Chapter 161: Making Up

"When I was crying in the carriage, on the edge of the mountain... you swore a blood oath. You said you would never leave me behind in the dark. You said we were a team."

"I... I was terrified, Seraphina," Kaelus choked out, finally lifting his head. His violet eyes were shining with unshed, desperate tears. "The anomaly was ancient. It was a apocalypse itself. If I had brought you, and the beast had broken my guard... if a single stray spell had struck you... I would not have survived it. I chose your safety over my honor. I would make the same choice a thousand times to keep you breathing if that’s what it takes. It’s fine even if you don’t forgive me."

It was a beautiful, tragic, fiercely loving defense. It was the logic of a father who would gladly burn the world to keep his child warm.

But Seraphina was having none of it.

"That is stupid!" Seraphina snapped, her voice suddenly cracking, volume rising as her frustration boiled over. "That is the most arrogant, stupid, selfish thing I have ever heard!"

Kaelus flinched, as if she had struck him with a whip.

"You adopted me to be a bait!" Seraphina yelled, gesturing wildly with her small hands. "When we met in the orphanage, you literally told me I was just a tactical asset! You brought me to the capital to sense and capture assassins! I was supposed to be your radar! And I accepted that! I liked that! Because it meant I was useful! It meant I had a purpose!"

She took a deep, shuddering breath, her dark eyes flashing with the faint, residual violet glow of her Supreme Core.

"But now?" she demanded, tears of pure frustration springing to her eyes. "Now you treat me like a glass doll! You wrap me in silk, you lock me in a room, and you go fight the monsters by yourself!"

"You are just a child!" Kaelus pleaded, reaching a desperate, trembling hand up toward the edge of the mattress, terrified to actually touch her. "It was my fault! I didn’t think it through because my jugdement was clouded. You are only six years old! You should not be fighting monsters! You should be playing with toys and folding paper ducks like you always do!"

"I am not a normal child, Papa!" Seraphina roared, slamming her small foot down onto the mattress.

The outburst was accompanied by a subconscious surge of her dark mana. The shadows in the room violently flared, extinguishing the fireplace instantly, plunging the room into darkness illuminated only by the faint moonlight and Kaelus’s glowing eyes.

"I have a Supreme Dark Core! I’m a Dark Mage!" Seraphina cried out, clutching her small hands against her chest, right over her heart. "It is huge! It is heavy! It is bubbling inside me all the time! If I don’t use it, if I don’t learn how to fight the things that hide in the dark, how am I ever going to grow up?! How am I going to learn?!"

She looked down at the kneeling, shattered warlord, her voice breaking into a desperate, heartbreaking sob.

"If you lock me in a box every time something scary happens," Seraphina wept, "I will never get stronger. I will just be a sitting duck. And when a monster finally breaks through your ice... I won’t know how to defend myself. You think you’re protecting me, but you’re just making me weak. You’re making me useless!"

The words hung in the freezing, shadow-filled air of the bedroom.

They struck Kaelus with the devastating, undeniable force of truth.

The Archduke of the North stared up at the crying child standing on the bed. His brain, previously clouded by blinding paranoia and overprotective instinct, suddenly cleared. The fog of his trauma lifted.

He saw it.

He saw the fatal flaw in his logic.

He had been so terrified of losing her, so paralyzed by the grief of his past, that he had actively attempted to stunt her growth. He had treated the most powerful magical anomaly in the Empire like a fragile porcelain teacup.

He hadn’t been protecting her future; he had been protecting his own fragile sanity.

She was right. She was a Sovereign.

She was a weapon of the dark. And a weapon left in its scabbard would eventually rust and shatter when finally drawn.

Kaelus slowly lowered his head, tear escaping his violet eye, tracking down his pale, scarred cheek to drip onto the ash-bear rug.

"I am a fool," Kaelus whispered, the admission torn from the very deepest, most vulnerable cavern of his soul. "I am an arrogant, terrified, selfish fool."

