Chapter 9: The Saint Candidate Hiding in My Pantry

Morning in the fortress had developed a rhythm so absurdly domestic that Nate still occasionally caught himself waiting for someone to yell cut and send the extras home.

The former seat of the Demon Lord woke not to war drums or screams of sacrificial terror, but to the clang of pots from the renovated kitchen, the chatter of labor sprites in the courtyard, and the low, offended grumbling of monsters being shooed away from the herb beds because they kept trying to eat the fertilizer.

Sunlight spilled over black battlements and ran in bright bars across stone that had once looked permanently stained by evil. It turned the new glass windows into sheets of gold. Down below, the outer road Nate had laid with his settlement skill cut through the old curse-blighted earth like a neat ribbon, already busy with a trickle of wagons and adventurers heading toward the newly opened dungeon route beneath the fortress. Coins, apparently, were willing to brave a lot more danger than common sense.

Nate stood in the central hall with a ledger in one hand and a cup of something that was allegedly coffee in the other. The beverage had been brewed by an enthusiastic goblin apprentice and tasted like roasted bark strained through regret, but it was hot, bitter, and within the general jurisdiction of caffeine. At this point, he counted that as civilization.

Before him hung a pale blue pane of light only he could see, floating in the air at eye level.

DIVINE SETTLEMENT STATUS

Territory Prosperity: Rising

Resident Satisfaction: 78%

Tourism Revenue: Stable

Dungeon Route Casualty Rate: Acceptable

Pending Complaints: 14

“I hate that word,” Nate muttered. “Acceptable should never be used for casualty rates.”

“Then lower it,” said a dry voice from beside him.

General Varkas stood ramrod-straight in his immaculate black coat, crimson skin catching the morning light with a lacquered gleam. Curved horns framed a face that looked carved for intimidating speeches and military portraits, except for the spectacles perched on his nose as he reviewed inventory tablets. The effect was less dread conqueror and more homicidal accountant.

“You have authority over trap pacing, route lighting, and healer station placement,” Varkas went on. “If tourists continue to insist on touching the cursed armor displays after the fourth warning sign, that falls under natural selection rather than administration.”

“Your people skills are incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know.”

At the far end of the hall, Lyris strode in with two vine-wrapped crates hovering behind her as if dragged by invisible hands. The dark elf botanist moved with the restless certainty of someone permanently one revelation away from either changing agriculture forever or committing a felony in the name of plant science. Her silver hair was braided back with sprigs of something glowing faintly green, and a smear of dark soil streaked her cheek like war paint.

“Good,” she said without preamble. “You’re both here. The fungus beds in the lower vaults have begun cross-pollinating with the dreammoss and now the east greenhouse is singing.”

Nate stared. “That sentence contained three separate problems.”

“Only if you are a coward.”

“I’m a landlord,” he said. “That’s basically a coward with paperwork.”

Lyris set one of the crates down. From inside came a wet, rhythmic thumping, as though something leafy was trying to escape. “Also, one of your adventurer groups stole cuttings from the restricted section. If they survive ingestion, I would like them returned for observation.”

Varkas made a note. “I will add ‘do not steal experimental vegetables’ to the posted regulations.”

“Add illustrations,” Lyris said. “Humans do not read.”

“In fairness,” Nate said, “a lot of humans back on Earth didn’t either.”

The hall’s massive double doors boomed open.

A line of servants entered with fresh linens, baskets of bread, and one very small person near the back carrying a stack of folded towels so high it concealed their face entirely.

Nate might not have noticed anything strange if his settlement interface hadn’t politely flared with a warning.

NOTICE: Unauthorized resident classification detected in Restricted Wing approach.

Identity mismatch with assigned labor rolls.

Would you like to deny room access?

YES / EXTREMELY YES

Nate blinked at the pane. “That’s… new.”

Varkas’s gaze sharpened at once. “What is it?”

“The house is snitching.” Nate looked up just as the line of servants passed beneath the arch leading toward the inner corridors. One by one, they went through.

The tiny one at the back walked directly into an invisible wall.

