My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 956: A Murder Poem

Ryuzen did not insult either of them by asking how she knew. "Obviously."

Because only an idiot would believe Lucienne had gone.

The siblings were many things: young by the standards of monsters, deeply unfortunate in their assignment, and currently standing inside the emotional radius of a woman whose idea of affection likely required international law revisions.

But they were not stupid enough to think she had abandoned Phei’s vicinity.

Her obsession ran too deep for that.

Obsession was not even the correct a word, perhaps.

It sounded almost human, like something manageable with therapy, locked doors and better hobbies.

But Lucienne’s fixation on Phei felt older, quieter, more horrifying, a bewitching hunger folded into patience, the kind of longing that did not chase because it already believed the entire road belonged to it.

Besides, there was another reason they knew she had not gone.

Her presence remained.

Not visibly or directly. But it hung in the air around the cliff mansion like a velvet noose, soft and beautiful until one remembered what nooses were for. It pressed against the gardens, the stage, the cars, the trees, the guests, the shadows beneath the chairs, the moonlit paths and every fragile little life gathered under the cold night.

It was not pressure in the crude way some powerful beings released aura to threaten others, like poorly trained dogs barking at fences. Lucienne’s presence was quieter than that; more elegant, obscene.

It simply existed as a domain and an invisible dominion that informed everything within it of one bleak truth: should she desire death of either of anyone here, then death would arrive before fear finished opening its mouth.

The two siblings were at her mercy too.

Yuzuki; with the clear, bitter precision of someone who had been sent to observe a creature she could not truly contain and Ryuzen; with the professional calm of a Demigod who understood that titles sounded impressive until something older and uglier than hierarchy looked his way.

Yet both of them kept their composure because panic, while emotionally valid, was rarely useful and almost never flattering.

"We are still alive," Ryuzen said after a moment.

Yuzuki’s eyes flicked briefly toward him. "That is your conclusion?"

"That she still finds us cute: that’s my conclusion."

Yuzuki stared at him.

Ryuzen’s mouth barely moved. "Or entertaining."

"That is not comforting."

"It was not meant to be. I was reporting conditions."

Yuzuki looked back toward the darkness where Lucienne had last been visible. "If she stops finding us entertaining?"

"Then our souls have completed their usefulness in this world."

There was no drama in his voice, which made the statement worse.

That, unfortunately, was how Lucienne worked.

If their desperate attempts amused her and their vigilance entertained her, while their little roles in the grand theater around Phei gave her something to watch with those monster-bright eyes of hers, then they could continue breathing.

If not, then existence itself would become a canceled appointment.

A miserable survival policy, but at least it was clear.

The only true way for them to be safe was to become openly acquainted with the Young Master as one of his people to just standing and watching from afar but to stand close enough to Phei that Lucienne’s own twisted rules, affection, obsession or whatever ancient madness she used as morality might hesitate before touching them because that wound anger him.

Unfortunately, they operated from the shadows.

That was the entire point of their duty; for now.

They guarded without being seen, watched without being acknowledged, protected from distances where gratitude could not reach them and safety could not recognize them as relatives.

And there lay the bitter joke neither sibling said aloud:

They had been sent here, armed by an Empress and a Princess, draped in enough artifacts costly enough to bankrupt a continent, to protect a young man who almost certainly did not need it, while the one thing that could keep them alive was the goodwill of a monster nobody had sent and nobody could recall.

They were bodyguards praying to be noticed by the very danger they were meant to guard against.

Somewhere in the family hierarchy, someone had drawn this assignment up on paper and presumably called it strategy.

Yuzuki exhaled softly. "We need a better position."

"We need divine intervention," Ryuzen corrected. "A better position is what people request when dealing with snipers, assassins or bad lighting. This is Lucienne."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"Remaining cute, perhaps?"

Yuzuki’s expression turned cold.

Ryuzen added calmly, "And useful to her entertainment."

"That is worse."

"It is accurate."

But the terror of Lucienne’s disappearance did not belong only to the siblings.

