FROST
Chapter 104: A King’s Mercy, A Demon’s Despair

Chapter 104: A King’s Mercy, A Demon’s Despair

At first, it was subtle. A strange weightlessness in his limbs. A distant warmth blooming low in his spine. Then came the vertigo, the tilting sensation that the ground itself had lost its loyalty to his feet. His hand shot up to grip his temple, but the disorientation was swift and unforgiving.

Within seconds, the mighty Lunar King crumpled to the cold stone floor, the folds of his cloak splaying beneath him like a silken eclipse.

Seravine caught his fall not with alarm—but with timing.

She knelt beside him slowly, not out of panic, but precision. Her fingers hovered over his chest, watching his breath shallow with each rise. His body was burning now. The fever had taken hold.

She had seen it before.

After all, she had given it to him.

The Crimson Pulse.

A demon-forged elixir—banned in nearly every realm, even the lawless ones. Brewed in the seventh kiln of Lust’s Keep by the incubi apothecaries of the Crimson Order, it was whispered about in gasps and warnings. Some said it was distilled from the heartblood of a fallen seraph, others claimed the final ingredient was the death-wail of a banshee in heat.

Regardless of its origins, its effects were undeniable.

Seravine hadn’t even needed to pour it into his mouth. A single touch—skin to skin—had been enough. Absorbed through the brush of her hand on his bare arm, the potion had obeyed her intent, its magic already slithering through his veins.

It did not ask permission.

It never did.

It obeyed only the will of its wielder.

And now Caspian’s body lay helpless beneath it—stirring with heat, twitching faintly as if responding to some unseen pleasure, a carnal awakening blooming under his skin. Even in unconsciousness, his flesh responded. Blood surging. Muscles coiling. His breath hitched again—barely audible.

Seravine turned her gaze away. Not in guilt, but in restraint.

She hadn’t done this for lust.

She wasn’t even a real succubi—only forced to play the role for survival. She hadn’t chosen the path that led her to this moment, but she would walk it to its bitter end.

Caspian was too close now. Too noble. Too kind. If he retrieved the child, he would leave—and he would take all her chances with him with the thought that she was only doing all of this to quench or sexual thirst.

If she was going to complete her mission...

If she was going to feed those forty-six hungry mouths back at the orphanage...

If she was going to escape the wrath of the Elven King, who promised her soul to the sacred tree’s roots—ten she had to do this.

Now. Before his honor woke with him and ruined everything.

So she remained by his side, silent as the potion did its work—time stretching, bending, wrapping him in a dream laced not by his own desires, but by hers.

Seravine looked around once more, sharp and silent, ensuring the shadows were empty and the flickering wisps of warding light couldn’t pierce this far into the stone-bound dark. Then, breath held, she began to drag Caspian’s half-limp form into the hollow at the edge of the chamber—where even the ghosts of moonlight dared not follow.

With care, she laid him down, unfastening the cloak from his broad shoulders and tucking it beneath his head like a pillow. His silver-blonde hair spilled against the fabric like moonlight bleeding into night. He looked too divine like this—beautiful and vulnerable. Too real.

She shouldn’t look.

But she did.

Their eyes met—barely. His were heavy-lidded, pupils dilated, lashes fluttering as if his body warred against some overwhelming tide. The Crimson Pulse had rooted deep in him now. She could feel it: his blood rising, breath hitching, skin hot and damp with its unnatural fever.

She told herself it was just the potion.

He might see her. He might know.

But she didn’t care anymore.

Her fingers reached for the hem of her thin veil of a top, and she peeled it slowly from her body, exposing skin sculpted from sacrifice. Her chest—full, blessed, revered even among the lesser succubi—rose and fell in time with her guilt.

No one had ever questioned her beauty.

They only questioned her right to live.

She straddled him gently, the fabric of her skirt pooling around his hips like dusk-colored water. Her palms flattened over his bare chest, tracing the lines of muscle, the warmth of him seeping into her fingers. She could feel him—feel him—responding through the layers still between them. Her heart thundered with every pulse of his.

Then, she looked again.

