My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 955: A Star Tied To A Chariot: Lucienne’s Ace

Unlike mortals, Anahita knew how useless it was to fight fate.

Mortals liked to spit at destiny and call it courage, usually right before destiny stepped over them without noticing.

Some powerful beings did succeed, yes, some creatures even climbed high enough to cut the strings of fate wrapped around them. Some monsters became sharp enough that fate itself bled when touching them.

But Anahita was not on that level.

She was just a Fallen thing bound by a soul contract, punished by masters, trapped between orders that contradicted each other and still expected to emerge obedient from both sides. All she could do was bow beneath the invisible strings and let fate drag her forward:

A fallen star tied to a chariot she did not own, praying only that the road ended before the wheels remembered her bones.

’Hopefully toward a quick death in the next few years.’

But when had good things ever happened to Fallens?

Grimacing at how bleak her future looked, Anahita sighed and turned her gaze toward Phei. If she was about to descend into hell again, she might as well enjoy the sight of something divine before the doors closed behind her.

He was walking toward the cars.

Phei moved beneath the moonlight with that effortless, ruinous grace of his, the kind that made even a doomed fallen angel forget for two seconds that her life was currently being dragged behind a carriage made of consequences. Beside him, the Goddess walked with an elegance so serene that the night seemed to arrange itself around her out of respect; the director hurrying behind them as though trying to catch up without appearing desperate, which was always difficult because desperation had terrible posture.

Anahita watched them both with a strange ache blooming quietly beneath her fear.

Unbeknownst to her, she was not alone.

An Elementally fairy hovered beside her, wings fluttering with delighted excitement, or perhaps pleasure from the lollipop she was licking with far too much commitment for a creature involved in live political and legacy family devastation.

She was floating t there like a tiny, sugar-fed calamity, her feet kicking lightly in the air, her bright gaze following Phei with open adoration. The lollipop clicked softly against her teeth as she watched her master walk away from the stage he had just turned into a slaughterhouse with broadcasting rights.

It was a hobby she had picked up from gods knew where;

The lollipop, that was.

The emotional attachment to apocalyptic young dragons was probably older and far more concerning.

But Eira was not the only one watching.

Lucienne watched too.

Hidden from every ordinary sight, concealed so deeply that even the moon itself might have doubted whether she stood beneath it, the Monster smiled from within her own impossible stillness.

No breeze touched her unless she allowed it neither did any shadow dare betray her shape and no gaze found her presence.

She was there and not there, a bewitching absence in the architecture of night, reading Anahita’s mind, her thoughts, her past, her present and the unfortunate futures branching ahead of her like roads leading toward sharper knives.

Lucienne smiled.

Fate is amusing.

Cruel, yes. Terrible, certainly. But amusing in the way only something ancient and shameless could be.

She could not even start to begin to imagine how fate kept delivering useful pieces to her so obediently, as though the fate had mistaken her designs for prayers and decided to answer them before she even finished speaking.

Anahita.

A fallen angel tied close to the Heavenchilds.

A creature already wounded by contracts, trapped between masters, terrified enough to break, and most importantly, with her strings already entangled in the endless infinity threads of the Young Dragon.

Lucienne’s smile deepened, soft and beautiful and entirely unkind, the kind of smile that did not belong to a woman discovering opportunity but to a monster watching fate deliver a trembling piece to her board.

Anahita would be useful; more than useful really if she were being honest:

In Lucienne’s hands, the fallen angel would not merely become an informant, a victim or a rescued thing dressed in gratitude.

She would become an ace

***

Of all the Young Master’s Keepers, perhaps only Anahita remained unaware of the dangerous woman who followed Phei everywhere, hidden within the shadows of his women and when that became inconvenient, she’d hide inside Phei’s very shadow.

A deeply unfair arrangement, really.

Most stalkers had the decency to rely on alleys, rooftops, suspicious coats and poor life choices.

Lucienne had chosen shadows themselves, because apparently normal obsession had not been dramatic enough for a woman the Ryujin Tiamat Bloodline called Monster with the same caution priests used when naming ancient sins.

Yuzuki, unfortunately for everyone’s peace of mind, knew very well.

The girl had been enjoying the spoils of the First Princess’s generosity for some time now, wrapped in high-tier concealment artifacts, defensive treasures, movement treasures, perception-anchoring rune and enough expensive little miracles to make a royal treasury develop trust issues.

Melissa’s elder sister, the mysterious First Princess, did not merely possess pockets fully os treasures; she possessed an abyss with accounting privileges.

Her wealth was not limited to trillions of the family she no longer had any meaningful use for except spoiling her nephew which she didn’t do to his understanding, which was already a suspiciously dangerous hobby, but her wealth extended into artifacts, ancient treasures, forbidden tools, items, charms, divine relics and sacred and defensive objects whose names sounded like dead empires had coughed them up in their final breath.

Beside Yuzuki, Ryuzen Raizen Hayashi stood in silence, his presence calm and immovable despite the pressure smothering the cliff mansion.

He was a Demigod-stage powerhouse, one who technically worked beneath his father, though the truth was more layered than that. The man he served in flesh was his father, yes, but the one he served in loyalty was the Empress herself:

That distinction mattered.

In worlds like theirs, loyalty was not some sentimental little ribbon people tied around friendship and called noble. Loyalty was architecture. It decided who lived inside walls and who became foundation material.

For some time, both siblings could see Lucienne.

Yuzuki saw her through the layered gifts the First Princess had placed upon her, each artifact helping her sight crawl past the kind of concealment that would have made lesser assassins weep into their overpriced cloaks.

Ryuzen saw her because he was Ryuzen and being a Demigod-stage powerhouse under the Empress came with privileges; like having even better treasures than his sister had.

Even then, neither of them looked at Lucienne directly for too long. That was the sort of mistake insects made near flames before becoming philosophy for moths.

Ryuzen’s eyes remained on his sister instead.

He watched her carefully without letting his concern alert her, keeping his expression composed while his senses measured the space around them again and again.

Yuzuki looked calm, almost indifferent, standing beneath the moonlight with her body still and her gaze distant, but he knew her well enough to recognize the slight tightening in her fingers, the minute shift of her breathing, the way her attention sharpened whenever Lucienne’s presence stirred.

"You see her?" he asked quietly, voice low enough that even the wind seemed to have to lean closer.

Yuzuki did not turn her head. "I did."

Ryuzen’s gaze narrowed. "Did?"

"She vanished."

The words were simple, but they struck the air between them with the quiet weight of a blade being placed on a table.

Ryuzen extended his senses farther.

Nothing.

No silhouette. No movement. No spiritual ripple. No residue of essence. No sound, no breath, no shadow thickening into form.

The Monster had not merely stepped out of sight:

She had disappeared from their perception entirely, erased herself from vision, senses and essence detection with such completeness that for one brief and insulting moment the world seemed to pretend she had never been there at all.

For Ryuzen, that was the part worth real alarm.

He had spent his life learning to read the rooms ancient things stood in, and the first lesson, beaten into him before he could grow into his own power, was that the truly dangerous ones did not announce themselves by how loudly they pressed against the world. They announced themselves by how cleanly the world forgot them.

A monster you could feel was a monster operating below her means. A monster you could not was a monster who had decided manners were no longer required.

Yuzuki’s lips pressed faintly together. "She is still here."