His parents were always too gentle and careful, treating him like fragile glass that might shatter if handled too roughly, while his older brothers kept a respectful, awkward distance.
To be treated with such warm, unhesitating intimacy made his heart swell until his chest felt like it might burst with joy.
He quickly scrambled over to the right side of the mattress, pulling the white cotton sheet up to his chin, leaving the entire left side of the bed wide open for her.
As Celeste walked around the foot of the bed and slid beneath the quilt beside him, propping her head against a navy-blue pillow, Noah rolled onto his side, propping his chin on his small fist as he stared at her face.
“Sister,” Noah murmured softly, his large dark eyes reflecting the dim amber light of the bedside lamp.
“Yes, Noah?” she asked, adjusting the quilt over her shoulders.
The little boy studied her features, the sharp, classical slope of her nose, the clear, pale skin of her cheeks, and the deep, serene obsidian of her eyes framed by her damp, dark lashes.
A smile of pure, earnest conviction broke across his face.
“Those socialite girls that Rosalle invites to the manor for tea… like Sora and Penelope… they spend hours putting powders and shiny creams on their faces,” Noah commented, his voice ringing with certainty.
“When they talk, their faces look like dolls made of painted plaster, and if they laugh too hard, the powder falls off onto their collars. But you just washed your face with simple soap and water, and your skin looks like clean white jade.”
He reached out, his small finger tentatively touching the sleeve of her charcoal pajamas, his voice dropping into a tone of proud, confidential worship.
“Even if all the girls in the capital stood in a line in the courtyard, none of them would be able to rival you, Sister. You are the prettiest person I have ever seen in my whole life.”
The compliment that was delivered without a single trace of flattery, fueled entirely by a ten-year-old boy’s genuine adoration for his sister, hit Celeste with a warmth that rivaled the culinary impact of the Chef’s fruitwood duck.
The feared Nemesis of the underworld felt her heart soften into molten gold. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
She turned onto her side, mirroring his posture, facing him across the twelve inches of mattress between them.
She reached out from beneath the quilt, her pale hand gently brushing a damp lock of hair away from his forehead.
“Your observational metrics are heavily biased by sibling affection, Noah,” Celeste whispered softly, her eyes glowing with starlight.
“However… I will accept your evaluation as the official consensus of this household. Now, tell me about this brass telescope on your desk. When did you begin mapping the southern constellations?”
What followed was two hours of pure, cozy civilian rehabilitation.
Beneath the warm white cotton quilts of the Hartwell Manor, the King of Hell and the selective mute of the Hartwell family talked until the grandfather clock in the gallery downstairs chimed midnight.
They didn’t talk about corporate shares, or old-money rivalries, or the fake daughter’s green-tea schemes.
They talked about silly, everyday things.
Noah explained with immense gravity how the manor’s golden retriever, “Nugget,” had once stolen three of the Eldest Uncle’s leather shoes during a family banquet and buried them in the rose bushes; he told her about his favorite astronomy teacher who wore mismatched socks; and he asked her with wide-eyed curiosity what the night sky looked like in the distant places she had visited.
Celeste answered him with careful, sanitized tales of the world outside.
She didn’t tell him about sniper overwatch positions in the Hindu Kush or cartel ambushes in the jungle.
Instead, she told him about camping beneath open skies where the stars were so bright they cast shadows on the grass; she told him about eating roasted wild chestnuts cooked over open campfires in the autumn. Read the latest chapters at novelping.com.
And she told him hilarious, clean anecdotes about a “boisterous physical education instructor named Vance” who once tried to bake a birthday cake using military field rations and ended up setting the kitchen table on fire.
By twelve-thirty, the rhythmic, soothing cadence of her voice had done its work.
Noah’s large dark eyes began to flutter shut.
His small hand, which had been holding onto the sleeve of her charcoal pajamas all night, relaxed its grip slightly, though his fingers remained looped into the silk fabric.
With a long, soft, contented sigh, the ten-year-old boy buried his face into his navy-blue pillow, his breathing slowing into the deep, even, uninterrupted rhythm of absolute, dreamless security.
Celeste lay perfectly still in the dim light of the bedside lamp for ten minutes, listening to the steady, peaceful sound of his respiration.
Then, when she was certain he was completely submerged in deep sleep, her eyes opened.
The warm, elder-sister tenderness vanished from her gaze in a fraction of a millisecond, replaced by the cool, razor-sharp, calculating alertness of a seasoned tactical commander.
She slipped out from beneath the white cotton quilt with the frictionless silence of a shadow.
Not a single floorboard creaked beneath her bare feet; not a single rustle of fabric betrayed her movement.
She walked over to the chair near the window, picked up a long, dark silk robe, and wrapped it smoothly around her shoulders, tying the sash securely at her waist.
She unlatched the dual glass doors leading out to the private terrace, sliding them open with millimeter-level precision so the mechanical tracks emitted no friction sound, and stepped out into the cool midnight air of the capital.
The night breeze blew through her damp black hair as she stood by the carved stone balustrade of the balcony, looking out over the sleeping Hartwell Manor.
Beneath her, the courtyard fountain bubbled softly; beyond the security fences, the distant, glittering skyline of the capital’s commercial district hummed with unseen energy.