Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

”But I swear to you,” Kaelus vowed, the words not a military command, but a sacred, unholy prayer. ”I will find it. Whether it is a poison, a curse, or the smiling Marquess himself. I will find whatever made you scream.”

His violet eyes, staring at her pale face, hardened.

The vulnerability remained, a bleeding wound in his chest, but around it, the iron of the Archduke forged a new, unbreakable resolve.

”They thought you were bait to trap the small beasts,” Kaelus murmured, a dark, terrifying promise filling the silent room. ”But they do not realise what happens when the bait belongs to the Leviathan.”

He pulled his heavy, midnight-blue cape from his own shoulders.

He draped it over the bed, covering her small form entirely, tucking the edges around her shoulders to create a perfect, impenetrable cocoon of his own lingering, protective mana.

Kaelus did not sleep that night.

He remained in the chair, his hand wrapped around hers, his eyes burning with an unnatural light in the darkness, standing an unyielding vigil over the fragile, broken pawn that had somehow become the only king that mattered on his board.

***

Consciousness did not return to Seraphina with a gentle, waking stretch, nor did it arrive with the sudden, violent jolt of a nightmare ending.

Instead, it seeped into her bones like molasses, thick, heavy, and overwhelmingly sluggish.

Her eyelids felt as though they had been stitched together with lead thread.

Her limbs were a collection of uncoordinated, heavy sandbags.

Her mouth tasted like old copper and dry cotton, and her throat possessed the distinct, scratchy texture of sandpaper that had been left out in the desert.

With a monumental effort that felt akin to moving a mountain, Seraphina forced her eyes open.

The room was bathed in the soft, muted hues of early morning light filtering through the heavy brocade curtains.

The familiar, oppressive grey fog of the Count’s estate was absent, replaced by the clean, sterile, and slightly floral scent of the Myer estate’s guest annex.

She blinked once, twice, trying to clear the blurry, sleep-crusted edges of her vision.

As the world slowly snapped into focus, the very first thing she saw nearly sent her back into an immediate coma out of sheer, unadulterated aesthetic shock.

Sitting in a high-backed velvet chair drawn mere inches from the edge of her mattress was Duke Kaelus von Nacht.

He was asleep, dozing upright in a posture that still somehow managed to scream lethal readiness.

His arms were crossed over his broad chest, his long legs stretched out in front of him, clad in his usual dark, mythril-reinforced boots.

But it was his face that arrested Seraphina’s attention.

The Reaper of the North looked like a man who had gone to war with the concept of sleep itself and lost a brutal, grinding campaign.

There were dark, bruised-looking circles carved deep beneath his violet eyes, standing out starkly against his usually flawless, pale skin.

The sharp, aristocratic lines of his jaw were shadowed by the faint, rough beginnings of a stubble, a wild, unkempt detail that was entirely foreign to the meticulously groomed Archduke.

His heavy, midnight-blue coat was wrinkled, the collar slightly askew, and a few strands of his raven-black hair had escaped their usual perfect styling to fall across his forehead.

He looked exhausted and rugged.

He looked like a man pushed to the brink.

And yet, Seraphina’s adult, artist-reincarnated mind could only process one incredibly frustrating fact.

’How is it scientifically possible to look this good while actively deteriorating?’ Seraphina thought, staring at him in utter bewilderment.

It was unfair.

It was a violation of the laws of nature!

If she didn’t sleep well for a single night, she woke up looking like a damp potato.

Kaelus, on the other hand, had clearly not slept in days, yet he looked like a tragically beautiful, brooding painting that belonged in an imperial museum!

The morning light caught the sharp angle of his cheekbones, casting a shadow that somehow only emphasised his ridiculous, godly bone structure.

It was as if the universe had permanently installed a dramatic, high-fantasy filter over him.

Seraphina slowly reached up and touched her own face.

She felt the crust in the corner of her eyes.

She felt her hair, which had undoubtedly returned to its natural state of an electrocuted bird’s nest.

’I am a squid,’ she concluded solemnly, mentally comparing her six-year-old, bedraggled form to the glowing masterpiece sleeping beside her. ’I am a small, uncoordinated squid sitting next to a celestial being. This world’s character design is heavily biased.’

But the humour of her inner monologue quickly faded, replaced by a sharp, sudden pang of worry.

Why did he look so tired?

The last thing she remembered was the restaurant.

She remembered the chocolate cake.

She remembered the door opening, the handsome Marquess Myer walking in, and then...

And then, the void.

A cold shiver raced down Seraphina’s spine as the memory of that suffocating, unnatural emptiness hit her.

The absolute terror.

The feeling of bugs crawling beneath her skin as her supreme dark core went into a catastrophic meltdown.

She remembered screaming for Kaelus.

She remembered the biting, soothing cold of his magic.

How long had she been asleep?

She needed to find out, but she couldn’t ask him.

Looking at the dark bags under his eyes, she realised that the terrifying, unstoppable Archduke had likely spent every single waking second since the restaurant sitting exactly in that chair, maintaining a vigil over her.

If she woke him up now, he would probably immediately start interrogating her, checking her vitals, and refusing to sleep until he conquered whatever invisible enemy had attacked her.

’He needs to sleep,’ Seraphina decided. ’Even Leviathans need naps.’

Moving with excruciating care, Seraphina slowly pushed the heavy duvet off her small body.

Her muscles ached, trembling with a strange, hollow weakness, but she managed to untangle her legs.

She reached over to the foot of the bed, where a thick, soft quilted blanket had been folded.