CHAPTER 58: CHAPTER 58: BADGE OF HONOUR

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. All hell breaks loose. In those moments, it becomes do or die. And Aiden, as weak as he might have been in flesh, never allowed weakness to be final.

He was a creature of shifting ground. In chaos, he adapted. When rules boxed him in, he rewrote them. When the board seemed too heavy with pieces not his own, he flipped it over entirely. A storm in human skin—that was his truest strength.

But tonight, as he stared into the mirror, it wasn’t chaos that defined him. It was something else, something smoother, almost sickening in how easily it had fallen into place.

Sometimes the world bent as if it belonged to him already, like its currents were tugged by invisible strings he alone could pluck. And maybe they were.

The sigil gleamed back at him from the mirror, so bright it nearly blinded him. The badge was no simple trinket. Silver, sharp, alive with the clash of two swords locked in eternal struggle, and at the center—the duchess’s own emblem, a flame stylized into wrath itself. His chest rose and fell as he studied it, as though the badge breathed with him, as though it were mocking him.

Knighted.

The word itself was absurd on his tongue. He had whispered lies in candlelit corridors, stolen affections from trembling maids, bent wills that once thought unbendable.

But this? Never, not in all the winding shadows of his life, had he thought he’d stand here, wearing silver that elevated him above servants, above peasants, above common men.

Not knighted by another knight. Not sworn in by some baron or high baron seeking glory through ceremony. No—he had been raised by Sabrina herself. The Duchess of Wrath. Sabrina of the Merlin bloodline, whose name dripped from the lips of nobles in books and records, whose lineage clawed into the heart of history like roots of a poisoned tree.

Her hands had touched his shoulders. Her voice had sealed the rite. And in her eyes... oh, in her eyes he had seen more than ceremony. He had seen hunger, a purple fire that flared with such voracious heat that, for a breath, he thought she had already fallen into his Temporary possession.

But when he checked, when he tested the web of charm, she remained beyond the leash. Still free. Still dangerous. Still within Charmed Possession. Where his rein around her neck was still not tight.

That was worse.

Because desire unclaimed was volatile.

This knighthood had not been Sabrina’s charity—it was her move in a game. He had staged this performance, after all.

The weakened garrison, the subtle pruning of the military tree, heads rolling discreetly, knights quietly stripped of purpose. He had meant to harvest them later, to lure them as he had the butlers and maids, one by one, until the structure bent under his sway.

Yet Sabrina, with one hand, handed him a shortcut. A knight’s badge. A seat at the table. A role carved into the duchy itself.

It should have felt like triumph. Instead, it felt like shackles made of silver.

"I will find a way," he whispered into the mirror. His voice was steady, but the words themselves were jagged glass in his throat. "Like I always do..."

The problem was not the badge. The problem was what the badge demanded. A knight was not merely rank—it was sword, it was code, it was the skeleton of honor itself. And in all those things, Aiden was not merely ignorant—he was grotesque.

The game of the sword? He did not know it. The way of the warrior? He could not mimic it. The word honor itself turned his stomach. The concept was poison to his veins.

Every tale of valor he had overheard in the servants’ quarters made him want to laugh until his ribs cracked. Honor was a parasite nobles invented to excuse their own violence. He had no use for it.

Yet now, clad in this title, he was expected to breathe it, wear it, bleed it.

Aiden closed his eyes and for a moment tasted bile rising up from his gut. The tea he had shared with Sabrina and Augustus earlier churned as though his stomach sought to vomit the very notion of knight out of him.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would be transferred. No longer a shadow in the servants’ wing, no longer the silent predator among butlers and maids. He would walk among soldiers, men who thought their heads brushed the sky simply because steel weighed down their hips. They worshiped hierarchy, reveled in their ability to press their boots upon peasants’ throats.

And now, he would stand among them as one of their own.

He ran a hand across the surface of the mirror. The glass was cool, almost icy, as though the world behind it held no warmth.

For a fleeting second, his reflection blurred, and he thought of another boy—a boy from years ago, barefoot, nameless, staring at the armored knights who marched past him in some forgotten street. He had looked up then too, with a mixture of awe and resentment. That boy had been invisible. Now, the invisible had become the adorned.

Knock. Knock.

"Aiden! You in there? Don’t forget our night out plan... it’s already late." John’s voice carried through the wooden door, warm and annoyingly carefree.

He remembered, his promise.

