Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

He looked up, his eyes meeting the Archduke’s.

Kaelus was not listening.

The Reaper’s brain had completely shut down its political subroutines. His mind was focused on the Capital Estate.

’It has been forty-eight hours,’ Kaelus’s inner monologue raged, the bottomless well of his fatherly paranoia overflowing into a catastrophic flood. ’She has been awake for two days without my supervision. Sebastian is competent, but he lacks an eye. What if she decided to climb the draperies? What if the Empress’s spy attempted to offer her poisoned candy? What if she had a nightmare about the demons?’

The thought of Seraphina sitting in the massive, unfamiliar estate, looking around for him and finding only empty hallways, drove a spike of pure, unadulterated agony directly into his chest.

He had played their game.

He had sat through their posturing.

His patience was officially, violently extinct.

CRACK.

The sound of Kaelus placing his hands flat on the mahogany table sounded like a glacier snapping in half.

The entire council chamber instantly went dead, apocalyptically silent.

Kaelus von Nacht stood up.

He didn’t say a word, offer a concluding argument, or ask for permission to leave.

He simply stood, his towering frame casting a long, terrifying shadow that practically swallowed the whimpering Minister of Finance. The dark mana rolling off his shoulders was so dense and crushing, that several nearby lords actively slumped forward in their chairs, struggling to draw breath.

He looked like the Grim Reaper ascending from the Abyss to collect a very specific, very overdue debt.

He turned on his heel.

His heavy boots struck the polished marble floor with the rhythmic, deafening cadence of a war drum. He marched directly toward the towering, twenty-foot-tall gilded doors of the chamber.

”Y-Your Grace!” the Minister of Defense choked out, attempting to salvage the Emperor’s stalling tactic. ”The session is not adjourned! We have not finalized the border treaties!”

Kaelus did not stop walking.

He did not turn around.

”The session is concluded,” Kaelus’s voice echoed through the freezing room, a low, vibrating rumble of pure, concentrated killing intent. ”If any man in this room attempts to summon me back to this table before the next lunar cycle, I will personally annex his territory and feed his ledgers to my horse. Do we have a political understanding?”

Nobody answered. Nobody breathed.

Kaelus reached the massive gilded doors. He didn’t wait for the trembling Royal Guards to open them.

He placed a single hand against the gold-plated wood, and with a casual shove, blew the doors off their heavy brass hinges.

The doors slammed against the corridor walls with a thunderous CRASH, and the Archduke of the North marched out into the sunlight.

***

”Your Grace! Please! The diplomatic optics of this exit are catastrophic!”

Trailing frantically a few paces behind the rapidly marching Archduke was a figure who looked entirely out of place in the blood-soaked, terrifying orbit of the Northern Reaper.

His name was Alistair.

He was the Archduke’s Chief Administrative Aide and Primary Logistics Officer.

And he was, without a single shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful, ethereal, delicately featured human being in the entire Imperial Capital.

Alistair possessed a face that looked as though it had been meticulously sculpted by a lovestruck renaissance artist.

His skin was the color of flawless, unblemished porcelain. His cheekbones were sharp and elegant. His eyes were a brilliant, striking shade of luminous, crystalline emerald green, framed by incredibly long, pale lashes.

But his most defining feature was his hair.

Alistair possessed a cascading waterfall of brilliant, sun-kissed blonde hair that flowed all the way down to his waist, currently gathered and tied at the nape of his neck in a loose, incredibly elegant low ponytail with a ribbon of dark green velvet.

He was dressed in immaculate, highly tailored scholar’s robes that clung to his lean, slender frame. He looked like an elven prince from a high-fantasy ballad.

He was also currently suffering a stress-induced administrative meltdown.

Alistair was clutching a massive stack of leather-bound files, desperately jogging to keep up with Kaelus’s massive strides as they navigated the opulent corridors of the palace.

”Your Grace, I beseech you!” Alistair pleaded, his voice smooth and melodic, yet laced with frantic exasperation. ”We have spent three months negotiating the mythril tariffs! By walking out before the Emperor’s seal is applied, you are inviting a procedural audit! The paperwork alone will require—”

”Burn the paperwork, Alistair,” Kaelus growled, his pace not slowing for a microsecond.

”I cannot burn Imperial documents, Your Grace, it is a felony!” Alistair gasped, dodging a terrified palace maid who threw herself against the wall to avoid them. ”Where are we even going?! The carriage is stationed at the eastern gate, but our scheduled departure is not until sundown!”

