Chapter 644: PJs [Bonus - ]

Chapter 644: PJs [Bonus Chapter]

The living room stayed quiet for a long moment with the pale twilight from the terrace doors catching the microscopic swirl of dust where the white torrent had just evaporated.

Harper sat with her knees drawn tight against her chest, both hands clamped over the charcoal wool of her trousers.

The blinding glare was gone, but her knuckles remained stark white and trembled against the fabric and her chest rose and fell in short drafts.

’The silence is good...’ Both of them thought at the same time but Silas didn’t withdraw his hand.

He kept his calloused palm planted flat against the back of hers, letting the warmth of his Gold Core seep through her skin and anchor her erratic pulse.

"Divinity," Silas said, breaking the silence in a dry voice. All of a sudden... he sounded unimpressed, was it because he was a bit jealous?

Harper blinked.

The dark violet of her eyes fluttered with her brows knitting together as she tilted her chin up to stare at him.

"Divinity? As in divine authority? The kind spoken of in the ancient scrolls of the first era or something?"

"Drop the liturgical nonsense," Silas replied, shaking his head slightly. "You aren’t reading from an altar... You took a hit from a god after all. Nitocris, Ititius... It doesn’t matter... The entity was a deity of sand and when its consciousness occupied your body beneath the White Citadel, your soul wasn’t just crushed under foreign mana... Its power was branded directly onto your spiritual conduits. I’m sure of it..."

He tapped the back of her hand lightly with his index finger.

"Before that thing came apart under the blade, its authority washed over your meridians so that means a fraction of that divine ether stuck to your marrow... What you just sparked isn’t an element, it isn’t high-order purple lightning, and it sure as hell isn’t black sand, It’s residual divinity."

Harper remained motionless with her lips slightly parted as she stared at the empty space above her lap.

She lifted her right palm and flexed her manicured fingers one by one.

The skin was smooth and unblemished, but beneath the pale surface an elusive frightening current seemed to hum just out of reach of her pulse.

"Residual," she murmured, with a dry self-deprecating chuckle. "A few dregs, then... Scraps left on the floor after an ancient god choked on my body..."

"Any amount of divine power in a mortal vessel is certainly special," Silas said firmly, shifting on the cushions so he faced her squarely.

He placed his heavy right hand on the curve of her shoulder, his fingers pressing into the tailored wool of her jacket with an unshakeable grip.

"Don’t sell it short, trust me, most Awakened would already be dead but your core held... You kept your identity intact, you maintained your native elemental affinity, and you fused the sand with your lightning too. You’re very lucky and stronger because of it."

He looked straight into her eyes.

"So you don’t need to fear it, Harper... It’s fuel... Train the energy, refine the compression ratios during your morning training and run the circuits through your central nervous system until the white spark stops biting your nerves... Keep at it, and one day you might actually forge yourself into a full-fledged deity."

Harper stared at him.

The rigid posture that usually defined the Head of House Whitmore slowly melted.

Her violet eyes widened, catching the amber gleam of the distant streetlights, shimmering with a sudden breathless brilliance that had nothing to do with calculations.

"A deity," she whispered then, without a shred of warning, the woman lunged forward at him.

LUNGE!

Harper threw both arms around Silas’s right bicep and pressed her cheek against his shoulder with a dramatic exaggerated whimper.

"Being a deity sounds absolutely terrifying!" Harper cried, her voice pitching up into a delightful whine as she clung to his arm like a child refusing to leave a toy shop. "All those rituals! The endless prayers from dusty cultists! Having to float around on a cloud looking miserable! No, thank you, Silas! That sounds like far too much paperwork!"

She squeezed his arm tighter against her ribs, tilting her face up to gaze at his profile with a wicked twinkle in her violet eyes.

"I’d much rather retire from everything and become your wife~"

Silas choked on his own breath with a bark of laughter tearing from his throat as he tried to pry her fingers off his bicep, though his effort was completely in vain.

"My wife?" Silas snorted, looking down at her clinging frame with an amused exasperated grin. "You’re the Head of House Whitmore, and your grand life ambition is to sit on my couch and steal my tea?"

"Precisely!" Harper beamed, rubbing her cheek against his sleeve with satisfaction. "Think of the tax exemptions! Think of the strategic merger! And besides, I make excellent homemade pastries when I’m not blowing up monsters like Arachnids."

Silas’s laughter faltered for half a second.