He slowly raised his hands, placing them flat on the mattress near her small feet, bowing his head in ultimate submission.

"You are not a doll," Kaelus vowed, his voice a thick, trembling rumble of absolute conviction. "You are not a sitting duck. You are the Sovereign of the Vanguard. You are my equal in the dark."

He looked up, his eyes meeting hers, stripping away every ounce of his Archduke persona, leaving only the bare, bleeding heart of a father.

"I am sorry, Seraphina," Kaelus wept silently. "I am so profoundly, deeply sorry. I swear to you, upon the very magic in my veins, I will never sideline you again. I will not fight for you. From this day forward, I will fight with you. I will teach you to compress the void. I will teach you to shatter the monsters. when you are exhausted, I will take the front line. I will forge you into a blade that the Abyss itself will fear. Just... please."

His voice broke, a pathetic, desperate crack.

"Please do not ignore me anymore. Please do not call me a draft. I cannot survive in a world where you do not look at me, my daughter."

Seraphina stared down at the terrifying Reaper of the North, who was currently weeping, asking a six-year-old for forgiveness.

The sour knot of anger that had sustained her all day completely dissolved. The rationale of ’establishing boundaries’ melted away in the face of his utterly devoted heartbreak.

He understood. He got the message.

The lesson was learned.

Seraphina’s lower lip wobbled. She let out a loud, ugly, incredibly childish hiccup.

She didn’t stay standing.

She dropped to her knees on the edge of the mattress, reached out her small arms, and threw herself forward, practically tumbling off the bed directly into Kaelus’s waiting, desperate embrace.

"Papa!" Seraphina wailed, burying her face into his neck, wrapping her arms as tightly as she could around his broad shoulders.

Kaelus caught her instantly, pulling her flush against his chest, wrapping his massive arms around her small body, burying his face in her dark hair. He held her as if she were the only physical anchor keeping him tethered to the earth, breathing in the scent of her vanilla soap and the faint ozone of her magic, completely overwhelmed by the relief of having his universe restored.

"I’m sorry," Seraphina sobbed into his collar, her tears soaking his immaculate black tunic. "I hated ignoring you. It was so hard. You looked so sad all day. And Uncle Leo is really annoying, he kept bouncing me, and I felt sick."

A wet, genuinely hysterical laugh bubbled up from Kaelus’s chest. He squeezed her tighter, rocking her gently back and forth on the rug. "I know, Mushroom. I know. He is such a menace. I will freeze his other ribs tomorrow."

They stayed like that for a long time, kneeling on the floor in the dark, holding each other, letting the tears wash away the toxic residue of the lie and the cold war.

The shadows in the room slowly receded, and Kaelus flicked a tiny pulse of magic to re-ignite the fireplace, bathing the room in warm, comforting red light once more.

Eventually, the tears subsided into quiet sniffles.

And then, a sound echoed through the quiet room.

GURRRRGGGLE.

It was a loud, aggressive, incredibly un-aristocratic sound of a stomach that had not processed a single calorie in over fourteen hours.

Kaelus pulled back slightly, looking down at Seraphina, raising an eyebrow.

"I didn’t eat breakfast," Seraphina mumbled, her cheeks flushing pink. "I was too busy being mad at you. And then I didn’t eat lunch because I was busy ignoring you. I am starving."

Kaelus’s expression softened into profound, gentle amusement. "A tactical error on your part, Sovereign. A siege cannot be maintained on an empty stomach. Shall I summon the knights to raid the kitchens?"

"No need," Seraphina sniffled, wiping her eyes. She wiggled out of his arms, standing up and turning back toward the massive bed. "I came prepared."

Seraphina reached under her massive silk pillow.

She began to pull things out.

First came a slightly squished, but perfectly preserved, Southern egg sandwich wrapped in a linen napkin. Then came three fruit tarts, carefully balanced on a small silver saucer.