Chapter 66: Winter Vacation: Day Two part 2.
– Harry Sitri –
A few minutes later, I was sitting in the hospital cafeteria across from an adorable girl with long purple hair while she destroyed her way through her sixth plate of food.
Destroyed is probably unfair.
Ingvild Leviathan ate with better manners than most pureblood heirs I had met since discovering the supernatural world existed. She didn’t slouch. She didn’t shovel food into her mouth like Ron Weasley. She used her utensils properly, dabbed at her lips with a napkin between plates, and even paused to murmur a quiet thank you every time one of the stunned hospital staff brought her something new.
She just did all of that at a speed that suggested the food might vanish if she slowed down.
Which, to be fair, probably made sense. The girl hadn’t eaten in nearly a century.
She looked delicate sitting there in a borrowed hospital robe, purple hair falling around her shoulders in soft waves, pale fingers curled around a fork as she very politely demolished a plate of roasted vegetables, buttered rolls, sliced fruit, and some kind of Underworld fish I didn’t recognize. Her eyes kept flicking around the cafeteria as if she expected everything to disappear.
And me. Mostly me, actually. Every few bites, Ingvild glanced up at me like she was still trying to decide whether I was real.
I tried to smile back in a way that said, yes, I was the strange half-devil idiot who had cut open a secret wall, murdered a fey curse with a sword made by the Lady of the Lake, and then asked if she wanted lunch afterwards.
Honestly, when I put it like that, I understood why she looked confused.
Beside me, my grandmother sat perfectly still.
Selene Sitri was beautiful in the way ancient noblewomen were beautiful. Effortless, terrifying, and clearly designed by nature to make lesser creatures apologize for existing too loudly. Her pink eyes were fixed on Ingvild with polite interest, but I could practically feel her gaze boring holes into the side of my head.
There was a privacy barrier around our table. Anyone who looked our way would simply decide we were uninteresting and look somewhere else. Anyone who tried to listen would hear a bland conversation about weather patterns in eastern Sitri territory. Anyone who tried to break the barrier would probably lose several fingers.
It was just the three of us at the table.
Me, my grandmother, and the secret Leviathan girl who had been hidden inside a Sitri hospital for almost a hundred years.
Director Mares was not with us. Director Mares was currently locked in a secure holding room three floors below, surrounded by enough Sitri wards to make a lesser devil cry. Grandmother had been very calm when she ordered it.
I did believe him, mostly. The man had looked shattered when Ingvild woke up. Afraid that whatever came next would swallow the girl he had apparently spent decades trying to protect.
But sincerity didn’t erase betrayal. He had hidden a Leviathan-blooded devil inside the Sitri clan’s flagship hospital. He had used Sitri resources, Sitri wards, Sitri staff, Sitri funding, and Sitri protection while keeping the clan matriarch in the dark. Even if every choice he made had come from loyalty to Ingvild, he had still betrayed the family whose crest hung over the hospital doors.
Grandmother had made that very clear.
“This,” Selene said at last, voice low and silk-smooth, “is going to be a larger scandal than Diodora Astaroth.”
I winced.
Across from us, Ingvild paused with a spoon halfway to her mouth.
Grandmother noticed, of course, and her expression softened by exactly one degree. “Eat, child,” she said. “That was not directed at you.”
Ingvild blinked, then gave a small, obedient nod and went back to her soup.
I leaned back in my chair. “Bigger than Diodora murdering someone in a public park and unleashing an experimental monster in Lucifer Land?”
Grandmother’s beautiful face scrunched up in a way that might have been funny if I hadn’t known she was imagining political documents with blood on them.
“Diodora’s crime is simple,” she said. “Hideous, yes. Politically inconvenient, certainly. But simple. He committed murder. He attacked civilians. He used illegal experimental material. He endangered the public. He will be punished. Ajuka will be humiliated. The Astaroth clan will bleed money, favors, and influence. There will be hearings. There will be apologies. There will be compensation.”
“That sounds simple to you?”
“It is a straight road, Harry.” Grandmother looked at Ingvild again. “This is not.”
Ingvild had slowed down slightly.
I couldn’t blame her. Waking up after a century and immediately being told your existence was a political disaster probably wasn’t the gentlest welcome back to consciousness.
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“I know.” The answer came instantly. No hesitation or coldness in her voice.
That helped. A little.
Grandmother sighed, and for the first time since we had found the hidden room, she looked tired. “Ingvild Leviathan is an innocent girl,” Grandmother said. “She is also a hidden descendant of one of the old Satan bloodlines, concealed inside my hospital, under my authority, without my knowledge, during a period in which Katerea Leviathan has already made moves against this family.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Serafall is going to lose her mind.”
“Serafall may actually cry,” Grandmother said dryly. “Not from grief. From the amount of work this is about to give her.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed. Then I looked at Ingvild again, and the laugh died before it made it out.
She was working through a plate of noodles now. Still quiet. Still polite. Still looking like she might apologize for breathing too loudly if someone startled her.
I didn’t know what to do with this situation.
That was becoming a recurring theme in my life.
I hadn’t known what to do when I learned I was a devil prince. I hadn’t known what to do when Hermione asked to join my peerage. I hadn’t known what to do when my dead mother turned out to be alive again as a Valkyrie. I hadn’t known what to do when Ophis, the Infinite Dragon God, climbed into my lap and decided I was warm.
Apparently, I especially didn’t know what to do when a sleeping half-devil girl with purple hair turned out to be hidden behind an illegal wall in my grandmother’s hospital.
But I knew one thing. I couldn’t have left her like that. Whatever political nightmare came next, whatever Serafall had to untangle, whatever Selene had to burn down and rebuild afterward. I couldn’t have looked at a girl trapped under a curse and walked away.
The sleeping sickness wasn’t even a sickness. It was a fey curse. A malicious, rotting thing that had wrapped itself around her like a nightmare and fed on a century of stolen life. Viviane’s sword had known. It had dragged me to that hidden room like an excited bloodhound, practically vibrating in my hand until I cut through the wards.
