Chapter 198: Brooding

The heavy, enchanted velvet drapes of the master suite in the Capital Estate were drawn tightly shut, blocking out the glittering, treacherous starlight of the Imperial City.

The room was bathed in the warm, flickering crimson glow of the massive hearth, casting long, dancing shadows against the polished marble walls.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht sat in a high-backed, leather armchair pulled directly to the edge of the sprawling, four-poster bed.

He had removed his heavy chestplate and his midnight-blue coat, clad only in his soft, dark linen undershirt.

His posture, usually so rigidly disciplined that it looked as though his spine had been replaced with an iron rod, was entirely relaxed.

He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his chin propped on his clasped hands.

He was staring at the bed.

Specifically, he was staring at the tiny, dark-haired child buried beneath a mountain of silk blankets, clutching a pink, gently snoring ember-puppy to her chest.

Seraphina was fast asleep.

Her breathing was a soft, rhythmic, incredibly peaceful hum. In the dim firelight, her soft, round cheeks were flushed with warmth, her dark eyelashes resting gently against her skin.

She looked impossibly small, fragile, and utterly cute.

Kaelus let out a long, slow, quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like a fragile, watery laugh.

He looked at her, and his chest ached.

It was a deep, resonating, beautiful sort of agony, the crushing weight of loving something so much that the mere thought of its absence felt like suffocating.

’I am a fool,’ Kaelus’s internal monologue whispered in the quiet dark, a brutal, honest confession to the silent room. ’I truly believed my heart had been permanently, irreversibly frozen. I thought the winter of the Glacial Abyss had killed whatever softness remained in my soul.’

Fifteen years ago, the universe had stripped him of everything.

His father had fallen to the demonic hordes.

His siblings, Caspian and Elara, unable to bear the suffocating gloom of the North and the terrifying, hardened monster their older brother had been forced to become, had left him.

They had fled to the bright, warm corners of the Empire, leaving Kaelus to rule a kingdom of ice and ghosts entirely alone.

He had let them go.

He had stood on the battlements of the Black Bastion and watched their carriages ride away, forcing himself not to call them back.

He had reasoned, with cold, ruthless, military logic, that they were strong.

They were Nachts. They could survive in the world without being tethered to his cursed existence.

He had locked his heart in a vault of black mythril and thrown away the key, resolving to live solely as the Reaper, a weapon for the Empire, devoid of all human attachment.

And then, he had walked into a miserable, gray, provincial orphanage.

Kaelus closed his violet eyes, a wave of sickening guilt washing over him as he remembered his original intentions.

He hadn’t gone to that orphanage to find a daughter.

He hadn’t been looking for a child to love.

He had marched into that dreary building looking for a tool, a piece of biological equipment he could utilize as bait to draw out the assassins lurking in his court.

He had looked at a six-year-old girl and seen a tactical asset.

’What kind of monster was I?’ Kaelus agonized, opening his eyes to stare at her sweet, innocent, sleeping face. ’I brought her into the darkest, most dangerous household in the continent. I intended to use her. I intended to place her in the line of fire.’

He reached out, his large, scarred hand trembling slightly as he gently, meticulously tucked a stray lock of dark hair behind her tiny ear.

’And instead, she conquered me,’ Kaelus realized, a fiercely fond, self-deprecating smile touching his lips. ’She did not just melt the ice; she shattered the vault, puffed her cheeks at my commanders, demanded pastries, and looked at the Reaper of the North and simply demanded to be held.’

The irony of fate was staggering.

The child he had adopted to use as a shield had become the only thing in the universe he desperately, terrifyingly needed to protect.

And she needed protecting.

Kaelus’s violet eyes darkened, the fond warmth instantly bleeding into a cold, hyper-vigilant, paranoid glare as he looked away from the bed and stared at the heavy oak door of the bedroom.

The Imperial Capital was not a playground.

It was a gilded slaughterhouse. Every single noble residing within these white marble walls was a viper waiting for a moment of weakness.

The Empress had already attempted to plant a spy in his household. The Emperor was stalling him with nonsense. They were all circling, smelling blood in the water, eager to exploit the Archduke’s newfound, glaringly obvious vulnerability.

If they realized how deeply he loved her, they would use her. They would try to manipulate her. They would try to poison her.

Kaelus looked back at Seraphina. She mumbled something in her sleep about a strawberry tart, a tiny, blissfully ignorant smile on her lips.

’She is so pure,’ Kaelus thought, his heart squeezing with protective panic. ’She is so innocent. So lovely and untainted by the rot of this world. She wanders the halls of this estate laughing at the tapestries and feeding the hounds. How could a creature so gentle, so entirely devoid of malice, possibly survive in a city that feasts on the naive?’

He clenched his fist, the leather of his glove creaking in the silence.

He had let his siblings go because they could fight. He had let them walk away because they possessed the fangs to survive the Empire.

But Seraphina?

’I will never let her go,’ the Reaper vowed, a terrifying oath sealing itself into his very marrow. ’I will never allow the filth of this Capital to touch her. I will burn the Imperial Palace to ash and freeze the ashes before I let a single, manipulative courtier bring a tear to her eye. I am her father. And my wrath will be the shield that preserves her innocence.’

Kaelus leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, settling into a watchful, sleepless vigil, perfectly content to spend the entire night guarding his precious, helpless, innocent little angel from the horrors of the world.

***

Directly outside the heavy oak doors of the master suite, standing at rigid, unyielding attention in the dimly lit corridor, was Sebastian.

The scarred, grizzled, veteran Head Butler had been standing guard for three hours. His single, pale blue eye stared straight ahead, his posture impeccable.

Sebastian possessed incredibly acute hearing, honed by decades of anticipating enemy movements in the frozen trenches of the North.

Through the thick wood of the door, he could hear the faint weight of the Archduke in his leather chair. He could hear the soft, rhythmic breathing of the child.

He could practically feel the suffocating, heavy waves of dramatic, overprotective, fatherly angst radiating from Kaelus’s aura.

Sebastian knew exactly what his master was thinking.

The Archduke was likely brooding over the child’s safety, mourning her fragile innocence, and plotting the violent demise of anyone who dared to look at her sideways.

Sebastian slowly, methodically raised his white-gloved hand and pinched the bridge of his scarred nose, letting out a long, silent, incredibly weary sigh.

’The Archduke is legally, comprehensively, and willfully blind,’ Sebastian’s internal monologue grumbled, shaking his head in disbelief.

Innocent? Pure? Helpless?

Sebastian remembered the incident in the drawing room earlier that week.

He remembered the tiny, seemingly sweet child looking directly into the eyes of a spy and dismantling the woman’s entire psychological infrastructure by comparing the Empress to a powdered donut.

He remembered the cold, calculating, predatory smirk on the child’s face when the spy had fled the room in tears.

And that wasn’t even the half of it.

Sebastian didn’t possess Spirit Sight.

He couldn’t see the ghosts. But he possessed the instincts of a survivor.

He had noticed the sudden, bizarre behavioral shifts in the estate staff. He had noticed the junior cook weeping hysterically in the pantry, burning his own letters of correspondence.

He had noticed the stable boy nervously checking his saddlebags every five minutes, looking over his shoulder with sheer terror.

Furthermore, Sebastian had found the origami.

He had discovered crisp, perfectly folded paper ducks sitting in the most secure, classified areas of the mansion.