’Arachnids, huh?’

His thoughts drifted to the cluster of spider eggs sitting in the incubators back in Blessed Land, and he wondered idly whether they had hatched yet.

’I’ll check them out when I get back to the Beast Pavillion.’ Silas thought as the heavy cedar front door clicked open.

THUD-CLATTER!

Footsteps scuffled across the limestone tiles of the foyer, accompanied by the loud crinkling rustle of heavy cardboard cartons and plastic packaging.

"Penelope, watch your step with the third box!" Lia’s voice carried through the archway sounding breathless and bossy. "If you drop the silk sets, Miss Martha will make us polish the banister until midnight!"

"I am carrying the soup containers, Lia," Penelope retorted in her flat immaculate voice. "You are carrying three empty garment bags... Do not lecture me on balance."

Harper’s grip loosened, but she didn’t jump back with guilty haste.

Instead, she smoothly transitioned from clinging to his arm into a relaxed recline on the cushions, crossing one tailored trouser-leg over the other with the untouchable poise of an empress who owned every square inch of the living room.

’Eh... It’s my living room though.’

Lia, Penelope, and Martha trooped into the room like a miniature supply caravan.

Penelope set two heavy insulated thermal food flasks onto the dining table, while Lia dumped a towering stack of midnight-blue and ivory garment boxes onto the coffee table, scattering Silas’s discarded magazines.

Martha followed close behind, carrying a wooden tray lined with ceramic soup bowls and clean silver spoons.

"Mission accomplished," Lia announced, wiping a nonexistent bead of sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. "The trunk of Lady Harper’s interceptor is essentially a mobile department store..."

Harper let out a melodic amused chuckle, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees as she tapped the topmost garment box with a polished fingernail.

"Not a department store, little one," Harper purred, her eyes scanning the three of them with playful pride. "Custom-tailored loungewear from the House of Valois from Australis... Imported silk-cotton blends woven with micro-temperature wards... Forty-five thousand credits per set."

She slid the lids off the boxes, revealing the pristine sets folded inside tissue paper.

"This midnight-blue set with the silver piping is for Miss Martha," Harper said, gesturing gracefully toward the housekeeper. "The pale lavender with the lace collar belongs to Penelope. The forest green with the embroidered rabbit crest is for Lia and this one..."

She lifted a deep violet set from the last box, the silk scattered with tiny embroidered golden stars that caught the lamplight like a night sky, and her lips curved into a slow devastating smirk.

"...is for a certain brooding lord who refuses to buy his own clothes. Mine matches his, of course."

Martha raised a polite hand to her cheek with her eyes widening slightly. "Forty-five thousand credits for sleepwear? Heavens, Lady Harper, that is far too extravagant for domestic duties..."

"Take the clothes, Martha," Silas interrupted with a dry smirk, waving his hand toward the box. "If you argue with her, she’ll buy thirty more sets just to prove a point about her liquidity."

Silas was very sure she was capable of it...

Lia didn’t need to be told twice as she snatched her forest-green box by the ribbon, let out a triumphant cheer, and bolted down the hallway toward her bedroom like a startled deer.

Penelope offered a stiff dignified nod of thanks to her older sister, picked up her lavender parcel, and followed with swift silent steps.

Martha, shaking her head with a faint sigh of surrender, gathered her set and retreated to the ground-floor guest quarters to change.

Silas stretched his arms above his head, letting his knuckles pop, and made to rise from the sofa.

"Right. I’ll go throw on the stars before the food goes cold."

"Sit down," Harper commanded softly.

Silas paused, his eyebrows lifting. "What?"

"I said, sit down," she repeated, her voice dropping into a purring voice that made the air in the room feel two degrees warmer.

"Whoo~"

Harper stood up from the sectional and reached for the lapels of her bespoke three-piece suit jacket.

With a slow deliberate shrug of her shoulders, she let the charcoal wool slide down her arms and drop across the back of an armchair.

Her slender fingers moved to the mother-of-pearl buttons of her high-collared white silk waistcoat, undoing them one by one with unhurried precision.

Silas sat back down on the cushions.

His posture stayed relaxed, but his dark eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her.

"Harper," Silas murmured, his voice dry as tinder. "The children are literally fifteen feet down the corridor."

"The children are currently arguing over who gets the top drawer in Lia’s wardrobe," Harper dismissed casually, sliding the waistcoat off and tossing it onto the table.