Towels exploded upward in a white flutter.

A girl stumbled backward with a strangled yelp, arms pinwheeling as the folded stack rained around her. She wore a maid’s plain brown dress and apron, though the cut was too fine, the cloth too soft, the stitching too delicate. Her hood had been pinned low over her face, but the impact jolted it back.

Sunlight caught in hair the color of pale honey. It spilled over her shoulders in a glossy wave, absurdly luminous in the dark stone hall. Her eyes were wide and blue enough to look painted, and there was an air about her—some impossible cleanness, some glimmer at the edges of her skin—that made the servants around her recoil first in confusion and then in collective, dawning horror.

Because glimmers of silver-white light had appeared around her where she had struck the barrier.

Not sparks.

Feathers.

Ghostly little feathers made of pure radiance, drifting downward and dissolving before they touched the floor.

Everyone froze.

Lyris set down her second crate with extreme care. “Oh,” she said softly. “That seems expensive.”

The girl sucked in a breath, saw the roomful of staring faces, and bolted.

She was surprisingly fast.

She spun on her heel, kicked off her shoes, and fled down the side passage with the panicked grace of a deer who had just realized it had wandered into a tax office.

“Don’t let her reach the chapel stores!” Varkas barked, already moving.

“Why the chapel stores specifically?” Nate demanded, sprinting after him.

“Because if she is what I suspect she is, half the consecrated stock in this fortress will react!”

That seemed like useful information to have earlier, but Nate was too busy not eating stone floor to say so. He tore after Varkas through the corridor while Lyris glided at a frankly insulting pace and still somehow kept up, her crates of probably felonious vegetation trailing obediently behind.

The fortress had changed so much in the past weeks that chasing an intruder through it felt like sprinting through a half-finished fever dream. Old demonic statuary glowered over freshly scrubbed floors. Velvet runners covered cracked basalt. Wall sconces lit automatically as they passed, bathing the halls in warm amber. Somewhere below, from the dungeon route, rose a faint chorus of distant screams, then applause. Business was thriving.

They rounded a corner just in time to see the girl throw herself at another corridor arch.

The arch flashed.

She bounced off it with a squeak and crumpled to the carpet in a swirl of brown skirts.

ACCESS DENIED: Private Residential Hall

Reason: Not on approved guest list.

“Seriously?” she cried at the empty air. “What kind of castle has opinions?”

“Mine,” Nate panted.

She looked up.

For one suspended heartbeat she simply stared at him.

Up close, she looked even less like a servant. Her hands were too smooth despite the deliberate dirt smudged on them. Pearls gleamed at one ear where she had forgotten to remove a single earring. And there it was again—that faint brightness around her, subtle now, but impossible to miss once seen, as if dawn itself had been tucked under her skin.

Her eyes flicked from Nate to Varkas’s horns, then to Lyris’s cool silver stare, then back to the looming walls around her. Panic climbed visibly up her throat.

“Please don’t kill me,” she blurted.

Varkas crossed his arms. “That depends heavily on why you infiltrated the fortress of the former Demon Lord disguised as laundry.”

“I did not disguise myself as laundry,” she protested, scandalized despite herself. “I disguised myself as a servant carrying laundry. There is a difference.”

“An increasingly academic one.”

“General,” Nate said.

Varkas fell silent, though his expression suggested he was generously allowing the interrogation to continue inefficiently.

The girl pushed herself upright and backed against the barrier-sealed arch as though proximity to the magical wall might somehow protect her from the three people cornering her. “I am not here to cause harm. I swear it. I only needed a place to hide for a little while. Just a few days. A week at most. Then I shall be gone and none of you need ever see me again.”

Lyris’s gaze traveled thoughtfully over the fading silver feathers. “No,” she said. “That is not true at all.”

The girl winced.

“You’re radiating enough sanctified mana to make my shade lilies wilt from across the corridor,” Lyris continued. “If you stay in the pantry, the flour will probably become medicinal.”

“The pantry?” Nate repeated.

The girl looked away.

“You were hiding in the pantry?”

