Chapter 784 - 783 - Waiting for his New Wife

Chapter 784: Chapter 783 - Waiting for his New Wife

What my memory hadn’t told me — because in my past life, I’d never bothered to investigate — was that the count’s daughter was the headmistress of the Royal Academy of Arcane Sciences. The very academy where I was about to take a position as a professor.

The very headmistress who, in my past life, had been framed as a demoness during the civil war. Executed. Her family — these people, this kindly thick mother and this sword-bearing father and this smirking uncle — wiped out. Their territory confiscated. Their names erased.

And the headmistress herself — a woman I’d never met in my past life, whose name I’d only seen in execution records — had been posthumously revealed as a necromancer. A powerful one. The kind that could raise armies of the dead. The kind that could have been an asset, if anyone had thought to recruit her before the kingdom decided she was a threat.

I looked at the father. At the mother. At the uncle. At the maids holding clothes like they were presenting royal garments.

These people were going to die.

Unless I did something about it.

My cock — still half-erect, still pressing against the sheet — twitched. Not from arousal. From the realization that the woman these people kept calling their daughter — the woman they thought had brought me home, the woman they believed was my lover — was a thirty-two-year-old academic prodigy who was going to become one of the most dangerous necromancers in the kingdom’s history.

And I wanted her abilities.

Not just wanted. Needed. The necromantic arts — soul binding, corpse animation, the manipulation of death energy — were among the few magical disciplines that my physiology couldn’t naturally absorb even with vast ninth rank mage knowledge I had.

I could take ninth rank magic from satoro’s wife. But necromancy required a practitioner’s body, not just their energy. I needed the body that can interact with darkness.

And here — sitting in her parents’ house, wearing her sheets, being called son-in-law by her family — I had the perfect opportunity.

A spark ignited in my chest. The scheming, calculating, predatory part of my brain — the part that had built a tower, fucked a cult into existence, and turned a maid into a living weapon — flickered to life.

I smiled.

"Indeed, indeed," I said. My voice shifted — warmer, more open, the voice of a man who was genuinely touched by his reception. "I met your daughter... ah..." I paused. Let the hesitation look like shyness.

"Vespera," the mother said. "Our daughter’s name is Vespera. Vespera Thorne."

"Vespera," I repeated. The name rolled off my tongue. In my past life, I’d seen it in execution records. Vespera Thorne, former Headmistress of the Royal Academy, convicted of necromancy, executed by royal decree. Age at death: thirty-four. "Yes. Vespera. We met at — well, it’s a rather long story."

"Tell us!" The mother sat on the edge of the bed. The father’s hand left his sword. The uncle leaned forward. The maids — forgotten — stood holding the clothes.

I told them a story.

A fabricated, carefully constructed, emotionally resonant story about meeting their daughter at a magical symposium. About shared interests in arcane theory. About long conversations over tea. About a whirlwind academic romance — books and formulas and the thrill of intellectual discovery. I invented details — the color of Vespera’s eyes (hazel, I guessed, based on the mother’s), the way she laughed when she solved a theorem (sharp, bright, the laugh of a woman who found joy in precision), the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking.

The parents ate it up.

"Oh, our daughter is too romantic!" The mother clutched her chest. Her eyes were wet. "Are you talking about our daughter really? Our Vespera? The one who refused twelve suitors? The one who said marriage was ’an inefficient allocation of cognitive resources’?"

"That’s the one," I said.

The father’s eyes were glistening. His jaw worked. He cleared his throat — the military man trying to maintain composure. "Finally," he said, his voice rough. "Finally, my daughter has chosen a husband for herself. I thought she was going to die with old age."

"Indeed, indeed," the uncle agreed, nodding sagely. "The girl was married to her books. I told her — I said, Vespera, books don’t warm your bed at night—"

"And what did she say?" the mother asked, her eyes on me.

"She said—" I paused. Composed the response. "She said her research was more stimulating than any man."

The mother laughed. A full, genuine, belly-shaking laugh. "That’s her. That’s our Vespera."

The father wiped his eye. "Damn that academic geezer — the old headmaster who recruited her. If not for him, my daughter wouldn’t have become the headmistress there. She’d have been married years ago. Had children. Lived a normal life."

"But she’s happy now," the mother said, looking at me. "She has you."

I smiled. Modest. Appropriate. The smile of a man who was absolutely not what they thought he was.

"Indeed, indeed," I said.

The word had become a reflex. The father and uncle used it constantly — a verbal tic, a family habit — and I’d absorbed it like a sponge. It felt natural coming out of my mouth.

They gave me clothes. I dressed — the father watched with approval, nodding at the fit, commenting on my shoulders. The mother fussed with my collar. The uncle made a joke about honeymoon stamina that made the maids blush.

We went downstairs. The dining room was modest but well-appointed — dark wood table, enchanted windows showing a garden view, porcelain plates. Breakfast was laid out: eggs, bread, preserved fruit, tea. I ate. They watched. The mother kept refilling my plate. The father kept refilling my cup. The uncle kept telling stories about Vespera’s childhood — how she’d disassembled her first magical artifact at age six, how she’d corrected her tutor’s spell formula at age nine, how she’d published her first academic paper at thirteen.

A prodigy. A genuine, bona fide prodigy. And in my past life, I’d let her die.

No. Not this time.

The carriage arrived in the afternoon. Not a carriage — a notification. A maid rushed in, breathless. "Mistress has arrived! She just came through the gate!"

The mother stood, her face lighting up. "She’s here? She came early?" Then she paused. Considered. "No — she always comes late at night. Why is she here in the afternoon?"

"Perhaps she heard the news?" the father suggested.

"What news?"

"That we’ve found her a husband."

"Mother—" I started.

"Wait here," the mother said, her expression shifting to something conspiratorial. She turned to me. "Son-in-law, wait for her in her bedroom. We’ll give her a surprise."

My mouth opened to object.

"What a wonderful plan!" the father agreed. "Indeed, indeed — we will give her the surprise."

"Indeed," the uncle nodded.

I looked at them. At their hopeful, eager, matchmaking faces. At the absolute, catastrophic misunderstanding that had formed between us. They thought I was their daughter’s secret lover. I was a naked stranger who had broken into their house.

But if I corrected them now, the opportunity would vanish. The headmistress would lock me out. The family would alert the authorities. My chance to access Vespera’s necromantic knowledge — and to save this family from the executioner’s blade — would disappear.

So I nodded. "I’ll wait upstairs."

The mother beamed. The father clapped my shoulder. The uncle winked.

I climbed the stairs. Found the bedroom — Vespera’s bedroom, apparently, which was where I’d woken up. I entered. Closed the door. Looked around.

The room was a laboratory masquerading as a bedroom. The desk was buried under papers, books, calculations. The bookshelves overflowed with treatises on magical theory, anatomy, soul mechanics. A half-eaten sandwich sat on a stack of journals. The bed — my bed for the night — was the only normal surface.

I sat at the desk. Picked up a pen. Found a blank page.

And waited.