Reincarnated As An Archmage’s Daughter

They ended up in front of an inn sometime after midnight.

Hania couldn’t feel her legs anymore. Val had carried her for the last mile, which was just as well, her body had apparently decided that walking was now optional. The building before them was called the “Golden Barrel,” a name that promised nothing and delivered even less.

He knocked four times, loudly.

The door creaked open. A sleepy, balding innkeeper squinted at them through the crack, his nightshirt rumpled and half-tucked.

“You. Mortal,” Val declared. “You shall provide the finest suite in this hovel. One with heavy drapes—black silk, preferably, and a large, soft bed. Do it quickly, before my patience begins to wane.”

The innkeeper blinked. “Sir, we have three rooms and a hayloft. I don’t have silk. Who are you to talk like that?”

“I am a Lord of—”

“Oh, please forgive him!”

Hania lunged forward, grabbing the innkeeper’s nightshirt with her tiny, trembling hands. Her eyes were wide and watery, radiating pure misery.

“Please, sir! We’ve been traveling for days. My uncle… he’s not well.”

Val froze mid-pose, his finger still pointed dramatically at the ceiling. “I am perfectly—”

“Shhh, Uncle Val! Don’t let the voices get loud again!” Hania shot him a look of panicked pity, then turned to the innkeeper’s wife, who had just appeared on the stairs clutching a rolling pin.

“He’s my only family left. Ever since the incident in the Northern mines, he’s been like this. He was a brilliant scholar once, but now his mind is like a broken mirror. He thinks he’s an ancient king.”

She wiped a tear from her cheek. “And the sun… he’s deathly allergic to it. His skin blisters at a single ray. He hasn’t seen daylight in three years. We travel only at night because if light touches him, he starts screaming about the Burning Eye of the Abyss and tries to fight the clouds.”

The innkeeper’s wife lowered her rolling pin. “Oh, the poor mad soul. And look at his clothes—all that velvet and lace in this heat. He’s completely lost it, hasn’t he?”

“Totally gone,” Hania agreed in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. “He spent our last copper on that coat because he thought it would protect him from ‘astral demons.’ Please, sir. Just one room. Somewhere dark. I’ll scrub your floors for a week.”

Val stood paralyzed. He, the High Lord Valthazar, was being described as a sun-allergic lunatic who bought clothes to fight astral demons.

“See?” Hania whispered to the wife, pointing at Val’s twitching face. “The tremors are starting. He’s about to have a ‘regal episode.’ We need to get him into the dark immediately.”

“Bless your heart, child!” the wife cried, grabbing a key. “Barnaby, help the poor gentleman upstairs. Don’t mind his tone. He’s just confused.”

“Right this way, you… Your Majesty,” the innkeeper said.

Val allowed himself to be led toward the stairs. His theatrical pride lay dead on the ale-stained floor. He didn’t react when the innkeeper patted his shoulder and said, “There, there, sir. The demons can’t find you in the storage room. It’s got no windows at all.”

At the top of the stairs, Hania looked back and gave the couple a brave, tragic little wave.

The door clicked shut. Val turned slowly. His healthy tan clashed with the deep, humiliated red of his ears.

“Mentally unstable?” he whispered. “A ‘regal episode’? Astral demons?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Hania hopped onto the lumpy bed. “Half-price room, and the wife’s bringing stew. Plus, they think you’re too crazy to be a threat. No one reports a madman to the local scouts.”

Val sank onto a rickety stool, burying his face in his mahogany-tinted hair. “I am a Scourge. Valthazar the Eternal.”

“You’re Fluffy the Sun-Allergic Uncle,” Hania corrected, pulling the thin blanket over her legs. “Now get some sleep. We have to be up by sunset. We’re going to the Southern Capital tomorrow, and I need you to be in top crazy-scholar form.”

He moved before she finished the sentence. In a flash of shadow, he was over the bed. One hand pinned her small shoulders to the mattress. The other tilted her head back, exposing her throat.

“You have forgotten yourself, little snack.” His voice was no longer theatrical. “You have mocked a Lord of the Bloodline. Dragged my dignity through the filth of this hovel. You think because I slept for centuries, my fangs have turned to glass?”

He leaned in. The tips of his canines grazed her neck.

“I am not a tool for your ambitions. I am not your pet.” His grip tightened. “I could drain you in three heartbeats and leave your father a husk to mourn. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”

Hania didn’t scream or struggle. She looked up into the swirling abyss of his red eyes. Slowly, she raised her hand.

Val tensed, expecting a spell.

She patted his head and smoothed down a stray lock of his mahogany hair.

“I know you wouldn’t,” she whispered.

Val’s breath hitched. The murderous tension in his arms wavered, then receded. He released her and retreated to the corner, his shadow elongating jaggedly against the stone wall.

“Why?” His voice was low. “Why didn’t you flinch? Why were you so sure?”

He leaned forward. The moonlight from the hallway crack caught the unnatural sharpness of his features.

“I am a creature of hunger and shadow, Hania. I do not have a conscience. I do not feel the pity your human stories attribute to my kind. I could have ended your story right there.”

Hania pulled the rough wool blanket up to her chin. She looked at him with a sleepy, almost bored expression.

“You’re right. You could kill me. You’re faster and stronger.” She paused. “But you wouldn’t. Not now.”

“Because I’m lonely?” Val sneered, though the bite was gone from his tone. “A sentimental guess.”

“No.” Hania closed her eyes. “Because you were surprised. You’ve spent centuries being feared or worshipped. When I called you Fluffy and made you a mentally unstable uncle, I became the first thing in five hundred years that you didn’t understand.”

She opened one eye. “And a creature as prideful as you can’t kill a mystery until he’s solved it. You’re too curious to let me die yet.”

Val stared at her, his jaw tightening. Her confidence wasn’t the frantic bravado of a child. It was like a gambler who knew exactly which cards she was holding.

He opened his mouth to retort, but she had already turned over, presenting her back to him—the ultimate display of trust, or the ultimate insult.

“Go to sleep, Val. The sun is coming, and your fake tan needs time to set.”

Val sat in the darkness, stunned into frustrated silence. He stayed awake, his mind spinning with questions he couldn’t ask a sleeping child.

In the quiet of her own mind, as sleep blurred her thoughts, Hania didn’t feel as brave as she looked.

I know you wouldn’t, she thought, her consciousness drifting. I know, because I saw it.

In her old life, in the final chapters of one of the manhwa she had obsessed over before the hospital lights went dark, there had been a hidden lore entry: “The Lost Lord of the South.” A vampire who, in a forgotten timeline, had protected a fallen princess. Not out of love, but out of stubborn, arrogant refusal to let the world destroy the only person who wasn’t afraid to laugh at him.

She hadn’t just guessed. She had spoilers.

I know exactly who you are, Valthazar. Her breathing slowed into deep sleep. You just haven’t realized it yet.