Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

Duke Voran, watching the terrifying Reaper of the North meticulously cut meat into bite-sized cubes for a six-year-old, looked as if his entire worldview was collapsing.

The heavy, iron-wrought doors at the far end of the dining hall suddenly swung open with a dramatic, echoing groan.

Seraphina paused mid-chew, looking up.

Marching into the room was a girl who looked to be about eight or nine years old.

She was, without a single shadow of a doubt, the biological daughter of Duke Reginald Voran.

Lady Drusilla was a miniature version of her father’s worst aesthetic impulses.

She was a sturdy, scowling child with the same bright, wiry orange hair, which had been aggressively curled and pinned up with heavy gold barrettes that looked like they were giving her a migraine.

She was wearing a dress that defied comfort.

It was woven from thick, stiff crimson brocade, suffocated in gold embroidery, and layered with so many frills that she didn’t so much walk as she waddled forward like a hostile, upholstered bell.

Around her neck hung a ruby pendant the size of a pigeon’s egg.

She looked hot, itchy, and perpetually enraged.

Drusilla stomped up to the table, completely ignoring the bowing servants.

She slammed her hands, which were also covered in gold rings, onto the obsidian table.

”Papa!” Drusilla demanded, her voice a shrill, piercing shriek that instantly caused Sir Gallahan to wince in pain. ”Why did you start the feast without me?! I was changing my gown! The seamstress made the gold threading too tight on my shoulders, so I had her thrown in the dungeon!”

Duke Voran, who had been cowed by Kaelus mere moments before, suddenly puffed up with pride, looking at his daughter as if she were a conquering hero.

”Ah, my precious ruby!” Voran boomed, gesturing grandly to the empty chair beside him. ”The duties of the Duchy wait for no man, but your timing is flawless! Come, sit! We have guests from the frozen wastelands!”

Drusilla turned her head, her nose stuck high in the air, preparing to sneer at the ’barbarians’ her father had mentioned.

Her eyes scanned the table, sliding past the terrifying, scarred knights standing in the shadows, moving past the small, dark-haired girl in the simple navy dress, and finally landing squarely on Duke Kaelus von Nacht.

Drusilla froze.

The shrill, demanding complaint died instantly on her lips.

Her jaw dropped open.

Kaelus was sitting casually, holding a silver goblet of water.

The dim, flickering light of the dining hall’s torches caught the sharp, breathtaking angles of his pale face.

His raven-black hair fell perfectly across his forehead, and his glowing violet eyes were dark, brooding, and intensely mysterious.

The sheer, overwhelming aesthetic force of the ’dramatic handsome filter’ that perpetually surrounded the Archduke hit the eight-year-old girl with the force of a runaway train.

In her short, spoiled life, Drusilla had only ever known men who looked like her father, sweaty, red-faced, loud, and covered in soot.

Looking at Kaelus, it was as if she had been struck by a divine revelation.

’He looks like a dark prince from a storybook,’ Drusilla’s inner monologue likely screamed, her eight-year-old heart fluttering wildly. ’He is so magnificent and shiny... I want him!’

Drusilla did not walk to the chair beside her father.

She altered her trajectory, marching around the obsidian table until she was standing directly across from Kaelus.

She planted her hands on her hips, her gold rings clanking against her brocade dress, and stared at the Archduke with obsession.

”Who are you?” Drusilla demanded, her tone lacking any aristocratic manners, sounding more like a merchant appraising a horse.

Kaelus did not look at her.

He didn’t even acknowledge her existence.

He reached over and used a napkin to wipe a small smudge of gravy from the corner of Seraphina’s mouth.

”You will chew the meat thirty times before swallowing, Seraphina,” Kaelus murmured, ignoring the orange-haired child staring at him. ”The proteins are dense.”

”I am chewing, Papa,” Seraphina mumbled around her food.

Drusilla’s eyes snapped from Kaelus’s handsome face down to the small, dark-haired girl sitting beside him.

The realization hit Drusilla like a slap to the face.

This beautiful, brooding, magnificent dark prince... was already taken.

He was already a ’Papa’.

And he was a ’Papa’ to a girl who was smaller, younger, and wearing a dress that didn’t even have a single ruby on it.

An ugly, green wave of toxic jealousy erupted in Drusilla’s chest.

She looked back at her own father, Duke Voran, who was currently sweating profusely, tearing into a roasted boar leg with his bare hands, grease dripping down his orange beard.

Then she looked back at Kaelus, who was elegantly, flawlessly cutting a carrot.

The comparison was devastating.

’It’s not fair!’ Drusilla thought, her face flushing as red as her father’s. ’I am the Jewel of the Forge! I am the Heir to the Iron Marches! I deserve the handsome, quiet, storybook papa! Not the sweaty, loud one! Why does that snotty little peasant girl get him?!’

Drusilla slammed her hands on the table again, leaning forward to glare directly at Seraphina.

”Hey, you!” Drusilla barked, pointing a ringed finger at Seraphina. ”What is your name? Why are you wearing such a boring dress? Are you poor?”

Seraphina paused her chewing.

She looked up at the older girl.

’Oh my god,’ Seraphina thought, her eyes widening slightly. ’Why is she glaring at me like that? Did I do something wrong? Or is she having a daddy-upgrade crisis? She took one look at Papa’s brooding protagonist aesthetic, looked back at her own dad, and decided she wants a refund. She’s trying to establish a shoujo-manga rivalry with a six-year-old child?’

It was hilarious as much as it was pathetic.

But as Seraphina looked closer at Drusilla, prepared to ignore the brat entirely, her Spirit Sight, which was active in this hostile environment, caught something incredibly strange.

Seraphina stopped chewing entirely, her dark eyes narrowing.