Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

Julian, oblivious to the Archduke’s sudden homicidal urges, stepped closer to the table.

”Oh dear,” Julian said gently, pulling a pristine white handkerchief from his breast pocket. He leaned down, bringing himself to Seraphina’s eye level. ”It seems I startled you, little one. I apologize. Chocolate stains are dreadfully stubborn.”

He reached out, his long, elegant fingers gently taking Seraphina’s small hand, intending to wipe the chocolate smudge from her knuckles.

His touch was light.

His smile was warm.

But inside Seraphina’s mind, every single alarm bell she possessed was screaming in absolute, deafening terror.

Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.

Her breathing stopped entirely.

The hairs on her arms stood straight up, and a cold sweat broke out across the back of her neck.

She stared into his beautiful golden eyes, and her supreme Dark Core violently, desperately recoiled, curling into a tight ball of pure survival instinct.

No ghosts were hovering over Julian Myer’s shoulders.

There were no weeping spirits, no bloody victims, no skeletal hands reaching out from his coat.

There was no gray fog of corruption, no miasma of sin.

And that was exactly the problem.

In a world saturated with ambient mana, where every living creature left a faint, spiritual footprint, where even the most pious priest carried the slight shadow of human error... Julian Myer had nothing.

To her Spirit Sight, the Marquess was not a man.

He was a void.

It was an absolute, terrifying absence of anything.

It was like looking into a perfectly clean, brightly lit room, only to realize the walls were painted with a white so blinding it erased the corners, erased the doors, erased the very concept of space.

It was a cleanliness that was profoundly, sickeningly unnatural.

It was the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff in the pitch dark, knowing that one step forward wouldn’t lead to a fall, but to complete and utter erasure from existence.

He wiped the chocolate from her hand.

His skin was warm.

Run, her instincts screamed.

Run, hide, get away from the monster, monster, MONSTER!

She couldn’t move or breathe.

She was paralyzed by a fear so primal it bypassed her adult logic entirely.

”There we are,” Julian smiled, folding the handkerchief away. He looked up at Kaelus, his golden eyes sparkling with gentle amusement. ”She is delightfully quiet, Kaelus. A stark contrast to her father, I must say.”

Kaelus, still silently fuming over the dropped cake, finally noticed the rigidity in Seraphina’s posture.

The petty jealousy vanished instantly, replaced by the razor-sharp instincts of a predator sensing a threat to its young.

He looked at Seraphina’s face.

She wasn’t blushing or swooning, but she was as pale as a corpse.

Before Julian could say another word, Kaelus moved.

He didn’t draw his sword, but the speed at which he moved was terrifying.

He reached across the table, his massive hand bypassing the cake entirely, and grabbed Seraphina by the waist.

In one fluid motion, he hauled her across the table, knocking over a crystal water glass, and pulled her firmly into his lap, pressing her face directly into the heavy, protective fabric of his chest.

He wrapped both arms around her, fully shielding her from the Marquess.

Julian stepped back, his perfect eyebrows knitting together in genuine confusion. ”Kaelus? Did I offend the young lady somehow? Or could it be that she’s afraid of new people? I didn’t mean to...”

Kaelus didn’t answer immediately.

He could feel Seraphina trembling against him.

It wasn’t the small shiver she got when the carriage was cold; it was the violent, uncontrollable shaking of a creature in the presence of an apex predator.

Her tiny fingers were dug into his coat so hard he could feel them through the thick wool.

Kaelus looked at Julian Myer.

The man he respected.

The ’good’ noble gentleman.

Kaelus let his mana flare.

Not the gentle, protective ward he used for Seraphina, but the crushing, suffocating, killing intent of the Reaper.

He pushed it forward, testing the Marquess.

Julian blinked, a look of mild discomfort crossing his flawless face, but he didn’t collapse.

He didn’t sweat.

He simply stood there, looking politely confused.

Still waters run deep, Kaelus had said earlier.

As he held the trembling, terrified child in his arms, the child who had stared down ghosts and laughed, Kaelus realized with chilling certainty that the waters of Julian Myer weren’t just deep.

They were a bottomless, unholy abyss.

”The journey has exhausted her,” Kaelus lied smoothly, his voice dropping an octave, becoming a lethal rumble. He stood up, keeping Seraphina securely locked against his chest, refusing to let Julian see her face again. ”We will conclude this meal later.”

”Of course,” Julian said softly, bowing his head gracefully, stepping out of the doorway to give Kaelus a wide berth. ”I shall have the guest wing at the estate prepared for quiet. You should rest well, Kaelus. We have much to discuss.”

Kaelus did not reply.

He walked past the smiling Marquess, his massive body completely shielding the child, and strided out of the restaurant and back into the sunlit streets.

But as the heavy glass doors of The Golden Stag swung shut behind them, Seraphina buried her face deeper into the scent of cold iron and blood that clung to Kaelus, shutting her eyes tight against the terror.

Because she knew the truth.

Count Rodhe had been a bad man, a greedy, corrupt human who created ghosts.

But Marquess Julian Myer, with his flawless face and his gentle smile, wasn’t human at all.

He was something much, much worse.

The carriage ride from The Golden Stag to the sun-drenched estate of Marquess Julian Myer was a blur of chaos.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht did not wait for the carriage to be properly brought around by the footmen.

He had strode out of the restaurant with the trembling child clutched tightly against his chest, his dark cloak acting as a physical shield against the eyes of the city.