I glanced down at my palm. The sword was gone now, dissolved back into me, but I could still feel the echo of it under my skin. Cool. Satisfied. Smug, somehow.
Bloody fey weapons.
Ingvild finally set her fork down.
The table in front of her looked like a small army had marched across it and lost. Eight plates. Three bowls. Two baskets of rolls. Half a pitcher of water. Something custard-based that one of the nurses had insisted would be “gentle on the stomach” before Ingvild ate it in six seconds flat.
She folded her hands in her lap. Then she looked at me. Really looked at me. Her eyes were a soft, unusual shade, somewhere between violet and blue, and there was a fragility in them that made my chest tighten again. Just the bewildered exhaustion of someone who had gone to sleep in one world and woken up in another.
“Thank you,” Ingvild said quietly. Her voice was soft, almost musical, and very polite.
I straightened without meaning to.
She lowered her head in a small bow. “For healing me. And for feeding me.”
For a second, I had no idea what to say.
Grandmother was silent beside me.
The whole cafeteria moved around us, unaware. Healers carried trays. Nurses crossed between tables. Patients chatted softly beneath floating lamps. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed.
And inside our little bubble of silence, a girl from an “enemy” bloodline thanked me for lunch after losing a hundred years of her life.
I swallowed. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” I said, gentler than I expected. “No one deserves to be left asleep under a curse.”
Ingvild’s fingers tightened together in her lap. “And the food?” she asked, almost shyly.
I smiled. “That one is my pleasure.”
Ingvild’s beautiful face turned pink. It bloomed across her cheeks in a soft, helpless flush that made her look even more delicate than she already had. Her fingers curled tighter in her lap, and she looked down at the table like I had just said something unbearably gallant instead of offering the groundbreaking opinion that feeding starving people was generally a good thing.
I blinked. Then I yelped.
Grandmother had pinched my arm. Hard.
“Ow,” I hissed, twisting toward her. “What was that for?”
Selene Sitri did not look even slightly apologetic. “Your harem is quite large enough at this point,” she said, her voice as smooth and merciless as polished glass. “Stop flirting.”
“I wasn’t flirting!”
Grandmother’s pink eyes slid toward Ingvild’s blushing face, then back to me.
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I looked at Ingvild again. She somehow went even pinker.
“…I was being nice,” I muttered.
“You are very bad at making those two things look different,” Grandmother said.
That was rude. Possibly accurate, but rude.
Ingvild’s blush began to fade, replaced by the nervous uncertainty from before. Her shoulders drew in slightly. Her gaze flicked between me and Grandmother, as if she had just realized she was the topic of a conversation happening around her rather than with her.
Selene noticed immediately. Of course she did. Grandmother’s expression shifted. Not dramatically. Selene Sitri didn’t really do dramatic unless she was blasting corrupt insurance managers through three walls. But the sharpness in her eyes softened, and when she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“Besides,” she said, “I have another plan for her.”
I frowned. “Another plan?”
Ingvild went very still.
Grandmother turned fully toward her. “Ingvild,” she said gently, “how would you feel about becoming my daughter?”
The cafeteria seemed to fall away. Even with the barrier around us, even with the soft noise of distant conversation and moving trays and hospital life carrying on beyond our little circle, the world narrowed to the three of us.
Ingvild stared at her. “I…” Her voice barely came out. “Your daughter?”
“Adopted into the Sitri clan,” Grandmother clarified. “Legally, magically, and publicly. We will simply tell everyone you have been raised by us this entire time.”
I stared at my grandmother. Then I stared a bit harder, because apparently the first stare had not communicated enough disbelief. “How is that better?” I asked. “Wouldn’t people have even more questions?”
“They will have questions regardless,” Grandmother said. “The question is which version of the truth gives us control.”
“That sounds like something Narcissa would say.”
“Narcissa Black is a very sensible woman.”
“She’d love hearing you say that.”
“I am aware.” Grandmother folded her hands neatly on the table, looking infuriatingly calm for someone casually suggesting we adopt a secret Leviathan girl we had found behind a fake wall less than an hour ago. “If the public learns that a Leviathan-blooded girl was hidden inside a Sitri hospital without the knowledge of the Sitri family or the current Maou,” she continued, “then every old Satan loyalist, every paranoid noble, every enemy of Serafall, and every opportunist in the Underworld will smell weakness. Whether we were compromised. Whether Mares acted alone. Whether Katerea knew. Whether Ingvild is connected to her.”
Ingvild flinched at Katerea’s name, though I wasn’t sure whether she recognized it from her past or simply heard the weight in Grandmother’s voice.
Selene’s eyes remained on mine. “But if the public believes the Maous were aware of Ingvild the entire time,” she said, “if they believe the Sitri clan took custody of an innocent branch-born Leviathan girl after the war and raised her quietly under our protection, then the story changes. It becomes mercy. It becomes stability. It becomes evidence that the new Satans are strong enough to spare innocent children of defeated bloodlines.”
I slowly leaned back in my chair. Damn. That actually made sense. “And Mares?” I asked.
Grandmother’s expression cooled. “Mares will still answer for what he did. His intentions may reduce his punishment. They will not erase his crime. Besides, we can’t have him telling a different story so he might have to disappear into prison for a few years.”
Harsh but necessary. “So the official story is that she’s been Sitri this whole time,” I said carefully.
“Yes.”
“And everyone who knows otherwise?”
“Will be silent,” Grandmother said. There was absolutely no doubt in her tone.
I believed her. Then I heard a tiny sound from across the table. A sniffle.
Both of us turned.
Ingvild was crying. Tears slipped down her cheeks in delicate tracks while she stared at Grandmother with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Really?” Ingvild whispered.
Grandmother stilled.
Ingvild’s hands trembled in her lap. “You would want someone like me to be your daughter?” Her voice cracked on the last word. “You’re not lying?”
I watched my grandmother’s face change, and something in her melted. “Child,” Grandmother said softly.
Ingvild wiped uselessly at her cheeks, only for more tears to fall.
