They’d only made it halfway through their breakfast when the doorbell chimed, the slightly irritating notes echoing throughout the house. Neither Tate nor Dewdrop moved even when the chimes came again.
The third time the chimes sounded the woman screamed from the back of the house. “Get the door!”
Tate kicked Dewdrop under the table. “She’s talking to you.”
“You need more servants,” he said with a full mouth.
Says the boy who’d never had a servant in his life.
“When you pay for one, we can get another.”
A roar and then a scream came from the front of Tate’s house. Tate’s sigh was echoed by Dewdrop as they looked at each other.
“Night,” they said in unison.
“He must have gotten irritated by the sound. I’d better go save whoever it is.” Dewdrop climbed to his feet and strolled out of the room while carrying his plate.
“Hanging in there?” Tate asked Ryu.
“I find the atmosphere quite enjoyable.” Seeing her skeptical look, he murmured, “Your home is very happy. Seeing the way you interact with each other reminds me of my family.”
Tate raised an eyebrow at him. “I doubt they acted anything like us.”
Maybe if they were a dysfunctional family, but somehow, Tate doubted that. Ryu gave the impression of being too well adjusted for that. She pictured his parents as genteel, elegant people. His younger sister as a cute and adorable imp. Mischievous, but only up to a point. Night, Dewdrop, and the twins were more like feral wildlings who only pretended at being civilized under the most extreme of circumstances.
“You’d be surprised,” Ryu said with a nostalgic look in his eyes. “My sister once ripped out a chunk of my father’s hair during a game my mother created. Actually, I think I’ve got a scar from another game with my mother.”
“They sound like my kind of people.”
A smile slowly spread across Ryu’s face. It was like watching the sun come out from behind a mass of dark clouds. “Yeah, they were. I’d almost forgotten those memories.”
Dewdrop’s voice from the hallway interrupted their conversation.
“Taaaate, you might want to get out here.”
Tate shoveled several more bites of food into her mouth as she stood, before taking a biscuit and pulling it into two pieces. She stuffed the last of the eggs in its middle, slammed the pieces together and walked out while nibbling her makeshift sandwich.
She stepped into the hall and stopped short.
Night faced off against George, his teeth bared. George held the blade known as the Dragon’s Torment in her hand. The darkness it emitted was so extreme it hurt Tate’s eyes. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mia, in her four-legged form, balanced on the stair railing directly behind George, looking ready to pounce at any second.
“I warned you about waving your toothpick around.” The hallway shook from the power Tate sank into her words until the air sounded like thunder. “Put it away.”
George hesitated, her gaze shifting as if to calculate her odds.
“I would listen if I was you,” Ryu growled from behind Tate.
George blanched, noticing him for the first time. “Lord Ryuji, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Do you think that excuses you from your behavior?”
“I—”
“I will be informing the emperor. Expect to face consequences from this.”
George bowed her head, looking chastised as the blade burst, the black light sinking back into her skin.
Ryu circled around Tate as she stood stock still, fighting the urge to shred George into tiny pieces and bury them in the pots on her rooftop balcony as a warning to other interlopers.
