Chapter 661: Sera’s Proposal [Bonus Chapter]
In the living room, the atmosphere was vastly more relaxed.
Silas sat sunk deep in the leather armchair with his bare feet propped on the cedar coffee table with his smartphone held between both hands.
Beside him, Valerius was leaning forward on the sofa with his golden hair catching the morning light and his thumbs tapping his sleek communicator speedily.
"VICTORY!" A deep booming orchestral fanfare blasted from Valerius’s speakers.
A gilded banner flashed across the screen.
[OPPOSING CITADEL CAPTURED! ALLIED FORCES ROUTED!]
"YES!" Valerius bellowed, throwing both arms into the air and laughing like a lunatic. "Down goes the Graves garrison! How’s that for strategy, Silas?! My floating Thunder Bastion tore your eastern ramparts into toothpicks, and Sir Gawain took your gate in four seconds flat...! Do you know how hard it is to summon a Knight of the Round Table?! It took me three weeks and a prayer!"
Silas stared at his own screen, where the words [DEFEAT: CITADEL RAZED] were pulsing in mocking crimson.
He slowly lowered the phone and turned a flat, deadpan glare on the blond scion.
"Valerius," he said, entirely without warmth. "You didn’t ’maneuver’ anything."
"I took the high ground!"
"You spent a hundred thousand Spirit Credits on the full thing," Silas said, tapping the battle log. "You bought three Tier 5 Divine Aegis shields, summoned a Round Table knight that isn’t even available on the standard servers yet, hovered a floating bastion over my palisade, and dropped an orbital mana-strike on my walls... You are a shameless pay-to-win dairy cow."
Silas used to play the game before he awakened so he wasn’t around recently, still he shouldn’t have lost so easily!
Valerius threw his head back and laughed, looking very unbothered.
"Hey, a win is a win!" he grinned, teeth flashing. "The game allowed the transaction, didn’t it? A true commander deploys every resource at his disposal! Capital is just another form of martial prowess, my friend!"
CREAK.
The kitchen’s swinging door opened and both men turned.
Marching out of the hallway like two decorated field marshals returning from a bloody campaign were Harper and Seraphina.
Harper carried a wide porcelain platter bearing two rolled omelets garnished with a fan of sliced sourdough, and Seraphina carried a ceramic pot of freshly brewed black tea and four small bowls of pickled radish.
Their appearances told a harrowing tale.
Harper’s violet pajama shirt was dusted with flour around the midsection with one cuff was soaked in egg white, and her hair clip hung slightly crooked.
Seraphina’s oversized white shirt had a prominent circular grease stain over her left ribs, a flake of black charcoal clung to her cheekbone, and her crimson hair looked like it had survived a minor hurricane.
Valerius blinked.
"Uh... did a grease fire break out in there?"
GLARE!
Seraphina’s red eyes snapped toward him and the temperature in the parlor dropped twenty degrees.
A wave of concentrated heat rolled off her, silently promising that if another syllable about her appearance left his lips, his next training spar would be conducted inside an active volcano.
Valerius’s survival instincts, honed by years of dealing with the Bloom heiress, fired with breathtaking speed.
"I mean—!" He snapped his face into a wide dazzling smile of shameless adulation. "What an incredible aesthetic! Look at that golden-brown coloration on the crust! That is the mark of pan-searing that only a World class chef would be able to produce! Only a prodigy could achieve such artisanal caramelization!"
’Isn’t the glaze a bit too much...?’
Seraphina sniffed, her chin lifting slightly as she set the tea tray down with a smug clack.
"Naturally... A refined palate recognizes true technique."
Harper set the platter between Silas and Valerius, sat on the sofa beside the blond scion, and folded her hands neatly in her lap.
"Eat," she said softly, though her violet eyes darted toward Silas’s face with quiet and barely concealed nervousness. "We prepared them to ensure your daily calories are maintained."
Silas looked down at the two omelets.
They were... lumpy.
One was slightly flatter than the other, as if it had been aggressively squashed by a blunt instrument, and the second had a distinct brown scorch mark along its spine that strongly resembled a tire tread.
He picked up a fork, sliced a generous portion off each, and lifted it to his mouth under the laser-focused unblinking scrutiny of the noblewomen that watched him.
He chewed.
The salt was uneven, one bite was completely bland, and the next had a saline punch that made his jaw tighten.
The texture was half velvety and there was an unmistakable undertone of burnt butter on the roof of his mouth.
’Truly they don’t know how to cook at all...’
He swallowed.
"Well?" Seraphina demanded, leaning over the back of the sofa with her face inches from his ear. "It’s exceptional, isn’t it? You’ve never tasted anything so complex."
Silas reached for his water glass and took a slow deliberate sip.
"I like it," he said honestly with a smirk. "It’s warm and it has protein."
Harper let out a quiet breath, and her shoulders visibly relaxed.
"However," Silas continued, pointing his fork at the scorch mark, "this side tastes like it was held over an exhaust pipe and this half has enough salt to cure a side of beef... For two geniuses who claim to understand thermodynamics and agriculture, you really have no idea how to make a basic three-minute omelet, do you?"
SMACK!
Seraphina’s palm came down hard on the back of his head.
"Ow!" Silas yelped, rubbing the spot with a scowl. "What was that for?!"
"Ungrateful brute!" she fumed, cheeks bright red as she stomped her loafer on the Persian rug. "We slaved over that scorching element for twenty minutes... We diced scallions to the millimeter! You should be writing us formal letters of appreciation, not offering unsolicited restaurant critiques!"
"I’m just saying, Martha doesn’t burn the butter," Silas muttered, taking another bite anyway.
Despite the flaws, it wasn’t terrible, and having two terrifyingly powerful women bicker over cooking for him had a strange absurd charm he couldn’t hate.