Selene rose from her chair.
I had seen my grandmother move like a queen, like a noble, like a ruler inspecting her domain. This was different. She walked around the table slowly, gently, giving Ingvild every chance to pull away.
Ingvild didn’t. She just stared up at her, trembling.
Grandmother stopped beside her chair and lowered herself gracefully to one knee.
That shocked me more than almost anything else that had happened that day.
Selene Sitri, matriarch of one of the richest and most powerful clans in the Underworld, knelt on the polished floor of a hospital cafeteria in front of a crying girl from a disgraced bloodline.
Then she reached up and carefully brushed a tear from Ingvild’s cheek. “I do not lie about family,” Grandmother said.
Ingvild made a broken little sound.
Selene opened her arms.
For a heartbeat, Ingvild looked like she didn’t understand what she was being offered.
Then she launched herself forward and clung to my grandmother like she was afraid someone would take the invitation back.
Grandmother caught her easily.
Her arms wrapped around Ingvild’s shaking shoulders, one hand rising to cradle the back of her purple head with surprising tenderness.
I sat there quietly, throat tight, feeling like I had accidentally stumbled into something too private and too important to interrupt.
Ingvild cried into Selene’s shoulder. Grandmother held her.
And I thought, not for the first time, that the Underworld was nothing like the stories humans told about Hell. Sometimes, Hell had hospitals. Sometimes, Hell had grandmothers. Sometimes, Hell found a girl who had been sleeping for a hundred years and decided she deserved a family.
A couple of hours later, I was back home at Sitri Manor.
Home. That was still a strange word to attach to a place like this.
The Sitri estate stretched out around me in all its impossible Underworld elegance. Pale stone terraces, silver-blue fountains, gardens shaped by water magic and ancient money, and a backyard so massive it made the Dursleys’ entire neighborhood look like a badly kept herb patch.
I was sitting at a porch table beside Sona. She had one leg crossed neatly over the other, a cup of tea untouched in front of her, and her eyes fixed on the lawn with the kind of careful attention that made it look like she was analyzing a chessboard instead of watching our peerages try to beat each other senseless.
In the wide training field beyond the porch, Sona’s peerage faced mine.
Tsubaki moved with calm, disciplined focus at the center of Sona’s side, her Mirror Alice already shimmering faintly around her arm. Luna drifted near the edge of the field with a dreamy smile, somehow managing to look like she was wandering through a greenhouse rather than dodging spellfire. Daphne and Tracey were both still a little stiff in the way they moved, but there was real focus in them now, the kind that came from being newly free and determined not to be helpless ever again. Astoria kept darting in and out of cover with surprising speed.
On my side, Lilja was a nightmare in motion. She had a wooden training sword in one hand, her black wings half-spread behind her, and the expression of a woman who considered “friendly spar” a flexible legal term. Tonks kept flashing between appearances and angles, her hair changing colors every time someone managed to almost hit her. Hermione stood farther back with glowing arrays circling both hands, eyes narrowed behind her frizzy brown curls as she layered shields, binds, and little bursts of Sitri-crest enhanced spellwork with terrifying efficiency. Ginny was all motion, red hair whipping behind her as she used her new Knight speed to launch herself across the field in unpredictable angles that made even Tsubaki pause.
It was just training. A friendly spar. That did not mean the girls on both sides weren’t absolutely trying.
A burst of silver-blue magic from Hermione slammed into one of Daphne’s shields and scattered in glittering sparks. Tracey took advantage of the distraction to send a binding spell snapping toward Ginny’s ankles, only for Ginny to twist mid-stride, kick off the ground sideways, and come down behind her with a wooden sword aimed at Tracey’s shoulder.
Tracey yelped and barely ducked.
Luna, without looking, casually flicked her fingers and sent a little bubble of distorted gravity drifting into Ginny’s path.
Ginny hit it and flipped completely upside down. “Oi!” Ginny shouted, spinning through the air.
Luna waved at her cheerfully.
Lilja laughed like a Valkyrie watching a particularly good battlefield accident and launched herself at Tsubaki.
I whistled low. “They’re really going at it.”
Sona hummed beside me, though her attention didn’t seem fully on the fight. For a few minutes, we simply watched. Just me, Sona, and the sound of several very dangerous women turning a backyard spar into something the insurance office would probably classify as “acts of overwhelming stupidity.”
Then Sona spoke. “It is kind of weird.” Her voice was quieter than usual.
I turned my head. “What is?”
Sona’s gaze stayed on the field, but her fingers tightened around her teacup. “I have another sister now.”
Ah. Inside the mansion, Grandmother was with Grandfather, Serafall, and Ingvild. The adoption ritual was happening right now. By the end of it, Ingvild Leviathan would become Ingvild Leviathan Sitri.
A new daughter of Selene and Sebastian Sitri.
A new sister for Serafall and Sona.
A political lie. A legal truth. A family, if everyone let it become one.
I studied Sona’s profile. She looked composed, of course. Sona always looked composed unless I was doing my level best to ruin her composure. Her glasses sat perfectly on her nose, her posture was immaculate, and her expression was measured.
But I knew her better than that now. The slight tension in her jaw gave her away. So did the way she hadn’t touched her tea.
I leaned back in my chair. “You know this doesn’t mean your mother will love you any less just because you’re not the youngest child anymore, right?”
Sona went very still.
I gave her my most innocent smile.
Her eyes slid toward me. “Fuck off, Harry,” she said.
I gasped. Loudly.
Sona immediately blushed.
Out on the field, Tonks stumbled mid-dodge and glanced toward us, probably because she had heard Sona swear from halfway across the estate. Ginny actually stopped moving for half a second, which got her smacked in the shoulder by one of Luna’s drifting gravity bubbles.
“Did you just swear at me?” I asked, scandalized. “Sona Sitri, heiress of the Sitri clan, top student, future school reformer, disciplined strategist, proud owner of at least six different color-coded filing systems—”
“Seven,” Sona muttered.
“—just told me to fuck off?”