The sound jolted him back. Aiden glanced down at the badge again, then carefully slid it into his trousers. It felt heavier than steel.

From the shelf, he took up a small vial—his own perfume, hand-brewed. Not perfume, not truly. Distilled from his own blood, alchemized into a scent that was him, amplified.

Sweet and metallic, dark yet inviting, a fragrance that caught in the lungs of those who passed him and made their hearts stumble. Everyone adored it, though none knew why.

He pressed the spray against his neck, against his wrists. The liquid bit cold at first, then bloomed into warmth that felt almost alive, like veins opening to whisper through the air.

"...Coming asshole.... Five minutes," he called back, his voice smooth, betraying none of the turmoil inside.

He capped the vial, setting it down with a quiet clink. His eyes flicked to the mirror one last time, his ember bar glowing golden and full on his wrist.

[Ember: 100%]

"Noice..." he rasped, voice low and dripping with smug hunger. He stalked to the bed, his half-unbuttoned shirt revealing a glistening, chiseled chest, the city of Leonidus buzzing beyond the velvet-curtained windows.

Slap!

His hand cracked against Luna’s plush, quivering buttocks, the sound echoing like a whip.

He was a knight of the the Merlin fief, and his vow to protect them, honour them, placing their order and needs before himself. His numerous promises...he would fulfill them all.

Of course, Starting with Luna, the heir to the duchy.

"Ahh!" Her moan was raw, desperate, as thick streams of her arousal spilled from her red, swollen cunt, dripping down her trembling thighs.

Bent over the bed, her white gown was a tattered ruin, torn at the hips to expose her creamy skin. Her silk panties hung from one ankle, a forgotten relic of her surrender.

Her wrists were bound tight behind her back with coarse red rope—she’d begged for it, pleaded for the bite of the knots as he pounded her into oblivion. That fateful night had awakened something feral in her, a craving for his brutal touch that she couldn’t shake.

Aiden’s eyes raked over her, drinking in her submission. Her crimson hair clung to her sweat-soaked back, her lips parted in a silent plea for more.

She was his to take, her body a wellspring of the "juice" he craved, and he’d claim it whenever the urge struck—her gasps, her moans, her very essence his to devour.

Luna’s tired, lust-drunk eyes followed him as he adjusted his cufflinks, ready to step into the neon-lit night.

"Come on Aiden, we are getting late!!.."John echoed again, desperate as usually.

"I said wait, Cunt!!!" Aiden beloud.

She quivered with his yelling, Her body twitching with the aftershocks of their savage fucking, each pulse a reminder of her surrender.

"I’m... I’m only doing this because you swore you wouldn’t touch my mother," she whispered, her voice breaking as another wave of ecstasy shuddered through her.

Aiden’s lips curled into a wicked grin. His fingers tangling in her damp hair, yanking her head back until her neck arched, vulnerable and exposed.

Fulfilling his role as her knight.

Her wide eyes locked onto his, brimming with fear and a twisted, burning need. "Come on...." he purred, voice a silken blade, " I made a vow, to protect you..." He voiced, pulling her hair tight.

"...and your mother, so why. would. I. Ever, do such a thing?"

Luna’s lips quivered, her breath hitching. "...just..don’t ... please..," she stammered, barely audible.

"What?" His tone was sharp, commanding.

"Please!" she cried, voice raw with desperation.

"....okay , okay...such a cry baby, I get it, You only want me to be your knight in shining armor, such a hooger. " he growled, releasing her hair. He left her sprawled across the silk sheets, wrists still bound, her body a trembling monument to their debauchery.

"Don’t worry ...I save dessert for last." He muttered, walking to the door.

Luna’s gaze clung to his back, his words no longer entering her ears as her eyes blazing with a hunger only his cruelty could feed.

The words of abuse to his actual abuse—his relentless grinding, the way his cock filled her throat until she choked, the stinging slaps as he called her tool, slave, whore—tightened her core, made her ache for more.

Thud!

The door slammed shut, sealing Luna in the dimly lit room. She buried her face in the pillow, the scent of their coupling still heavy in the air. She craved it—she don’t know why but she did.

the bruising grip of his hands, the forceful thrusts that left her raw, the way he fucked her like a beast, with no mercy, with no restraint, like she was a just a thing, not a human, but just a bloody thing and again, she liked it, no loved it, addicted to it.

But his last words echoed to her ears. The words she somewhat didn’t understand. Or didn’t want to understand.

".... Dessert?"