[BL] Accidentally Becoming the Healer of the Deranged Archduke novel Chapter 76

Chapter 76: From Ruins To Ashes

Darius did not need to look in the mirror to know that a murderous hunger was slithering its way into his eyes. The bloodlust was humming in his veins. So sweetly, so intensely.

His hands carefully wrapped around the small figure. Even as he lifted Xion effortlessly into his embrace, the boy, who should have stiffened, should have widened those innocent eyes in fear or disbelief, remained muted.

Too quiet.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. He exhaled slowly, forcing restraint over the dark impulse curling in his chest.

"B-Brother said not to touch him. A-and not to come close."

Darius’s gaze flickered downward.

Noxian stood rooted in place, his tiny fists clenched at his sides. His dark eyes shimmered with unconcealed worry.

"I... I kept calling him. I shook him, but he wouldn’t wake up," Noxian almost bit his tongue as he hastily told what little whispers he had heard.

His earlier shouts had alerted Sir Allen, who had been standing guard. Noxian was unsure how or why, but within moments, silence swallowed everything.

The archduke had left his carriage. With just a flick of his wrist, an invisible weight had pressed down upon the gathered people, forcing them to bow. Some fell to their knees, others barely able to stay standing under the suffocating force of his presence.

Darius was not touching them. He did not need to.

The only reason he did not crush them further was because of the royal hounds sniffing at his heels. Any move he made would be twisted into something monstrous in the court’s eyes.

This was not his territory. It was not his place to punish anyone.

Yet.

Darius stood near the ox cart. His long red robe swayed in the same rhythm as that of those small cuttings of clothes decorating the cart.

He could almost hear Xion’s voice, babbling about how he wanted to tie the cloth a certain way, how it would look "prettier."

Almost.

But Xion remained still. He wasn’t just quiet. He wasn’t just pale.

The healer was lifeless.

"Teacher..." Allen hesitated before saying, "He seemed to have fallen into the Veil of Reminiscence."

Veil of Reminiscence was a powerful spell a magician from the magic tower had created a few decades ago. Its use was simple enough. To trap the enemy into their most painful past until they lose their will to live.

Thick, cloying hatred seemed to crowd Darius’ brain as he thought of the Vaelis family. What have they done to you? What did they do to make you so...

I want to kill them all, Darius thought in a soft acknowledgment. Anyone who hurt you, Xion. I want to rip them apart and feed them to my hounds.

I want to watch their bodies slowly rot away as they scream their apologies for hurting what’s mine. For hurting you.

Their cries, those melodious sounds would be all too familiar. After all, they would feel like home. Something the archduke was so used to that it had become normal to him.

Ah, but would that not scare his Xion? Yes, Darius nodded to himself, he would just keep Xion away from the hunting grounds, then.

While skillfully holding the boy closer to his chest, Darius pressed his face against Xion’s cheek. Cold. Far too cold.

A pulse throbbed beneath Xion’s temples, but it was faint. As if in the next instant it would disappear.

The temperature seemed to drop. Even without looking, Ray knew it. The archduke’s patience had shattered. A loud rumble of thunder roared in the sky.

"Burn it."

Two words- cold, venomous, irrevocable- tumbled out of his thin lips as he slowly made his way toward his carriage.

"At your command, your grace." Raymond Eldritch along with a handful of elite guards spurred their horses forward and disappeared into the dim morning.