... find it acceptable.”

Seraphina stared at the two boys.

Her mind completely, irreparably blue-screened.

’They are blushing,’ Seraphina’s internal monologue shrieked in absolute, soul-deep repulsion.

’Two prepubescent boys are actively, genuinely blushing at me. They are having a romantic crisis over a six-year-old girl who just made them run away from paper birds. This is illegal. This is psychologically exhausting. I need to be washed in holy water. I need an adult!’

”Boys, please,” Lysandra hissed, her face burning with embarrassment, covering her eyes with her hand. ”You are embarrassing yourselves. She is only six.”

”She is a prodigy!” Castor argued passionately, his face still bright red. ”Age is just a number! Power is eternal!”

”Exactly,” Pollux agreed darkly, nodding furiously. ”Our souls are ancient.”

The dining hall fell silent again.

Seraphina slowly turned her head away from the two blushing idiots. She looked toward the far end of the table.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht was no longer staring blankly at his steak.

The gray, miserable, catatonic gloom that had consumed his aura had entirely vanished.

It had been replaced by a suffocating, freezing, apocalyptically terrifying wave of pure killing intent.

The ambient temperature in the dining hall did not just drop; it plummeted to the absolute limit.

The crystal chandeliers above their heads began to crack and shatter, raining tiny, freezing shards of glass onto the mahogany table.

The roaring fire in the hearth was instantly extinguished, choked out by the heavy, suffocating mass of Kaelus’s icy mana.

Kaelus slowly turned his head.

His violet eyes were no longer dull. They were burning with a radioactive, blinding, searing light that seemed to pierce through the physical realm.

He stared at Castor. He stared at Pollux.

The two boys, previously caught in the throes of pre-teen infatuation, instantly snapped back to reality.

The crushing weight of the Archduke’s bloodlust hit them like a physical wall. The blood drained from their flushed faces, replaced by the pale, chalky hue of absolute, pants-wetting terror.

”You...” Kaelus whispered.

The single syllable echoed through the freezing room. It was the sound of a glacier grinding a continent to dust.

Kaelus didn’t yell. He didn’t stand up.

He slowly, with terrifyingly calm precision, reached down to his hip. His black-gloved hand wrapped around the leather-bound hilt of Requiem.

With a slow, loud sound of shhhhhing, he began to draw the mythril longsword from its scabbard right there at the dinner table.

The icy-blue runes on the blade flared to life, humming with a desperate, bloodthirsty song.

”I am going to end the Valen bloodline today,” Kaelus stated, his voice a flat, emotionless drone of pure fact. ”I am going to sever your heads, freeze your internal organs, and mount your shattered remains on the gates of the Bastion as a warning to any male entity that dares to look in her direction.”

”KAELUS, PUT THE SWORD AWAY! I WAS JUST JOKING ABOUT THE MARRIAGE! THERE IS NO SUCH THING GOING TO HAPPEN!” Leonidas roared, jumping to his feet, instantly realizing he had pushed the joke entirely too far, realizing his mistake.