He was the Duke; he did not make silly faces.
But inwardly, the ruthless warlord was currently waving a white flag of surrender.
The "wriggling" feeling in his chest was undeniable. It was a warm, expanding pressure that made his throat feel tight.
"You are not sleeping," Kaelus stated. His voice was supposed to sound commanding, but it came out softer, lacking its usual razor edge.
Seraphina sniffled, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet room.
She didn't let go of the cape, just blinked up at him, a single tear escaping the corner of her eye and sliding down her cheek to vanish into the dark fur collar of his mantle.
"Cold," she whispered, her voice rough. "The fog came back when you left. The crying people came back."
She was telling him the truth. She wasn't throwing a tantrum; she was terrified.
She had hidden in his cape because it smelled like him, because his residual magic was the only thing keeping the nightmares at bay.
The invisible arrow in his chest twisted, embedding itself deeper.
Kaelus didn't tell her that ghosts weren't real, nor did he tell her to be brave.
He slowly knelt, bringing his face level with the mattress.
He reached out, his large, gloved hand hovering for a second before he gently, almost awkwardly, brushed the tear away from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
"I brought you some food," he said, his voice a low, steady rumble that vibrated through the mattress. "Soup. Milk. And... the red fruit."
Seraphina's eyes darted past him to the tray on the table.
The smell of the warm, buttery potato soup finally cut through the stale air of the room. Her stomach gave a tiny, traitorous rumble.
She looked back at him, her grip on the cape loosening just a fraction.
"Did you make the crying people go away?" she asked, her voice small.
Kaelus stood up. He didn't look around the room, but he let his mana flare.
The suffocating, terrifying aura of the Dark Lord expanded like a shockwave, crashing against the walls, obliterating any trace of the Count's "fog" and sending any lingering spirits fleeing into the ether in absolute terror.
The air in the room instantly felt lighter, cleaner.
He looked back down at the small girl, the stray kitten who had somehow claimed his cape and his pulse.
"They are gone," Kaelus said smoothly, picking up the bowl of warm soup. He sat on the edge of the bed, right next to the bundled-up child. "And they will not return. Now, sit up. You cannot eat while lying down. It is bad for digestion."
Seraphina hesitated for a moment, testing the air. The oppressive weight was truly gone. She slowly uncurled, pushing the heavy cape off her head, though she kept it wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket.
She crawled toward him, her small hands reaching out to take the bowl.
But Kaelus didn't hand it to her.
Instead, guided by some strange, newly awakened instinct he didn't fully understand, he scooped a spoonful of the creamy soup, blew on it softly to cool it, and held it out toward her mouth.
Seraphina blinked, surprised. But she didn't argue. She leaned forward and opened her mouth, accepting the food from the hand of the most dangerous man in the Empire.
As she chewed, a tiny, contented sigh escaped her lips, and the wronged look on her face melted into sleepy satisfaction.
Kaelus watched her eat, his face as stoic as stone, while inside his chest, the heart of the Northern Reaper surrendered its final, crumbling defences.
***
The silver spoon clinked softly against the bottom of the porcelain bowl, a delicate, ringing chime that echoed loudly in the vast, shadowed expanse of the guest suite.
Seraphina swallowed the very last drop of the creamy potato soup. She let out a small, contented sigh, the kind that only a child whose belly is full can produce.
She sat cross-legged in the center of the massive four-poster bed, the Duke's heavy, fur-lined cape still draped securely over her shoulders like an oversized, midnight-blue shell.
The room was peaceful.
To a normal person, the room had always been peaceful. But to Seraphina, the transformation was nothing short of a miracle.
The suffocating, gray fog of Count Rodhe's estate was completely gone, pushed out by the overwhelming, invisible pressure of the man sitting on the edge of her mattress.
The weeping ghosts, the shadowy figures, the lingering echoes of the Count's victims, they had all fled, terrified of the concentrated killing intent radiating from Duke Kaelus von Nacht.
In his presence, her world was finally, blissfully quiet.
She reached up with a small hand and rubbed her eyes, a gesture of lingering fatigue. Then, she looked up at him.
Kaelus was staring at her.
His posture was, as always, impossibly rigid. His back was straight, his broad shoulders squared, and his face was carved from the same unforgiving ice that covered the Northern peaks.
But his eyes, those striking, violet irises, held a strange, arrested look.
Internally, the Reaper of the North was currently fighting a losing battle against his own memory.
He could not get the image out of his head. The way she had eagerly opened her mouth for the spoon.
The way she had chewed the strawberries, her cheeks puffing out with absolute, innocent dedication to the task of eating.
The tiny, involuntary hums of satisfaction she made when she tasted the honeyed milk.
Like a kitten, his mind whispered, entirely unbidden.
'A tiny, soft, fluffy kitten that had been left out in the rain, looking at the person who finally gave it a saucer of cream.'
It was a dangerous comparison. Kittens were soft and fragile.
In Kaelus's world, soft things were the first to be crushed beneath the boot of ambition or torn apart by the fangs of demons.
He had built his entire existence, his entire dukedom, on the philosophy of iron and frost.