Her blush deepened. “You were being insufferable.”
“I was being emotionally supportive.”
“You were being smug.”
“I can be both.”
Sona lifted her teacup, realized it was still full and cold, and set it back down with a faint click. For a moment, the playful irritation faded.
“I just do not know how to approach her,” Sona admitted.
That was honest enough to make me stop teasing. Mostly. I turned in my chair to face her more fully. “Ingvild?”
Sona nodded. “She woke up today,” she said. “After nearly a century. She is Leviathan-blooded, half-devil, politically dangerous, emotionally fragile, and now my mother is adopting her into our family before she has even had time to understand the current century. Serafall will overwhelm her by existing. Mother will try to protect her through control. Father will spoil her. The servants will gossip. The nobles will whisper. And I…” She trailed off.
“And you?” I asked gently.
Sona’s mouth tightened. “I am not naturally warm with strangers,” she said.
I stared at her.
She looked at me flatly. “Do not say anything foolish.”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
I grinned. “Maybe just try the same way you approached me, then.”
Sona scoffed. “That ended with us having sex with Serafall, and now we are engaged.”
“True,” I said. “Maybe skip a few steps then...”
Her cheeks turned pink again. I loved that color on her. Probably too much.
The sparring field erupted in a burst of noise as Lilja and Tsubaki clashed hard enough to send a ripple of force through the grass. Hermione shouted something about controlled output. Tonks yelled back that “controlled output” was for cowards. Daphne and Tracey used the argument to flank Ginny, only for Astoria to get caught in one of Luna’s drifting bubbles and float upward with a resigned expression.
Sona watched it all with the faintest smile tugging at her lips despite herself.
“She is not you,” she said softly. “Ingvild. I cannot simply challenge her, lecture her, or train her into relaxing.”
“No,” I agreed. “Probably not. She also has Satan class magical reserves and could curbstomp the both of us at the same time. It’s a good thing that girl doesn’t have a mean bone in her body…”
“There’s that too,” Sona nodded at me. I could see the slightly nervous expression on her face. Sona had just hit Ultimate Class alongside me and now she gained another sister who was still stronger than her. She was prideful and I loved that about her.
I reached across the small space between us and took her hand.
Sona looked down at our joined fingers. Then, slowly, she let her hand relax in mine. Her skin was cool and soft. Her fingers fit between mine with the kind of familiarity that still made something warm settle behind my ribs. For all the madness of our relationship, for all the political absurdity and family complications and the fact that every proper human moral philosopher would probably need a lie-down after hearing our family tree, moments like this were simple.
Sona was worried. I loved her. So I held her hand.
“Try being less beautiful,” I said.
Sona blinked. Then her entire face went red. “Harry.”
“What? You said your approach to me went badly. I’m just saying, maybe if you weren’t gorgeous, brilliant, and terrifying, I wouldn’t have fallen so hard.”
“You are impossible.” Her mouth twitched despite her best effort.
I squeezed her hand. “Just talk to her, Sona. Not as heiress. Not as two women from families that have had a blood feud for hundreds of years. Just as her new sister.”
Sona looked back toward the field.
For a while, she said nothing.
Hermione had somehow trapped Luna in a glowing circle of runes, except Luna seemed completely unbothered and was now sitting cross-legged inside it, speaking pleasantly to the magic like it was a nervous animal. Ginny and Astoria were dueling at close range. Tonks had turned her hair the same purple as Tsubaki’s uniform just to be annoying. Lilja was laughing again as Daphne and Tracy both tried to run away from her.
Sona’s thumb brushed once over the back of my hand. “I am not good at just being someone’s sister,” she said.
I thought of Serafall. Of the way she loved like a tidal wave, smothering and shameless and impossible to ignore. I thought of Sona, who loved like a ward circle. Protective, layered, and stronger than anyone realized until something tried to break through. “Yeah,” I said. “You are.”
Sona glanced at me.
I smiled. “You’re just Sona about it.”
Her expression softened.
A wave of magic rolled outward from the heart of the house, washing across the terrace, through the garden, and over the training field like invisible water. It brushed against my skin, and left behind the faint taste of silver-blue rain.
Every fight in the yard stopped at once.
Lilja lowered her wooden sword. Hermione’s glowing arrays flickered out around her hands. Ginny landed in a crouch from whatever impossible Knight movement she had been halfway through. Tsubaki’s Mirror Alice shimmered once and vanished. Even Luna looked toward the manor with her head tilted, her expression unusually clear.
Beside me, Sona’s hand tightened around mine. “That was it,” she said softly.
The adoption ritual was finished. Ingvild Leviathan was now Ingvild Leviathan Sitri.
The back door opened a few seconds later.
Rossweisse stepped out.
My beautiful white-haired Bishop looked every inch the professional magical consultant she insisted she was. Her silver hair was tied back neatly, her robes were immaculate despite the hours she had spent monitoring ancient bloodline magic, and there was a faint glow still clinging to her hands where layered spell formulas had only just faded.
“The ritual is complete,” Rossweisse said as she approached the porch. “Mistress Ingvild is stable.”
Sona exhaled through her nose. “And Ingvild?” she asked.
“Sleeping,” Rossweisse said. “The ritual placed significant strain on her body and magic. Given that she only woke from a century-long fey curse today, sleep is the best possible outcome. Lady Selene, Lord Sebastian, and Lady Serafall are with her.”
Sona nodded, but I felt the tension in her fingers loosen.
I stood, lifting her hand as I did. Sona looked up at me, one eyebrow rising in warning, but I simply bent and kissed the back of her hand.
Her expression went beautifully still. Then pink. “You are doing that on purpose,” she murmured.
“Constantly,” I said. I let her hand go before she could decide whether to freeze me, then crossed the few steps to Rossweisse. “Thank you,” I told her. “For helping with all of that.”
Rossweisse’s face softened immediately. “It was my pleasure. Truly. The devil adoption ritual structure was fascinating. Lady Selene’s control was extraordinary, and Lady Serafall’s power output was—” She cut herself off when a loud crash came from the training field.
