Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

She wasn’t looking at Drusilla’s ugly, heavy gold necklace.

She wasn’t looking at the girl’s angry, flushed face.

She was looking at Drusilla’s shoulders.

Clinging to the heavy, crimson brocade fabric of Drusilla’s dress, invisible to the naked eye, were three small, fuzzy, pitch-black clusters of dark aura.

They were roughly the size of softballs.

They didn’t have distinct faces, but they possessed tiny, grasping, shadowy claws that dug deeply into Drusilla’s spiritual aura.

They looked like little, pulsating soot-gremlins.

They weren’t weeping ghosts of the dead, nor were they the terrifying, ancient void of the red-eyed monster.

They were curses.

Low-level, parasitic curses born of pure, negative emotion.

In a city built on the suffering and exploitation of thousands of starving miners, ambient resentment was as common as the smog.

Drusilla, being a spoiled, arrogant child who likely threw tantrums and abused the servants daily, acted as a perfect magnetic lightning rod for all that free-floating malice.

The gremlins were actively feeding on her jealousy.

As Drusilla glared at Seraphina, her negative emotions spiking, one of the black clusters swelled in size, letting out a silent, satisfied little burp.

’Gross,’ Seraphina thought, her nose wrinkling in disgust. ’She literally has bad vibes clinging to her like ticks. They’re feeding on her spoiled brat energy.’

Seraphina realized that if she engaged with the girl, if she fought back, or got angry, or cried, the parasitic curses would only grow stronger, feeding off the conflict.

Furthermore, she was the Sovereign of the North!

She was not going to stoop to trading petty insults with an eight-year-old infested with soot-ticks!

Seraphina made a decision.

She completely ignored her.

Seraphina broke eye contact with Drusilla, turned her head back to her plate, picked up a perfectly cut cube of roasted fowl, and popped it into her mouth, chewing exactly thirty times as Kaelus had instructed.

Drusilla’s face twitched.

Her jaw dropped.

She had just issued a direct insult.

She had demanded a response.

She was the Heir to the Forge!

When she spoke, servants trembled!

Tutors bowed!

Her father showered her with gold!

And this... this stray in a navy dress had just looked at her, wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something foul, and gone back to eating a piece of chicken.

”Did you hear me?!” Drusilla shrieked, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. She stomped her foot, shaking the obsidian table. ”I am talking to you! You are so rude! Papa, tell her she is rude!”

Duke Voran, whose mouth was currently full of boar meat, swallowed heavily.

He looked from his screaming daughter to the terrifying, silent Archduke sitting across from her.

”Er, Drusilla, my ruby,” Voran mumbled nervously, wiping grease from his beard. ”Perhaps we should simply sit down and eat. The guests are...”

”NO!” Drusilla roared, pointing her finger directly at Kaelus now. ”I don’t want to sit by you! I want to sit by him! He is handsome! He looks like a prince! I want him to be my papa! Tell her to get out of that chair! It’s my chair now!”

The audacity of the demand caused the entire dining hall to plunge into a freezing silence.

Behind Kaelus, Sir Lucas had to slap a hand over his own mouth to stifle the bark of hysterical laughter threatening to erupt from his lungs.

Sir Boris turned his head toward the wall, his shoulders shaking with suppressed amusement.

Sir Gallahan was biting his lip so hard it was turning white, staring at the ceiling and violently reciting the knightly code of conduct in his mind to keep from losing his mind.

She wants to adopt the Archduke.

Duke Reginald Voran turned the color of a boiled lobster.

His own daughter had just publicly demanded to trade him in for a newer, shinier model in front of the most terrifying warlord on the continent.

”Drusilla!” Voran gasped, thoroughly humiliated. ”That is Duke Nacht! You cannot simply—”

”I WANT HIM!” Drusilla wailed, the classic, ear-splitting crescendo of a spoiled child denied their whim. She glared at Seraphina with pure, venomous hatred. ”Get out of the chair, you ugly peasant! He’s mine! I have more gold than you! I am prettier than you! He should be cutting my food!”

One of the soot-gremlins clinging to Drusilla’s shoulder actively cheered, feeding on the surge of toxicity, expanding slightly in a puff of dark spiritual smoke.

Seraphina sighed internally. ’She’s not just a brat. She’s an active biological hazard.’

Seraphina didn’t say a word to the screaming girl.

She didn’t need to.

She picked up her small silver fork, looked up at Kaelus, and blinked her large, dark eyes innocently.

”Papa Duke,” Seraphina said, her clear, childish voice carrying perfectly over Drusilla’s heavy breathing. ”The orange lady is very loud, and she has bad vibes. Can we move to the carriage? I don’t want to catch her loud disease.”

The brutal, blunt dismissal hit Drusilla like a strike to the cheek.

The orange girl.

Loud disease.

Drusilla’s face transitioned from red to a terrifying, mottled purple.

She inhaled a breath, preparing to unleash a tantrum that would shatter the stained-glass windows.

But before she could emit a single sound, the temperature in the room plummeted to zero.

Kaelus von Nacht did not even look at Drusilla.

He did not grant the eight-year-old girl a single fraction of a second of his attention.

To the Reaper of the North, the screaming child was invisible, a piece of annoying, background static that was currently disturbing his daughter’s digestion.

Kaelus slowly turned his head, his glowing violet eyes locking directly onto Duke Reginald Voran.

The look on Kaelus’s face was one of disgust.

It was the look a man gives a cockroach floating in his wine glass.

”Reginald,” Kaelus said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble that vibrated the silverware on the table. ”You have ten seconds to remove this screaming defect from my line of sight, before I permanently freeze its vocal cords and mount it on your wall as a gargoyle.”