Valerius was already devouring his half with hollow-legged enthusiasm, nodding around a mouthful of egg and bread.
"Actually pretty damn good with the tea! Pass the pickled radish, Silas!"
The tension in the room dissolved into the soft sounds of breakfast.
Sun poured through the high windows, warming the leather and wood, and the easy banter of young people who had briefly escaped the weight of their bloodlines filled the hall.
Silas finished his portion, leaned back in the armchair with a contented sigh, and reached up to unbutton the top of his violet pajamas so his neck could breathe.
Chink!
A metallic chime sounded as a piece of jewelry slipped out from beneath the silk.
Resting against Silas’s collarbone was a heavy dark chain with a light-devouring void-chrysolite stone carved with microscopic runes, held by a silver clasp.
Seraphina paused.
She had been reaching for the teapot with her red eyes casually tracking Silas’s movements.
The instant the dark stone caught the morning light, her fingers froze around the porcelain handle.
Her pupils contracted to sharp pinpricks.
’Ah... I almost forgot.’
The flustered petulance vanished from her face as her spine snapped straight, and her jaw set into the rigid terrifying line of an interrogator.
She put the teapot down without a sound.
"Silas," she said.
Her voice was flat and quiet and carried a sudden, chilling drop in temperature that made Valerius freeze with his fork halfway to his mouth.
Silas looked up.
"Yeah?"
She stepped around the coffee table and stopped in front of his chair.
Sera reached down, took the collar of his pajama shirt between two fingers, and pulled it down.
"Turn it over," she said.
"Sera—"
"Turn it over."
He turned the clasp.
On the back of the silver, so small a person would need to know where to look, were four tiny lines, scratched crookedly with a dagger point.
"I bought this for you on the double date with Harper," Seraphina said, her red eyes burning with an intense unblinking fire as she locked onto his pupils. "I made you promise never to take it off but I carved those four lines while you were looking the other way, so that if you ever lost it, I would know it was yours."
CLATTER!
Valerius’s fork slipped from his fingers, bounced off the porcelain plate, and rattled onto the cedar table.
"I saw it again at the Succession Exhibition," she went on. "On the collarbone of that woman named Kara White... or Vespera, The Gold core and you stood there in that crowd, smiling, with my four little lines on your neck."
She straightened and crossed her arms over her butter-stained shirt.
"So I’ll ask you a question, Silas. When were you planning on telling us that you are Vespera?"
Valerius made a strangled noise.
"V-V-Vespera?!" His golden eyes bulged out of his head with his gaze darting between Seraphina and Silas as though one of them had just pulled the pin on an antimatter grenade. "The Lord of Blessed Land?! The single-armed Lord who swept the leaderboards and even the Tournament of succession?! Silas... is Vespera?!"
On the other side of the sofa, Harper didn’t drop her cutlery.
She sat perfectly still, hands in her lap with violet eyes widening slightly behind her glasses.
’She knew?’ Harper thought, a sharp spike of surprise tightening her chest. ’Since the Exhibition, huh? What exhibition?’
Harper had known Silas’s dual identity since the whole thing with Ititius, but she wasn’t being like this... Seraphina didn’t look at her however, her eyes stayed on Silas.
"You didn’t tell me," she said, more quietly. "I figured it out at the tournament I kept my mouth shut... I didn’t tell Valerius... I didn’t tell my mother... I waited... I thought, he’ll tell me when he trusts me enough..."
A muscle flickered in her jaw.
"You never did. I’m not angry about the secret, Silas. I understand secrets but you should have told me."
Silas didn’t panic.
He leaned his head back against the armchair and let out a long, heavy sigh through his nose.
’She’s sharp,’ he thought, fingers tapping his knee. ’Terrifyingly sharp.’
What had he expected? She was the heiress to a noble house.
She had spent her whole adolescence navigating Council politics, corporate espionage, and trade auctions where one overlooked detail could cost a dynasty millions.
’I really need to take the damn necklace off when I switch to the ring,’ he thought, with a dry grimace. ’What a rookie mistake.’
He ran down the mental roster.
Harper knew... Martha knew... Lia and the girls knew...
And now Seraphina Bloom and Valerius Sterling were in his living room, staring at his collarbone with the truth laid bare.
Silas took a slow breath, closed his eyes for two seconds, and opened them again, meeting Seraphina’s gaze.
’Whatever,’ he thought, with quiet resignation. ’It’s fine.’
Neither of them was an enemy.
They’d bled in the sand beside him... If his identity had to leak beyond Blessed Land, better that it rest with allies than with the hostile factions in the World Council.
"Alright," Silas said. "You caught me. I’m Vespera... Sorry for not telling you but I had my reasons."
Valerius let out a strangled, squeaking wheeze and slumped back onto the cushions like a deflated balloon.
"Holy shit man!"
So essentially Silas was cross-dressing as that hot woman...? So did that make him gay?
Harper pushed up her glasses with a proud smile touching her lips, and said nothing.
Seraphina stood in front of the chair as now that the secret was confirmed, the triumphant smirk faded.
The domestic absurdity of the burnt omelets, the grease stains on her shirt, the bickering, all of it seemed to evaporate from her frame.
Her red eyes ignited with a deep fire, and the temperature in the parlor surged as a dry crackling heat radiating off her skin as her Purple Core began to hum.
’I don’t want much...’
She leaned forward, rested one palm on the armrest, put her face inches from his as well.
"Good," she whispered, her eyes locked on his with fiery intensity. "I don’t give a damn about the politics, Silas... I don’t care about the Council, and I don’t care about the rankings..."
Her lips parted into a wild grin that sent a sharp chill down his spine.
"Right now... I want you to step out into the courtyard."
Her crimson dagger materialized in her palm with a metallic shing.
"And I want you to spar me at full power."