We both looked.
Lilja had apparently decided the spar was allowed to resume and was currently driving Daphne, Tracey, and Astoria backward with the cheerful savagery of a Valkyrie who believed “warm-up” meant “survive me for three minutes.” Tonks was cackling as she changed her face to match Tsubaki’s and shouted, “Mirror this, gorgeous!” before ducking under a reflected spell. Hermione was yelling at Ginny for using her new devil speed recklessly, which Ginny answered by using her new devil speed recklessly in the opposite direction.
Rossweisse’s eyes narrowed with immediate tactical interest.
That was when I leaned in and kissed her. Just a quick kiss.
Rossweisse made a strangled sound against my mouth and went completely rigid. When I pulled back, her cheeks had turned a bright, helpless pink. “H-Harry!”
I grinned. “You were distracted.”
“I was observing the training exercise!”
“That sounds like being distracted with extra syllables.”
Her mouth opened. No words came out.
Sona made a faintly exasperated sound behind me.
“Also,” I added, nodding toward the field, “you should go join in. My side is outnumbered.”
Sona’s head snapped toward me. “Excuse me?”
I spread my hands. “What? It is.”
“You have Lilja, Hermione, Tonks, and Ginny.”
“And you have Tsubaki, Luna, Daphne, Tracey, and Astoria.”
“Your Queen is a Valkyrie.”
“Your Luna is terrifying.”
“She is not terrifying, she’s newly reincarnated.”
Out on the field, Luna smiled serenely while one of her gravity bubbles swallowed Ginny’s training sword, turned it into a slowly spinning piece of airborne wood, and then gently deposited it inside a decorative fountain.
Ginny stared at the fountain. Then at Luna. “Luna!”
Luna waved playfully again.
I looked back at Sona.
Sona adjusted her glasses. “That is beside the point.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” She glanced at Rossweisse, and something competitive flashed in her eyes. “Besides, Rossweisse is too strong. If she joins your side, my peerage will lose.”
Rossweisse immediately straightened. “I can moderate my output.”
“You are Ultimate Class,” Sona said. “Your moderated output could probably demolish half the Sitri territory.”
Rossweisse looked embarrassed. “Only if I miscalculated.”
“That is not reassuring.”
I was enjoying this far too much.
Then Sona stood. Her new staff appeared in her hand. Or was it a wand? Or adorable heart-tipped implement of terrifying Sitri destruction. I still wasn’t entirely sure what to call it, and I strongly suspected calling it “adorable” out loud would get me frozen from the neck down.
The staff was elegant, slim, and silver-blue, with a heart-shaped focus near the top that pulsed softly with her demonic energy. It should have looked ridiculous. It somehow looked regal in her hand. Probably because Sona could make a frilly umbrella look like a dueling implement if she held it with enough contempt. “Unless,” Sona said, eyes fixed on Rossweisse, “Rossweisse would prefer to try taking me on instead.”
Rossweisse stared at her. Then her blush faded beneath a slow, delighted smile. The kind of smile that reminded me she was not just Lilja’s lonely, overworked older sister who panicked when teased.
She was Rossweisse. Former Valkyrie of Asgard. Ultimate Class mage. My Bishop. And apparently, someone who looked very interested in trading spells with a Sitri heiress who had just reached Ultimate Class herself.
“It would be an honor,” Rossweisse said, her voice warming with genuine excitement, “to exchange magical pointers with you, Lady Sona.”
Sona’s lips curved faintly. “Good.”
The field went silent again as both women stepped down from the porch.
Lilja noticed first. “Oh,” she said, sounding delighted. “This is going to be good.”
Hermione immediately backed up several steps. “Everyone behind shields. Now.”
Tonks grinned. “That bad?”
Hermione looked at Rossweisse. Then Sona. Then Rossweisse again. “Possibly worse.”
Luna drifted toward the side of the field, humming. “The grass spirits are nervous.”
“Brilliant,” Ginny muttered, reclaiming her sword from the fountain. “Even the grass knows we’re doomed.”
I stood there on the porch, watching Sona and Rossweisse face each other across the training field as their magic began to rise.
Sona’s power was cold and layered, like a frozen lake hiding impossible depth beneath flawless glass.
Rossweisse’s was silver and bright, threaded with runic structure and battlefield discipline, the kind of magic that felt like standing beneath a storm someone had organized alphabetically.
An Ultimate Class magical duel between two absurdly beautiful women who both meant the world to me.
And I was going to miss it. That was unfair. Deeply unfair. Tragically unfair.
I sighed like a man making a noble sacrifice. “I should go inside and check on everyone.”
Lilja looked over her shoulder at me. “You are choosing family responsibility over watching Sona and my sister try to out-math each other with explosions?”
“I know,” I said. “I’m growing as a person. It’s horrible…”
Tonks cupped her hands around her mouth. “We’ll tell you if anyone loses clothes! In fact, I’ll just take pictures!”
“You’re the best Tonks!”
“Damn right I am!”
Rossweisse made a scandalized noise. Sona closed her eyes briefly, as if asking every ancestor in the Sitri line for patience.
I turned toward the manor before I could change my mind.
Behind me, Rossweisse’s spell circles began unfolding with a soft, crystalline hum.
Sona’s staff answered with a pulse of blue-white light.
The air snapped cold.
I paused at the back door for half a second, every instinct screaming at me to turn around and watch. Then I forced myself inside. Because Ingvild had just become part of the family. Because Serafall was probably either crying, planning three press conferences, or already designing matching sister outfits. And because my life had reached the point where walking away from an Ultimate Class duel in my own backyard somehow counted as the responsible option.
Bloody hell.
…Inside, the manor was much quieter than the backyard.
Ingvild was asleep on a couch near the far windows.
Someone—probably Grandmother—had tucked a soft blue blanket over her body. Only her purple hair spilled out across the pillow, loose and glossy against the pale fabric. She looked small like that. Like a girl who had spent the entire day being dragged from one impossible revelation to the next until her body finally decided unconsciousness was safer.