”We are returning to the estate,” Kaelus snapped, his violet eyes locked on the exit. ”I have been absent for forty-eight hours. The security has been compromised by my lack of physical presence.”

Alistair rolled his beautiful emerald eyes, letting out a highly un-aristocratic groan of pure, unadulterated suffering.

Alistair was a genius.

He managed the finances, supply lines, and internal politics of the entire Northern territory with flawless, mathematical precision.

But he possessed absolutely zero patience for children, and even less patience for the Archduke’s sudden descent into overprotective fatherhood.

’The Sovereign,’ Alistair thought bitterly, clutching his files. ’A feral, provincial stray he picked up on a whim. The entire political stability of the North is currently being jeopardized because His Grace is experiencing separation anxiety from a toddler. This is a logistical nightmare.’

”Your Grace, the child is under the protection of the Vanguard and Sebastian,” Alistair reasoned, trying to inject logic into the hurricane. ”She is perfectly safe. The Capital perceives your hasty retreat as a sign of weakness! We must project unbothered superiority!”

”I am projecting a desire to see my daughter,” Kaelus replied coldly. ”If the Capital mistakes that for weakness, they are welcome to test my blade. Now, silence your fretting, Alistair. We have a crucial stop to make before we return.”

Alistair blinked, a glimmer of hope returning to his beautiful, exhausted face. ’A stop? Ah. A meeting with an informant, perhaps? A covert rendezvous to gather intelligence on the Emperor’s true motives?’

”Of course, Your Grace,” Alistair nodded smoothly, adjusting his grip on the files. ”Which safehouse are we visiting? I shall prepare the encrypted ledgers.”

Kaelus did not answer. He marched out of the palace gates, past the terrified Royal Guards, and commandeered his waiting carriage with a sharp, commanding gesture.

Twenty minutes later, the carriage rolled into the most exclusive, opulent, high-society commercial district of the Imperial Capital.

The carriage did not stop at a covert tavern.

It did not stop at an intelligence guild.

The carriage ground to a halt directly in front of a pastel-pink, incredibly famous storefront featuring massive glass windows displaying towering, architecturally impossible spun-sugar cakes.

The gold-leaf sign above the door read: La Petite Rêverie.

It was the most exclusive, elite patisserie in the Empire, frequented exclusively by Duchesses, Countesses, and the highest echelon of Capital debutantes.

Alistair, sitting across from Kaelus in the carriage, stared out the window at the pastel-pink awning. He stared at the line of giggling, parasol-wielding noblewomen waiting outside the door.

One lady was discussing a duke’s suspiciously sudden divorce.

Another was dissecting the Empress’s newest jewelry collection.

A third was explaining, with great confidence and absolutely no evidence, that the Crown Prince had secretly fallen in love with a foreign princess.

It was a perfectly ordinary afternoon in the Imperial Capital.

The flawless, beautiful aide slowly turned his head to look at the terrifying Archduke of the North.

”Your Grace,” Alistair whispered, his voice trembling with sheer, unadulterated horror. ”Please tell me we are here to assassinate the baker.”

”We are here,” Kaelus stated, adjusting the cuffs of his midnight-velvet coat, his expression a mask of absolute, deadly seriousness, ”to procure the strawberry-glazed confections that Seraphina specifically requested. And the boutique next door sells imported plush dolls. She requires a new bear. The one Boris provided lacks structural softness.”

Alistair felt his soul physically detach from his body and float away.

”Your Grace, no,” Alistair begged, actually reaching out to grab Kaelus’s sleeve. ”You are the Reaper of the North. You are wearing your formal war-regalia. You cannot stand in line at a pastel bakery! It will annihilate our political intimidation factor! Send a guard! Send a servant! Send me! I will buy the entire shop!”

”A servant does not possess the acute observational parameters necessary to select the exact, optimal ratio of strawberry glaze to vanilla cream,” Kaelus corrected flawlessly, stepping out of the carriage. ”I must visually inspect the inventory myself.”

.

.

.

The atmosphere outside La Petite Rêverie was a delicate, perfumed bubble of high-society gossip.

A dozen young noblewomen, dressed in extravagant, pastel-colored silk gowns, were standing in line, twirling their lace parasols, whispering about the latest scandals of the Imperial Court.