Chapter 860: Harper and Nitocris [I / Bonus - ]

Chapter 860: Harper and Nitocris [I / Bonus Chapter]

CLICK!

The call ended.

Kaede dropped to her knees, raised both fists toward the ceiling and let out an ear-splitting battle cry of triumph.

“VICTORY! THE FORTRESS HAS FALLEN AND THE SLEEPOVER BEGINS!”

Penelope threw her arms around Kaede’s neck, and the two of them tumbled onto the wool carpet in a laughing, cheering heap of charcoal school uniforms while Lia clapped her hands together with a sweet bright giggle.

Silas chuckled and shook his head as he stepped back from Martha.

“Alright, you little maniacs,” he said, rolling his shoulders with a satisfied breath. “Now that the international crisis has been resolved… I’m going to go try out that ridiculous bathtub upstairs. I’ve been carrying cats and signing deeds all afternoon so I’m taking a nice, long quiet soak.”

“Go right ahead, Master Silas,” Martha smiled, smoothing her apron. “While you rest, I’ll make a hearty late lunch to hold everyone over until dinner…”

Then she turned toward the three girls on the floor, and her expression shifted into the firm, loving, no-nonsense look that never lost an argument.

“And as for you three young ladies,” she announced, tapping her fingers against her waist. “Before any swimming, before any exploring, and before a single biscuit touches your lips… you’ll bring out your bags and set up your homework on the dining table.”

The cheering died instantly.

Penelope and Kaede stopped wrestling on the rug and sat up with matching, wide, thoroughly victorious grins.

“Hehehe… you’re out of luck today, Martha!” Penelope crowed, puffing out her chest. “The Academy closed early because of the faculty project! None of the teachers gave out homework! Zero! None! We’re totally free until tomorrow morning!”

“A day of rest has been granted!” Kaede declared, striking a dramatic pose on the carpet then, normally, “We literally have nothing. I checked twice…”

Martha didn’t even blink as a calm and deeply terrifying smile spread across her face.

She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a thick workbook filled with hand-copied math formulas, rune stroke charts and geography maps she’d written out herself.

“Is that so, Miss Penelope?” she asked, her voice sweet as honey. “How wonderfully convenient… That means you’ll have plenty of time for extra lessons instead.”

The girls’ jaws dropped in unison.

“EXTRA LESSONS?!” Penelope wailed, clutching her head as if she’d just been hit by a cannonball. “NOOO! MARTHA, HAVE MERCY!”

“Why is being good rewarded with more math?!” Kaede groaned, flopping face-down onto the rug like a discarded ragdoll. “My brain can’t take two more hours of numbers after a whole day of school…!”

Lia gave an adorable dramatic little pout, puffing her cheeks out and crossing her arms.

“Martha… but the sun’s still up… We wanted to see the koi fish in the garden…”

“The koi fish will still be swimming when you’re done, Lady Lia,” Martha replied calmly, tapping the workbook against the edge of the table. “A proper young lady doesn’t settle for the bare minimum… You’ll do well in your classes, so that when the exams come, you can sit down without a single worry. Now, up you go… Change out of your uniforms into something comfortable, and meet me at the dining table in ten minutes.”

The three girls let out a long synchronized groan that practically shook the chandeliers but underneath all the pouting, their eyes were full of love.

They knew Martha pushed them because she cared about them fiercely, and that she taught them extra lessons so they’d shine in class… They loved her for it but they just really, really wanted to go explore first.

“Yes, Martha…” Lia sighed with a fond resigned smile, pushing herself up off the sofa.

“The tyrant of the tea kettle strikes again…” Penelope grumbled, dragging Kaede up by her collar as the three of them trudged toward the grand staircase to change in Lia’s new room.

Standing by the hallway archway, Harper watched the whole thing with an amused smirk then she turned her gaze to Nitocris, who was still standing in the middle of the rug in Silas’s oversized shirt, watching the children leave with an expression of royal bewilderment.

A sharp gleam flashed behind Harper’s glasses.