I slowed without meaning to.
Ingvild Leviathan Sitri.
That was still strange. Across the room, my grandfather sat in an armchair with one ankle crossed over his knee, looking unfairly relaxed for a man whose family had just adopted a political hand grenade. Grandmother stood near the fireplace with a crystal glass in one hand and the expression of a woman already calculating how many people she would need to terrify into silence by breakfast tomorrow morning.
And Serafall was crying. Dramatically. My mother had both hands pressed to her face while sparkling tears streamed down her cheeks in a way that I was almost certain involved magic. Her twin-tails trembled. Her shoulders shook. She looked like the heroine of a tragedy whose favorite cake shop had burned down on her birthday.
Then she saw me. “Harry!”
I had just enough time to brace myself before Serafall crossed the room in a blur and slammed into me.
Soft, warm curves pressed tight against my chest as she wrapped herself around me, burying her face against my neck. Her arms locked behind my back with enough strength that I wheezed. Serafall never hugged halfway. She hugged like she was trying to fuse people into the family through pressure alone.
“I’m so happy,” she wailed into my collar. “I have a new little sister! She’s so cute and lonely and sleepy and purple, and Mother adopted her, and now Sona has another sister, and I have another sister, and the Sitri family is even bigger!”
“That sounds good,” I said, trying to breathe.
“It is good!” Serafall sobbed harder. “But it’s also terrible!”
“...Because?”
“Paperwork!”
Ah. There it was.
“She’s going to create so much paperwork for me, Harry!” Serafall pulled back enough to look at me with enormous watery blue eyes. “So much! Do you know how many forms require triplicate submissions when backdating a secret daughter into a noble clan?”
“No?”
“Neither do I!” she cried. “That’s how bad it is!”
I patted her back because that seemed like the safest response.
Serafall sniffled. Then, abruptly, she stopped crying. Her eyes flicked to my mouth.
Oh no. “Mum—”
She kissed me. There was nothing soft or hesitant about it. One second she was clinging to me and mourning the death of her free time, and the next her lips were on mine, deep and hungry and completely unfair. Her body pressed hotter against me, the soft weight of her curves pinning me in place as one of her hands slid up into my hair.
I made a startled sound against her mouth.
Serafall took immediate advantage of that.
Her tongue slipped past my lips, licking against mine in a way that turned every thought in my head into sparks and static. She tasted sweet, like some kind of candy I didn’t recognize, and warm in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. Her fingers tightened in my hair. Her hips pressed in closer. The entire world narrowed to soft lips, wet heat, and the fact that my mother had apparently decided emotional stress could be solved by kissing me senseless in my grandparents’ sitting room.
Which was very Serafall. Also very bad for my ability to think.
Someone cleared their throat. Very loudly.
Serafall did not stop immediately.
Grandmother cleared her throat again.
This time, the sound had frost on it. “Serafall,” Selene said.
My mother made a tiny annoyed noise into my mouth before finally pulling back.
I stood there blushing like an idiot, lips wet, heart pounding, while Serafall remained draped against me like she had every intention of resuming the moment her mother blinked.
Grandfather chuckled from his chair.
I glared at him weakly.
He only looked more amused.
Grandmother, however, was not amused. “You have work to do, daughter.”
Serafall pouted. “Work is lame.”
“You are a Maou.”
“I want to quit being a Maou!”
“That is not happening,” Grandmother said sternly.
Serafall made the wounded face of a woman being denied fundamental rights. “But paperwork.”
“Yes,” Grandmother said. “Paperwork…”
“That’s cruel.”
“That is governance.”
“Same thing.”
Sebastian coughed into his fist, suspiciously close to a laugh.
Serafall grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward another empty couch before Grandmother could stop her. She dropped onto it, pulled me down beside her, and immediately leaned into my side with her body pressed close, as if I were some kind of emotional support pillow with a pulse.
Then she snapped her fingers. A stack of parchment appeared on the low table in front of us.
Not a small stack. Not a normal stack. A two-foot-tall tower of bureaucratic doom landed with a heavy thump that made the table creak ominously.
I stared at it. The paperwork stared back.
Serafall sniffled again. “These are only the urgent forms.”
“Only?” I asked.
She nodded miserably. “Everything needed to backdate the secret fake raising of Ingvild into our clan.”
Grandmother, to my surprise, actually blanched slightly.
That did not make me feel better.
Serafall gestured at the stack like it had personally betrayed her. “Custody records. Old Satan bloodline amnesty protections. Private Maou acknowledgment seals. Sitri household magical registry corrections. Educational history fabrication. Medical access retroactivity. Inheritance limitation protections so no one can claim we are stealing Leviathan assets through a Sitri adoption. Public-facing noble announcement drafts. Private-facing Maou council reports. And a very stupid form titled ‘Discovery and Reclassification of Previously Unacknowledged Noble Offspring or Equivalent Household Dependent.’”
I blinked. “That’s a real form?”
“I hate that it is…”
Devils loved their paperwork I guess…
Grandmother stared at the stack for another moment, then set her glass down. “Thank you, my daughter.”
Serafall turned her head slowly. A dangerous, hopeful light entered her eyes. “You could thank me by helping,” she glanced to my grandfather as well when she said that.
Grandfather immediately stood. Far too smoothly. “Ah,” Sebastian said. “That reminds me. I have an urgent meeting with Zeoticus Gremory.”
Grandmother’s eyes narrowed. “Do you?”
“Yes,” Grandfather said gravely. “Very urgent. I had simply forgotten...”
No one spoke. Grandfather smiled. Then he vanished in a flash of teleportation magic.
The silence that followed was beautiful. Absolutely everyone knew he was full of shit. Even sleeping Ingvild probably knew he was full of shit.
Grandmother closed her eyes. For one long second, Selene Sitri looked less like the terrifying matriarch of an ancient noble house and more like a woman calculating how much trouble it would be to hunt her husband down and drag him back by the ear.
Then she sighed. “Fine.”
Serafall gasped. “Really?”
“I will help.”
