Page 6 of Cut of the Dark Elf's Blade

In the light, everything is bare. Exposed.

Right now, as I stand in the courtyard and look up at the windows of the manor, I feel like a yillese on a rock with a light shining over it. I feel like I am being examined. And I hate it.

Coming home is always difficult which is why I avoid it at all costs. I usually stay at my place in the city, but I had to come home this time.

It could not be helped, Luo. You had to do it,I tell myself. I clench my fists as I realize that I have called myself by the pet name my mother used to call me.

She has not used that pet name in years.

I do not like being home for several reasons, but the most important reason is that I will have to actually communicate with my mother and brother.

My father isn’t home, so he’s not here to act as a buffer between me and my mother’s disgust, which has become a separate entity from her and spits venom at me every chance it gets.

Rhiucra, who is a useless cunt, will spend most of his time acting like he is better than me, and I will have to share a kitchen with him, which I fucking hate.

You need to remain calm.

I know that my dark mood is compounded by the fact that I am exhausted from my last job. It was more physically taxing than I anticipated, and that, coupled with the weeks of mental preparation that I had to do, means that I am dead on my feet.

The sun shifts then, and I exhale with relief as gloomy clouds bloom and spill across the sky beautifully. A stiff wind picks up, and my skin prickles as the wind blows haphazard droplets of rain across the sky.

The droplets of rain disappear quickly, but the cool air remains behind.

I enter my family’s estate through a side entryway that my father had installed for my use years ago so no one knows that I have arrived home.

The sudden change in weather has lifted my mood, and the cold air has wiped away some of my exhaustion. My muscles still ache, and I doubt I can form very complex thoughts, but I can do the thing I like to do best.

Terrify the shit out of my family and the servants.

“Luocre!” My mother’s voice is high-pitched when I enter her private parlor. She drops the cup and saucer she was holding.

I lean against the doorframe.

She isn’t alone. Instead, one of her friends is sitting on another sofa with a scone in hand. The friend smiles at me, and I bow graciously to her.

My mother’s body stiffened the minute she saw me, and two zagfers appeared to wipe up the stained rug and pick up the broken teacup and saucer.

My mother’s breathing is shallow as I walk over to her and make a show of kissing her on the cheek.

I help one of the zagfer with the broken teacup, but the servant elf yelps with fear and lifts her skirts before running away. I cannot help but laugh at the sight of her. My laugh is loud and harsh, and my mother lets out a brittle gasp at the sound of it.

At the sound of me.

“How are you, Mother?”

Her friend is looking at her strangely. As if trying to figure out why she has reacted to me the way she has.

“I’m fine, Luocre, but I think it is time we wrapped up tea. Why don’t you show Zaria out?”

I help out my mother’s friend Zaria, and when I return to the parlor, my mother has vanished.

That old bitch has probably locked herself in her room, and she won’t come out till I leave.

I roll my eyes at my mother’s irrational behavior, and then I decide to stroll through the main mansion.

I do not know if the servants know what I am. I do not know if they know what I do. But I do know that they sense it. They sense the death and darkness that has settled comfortably on my shoulders. They sense the imminent danger that they are always in around me. They can sense that I have given myself, my soul, up to something…evil?

I do not know if evil is the right word for what I do, but evil might be the right word for what I am.

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