Chapter 54: Missing Children

Her nose was already running, a tiny, snotty bubble forming at her nostril.

"P-Papa?" she whimpered, her voice cracking into a high-pitched, devastated squeak. "We... we aren’t going? Did I do something bad? Am I in trouble?"

"By the Light, no!" Sir Gallahan panicked, dropping to his knees so fast his kneecaps audibly cracked against the floor. He desperately began rummaging through his pouches, pulling out anything shiny. "My Lady, please! Look! A silver coin! Look at the shiny coin! It has the Emperor’s ugly face on it! Please don’t cry!"

"I don’t want the ugly coin," Seraphina sobbed, burying her face into the side of Kaelus’s thick leather coat. She rubbed her wet, snotty nose directly into the expensive, imported material, leaving a prominent, glistening snail-trail of toddler despair across his thigh. "I wanted a draaaagon!"

Sir Boris, the seven-foot mountain of muscle, looked absolutely frantic.

He grabbed one of his massive, spiked iron gauntlets and began frantically trying to twist the articulated metal fingers into the shape of an animal. "Look, My Little Lady Mushroom! I can make a... a metal dog! See? It barks! Woof! Woof! Please look at the dog!"

"That looks like a crushed crab, Boris, you’re making it worse!" Lucas hissed, stepping forward and awkwardly patting Seraphina’s back with a hand that was more accustomed to breaking jaws. "There, there, little warrior. We can burn the market down if you wish. Would a bonfire soothe you?"

Kaelus ignored the utter, pathetic meltdown of his elite commanders.

He rested his large hand gently on the back of Seraphina’s shaking head, holding her against his leg.

He slowly looked back up at Julian Myer.

If Kaelus’s gaze had been dangerous before, it was now apocalyptic.

The violet in his eyes glowed with an unholy, radioactive intensity.

The shadows in the hallway began to stretch and writhe, reaching toward the Marquess like grasping claws.

"You have exactly five seconds," Kaelus said, his voice a guttural, demonic rumble that vibrated the floorboards, "to explain why you just made my daughter cry, Julian. And if the explanation is not satisfactory, I will paint the walls of this annex with your estate guards."

The four Myer guards behind Julian turned the color of old milk, visibly shaking, but Julian stood his ground.

He looked at the weeping, snot-nosed child wiping her face on the Archduke’s coat, and a flicker of deep, genuine pain crossed his flawless features.

He closed his eyes for a brief second, letting out a heavy sigh, and rubbed his temples.

"Withdraw," Julian ordered his guards softly.

"My Lord, we cannot leave you alone with—" the captain started.

"I said withdraw," Julian snapped, a rare flash of real anger piercing his polite veneer.

The guards bowed hastily and retreated down the corridor, leaving the Marquess alone with the terrifying, enraged Bastion.

Julian stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind him to ensure absolute privacy.

He looked Kaelus dead in the eyes, entirely ignoring the murderous aura pressing against his skin.

"I don’t care if she is your daughter, your heir, or your prized political asset, Kaelus," Julian said, his voice dropping into a harsh, gritty tone that entirely stripped away the ’soft southern dandy’ persona. "I am not letting you march a six-year-old girl into a hunting ground."

The murderous aura in the room twitched.

Kaelus frowned, his eyes narrowing. "Explain."

Julian ran a hand through his perfectly styled silver hair, ruining the coiffure, suddenly looking as exhausted as Kaelus had felt three days ago.

"For the past month," Julian began, his voice tight with suppressed rage and profound grief, "children have been vanishing in Oakhaven. Not runaways or accidents. They are being taken away. Ripped from the streets, from the alleys, right out from under the noses of their parents. And almost all of them... were taken during the Night Market."

Seraphina’s sobs hitched.

She kept her face pressed against Kaelus’s leg, but her crying ceased.

Her adult mind, the one that devoured mystery novels and political thrillers in her past life, instantly slammed on the brakes.

Missing children?

"Twelve," Julian continued, the number sounding heavy and sick in the quiet room. "Twelve children in four weeks. My guards have turned the city upside down. We have raided the thieves’ guilds, interrogated the mercenaries, and scoured the sewers. Nothing. No ransom notes. No bodies. It is as if they are evaporating into thin air."

Kaelus’s grip on his sword hilt loosened slightly.

The anger was fading, replaced by the cold, calculating gears of a military commander. "Why did you not inform me of this upon my arrival?"

Julian let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. "I intended to. By the Light, Lord Kaelus, you have the Black Bastion. You have the greatest trackers and the most ruthless investigators on the continent. I was at The Golden Stag that day specifically to seek you out, to swallow my noble pride and beg for your vanguard’s assistance in tearing my city apart to find them."

Julian looked down at Seraphina, his golden eyes filled with an unbearable sorrow.

"But then," Julian whispered, "she collapsed. I watched a father carry his dying child out of a restaurant, and I spent the next three days listening to the reports of your despair. How could I... how could I possibly walk into this room, burden a father whose own child was hanging by a thread, and ask him to focus on the missing children of strangers? It would have been monstrously selfish."

The absolute sincerity in Julian’s voice hung in the air.

This was why he was the ’good’ Marquess, a kind soul to everyone.

He was a man drowning in a crisis, yet he had refused to throw his anchor to a grieving father.

Kaelus absorbed the information.

He looked at the man he had almost beheaded thirty seconds ago.

The respect he held for Marquess Julian Myer solidified; he didn’t trust the wrong person and didn’t judge him wrongly.