“My beautiful, wonderful, terrifying mother!”
“Do not make me regret this.”
“You already do!”
“Yes.” Grandmother sat on Serafall’s other side, somehow managing to look dignified even while lowering herself beside a daughter who was still clinging to me like a spoiled cat.
Serafall beamed and immediately divided the paperwork into three piles.
One in front of herself.
One in front of Grandmother.
One in front of me. I looked down at mine. Then at her. “No.”
“But Harry—”
“No.”
“You’re part of the family!”
“I literally understand none of this!” I could probably figure it out if I really tried, I just didn’t want to!
Grandmother slid my pile back toward Serafall without comment. I loved my grandmother.
A little later, while Serafall and Selene began attacking the forms with terrifying efficiency, I glanced over at Ingvild again. She hadn’t moved. The blanket rose and fell gently with her breathing. Her face was peaceful in sleep.
I watched her for a moment, then asked the question that had been circling in the back of my head. “What did the adoption ritual actually do?”
Serafall paused mid-signature, a quill hovering over a line labeled something horrible about retroactive family recognition.
Grandmother looked up too.
I nodded toward Ingvild. “Does she have our bloodline now?”
“No,” Serafall said immediately. “If bloodlines were that easy to acquire, noble clans would be adopting other devils all the time.”
“Fair point.”
“The ritual made her Sitri in a magical sense,” Serafall explained. Her tone shifted slightly, becoming less theatrical and more genuinely instructive. “Household recognition. Clan protection. Legal inheritance boundaries. Familial authority. Kinship resonance. The manor wards will recognize her. Our private teleportation arrays will allow her access once Mother assigns permissions. Sitri defensive magic will classify her as family instead of guest or threat. Our household registries will accept her name. But her blood is still hers.”
“So she’s not suddenly water and ice?”
Serafall tilted her head. “Technically, Leviathan bloodline magic is already extremely close to ours. The Sitri clan controls water and ice. The old Leviathan bloodline governed the seas, storms, tides, deep currents, abyssal pressure, and sometimes ice depending on the branch.”
I stared at her. “So water,” I said.
Serafall pointed her quill at me. “Dramatic water...”
Yeah, the Leviathans would have the same power as us but classify it in a more dramatic way to make themselves seem more powerful…
Grandmother’s lips twitched.
I looked back at Ingvild.
That was true, actually. Sitris controlled water and ice. Leviathans controlled the seas, which was also water, sometimes ice, and apparently whatever else you got if you added better marketing and a flair for terrifying ocean imagery.
Same thing, really.
The Leviathan bloodline just sounded more dramatic.
Then, from the couch, Ingvild made a tiny sleepy sound and turned onto her side beneath the blanket.
All three of us went quiet at once.
We just watched her sleep.
The secret Leviathan girl. The new Sitri daughter. My new aunt, technically. Because of course she was. My life had long ago given up on simple family trees and started drawing magical forests instead.
Serafall leaned against my side again, softer this time. Grandmother’s quill resumed moving across parchment. Somewhere outside, a massive burst of magic rattled the windows, followed by what sounded suspiciously like Tonks cheering.
Sona and Rossweisse were definitely fighting now.
I sighed. “Still can’t believe I’m missing that duel.”
“What duel?” Grandmother asked.
“Sona and Roseweisse are sparring,” I told her, nodding in the direction of the powers we sensed clashing in the backyard.
Serafall pouted dramatically, looking very much like she also wanted to go watch, but Selene then pointed right back at the stack of paperwork. Serafall dramatically sighed and clicked her pen.
– Ingvild –
Ingvild woke for the second time that day. For a moment, she did not move.
Her eyes opened slowly to warm golden light, a high ceiling, and the soft crackle of a fireplace somewhere nearby. The air smelled faintly of polished wood, expensive tea, winter flowers, and something sweet she could not name. A blanket lay tucked around her body, heavy and soft in a way hospital linens had not been. Beneath her, the couch was so comfortable it almost felt unreal.
Everything looked beautiful. That was the first thing she noticed.
The room was enormous, though not in the cold way some noble halls had been enormous in her memories. This sitting room felt lived in despite its elegance. Pale stone framed the fireplace. Blue and silver accents curved through the furniture. Tall windows looked out over gardens glowing faintly beneath Underworld light. Shelves held books, crystal ornaments, framed portraits, and little objects that looked too personal to be decoration alone.
Ingvild swallowed. Then she whispered, “It really wasn’t a dream.” Her own voice sounded strange to her ears. Soft. Hoarse. Too small for a room so large.
“Did it seem like a dream?” The male voice came from beside her.
Ingvild startled so hard the blanket slipped down her shoulder.
She turned her head quickly and found him sitting in an armchair near the couch, one ankle resting over his opposite knee, dark hair messy in a way that looked accidental but still unfairly charming. His bright blue eyes were already on her, gentle and amused, but not mocking.
Harry Sitri. The handsome prince who had woken her from eternal sleep.
Heat rose instantly to her cheeks. That was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. She was not a child. She was not some storybook girl waiting in a tower or a glass coffin or a cursed palace. She was Ingvild Leviathan—Ingvild Leviathan Sitri now, apparently—and she had woken into a world full of politics, secrets, and people whose names carried enough power to shake nations.
Still. He had found her hidden away under a curse. He had cut through the nightmare wrapped around her soul. He had been the first face she had truly seen after almost a century of stolen time.
It was exactly the sort of thing minstrels used to sing about in romantic tragedies.
Too bad he did not wake me up with a kiss. The thought struck her so suddenly and so vividly that her blush deepened all the way to the tips of her ears.
Harry’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Are you okay?”
Ingvild snapped out of her thoughts so quickly she nearly sat upright too fast. “I’m fine!” she said. Too loudly. Her voice cracked halfway through.
Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. She had slept for nearly a hundred years, woken to find herself adopted into one of the greatest noble families in the Underworld, and within hours she was embarrassing herself in front of the boy who had saved her because she had been thinking about fairytale kisses.
