Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 1079

The portal sighed shut behind us, soft as a well-made door clicking into its frame with the finality of a grave sealing itself, and the three of us stood together on the dark grass of my estate.

Ashley made a small helpless sound against my coat.

She had been tucked under my arm through the whole crossing, eyes squeezed shut against the unmaking of her old world and the making of my world, but the moment her feet touched solid ground her head snapped up, and her breath stopped halfway in.

Her hands stayed locked in the front of my coat like a supplicant clinging to the hem of fate itself.

Her eyes went wide.

The whole sweep of my estate lay in front of her, lit gold and silver in the late hour—the long pale drive curving toward the main house with the lazy arrogance of something that knew it would never be denied, cypresses tall and silent along its edge like spears raised in eternal salute, the warm windows of the mansion glowing at the far end like invitations to damnation wrapped in comfort, lawns rolling out into low hills that disappeared into a horizon she could not see yet but could already feel was hers if she ever wanted it to be.

A horizon I conquered and now offered as a bauble.

"Oh," she breathed.

I let her look. Gods do not rush their worshippers.

ARIA waited a polite distance off, hands clasped behind her back, watching the girl take her first real breath of a life she had not yet realised she had just stepped into—irrevocably, deliciously.

"Welcome home, little one," ARIA said softly.

Ashley could not answer. Mortals rarely can when the veil tears open, right?

I bent my head and pressed a kiss into her hair. "Go with ARIA. She will settle you in, get you ready for tomorrow. I will find you before the sun remembers its place."

"You're not—"

"I am precisely where I choose to be. Promise. I just need to get my girl home."

"Okay."

"Okay."

She tipped her face up and kissed me, quick and a little disbelieving, her fingers letting go of my coat one at a time like reluctant prayers. ARIA gathered her in at the waist with the easy affection of an older sister claiming a smaller one, and the moment Ashley's feet left the ground—

"Oh—"

"Hold on, little one." As if she wasn't barely weeks old.

"Oh oh oh—"

ARIA rose. Slow at first, testing her. Ashley shrieked once into ARIA's shoulder—pure delighted terror—and buried her face there for half a breath before yanking it back up because there was no chance in any heaven she was missing a single second of this ascension I had granted.

"PETER—"

Both her hands flew to her mouth.

"—Eros, I meant Eros, I meant Eros, I'm sorry—!"

ARIA laughed, real and warm. "He answers to both. Don't worry. His pride is vast enough to swallow both names and still hunger."

"I'M FLYING—!"

"You are tasting what belongs to him."

"PETER I'M FLYING!"

I raised my hand from below in a slow wave. "I see."

"I LOVE YOU I'M FLYING BYE—!"

"Bye."

ARIA shot me a smile over her shoulder, entirely conspiratorial, and with one clean motion she was up past the cypresses and banking toward the main house with my girl on her hip, laughing and shrieking in equal measure.

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