“Well now,” she purred, taking two deliberate, predatory steps toward the empress. “Change back, Nito…”

“I beg your pardon?” Nitocris said, arching one elegant brow.

“Cat form… Now,” Harper said sweetly, holding her arms out. “You’re coming with me, and I’m not dragging a six-foot desert queen down the hallway by her ear.”

Nitocris looked at Harper’s outstretched arms, then at Harper’s face, which held the specific smile of a girl who would absolutely try it.

She let out a long suffering sigh.

FWOOM!

In a puff of purple smoke, the stunning desert queen shrank back into a sleek black cat and dropped straight into Harper’s waiting arms.

“This is undignified,” the cat complained, her paws flailing against Harper’s houndstooth blazer. “What is the meaning of this, mortal, Nyaa~?”

“I’m borrowing you for a bit, Nito,” Harper announced, flashing a dazzling smile at Silas, who was watching from the stairs with an amused chuckle.

“Don’t wait up, handsome,” Harper winked, turning on her heels. “The girls need to study, you need your bath, while Nito and I have some very important things to discuss.”

She carried the squirming cat down the hallway of the guest wing, past three empty suites, and into the big corner bedroom she’d picked for herself earlier that afternoon.

It was beautiful, with pale lavender walls, white ash furniture, a private balcony overlooking the city, and a king-sized canopy bed draped in sheer violet fabric.

Harper stepped inside and kicked the double doors shut with the heel of her shoe.

CLACK!

She turned the heavy brass deadbolt until it locked.

CLICK!

She marched to the floor-to-ceiling balcony windows and pulled them shut, then drew the heavy blackout curtains closed, plunging the room into shadowy twilight lit only by a single bedside lamp then she walked over to the bed and set the black cat down in the middle of the silk comforter.

Nitocris immediately shook out her coat, her violet eyes narrowing to suspicious slits as her tail whipped against the duvet.

“What’s the meaning of all this secrecy, Harper?” she demanded, lifting her small black chin. “Why have you sealed the doors and put out the light? If you brought me here to scold me about my bath with Silas, I assure you that my royal conduct was entirely beyond reproach, Nyaa~”

Harper didn’t answer with words.

She stood at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed, and a slow, brilliant and completely dangerous smile spread across her face.

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with one slender finger as her violet eyes flashed behind the lenses with ambition, pride and wicked excitement.

“Alright, Nito… I want to show you something.”

The heavy curtains muffled the autumn breeze outside, leaving the corner suite wrapped in warm amber-lit seclusion.

Nitocris sat upright on the silk comforter with her paws neatly lined up, her whiskers twitching with a mix of royal impatience and careful curiosity.

“Well, Harper?” she prompted, tilting her sleek head with a dry flick of her tail. “You’ve locked this room up tighter than a royal treasury… Are you going to present me with an offering, or are we auditioning to become spies, Nyaa~?”

Harper stopped in the middle of the room with her back to the lamp as she took off her glasses and set them on the marble side table.

Without the glass in the way, her violet eyes burned with a sharp electric light that seemed to hum in the quiet air.

“When you were riding around inside my head,” she began, her voice quiet and grounded, with none of her usual boardroom sarcasm, “you spent a while hammering the tectonic sands into my bones like you said… You drilled my channels, pushed my mana until I was coughing up grit, and treated my body like a half-finished blade.”

“Naturally,” Nitocris replied smoothly, her chin lifting with unrepentant pride. “A dull vessel can’t carry the weight of the dunes… If I hadn’t rebuilt you from the inside, you’d have crumbled to dust in Khemet, Nyaa~”

“I’m not complaining about the training,” Harper said, a faint, confident smirk curling her lips. “I’m talking about what happened after. When Silas killed Ititius and you were dragged out of me… something stayed behind.”

She took a slow deep breath and planted her heels firmly in the rug.

Her whole posture changed.

The relaxed heiress disappeared in a heartbeat, and Lord who’d spent hours in the training room fighting through her own lightning took her place.

