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A Better Bargain

Author: Samuelade
last update Last Updated: 2025-12-27 19:59:47

CASSIAN

I knelt in the dirt with my father's sigil burned into the ground between us. The air had gone so cold my breath came out in white clouds. The trees behind me held their silence like they were afraid to interrupt what was about to happen.

The ground split open.

Blue flames erupted from the crack. It didn't burn hot. It burned cold. The kind of cold that made my bones ache and my skin prickle with wrongness. The flames died as quickly as they'd come, and there he stood.

A child. Maybe seven years old. Suspenders over a crisp white shirt. A lollipop stuck in his mouth, the candy staining his tongue an unnatural shade of red. He smiled at me with too many teeth.

"Kassariel." His voice was warm. Affectionate. The way a real father might greet a son he actually loved. "How I have missed you."

I stayed on my knees. Kept my head bowed. "Did you predict this?"

"She was actually supposed to die." He pulled the lollipop from his mouth with a wet pop. Examined it like it held some fascin
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  • Reckless Royals of Nocturne Prep   The Exception

    RAE I sat in the wreckage and waited for my body to remember how to work.The cabin had stopped groaning. The dust had settled. Rain started somewhere above me, pattering through the holes I'd torn in the roof with nothing but my voice and my grief. The drops hit my skin, cold and purposeful, like the world was trying to wake me up.Problem was... I didn't want to wake up.My wounds were closing. I could feel them knitting themselves back together, skin pulling tight over places that should have hurt more than they did. Everything healed too fast now. Everything except the thing that mattered.The wolf appeared in front of me.I knew it before I saw it. I felt its presence like a weight pressing down on the air. When I finally looked up, there it was. Blood red fur. Eyes that burned. The size of a bear, massive and wrong and entirely too real."Leave," I said. My voice came out scraped raw.The wolf didn't move. I watched rain slid down its fur in dark rivulets as if it were real and

  • Reckless Royals of Nocturne Prep   Hell Is Home 2

    CASSIAN"I'm here now." I stepped closer, my voice low. "Your metaphorical chains are on me without fail. What's the point of keeping it a secret? Or is the king of Hell afraid I'll somehow beat him at his own gama and domain?"Silence fell over the room.Several demons shifted uncomfortably. One of them sucked in a sharp breath. You didn't talk to Asmodeus like that. Not if you valued your continued existence.But I was no mere demon. Even at that, I knew I was pushing it. It was like I wanted him to hurt me. I wanted to feel something other than regret and rage. I wanted the now dulling pain to sting and fucking hurt. I wanted a pain so bad and distracting that it was the only thing that dominated my mind.But my father just smiled.It wasn't a kind smile though. As I had seen may times before, this was that smile that father had when he realized the prey he had somehow had the audacity to have teeth they bared and he found it amusing rather than threatening."You do know how to tou

  • Reckless Royals of Nocturne Prep   Hell is Home 1

    CASSIANThe pull was absolute.It wasn't like falling. Falling implied direction, gravity, some sense of up or down. This was different. This was being unmade from one place and reconstructed in another, every atom of me screaming in protest as the fabric of reality bent around my father's will.I heard Rae scream my name. The sound cut through the roar of the rift, sharp and desperate, and I wanted to turn back. I wanted to claw my way through the dimensional tear and throw myself at her feet and tell her I was sorry. Sorry for loving her. Sorry for being the reason she continued to suffer. Sorry for leaving.But the darkness swallowed me whole.The sensation of being dragged through the void between worlds was like drowning in tar. It was thick and suffocating. Every breath I tried to take filled my lungs with heat and sulfur. My skin burned where the portal touched me, searing away the remnants of Earth, of morning light, of her.Then I hit solid ground.The impact drove the air fr

  • Reckless Royals of Nocturne Prep   Carousel

    MAGNUSThe last swallow of wine sat wrong in my mouth, bitter and dry, like I had chewed ash instead of grapes. I barely registered the looks that followed me as I turned away from the table. I just walked. Out of the dining room, down the hall, past the tall doors where a servant appeared with my coat already in hand, eyes down, silent. I shrugged into it and stepped outside.The cold hit hard. Wet. Sharp. I dragged in a breath like I had been underwater too long and only just broken the surface. My chest felt tight, like something had wrapped itself around my ribs and refused to let go.I fumbled for my keys. Dropped them. Swore under my breath as they skittered across the stone. My hands were shaking when I picked them up again, and it took three tries before the right key slid into the lock.Something was wrong. Not the vague kind of wrong you talk yourself out of, but the kind that settles deep, bone level, the kind instinct screams about long before the mind can catch up.Rae.I

  • Reckless Royals of Nocturne Prep   Warren The Kind

    WARRENI came back into the dining room with the new bottle in my hand, holding it carefully, almost reverently, the way people carried offerings when they still believed gods listened.The conversation stopped the second I crossed the threshold. Not gradually. Not awkwardly. It just died. Every head turned toward me, every face rearranging itself into something polite and watchful, suspicion wearing manners like a borrowed coat.“I apologize for denying you more wine,” I said as I set the bottle down between us. “That was rude of me. But my shit is expensive.”I worked the cork loose. It came free with a sharp pop that echoed a little too loudly in the quiet. Oliver leaned in slightly, sniffing like the predator he was.“I do not suppose you have a stash of human blood down there too.”“I do not,” I said, easy. “I apologize.”He scoffed, unimpressed. I poured anyway, letting the wine slide into each glass, dark and slow, catching the candlelight as it moved. When I reached Magnus, I

  • Reckless Royals of Nocturne Prep   Heirloom

    UNKNOWNI poured the wine, watching the bottle tilt until only a few drops remained in its belly. The crystal caught the candlelight and threw it back in fractured pieces across the white tablecloth."I'm glad you could make it, Vivianne."She turned from examining the portrait on the far wall. Her movements were practiced, elegant. The kind of grace that came from days of pretending grief didn't hollow you out from the inside."I thought it was going to be a private dinner.""Come on." I gestured at the others seated around the table. "We're a close-knitted family since Nocturne."Magnus leaned back in his chair. "We were. There's a difference.""You still haven't changed, Gus."His jaw tightened. "Do not call me that."Oliver Duskmoor set down his glass with enough force to make the silverware jump. "Considering you tricked us into coming to a black dinner. I would have preferred blood than pretending to eat and drink your mush.""This is not a black dinner." I met each of their eye

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