CHAPTER 1 Nobody Managed to Poison the Punch!

CHAPTER 1

Nobody Managed to Poison the Punch!

Rufus

“I now pronounce you, Dark Lord and Lady!” Their Royal Highness Rowen of Peldeep announced. “You may kiss the bride!”

The pair obliged, and a cheer erupted from the guests as I let out a sigh of relief. Keith was married, and nobody had lit anything on fire!

Of course, that was when the crowd’s cheering cut off into a sudden unnatural quiet.

Everyone was looking up in fear. “What?” I stiffened, searching the area for assassins, when an unmistakable green tail with a purple sheen dropped down from above.

Her Eminence Feliwyn the dragon whipped her tail around in her sleep. It landed daintily between the dais and the first row of guests.

Everyone held their breath, readying to run screaming for their lives. The dragon had been asleep for eight years now and not awoken from her proposed decade-long nap.

Luckily, the dragon resettled.

“We invite everyone to the reception,” Their Royal Highness Rowen declared loudly, dragging everyone’s attention away from the house-size magical lizard, “where there will be music and refreshments.”

The tension eased, and I joined the rest of the wedding party as we navigated stage left around the curling tail.

“Getting married beside Her Eminence was your idea,” I teased Chloe the Necromancer.

“And I told you this was going to be a wedding they’ll never forget!” She chuckled. “You worry too much, Rufus. Besides, this way she gets to attend.”

I scanned the field. We were set up beside Lake Loria, the largest lake in the Dark Enchanted Forest of Nilheim. Below, in its depths, lay the city of Plittsmouth, home to selkies and kelpies and all other manner of murderous aquatic folk. They were a blast at parties.

After enough time had passed to ensure that Feliwyn wasn’t going to wake up—that dragon was not a morning person—the lake inhabitants came back to frolic in the waters.

There were no obvious threats, but I activated a perk to be sure.

[You have attempted to use the Perk: Detect Fake . You have succeeded.]

[Scanning targets equal to your Perception 30 x Examine 6. You have selected all 180 available targets. No Disguise-based abilities detected.]

It didn’t work on those individuals who were higher level than me, but not many people on the continent fit that description.

Unfortunately, most of those people were invited to this event.

Sigh.

I checked to make sure my mana could handle another hour of this.

Name: Rufus Triever Occupation: Commander General Level: 54 Experience Points: 12787/13500 Hit Points: 616/616 Mana Points: 540/900 Class: Commander Titles: [Beastfolk], [Protector], [Mediator], [General], [Commander], [Connoisseur] Attributes: Strength: 26 Intelligence: 30 Dexterity:

19 Perception: 30 Constitution: 24 Charisma: 19 Skills: Keen Senses: 2 Leadership: 4 Secure: 6 Bureaucracy: 4 Patient: 6 Examine: 6 Perks: Sense Threat, Redirect Blow, Claw Strike, Force Palm, Empathy, Calming Effect, Inspire Honesty, Commanding Voice, Natural Poise, Sense Lies, Personnel, Detect Poison, Detect Fake, Identify Craft.

I turned my attention to my notifications and finished processing the myriad information en masse.

The headache that accompanied it thrummed in my temples, but I maintained a calm and assured appearance. It was the work of seconds, and I did it every quarter hour. The downside of my abilities was the time it took to comprehend what the system was feeding me, and I’d long ago masked the discomfort with a serene and confident air.

There were almost two hundred guests from around the continent at Keith and Henrietta’s wedding, and between my [Examine] skill and my two perks [Sense Threat] and [Sense Lies], I was getting an untenable number of prompts.

I wanted to vomit.

And then, just as my headache was becoming unbearable and my stomach clenched … I heard it.

If I had one weakness, it was this. Her voice .

… and the battle that she fought was for

The Dark Lord’s Heart she won.

While Minstrel Bronwynn had originally been playing light instrumental music in the background, the Dark Lady had requested a song, and the dulcet tones of the bard’s singing carried over the crowd.

They said music tamed the savage beast, so call me savage, because ever since that night I slipped into a tavern in Peldeep and first heard Minstrel Bronwynn perform “The Traveler’s Tale,” I’d been under her spell.

“Do you think she could be convinced to play at my wedding?” Chloe broke me out of my musical revelry. She tapped her chin slowly. Her long, curly blonde hair was done up in intricate braids for the affair, all over with flowers, and while she stood no taller than my bicep … she was a terrifying force of nature.