“Once I got my body back,” she murmured, her fingers curling loosely into fists at her sides, “the sand didn’t just answer me like a borrowed tool anymore… It started pulling on something higher up and something purer.”

Nitocris’s violet eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits. Her ears swiveled forward as a hum began to vibrate through the floorboards.

“Explain yourself, girl, Nyaa~,” the cat said, all the playfulness suddenly gone from her voice.

“I didn’t just learn your technique, Nito,” Harper said softly. “I kept the spark… just like you wanted though I think I went overboard…”

She closed her eyes.

Deep in her chest, something ancient and dormant flared to life… It wasn’t the ordinary mana that every Lord carried, and it wasn’t the wild elemental energy that came pouring out of rifts.

This was divinity.

A soft pulsing golden-white glow bled through the weave of Harper’s houndstooth blazer, lighting up the buttons like tiny suns.

The air in the locked bedroom thickened at once and pressed in around her as the scent of lavender in the room was swallowed by a different scent of rain.

Nitocris rose onto all four paws, her back arching slightly and the fur along her spine rippling as the aura washed over the bed.

“By the dawn…” she whispered, her velvety voice trembling with genuine disbelief. “The divine resonance… it didn’t fade when you were freed, Nyaa~?”

“Not even a drop,” Harper said, and her eyes snapped open.

Her violet irises were burning as she held out her right hand, palm up toward the ceiling.

Deep in her channels, she seized the divine spark and poured it into her own elements with the precision of someone who’d spent a lot of time at it.

RUMBLE!

From the corners of the room, from the tiny gaps between the floor tiles and from the empty air itself, dense ribbons of matte-black tectonic sand hissed into existence.

It churned in tight, pressurized rings around her forearm, held in place by sheer will then she flooded the sand with purple lightning.

CRACKLE!

Jagged violet arcs leaped from her knuckles and coiled through the swirling sand.

The two powers didn’t clash or push each other away… They fused into a boiling crackling lattice of black grit and violet light that threw sharp dancing shadows across the walls.

Harper held the hovering vortex steady three inches above her palm with the voltage whipping her long violet hair into a wild crackling halo around her face.

“I’ve been practicing,” she said, her breath steady and her voice ringing with hard-earned satisfaction. “Every single morning since Khemet… I figured if I’m going to stand next to Silas, I can’t just be another rich girl throwing spells from the back row. What do you think, teacher?”

Nitocris sat back on her haunches, her violet eyes tracking the spinning lattice of sand and lightning.

For all her endless complaining and haughty dismissals, the ancient empress knew greatness when she saw it and Harper was eighteen years old.

She was a girl raised among glass towers and stock markets though she was holding divine sand and lightning together with the rock-solid grip of a war goddess.

A slow satisfied purr rumbled in Nitocris’s small chest.

“Splendid,” she said softly, her whiskers curving upward with genuine, unvarnished pride. “Your channels are wide, your control is flawless, and you’re holding the divine frequency without letting the voltage burn you… When I first took root in you, you were a stubborn reckless fledgling who nearly snapped her own wrist trying to raise a three-foot wall of sand but now you command the stone like an empress in your own right. I approve, Harper… You’ve done honor to the teachings of Khemet, Nyaa~”

Harper’s chest went warm, and a bright triumphant smile broke across her face.

From anyone else, it would’ve sounded condescending but from the ancient monster who’d drilled her mercilessly in the desert before taking her body, it was the sweetest win she’d had all week.

She closed her fist.

FZZZT!

The sand collapsed inward, the lightning fizzled into harmless sparks against her palm, and the divine glow sank back beneath her skin, leaving the room quiet again.

“Of course I did,” Harper beamed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t half-ass anything, Nito…”

Nitocris let out a soft amused huff through her nose.

“Don’t get conceited, little fledgling,” she purred, rising slowly to her paws on the comforter. “You’ve mastered the spark… but you seem to have forgotten who lit the flame, Nyaa~”