Silence.

“Since when?” Nate asked.

Her silence deepened into confession.

He dragged a hand over his face. “How long have you been living in my pantry?”

“Two days,” she said in a very small voice.

“Two days?”

“I was careful!”

“You were stealing bread!”

“Only the heels! No one likes the heels!”

Lyris nodded with maddening seriousness. “Fair.”

Varkas stared at the girl as if reconsidering several of his assumptions about the threat level. “Two days,” he repeated. “You infiltrated our perimeter, avoided the gargoyle sentries, bypassed warded halls, and survived the lower kitchen staff… to live among pickled onions?”

Color rose to her cheeks. “I was improvising.”

Nate looked at the hovering blue prompt still waiting for him to choose whether to deny room access and felt a tired, hysterical laugh clawing up through his chest. Of course. Of course his broken kingdom-building ability had somehow evolved into a magical anti-squatter system specifically for runaway holy maid impostors.

“All right,” he said, exhaling. “New plan. No one kills anyone. No one sanctifies the pantry. We go somewhere, sit down, and have a conversation like relatively normal lunatics.”

“I object to ‘relatively,’” said Lyris.

“Overruled.”

He selected YES on the prompt. The barrier dissolved with a shimmer, then reformed not around the arch but gently around the corridor ends, sealing the area so she couldn’t bolt again. The girl looked from one glowing wall to another and seemed to realize with fresh despair that the castle itself was taking Nate’s side.

“You can do that?” she whispered.

“Apparently,” Nate said. “Come on. Let’s talk before my building gets any more judgmental.”

She came because there was nowhere else to go.

The solar had once been a war chamber. Nate had had it renovated into something that split the difference between lordly office and cozy lounge: dark wood tables, deep chairs, windows looking out over the inner gardens, shelves crammed with maps and reports and a ceramic mug someone had painted with a dragon breathing fire over the words WORLD’S BEST LANDLORD. The dragon in question denied involvement every time he asked.

The girl sat on the edge of a chair as if expecting it to turn into a trap. She had been given tea and a plate of sliced fruit. She was eyeing both with the suspicion of someone raised among poison tasters.

Varkas stood by the hearth like a disciplinary spirit. Lyris had claimed the windowsill and was absently feeding one of the glowing slices of fruit to a vine peeking from her sleeve. Nate took the chair opposite the girl and set his awful coffee aside.

“Let’s start with your name,” he said.

She hesitated.

“If I give it,” she asked carefully, “will it stay in this room?”

“Depends,” Varkas said. “Is it attached to an army?”

She flinched, then gathered herself with visible effort. Whatever breeding she had, it emerged in moments like that—in the straightening of her shoulders, the way her fingers stopped trembling when she laced them together, the deliberate lift of her chin.

“Seraphina Valecourt,” she said. “Third daughter of House Valecourt of the Helios Theocracy. Candidate of the Seventh Consecration.”

The room went very still.

Outside the window, some bird trilled in the garden and cut off abruptly, as if even it knew when politics had entered the room and wanted no part of it.

Nate had learned enough in the last month to understand every word of that sentence was trouble. He might not know the details, but he knew the shape of them. Theocracy meant religion. House meant nobility. Candidate meant succession. Consecration meant holy office. Third daughter meant there were almost certainly family members behind her with opinions, resources, and legal paperwork sharp enough to skin a man alive.

“A saint candidate,” Varkas said at last.

Seraphina’s throat moved. “Yes.”

“That explains the feathers,” Nate murmured.

“There were feathers?” she asked weakly.

“A concerning amount, yes.”

Lyris tilted her head. “I have never seen a saint candidate in a pantry before. Usually they travel with banners.”

Seraphina closed her eyes. “I am aware this is undignified.”

“Undignified isn’t really the word I’d use,” Nate said. “Potentially continent-wide diplomatic incident, maybe.”

She opened her eyes again, and whatever fragile composure had been holding her together cracked.

“Then please,” she said, voice suddenly raw. “Please understand that I would not have come if I had anywhere else to go.”