Caspian’s gaze was still on her. Glazed. Clouded. But there was something in it—something sharp and trembling. Not arousal.

Fear.

He wasn’t reaching for her.

He was pleading.

Seravine froze.

The pulse of the potion drummed louder in her ears, whispering of need, of purpose, of the mission she was meant to fulfill. Her hand drifted to the zipper of his royal trousers—but just as her fingers brushed the metal, a memory cut through the heat like lightning:

A little girl in the slums. Her horns crooked, tail missing, clothes stitched from scraps. Laughing, bold and brave, declaring she’d change the world. She’d feed the orphaned. She’d change the story.

"Not all demons are evil," she said, "and I’ll prove it, even if I have to steal from demon kings."

Seravine’s breath caught.

Her fingers stilled.

What was she doing?

This wasn’t power. It wasn’t survival. It was betrayal.

Not just of him—but of herself. Of that little girl she used to be.

With a quiet sob, she slid off him, retreating to the corner of the dark hollow and wrapping her arms tightly around her exposed chest. Her breath trembled, and her eyes stung.

She would not cross that line.

Even if it meant failing Asmaros. Even if it meant turning to ash.

Because Caspian—this man who had never mocked her horns, who had never flinched when her disappearing tail accidentally hit his back—deserved more than the monster she had been told to become.

Caspian shut his eyes the moment Seravine walked away. He hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even moved—mostly because he literally couldn’t. The damned potion didn’t just toy with his masculinity; it hijacked his entire skeletal, muscular, and nervous system like some overenthusiastic demon chiropractor trying to rewire his soul through arousal.

He was basically a glorified, sweaty statue with a very awkward situation in the pants department.

"Brilliant," he thought, internally screaming. "Taken down not by sword, not by magic, but by a glorified aphrodisiac brewed in some horny demon’s basement."

Seravine probably didn’t notice, but her tears had started falling long before that—back when they’d looked at each other during their walk, when her grip on his arm tightened just a little too hard.

He hadn’t asked. It felt too invasive, too cruel to pull her pain into the open when she was clearly holding herself together by a thread.

But now, lying in the cold shadows of the dungeon, reality hit him with brutal clarity.

Every desperate attempt Seravine had made to conceive a child from a royalty—it wasn’t out of lust, nor ambition. It was survival. Desperation. Maybe even redemption.

It must have been a matter of life and death.

Caspian exhaled shakily and opened his eyes, only to immediately regret it. The effects of the Crimson Pulse still lingered in his body—his nerves ached, his skin was far too sensitive, and worst of all...

His manhood, stubborn and still half-awake, was trapped beneath the tight confines of his royal belt.

He winced.

"MEN," he mentally groaned. "Why must betrayal always end in inconvenient erections?"

Caspian waited for the effects of the potion to wear off, counting every second like a monk waiting for enlightenment—or in his case, for his dignity to return. Based on his totally-not-guesswork math, it took about thirty agonizing minutes for the cursed brew to finally leave his bloodstream.

Carefully, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, groaning like an old man at a tea party. The first thing he did was check his pants, praying to every moon deity in the cosmos that little Caspian had finally gone back to sleep.

Satisfied—mostly—he turned, scanning the dim dungeon for Seravine. But she was gone. Vanished. Probably melted into the shadows like the overly dramatic demoness she was.

He was just about to stand when his fingers snagged on something soft. He squinted at it under the flickering wisp light.

"A rope?" he muttered, lifting it with both hands.

But upon closer inspection—and a very unfortunate whiff—he realized it wasn’t a rope.

It was her top.

Caspian immediately flung it away like it burned him. His mind, however, betrayed him with a vivid memory of Seravine’s chest hovering above his—glorious, unapologetic, and unfairly proportioned.

His eyes snapped wide, and he looked down in horror as he felt a familiar twitch in his trousers, poking his navel.

"You unfaithful shit!" he hissed at his own body, slapping a hand over the offense like a disappointed parent disciplining a rebellious child.

Since Caspian had already wasted a good thirty minutes lying in what could only be described as the most humiliating state of his royal life, he had no choice but to press on—even with that situation still mildly... present.