Eira felt it too.

The fairy hovered near Anahita, wings fluttering with a tension that had nothing to do with excitement now, lollipop still held between her lips though even its sweetness failed to distract her properly. Her bright eyes moved from the cliff path to the shadowed trees, from Phei near the cars to the dark folds around the mansion, searching again and again for the most dangerous of her Master’s stalkers.

Nothing.

No trace.

No outline or the familiar monstrous presence where her senses expected one to be.

Eira’s wings beat faster.

For all her sweetness, her size, her lollipop addiction and her frequent resemblance to a tiny sugar-fed disaster with wings, she was not foolish.

She knew danger.

More importantly, she knew the hierarchy of danger around Phei, and Lucienne occupied a category so unpleasantly high that even Eira’s thoughts approached it barefoot and apologizing.

Among the women, enemies, watchers, guardians, admirers and absurdly persistent predators circling her Master, Lucienne was one of the few who made Eira’s instincts curl inward.

"She disappeared," Eira whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

The lollipop shifted in her mouth as she frowned.

That was bad.

No, bad was what happened when someone spilled tea, lost an artifact, insulted a princess or discovered that humans had invented another bureaucracy.

This was beyond bad; it wore silk gloves and smiled before pulling out someone’s spine for aesthetic balance.

Eira focused harder, her senses stretching across the mansion grounds, combing shadows, moonlight, reflections, glass, grass, the undersides of cars, the edges of coats, the breathing gaps between people.

She searched the places ordinary eyes forgot, the small pockets where power liked to fold itself and wait.

Still nothing.

The Monster was gone from her sight.

Gone from her senses.

And yet every delicate instinct in Eira’s body tingled with warning, telling her the disappearance itself was the danger. A visible Lucienne was horrifying, yes, but at least visible horror had manners. Invisible Lucienne was worse:

Invisible Lucienne was a murder poem no one had reached the final line of yet.

Eira sighed through her nose, which looked adorable and annoyed, a deeply unserious combination given the circumstances.

"What can I even do?" she muttered, licking the lollipop once as if sugar might provide strategic brilliance. It did not.

Sugar, like most substances humans trusted emotionally, was wildly overpraised.

She knew how helpless she was before that woman.

That was the irritating part.

Eira could protect her Master from many things. She could watch, warn, interfere, retrieve secrets, pluck evidence from time and whisper truths into his ear while he turned interviews into elegant slaughterhouses.

She could be useful; she liked being useful because usefulness was a kind of devotion when one had chosen her Master as the center of all meaningful light.

And that was precisely why Lucienne gnawed at her.

Eira seen Phei past across a span of time most of these scheming families could not even conceive of, she had watched when he was small and forgettable and entirely unaware of the blood sleeping in him, and after watching all those long quiet years she had appointed herself the line nothing crossed.

To meet a thing she could not block, could not outwit, could not even reliably see, was to feel that ancient appointment slip a little in her small hands.

It was not the fear of dying that bothered her.

It was the fear of being insufficient to him at the exact moment he needed her most.

But Lucienne?

Lucienne was not simply an enemy to be blocked or a threat to be reported.

Lucienne was a calamity with patience, a lonesome beauty sharpened into obsession, a woman whose affection itself felt like something that needed containment wards and perhaps a legal framework no civilization had survived long enough to write.

Eira looked toward Phei again.

He with his Goddess, calm beneath the moon as though the night had not become crowded with invisible monsters, doomed fallen angels, nervous guardians and one tiny fairy quietly calculating how useless she would be if Lucienne decided to move.

Eira clicked the lollipop against her teeth.

"Master," she whispered, too softly for him to hear. "You collect the worst women."

Then she paused, glanced toward the shadows where Lucienne might or might not be listening, and added in a much smaller voice, "Beautiful ones, though. Terrifying taste. But beautiful."

Because Eira was loyal, not suicidal.

And somewhere in the hidden architecture of the night, Lucienne smiled.