“You would have to ask her.” I shrugged. “She hasn’t announced her summer tour yet, so she might be free.”

“Oh, really.” Chloe raised an eyebrow at me. “Where is she off to next?”

I took a sip of my drink. “She’s going to Servalt for Duke Wyldon’s birthday tea party, then she’s off to Peldeep for an apple blossom ceremony, and then she promised Henrietta that she’ll visit for the Hollow Silver Star Festival, all of which takes place before your wedding at the Summer Masquerade.”

Chloe creased her brow in a delicate frown and scrunched up her nose in disgust. “ Whyever would she agree to visit Servalt after they kidnapped her and broke her instrument? I’m surprised the place hasn’t fallen apart already after the whole incident at the Spring Ball.”

“Servalt is hunting down the perpetrators,” I pointed out. “And they’ve successfully recovered all of Lieutenant Franni’s platoon.”

“That still proves my point, doesn’t it?” Chloe countered. “If they’re still hunting down the villains, then the villains are still out there . And there are plenty of reasons to stay away in the meantime.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t like Servalt.” I laughed. “From what the Continental Council has gathered, this mess stretches everywhere , and every kingdom is responsible for contributing to the search.”

“I don’t like Servalt,” Chloe agreed. “So how is the search going?”

“Duke Wyldon returned to Servalt after the Spring Ball and tore apart every estate associated with Marquess Chadwick. He’s done most of my work for me.”

“What’s left then?”

I sighed, the thought of the previous weeks’ overtime a distant nightmare that still wasn’t over. “Now that I’ve finished combing through transit documents from every Servalt merchant going back over the last three years and reviewed every single missing person, and immigration and emigration file, I just need to cross-reference those forms with the other kingdoms border offices.”

“Sounds fun,” Chloe said dryly. She tried to cheer me up with, “At least it’s just paper shuffling? It shouldn’t take too long.”

“ Do you know how many people have emigrated to North Sumbria in the last year alone?! ” I dragged a hand down my face, dreading the arduous task ahead. It was my fault, though; I’d been teasing my king a lot recently, and vengeance was a dish best served with paperwork. “And that’s not everything; I’ve also been tasked to visit our illustrious neighbors to check on those gifts our rulers sent them.”

Namely, the seventy-five-odd assassins who’d survived the Dark Enchanted Forest and been kindly sent back to the guilds in Servalt and Peldeep. Nobody had bothered to check which assassins went to which guild, but that would be their job to sort out .

I just needed to go and reestablish contracts with both guilds so that it wouldn’t happen again. And, under order by my king, figure out how the assassins keep popping up everywhere and getting past the kingdom’s golem defenses.

“Now that actually sounds fun.” A brilliant smile lit up her face as Chloe’s fiancée, Countess Julia, walked over to join us.

“Dear, are you bothering Rufus while he’s on guard duty?” Julia chastised playfully, winding an arm around the necromancer’s shoulders. Julia was a head taller than Chloe, and she took after her mother: tall, dark, and powerful.

“We’re all on guard duty.” Chloe waved a hand over the wedding party. “But it’s unlikely anything will happen with Feliwyn so close.”

We all turned to the giant sleeping dragon, who remained blissfully oblivious to the celebration going on around her.

“When do you think Her Eminence Feliwyn will wake up?” Julia asked. “I heard King Keith say it was soon, but how soon?”

I shrugged. “It’s been eight years… so any day now?”

“I think she’ll nap the whole decade,” Chloe said. She finished her drink and wrapped her arms around Julia’s forearm. “How about we take a walk? I need to check on everything .”

“Of course you do, darling.” Her soon-to-be wife laughed. “It’s almost time to swear fealty, and the unicorns are getting antsy.”

“Why didn’t you say so?!” Chloe perked up and started for the herds milling about the field away from the celebration. “I’ll go speak with Goldenhoof right now.”

I finished my drink and headed for the snack table while enjoying the ambiance that Minstrel Bronwynn added to the event. Suddenly, sorting through a few hundred people’s emotions didn’t seem so hard.

The Dark Enchanted Forest welcomed its new Dark Lady with open arms. No one tried to outright assassinate anyone, even as representatives from around the kingdom offered their allegiance to Queen Henrietta.

And nobody had poisoned the punch!

All in all, the wedding was a great success. And I was ready to get back to the castle for a rest.