Chapter 1103: Where is Karma When I Need It?

Chapter 1103 – Where is Karma When I Need It?

Aela’s expression had gone quiet and cold.

Lux did not move.

His coffee sat untouched.

Something dark gathered behind his eyes. "What was his name?" Lux asked softly.

Runa’s fingers tightened around the cup. She looked up. "Kaelmor."

Silence.

The name landed like a blade dropped onto porcelain.

Lux’s expression did not change.

That was how Runa knew the name mattered.

Aela’s eyes widened slightly.

Lux slowly set his coffee down. "Wait." His voice went lower. "So it was indeed the king."

Runa blinked. "The king?"

Lux’s mouth thinned.

Aela turned toward Runa gently. "In the Underworld."

Runa stared. "What?!"

Lux looked at her. "Kaelmor is King of Hell now."

Runa did not speak.

Her ears slowly flattened.

Her tail went completely still.

Then her face twisted with pure, historical disgust.

"That demon became a king?!"

Lux nodded.

Runa stared at the table. "Nope."

Aela blinked.

Runa pushed her cup away and leaned back in the chair with the expression of a woman who had just discovered the universe had promoted her worst mistake.

"Let me become a tower again. Or at least let me become a cat. An innocent cat. I will eat fish, scratch curtains, and judge mortals from windows. That is acceptable. But Kaelmor becoming king?" She grimaced violently. "Where is karma when I need it?"

Runa narrowed her eyes and leaned to Lux. "Can it curse kings?"

"I don’t think so."

"Useless."

Lux’s mouth twitched.

Aela covered her lips.

Runa picked up the milk again and drank like she needed strength to survive the news.

"He became king," she muttered. "Of course he did. Of course the obsessive tower-building demon became king. Why would the world reward reasonable people? No, let us give the crown to the man who heard ’no’ and thought architecture was a counterargument."

Lux’s smile was small, but dangerous. "That sounds like him."

Runa looked at him sharply. "You know him."

"Yes."

"Personally?"

"Unfortunately."

Her eyes narrowed further. "You don’t like him."

Lux’s gaze darkened. "No."

Aela set the tea cup down. "That is putting it mildly."

Runa looked between them.

Something inside her shifted.

The disgust in her chest tangled with something else. Rage.

This was old rage. Sour rage. The kind left too long inside stone until it fermented into something sharp enough to cut the soul that carried it.

Runa’s fingers tightened around the cup of milk.

Lux’s eyes remained on her. "He didn’t siphon you," he said.

Runa stiffened. "What?"

"When I analyzed the tower, there were no absorption channels. No warden layers. No active siphoning. No power extraction. You were imprisoned, not farmed."

Runa’s mouth twisted.

"Should I be grateful?"

"No." Lux’s voice was flat. "Just trying to understand why."

Aela’s expression hardened. "Because she was not a resource to him. She was a monument."

Runa looked down.

That hit too close.

A monument.

Yes.

That was the ugliness of it, wasn’t it?

A statement.

A memory he could own after failing to own the woman.

Runa wanted to laugh. Wanted to scream. Wanted to turn the table into dust and then apologize to the milk for collateral damage.

Instead, she stared at the pale liquid in her cup and saw dawn.

Red moon fading.

Tower rubble.

Kaelmor’s smile breaking into something colder than hatred.

’If I cannot have your heart, then I will keep your defiance.’

His eyes stayed on her.

Still.

Focused.

Runa slowly lifted her gaze.

He had fallen quiet, thinking. His face looked calm, but not empty. The gears behind his eyes were moving. It was the look of a man calculating more than emotion.

Runa did not like being studied.

Especially not by a shirtless incubus whose body looked like a crime invented by candlelight and bad decisions.

His gaze was on her face.

Right?

Or...

Wait.

Was it?

Runa’s mind, already poisoned by pheromone trauma, milk dependency, and the memory of Lux’s bare chest, immediately betrayed her.

Was he inspecting her body?

Was he looking at the way his oversized shirt hung from her shoulders? The way the hem barely protected her thighs? The way her cat ears twitched every time he breathed too deeply? Was he imagining taking her the way he took the women in this mansion? Slow, shameless, confident, with that dark voice and those hands that knew how to feed and ruin?

No.

No, no, no.

Runa hugged her body instinctively, Lux’s oversized shirt bunching beneath her fingers. "What?" she snapped.

Lux blinked. "Hm?"

Her ears twitched. "Are you drooling over my beautiful body?"

Aela froze.

Lux stared.

Runa lifted her chin higher, because now that she had started, she had no choice but to continue the disaster with authority. "I’m a cat. Meow. You can’t do that to a cat!"

The silence became enormous.

Lux’s expression changed slowly. Into pure, exhausted cringe.

He closed his eyes for half a second. "I was thinking."

"Thinking about my body, right?"

Aela turned her face away and lifted one hand to her mouth.

She was laughing.

Quietly.

Traitorously.

Lux looked genuinely speechless.

Because what was he supposed to say?

This cat mage.

One moment she recoiled from him as if his pheromones were demonic poison. The next moment, she sat there in his shirt, holding milk with both hands, accusing him of lustful inspection while saying "meow" like a woman trying to commit emotional sabotage against herself.

Lux stared at her.

Runa stared back with the fierce pride of someone who had definitely not panicked.

Aela finally let out a small breath that might have been a laugh.

Runa shot her a look.

Aela calmly picked up her tea again. "Please continue. I am learning modern cat diplomacy."

"I am not a cat," Runa said. Okay, that was stupid. It contradicted with what she just said.

Lux glanced at her ears.

Runa’s tail flicked under the chair. "Do not look at evidence!"

Lux pressed his lips together. "You know," he said slowly, "for someone who does not want attention, you are remarkably skilled at creating it."