She clutched the blanket in both hands and forced herself to breathe.
Harry, thankfully, did not laugh. He only smiled a little, as if he had noticed something but was kind enough not to say it.
That made it worse, somehow.
Ingvild looked around the sitting room, partly to escape his eyes and partly because she had finally realized something important.
They were alone. No Lady Selene. No Serafall Leviathan, the Maou whose name had haunted the fragments of history Ingvild remembered. No elegant older man who must have been Lord Sebastian.
Just her and Harry.
Her fingers tightened around the blanket. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
Harry’s smile softened. “Getting ready.”
“For what?”
“For a feast.”
Ingvild blinked. “A feast?”
He nodded. “In your honor.”
Her thoughts stopped. A feast? In her honor?
She stared at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence. Waiting for the qualification, the explanation, the political reason that made it less impossible. But Harry only watched her with that same calm gentleness, as if people woke from century-long curses and had family celebrations thrown for them all the time.
“In my honor?” she repeated faintly.
“Yeah.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Grandmother thought it would be good to welcome you properly. Serafall agreed, obviously. I think she started planning decorations before the adoption paperwork ink was even dry.”
Ingvild tried to picture that. A table filled with food. People gathered around it. Her name spoken warmly instead of whispered like a threat. A family announcing that she belonged to them.
Her breathing went shallow. This was all real. It kept hitting her in waves. The happiness was too large to fit inside her chest. Everything was happening too quickly. She had gone to sleep in a world that was gone. She had woken up and learned that the old Satan factions were broken, that her bloodline was dangerous, that the Sitri clan had taken her in, that her very existence could cause scandal, that people she did not know had decided to protect her anyway.
She had a mother now. A father. Sisters. A nephew who looked like a prince and smiled at her like she was not something cursed.
Ingvild’s vision blurred. She looked down quickly, embarrassed. “That is… very kind.”
Harry stood.
She tensed automatically, but he did not come too close. He moved slowly, crossing the small space between them and crouching beside the couch instead of looming over her.
“It’s a lot,” he said.
Ingvild swallowed. Then she nodded. The motion made one tear slip free. She wiped it away quickly. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I keep crying.”
“You woke up from a hundred-year curse today,” Harry said. “I think you’re allowed.”
That made her laugh. Only a little. It came out thin and shaky, but it was still a laugh.
Harry smiled at the sound.
Ingvild stared at her hands in the blanket. “I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted.
“The feast?”
“Any of it.” Her voice grew smaller. “Being awake. Being here. Being… Sitri. Everyone has been kind, but I do not know them. I do not know this house. I do not know this time. I do not know what happened to the people I remember. I do not know what I am supposed to say when they look at me.”
Harry was quiet for a moment. Then he sat on the floor beside the couch like sitting on expensive carpet in a noble manor was perfectly normal behavior.
It startled her enough that she looked at him again. He leaned back against the side of the couch, stretching one leg out, completely unconcerned with dignity. “You don’t have to know all of it tonight,” he said.
Ingvild studied him.
Harry looked toward the fire. “When I first found out about all of this—the Underworld, devils, Serafall, the Sitri clan—I felt like everyone else had been reading the instructions for years and I’d been handed the game halfway through with half the pieces missing.”
“That sounds frightening.”
“It was.” He glanced back at her. “Still is, sometimes.”
“But you seem so calm!”
Harry snorted. “That is a horrible misunderstanding.”
Ingvild’s lips twitched despite herself.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I panic all the time. Usually internally. Occasionally while being dragged into things by women much more competent than me.”
That was such a strange thing for a prince to say that she forgot to be anxious for half a second. “You do not seem incompetent.”
“Thank you. I’ve been practicing.”
This time, her laugh came easier.
Harry’s expression softened again, and that warmth in his eyes made something inside her ache. “You don’t have to be perfect tonight,” he said. “You don’t have to impress anyone. You don’t have to understand every joke, every custom, every family dynamic, or every ridiculous thing Serafall says. Just eat, listen, ask questions if you want, and leave if it gets too much.”
“Leave?”
“Of course.” His voice was firm. “If you get overwhelmed, tell me. Or Grandmother. Or Sona, if she stops panicking about how to be a good sister long enough to talk to you.”
Ingvild blinked. “Lady Sona is panicking about me?” Ingvild tried to imagine the composed girl she had seen briefly before the ritual panicking about anything. It was difficult.
Harry looked amused.
Ingvild smiled into the blanket. The sitting room no longer felt so enormous. The fireplace sounded warmer. The blanket felt less like something she was hiding under and more like something someone had placed over her because they wanted her comfortable.
“I don’t want to disappoint them,” she whispered.
“You won’t.” Harry looked at her, and for a moment his expression turned serious. “Grandmother already chose you as her third daughter. Serafall already cried over you. Sona is already nervous about being a good sister. Grandfather already ran away from paperwork, which means he considers you family enough to abandon everyone else to deal with the consequences.”
Ingvild blinked. Then, very slowly, she smiled. “That last one sounds less reassuring.”
“It’s more reassuring than it sounds.”
“I will have to trust you on that I suppose,” she told him with her smile growing larger.
“I have a very convincing face.”
She looked at him.
His hair was still messy. His eyes were still bright. He was still sitting on the floor next to her couch like a storybook prince who had gotten bored of royal posture and decided to be kind instead.
“Yes,” she said softly. “You do.”
Harry opened his mouth, paused, then seemed to decide not to tease her.
She appreciated that.
A knock sounded at the door.
Ingvild jumped slightly on the couch.
Harry stood at once, offering her his hand. “That’ll probably be someone telling us the feast is almost ready.”
Her stomach fluttered. She looked at his hand. Then she took it. His palm was warm. For a girl who had spent a century trapped in sleep, that warmth felt more real than anything.
Harry helped her sit up carefully. “Ready?”
Ingvild drew in a breath. She was not. Not really. But perhaps she did not need to be fully ready. Perhaps being awake was enough. Perhaps family was something she could learn one handhold at a time. She nodded. “I think so…”
XXX