He could’ve left Seravine behind. Truly, he could. And yet, some irritating, persistent voice in the back of his mind kept nagging at him. Telling him the woman was in far deeper trouble.

With a heavy sigh, he threw on his cloak, adjusted his belt with great restraint, and began his reluctant search. The dungeon was a miserable maze of damp stone, curling vines, and carpets of moss that squelched underfoot. Every turn looked the same. Endless walls, no windows, no air. It was like wandering through the intestines of a moody giant.

But then—finally—his eyes caught a faint glow in the distance. A soft light, pale and pulsing, seeping through what looked like an exit with no doors.

Caspian stepped through the threshold—and his lips parted in astonishment.

Before him lay a breathtaking view: a hidden sanctuary bathed in moonlight, where crystalline trees sparkled like frozen stars and a glassy lake mirrored the heavens above. The air shimmered softly, humming with the kind of ancient magic that made even Caspian’s cynical bones tingle—a place so untouched by time it felt like stepping into a dream.

"Estes must’ve scammed me," he muttered, brow twitching. "How the hell would a demon live in a place like this?"

"We do live in a place such as this," came a voice beside him—smooth, familiar, and far too close for his sanity.

He didn’t have to look. He knew it was Seravine.

But he looked anyway.

And promptly regretted everything.

Caspian stiffened—literally and figuratively—when he saw her, still topless, casually standing like the moonlit goddess of awkward erections. His entire royal dignity screamed as he instinctively staggered a step back, very nearly hurling himself into the lake just to preserve what little remained of his virtue.

Because if his little prince saluted one more time without permission, he was going to exile himself forever.

Caspian turned farther away sharply, his gaze fixed on the glimmering lake. The moonlight danced over the water’s surface, mocking the storm twisting in his chest. He clenched his jaw, trying to keep the heat from crawling back to his face—but then he heard it.

A breath. A fragile sound breaking apart.

"I—I’m so sorry, Your Highness." Her voice trembled, low and raw, like a wound trying to speak. "I didn’t mean to violate you or your honor like that. I just... I needed it to survive."

Caspian’s lips twitched. There it was. The truth he had already suspected, now wrapped in guilt and desperation.

"I was cursed," she continued, her voice cracking with each syllable. "The only way to lift it... was to bear a child—your child. A child of royal blood."

She took a shallow breath, then another, as though the confession itself stole the air from her lungs.

"I only had a few weeks left. So I—I was desperate. So desperate, I forgot what it meant to be good... or kind... or human."

Her sobs echoed softly in the sanctuary, the sound so heartbreakingly out of place in a land this beautiful. And yet, they belonged—just like she did.

Caspian’s chest tightened.

He knew curses.

He knew what desperation looked like when wrapped in prophecy and chained to time.

His fingers slowly unfastened the clasp of his cloak. The fabric was heavy, warm with his body heat, still dusted with dungeon stone and the scent of iron. He didn’t look at her—couldn’t. He kept his eyes fixed on the far end of the lake, careful with each step as he moved toward her.

Then, without a word, he draped the cloak around her trembling frame.

Seravine froze. Her hands gripped the edges of the cloak as if afraid it would vanish if she exhaled too hard. Slowly, her tear-streaked face tilted up toward him.

He still wouldn’t meet her gaze.

"It’s okay," he said, voice low, almost reluctant, as though the words weighed more than his crown. "I know what it’s like. To carry something inside you that you never asked for. Something cruel. Something that takes... everything."

He swallowed thickly, the memories returning unbidden—the Queen’s distant smile, the hollow cries of a child burdened with destiny, the silence of a court too afraid to say the truth aloud.

"I’m here to break my curse," he murmured, "not just for me, but for the people who believe I still can."

Seravine stared at him—at the furrow of his brows, the tense line of his jaw, the barely visible pain behind his calm. And then, with no control left in her, she smiled.

Not out of joy.

But because, in that moment, she saw something rare.

Not just a man.

Not just a King.

But someone who, even when broken, still tried to carry the brokenness of others.

"You truly are a good King, Caspian," she whispered.