Her fingers moved to the collar of her silk shirt and undid the top three buttons, revealing the pale porcelain of her throat and the sharp, elegant dip of her collarbones.

Beneath the tailored fabric, the athletic lines of her frame were unmistakable... the narrow waist, the flare of her hips, the subtle corded muscle along her shoulders forged through years of combat.

She turned slightly, catching his gaze in the dim light with a wicked teasing glint dancing in her violet pupils.

"Tell me, Syyyy," she whispered, stepping half an inch closer to the edge of the coffee table. "Do you like what you see?"

Silas didn’t look away.

He leaned back against the cushions, crossing his arms over his chest with his jaw setting into a calm immovable line.

’If I look away, she’ll tease me more.’

For that reason, he let his gaze sweep slowly over the bare curve of her neck and down to the exposed dip of her ribs before meeting her eyes with a arrogant smirk.

"So what if I do?" Silas countered, his voice dropping into a low voice designed to rattle her composure. "You think you’re the first dangerous woman to take off her jacket in front of me?"

Harper’s violet eyes dilated slightly.

A microscopic prickle of pink heat dusted the high ridges of her cheekbones, catching her completely off-guard.

She opened her mouth, stepping forward with a defiant tilt of her chin, her voice dropping into a breathless rasp.

"Well, then... if you like it so much, Silas... you can just come over here and take i—"

SLAM!

The hallway door flew open with the force of a breaching charge.

"LOOK AT THE SLEEVES!" Lia shrieked, skidding onto the living room rug on her stockinged heels, holding her arms out like an airplane.

The forest-green silk set was two sizes too large, the cuffs swallowing her hands like floppy green mittens.

"PENELOPE SAID I LOOK LIKE A CABBAGE, BUT SHE’S JUST JEALOUS BECAUSE MINE HAS POCKETS!"

Penelope walked out behind her, adjusting the neat lace collar of her lavender set with long-suffering dignity.

"You do look like a cabbage, Lia... A very expensive, organic cabbage..."

Harper’s entire body went rigid.

In a fraction of a second that would have made an elite shinobi weep with envy, Harper snatched her matching violet set from the box, whipped her arms through the pajama shirt, and buttoned it up to her chin with frantic blurred fingers.

She spun around to face the girls with a smile so stiff it looked painted on.

Silas buried his face in his hands on the couch with his shoulders shaking with silent breathless laughter.

’Take it, huh?’ he thought, coughing into his palms. ’Almost had her.’

Martha emerged from the kitchen archway a moment later, wearing her midnight-blue set beneath a clean cotton apron.

She paused, taking in the scene which was Harper aggressively smoothing down her silk lapels, Silas grinning like an idiot on the sofa, and the two little girls inspecting the hem of the rug.

Her sharp eyes darted between Harper’s flushed cheeks and Silas’s messy hair though her lips were twitching with a knowing smirk that carried a hint of wry amusement.

’I’m a bit jealous...’

"I see the evening dress code has been established," Martha remarked with her tone sweet as honey.

Harper cleared her throat, stepping gracefully toward the dining table, her composure snapping back into place like a steel bear trap.

"Indeed! And now, dinner... Real food!"

She unlatched the heavy thermal flasks, releasing a rich intoxicating aroma that instantly conquered the living room.

It was a dark velvety beef and oxtail stew, simmered with roasted root vegetables, wild thyme, and dark red wine until the meat had dissolved into tender ribbons.

Beside it was a ceramic crock of crusty sourdough rolls, still warm to the touch, and a chilled glass dish of pickled cucumber spears.

The five of them gathered around the low table, sitting on the thick floor cushions.

Lia and Penelope dug in with zero hesitation, their eyes lighting up as they tore into the bread.

"This is amazing," Penelope admitted, closing her eyes as she chewed. "Sister, your training in cooking was not an entire waste of resources after all..."

"High praise from my own flesh and blood," Harper chuckled, ladling a generous portion into Silas’s bowl.

Silas picked up a ceramic soup spoon, dipped it into the dark broth, blew on the steam, and took a slow deliberate sip.

He chewed a piece of tender carrot with deadpan contemplation, then set the spoon down and looked at Harper.

"The broth is flat," Silas stated with unblinking seriousness. "It lacks sweetness... Honestly, I think the bone marrow they served us in the Khemet refugee camps had more flavor."

Ah, was Silas trying to court death?!