Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

’Do not accept food from an unknown magical entity! He is a foreign variable! Maintain your operational security!’

Her six-year-old body, however, completely hijacked her nervous system.

”Ooooh,” Seraphina breathed, her eyes turning into massive, sparkling stars.

She reached out and snatched a blue macaron, shoving it directly into her mouth.

The overwhelming, explosive sweetness of the elven magic hit her tastebuds.

It was the most incredible thing she had ever eaten. Her cheeks puffed out, and she let out a tiny, happy hum, her feet doing a subconscious little dance of pure joy on the carpet.

Roan watched her, his heart clenching with a sudden wave of pure affection.

She was terrifying, incredibly sharp, and utterly brilliant. But when she ate sweets, she was just a tiny, soft, wonderful child.

He couldn’t help himself.

Roan reached out, his pale hand gently resting on top of her dark, messy head. He patted her hair softly, a gesture of incredibly natural, familial warmth.

”We are going to get along famously, Lady Seraphina,” Roan murmured, his black eyes soft. ”I promise your that.”

Seraphina, thoroughly distracted by the stardust popping in her mouth, didn’t swat his hand away.

She just kept chewing, offering a noncommittal little nod.

It was a beautiful, cute, incredibly wholesome interaction between a disguised Archmage and a tiny Sovereign.

It was also, currently, triggering a medical emergency.

***

The secondary study possessed a beautiful, large stained-glass window that looked out into the interior hallway of the estate. The glass was heavily frosted, designed to allow light in while maintaining privacy.

Except for one, tiny, clear pane of glass near the very bottom edge of the frame.

Crouched in the hallway, with his body awkwardly, painfully contorted into a pretzel to look through the tiny square of clear glass, was Duke Kaelus von Nacht.

The Reaper of the North was spying on the study session.

He had not trusted the new tutor for a single second.

The man was too put-together. He was too smooth.

He had slicked-back hair.

And Kaelus hated his hair.

Kaelus had his face practically mashed against the glass, his violet eyes burning a hole through the window.

He watched the tutor take his glasses off.

He watched the man crouch down. He couldn’t hear what they were saying through the heavy oak door, but he could see the interaction.

He saw the man produce a box of incredibly expensive pastries.

’Bribery,’ Kaelus’s mind hissed, a low, territorial growl rumbling in his chest. ’He is attempting to circumvent her defenses with sugar. A classic, manipulative infiltration tactic. If he really does something, I swear to lord that I will break his fingers.’

And then, Kaelus saw it.

He saw the tutor reach out.

He saw the pale hand gently, softly pat Seraphina’s head.

He saw Seraphina lean into the touch, happily chewing her macaron, entirely unbothered by the physical contact from a strange man.

The reaction within Kaelus von Nacht’s biological system was catastrophic.

The factory of vinegar inside his soul did not merely explode; it underwent a full nuclear fusion event.

The volume of intense, possessive fatherly jealousy flooded his bloodstream with such violent force that it spiked his blood pressure to lethal levels.

Kaelus let out a strangled, choked gasp.

He violently ripped himself away from the window, slamming his back against the hallway wall. He reached up, his black-gloved hands gripping his own throat, his eyes wide and panicked.

He was hyperventilating.

He was struggling to process the visual data.

’He touched her head,’ Kaelus’s mind screamed, his vision going white at the edges.

’He patted her head. She allowed it. She smiled at him. I am the one who pats her head. I am the one who provides the pastries. Why is she fawning over the bespectacled academic?! Is it the suit?! Does she prefer charcoal gray to midnight velvet?! I will burn all my clothes. I will buy a suit. I will buy glasses!’

Sir Boris, who was patrolling the corridor, stopped dead in his tracks.

The massive giant stared at his Liege Lord.

The Archduke of the North was currently sliding slowly down the wall, clutching his throat, panting heavily, looking as though he had just been stabbed in the heart by an invisible assassin.

”Your Grace!” Boris panicked, rushing forward, dropping his broadsword with a clatter. ”Are you injured?! Poison?! Has the Capital deployed a neurotoxin?!”

”Boris,” Kaelus wheezed, his voice a pathetic, high-pitched rasp of pure agony, grabbing the giant knight by the collar of his armor. ”The tutor. He... he patted her head. And she... she ate his macaron.”

Boris blinked.

His single eye stared at the Archduke.

The terrifying Vanguard Commander slowly processed the information. He looked at the locked door of the study. He looked back at Kaelus’s devastated, hyperventilating face.

”Your Grace,” Boris whispered, a heavy sense of secondhand embarrassment washing over him. ”Are you... are you having a jealousy attack in the hallway?”

”I AM BEING REPLACED!” Kaelus hissed, completely losing his grip on reality, his violet eyes glowing with manic, feral panic.

”He is too handsome, Boris! That bastard has such symmetrical features! She has a documented weakness for handsome features! First the Valen boy, then the Paladin, and now this pathetic reject! She is aesthetically fickle! I must interrupt the lesson! I must throw a chair through the window!”

”No, Your Grace! Stand down!” Boris grabbed Kaelus by the shoulders, desperately trying to restrain the Archduke before he committed murder over a head pat. ”You cannot throw a chair! The Lady needs an education! If you murder the tutor, Alistair will cry again!”

”Let him cry!” Kaelus snarled, struggling against the giant’s grip, fully prepared to deploy a glacial blast.

Inside the study, blissfully unaware that her father was currently experiencing a full-blown, blood-pressure-spiking meltdown in the corridor, Seraphina finished her macaron.

”Alright, Mr. Balcony Ghost,” Seraphina declared, licking the stardust from her fingers. ”I shall permit you to stay here for the time being.”