The Dark Lady's Guide to Villainy [Book 1 Complete] [Dark Lord, School, Romance]

Lucian was already standing, gesturing expansively. "Friends! Beautiful friends! Have I told you lately how much I appreciate you all?" He grabbed Valerius in a hug that left scorch marks on the shadow demon's perfect shirt. "Valerius, you pretentious git, you're actually wonderful underneath all that aristocratic nonsense!"

"Lucian, you're on fire," Valerius said, trying to extract himself. "Literally. My sleeve is smoking."

"Life is fire! Passion! Joy!" Lucian spun around the room, leaving small burn marks on the carpet. "Why do I write such depressing poetry? 'Ice breaks, hearts ache'—what garbage! I should write about sunshine! Butterflies! The way Valerius's eyes sparkle when he thinks no one's looking!"

"Oh no," Mo said.

"Oh, YES!" Lucian countered, now practically glowing with heat. "No more metaphors about frozen hearts! From now on, only volcano poetry! 'Your love erupts like magma from my soul…'"

"Please stop," Valerius begged, though his cheeks were suspiciously pink.

"'…burning through the permafrost of my depression!'" Lucian finished triumphantly.

That's when they heard it—heavy footsteps in the hallway, getting closer fast.

The door burst open without warning. Cordelia stood there, nostrils flaring like a predator catching a scent.

"I smell it," she announced, eyes locked on the cup in Lucian's hand. "Volcanic soil. Dragon coffee. Who dared start without me?"

"We didn't invite…" Mo started.

"You gave ICE BOY my coffee?" Cordelia's voice dropped to a dangerous register. "The volcanic blend is MINE by territorial right!"

Emily, looking terrified, quickly poured another cup. "There's plenty! See? No need for violence!"

Cordelia snatched the cup and downed it in one gulp. For a moment, nothing happened. Then she breathed out a stream of fire that definitely violated several Academy safety regulations. The flame formed into the shape of a dragon mid-flight before dissipating.

"Acceptable," Cordelia pronounced, then looked at Lucian, who was still radiating heat and writing love poetry in the air with finger-flames. "Though watching Frostbrook melt is almost worth the insult. How long will he be like this?"

"Unknown," Emily admitted. "The interaction between ice magic and volcanic coffee wasn't exactly tested..."

"I LOVE EVERYTHING!" Lucian declared, reaching toward Nyx.

"Alright, we can probably assume that Lucian is safe… -ish," Emily said quickly. "Who wants to test the Temporal Blend?"

"Let me!" Nyx said, already reaching for the cup. "Can't let Lucian have all the fun."

Emily poured carefully. "The brewing temperature determines if it speeds up or slows down perception. This batch should slow things down, make everything feel extended..."

Nyx took a sip. For a moment, nothing happened. Then their form flickered, and suddenly there were three of them—but not copies. Three distinct temporal versions existing simultaneously.

"Oh no," Past-Nyx said, cringing at something.

"This is weird," Present-Nyx observed, looking at their other selves.

"Don't date him!" Future-Nyx shouted at Past-Nyx.

Emily's eyes went wide. "That's not supposed to happen. The blend should affect perception, not... split temporal existence..."

"It's my shapeshifting," all three Nyxes said in unison, then looked disturbed at their synchronization. "The coffee has probably interacted with my fluid nature and…"

"…created temporal division instead of…"

"…perception alteration. Every embarrassing thing I've ever done is happening RIGHT NOW."

Lucian, still radiating heat, tried to hug Present-Nyx's. "Group hug! All three of you!"

"It burns!" Present-Nyx screamed.

"This ends badly," Future-Nyx warned.

"This is hilarious," Past-Nyx said thoughtfully.

"Should we try the actual Frostbrook blend to counteract it?" Mo suggested, watching Lucian write flaming hearts in the air.

"Counteract Lucian or Nyx?" Valerius asked. "Or both?"

"NO!" Lucian clutched his cup protectively. "I refuse to return to the cold! Let me be warm! Let me feel! Let me write terrible poetry about feelings without metaphorical ice shields!"

Cordelia took another sip from her cup, burping out a bit more dragon-shaped fire. "Fifteen pounds of the volcanic blend," she announced, ignoring the chaos. "I'll pay in advance."

"The cost would be…"

"Irrelevant. Twenty pounds. Final offer. And I want exclusive dragon territory distribution rights."

Emily looked at Mo helplessly. Mo shrugged. When dragons wanted coffee monopolies, you negotiated carefully or got eaten.

Cordelia took another sip. "Fifty pounds! Not an ounce less, not an ounce more."

"There's one more blend," Emily said carefully, pulling out a container covered in warning labels and what looked like a chastity belt for coffee. "But we're not opening this one."

"The aphrodisiac blend?" Mo asked.

Everyone turned to stare at her. Including all three versions of Nyx.

"I warned that it ends badly…"

"You know it was an accident!" Emily said quickly. Too quickly. "The temporal differential in Dimension 7-Gamma created an unexpected mutation."

"I thought you were going to investigate the real reasons behind that mutation," drawled Nyx. "I was really curious to find out. That's a pity we'd never get to the bottom of that…"

"You know perfectly well what incited that mutation!" exclaimed Mo. "Look at Emily, she's turning red!"

"The coffee enhances emotional receptivity and lowers inhibitions," Emily was saying with robotic voice as if she was reading a report. Then her face brightened as she figured out how to switch attention from her night with Mo and the consequences of their passion. "Grimz tested it on volunteers!"

"He did what?" Mo interrupted.

"Ethically! With consent forms! In triplicate! They all wanted to be of good use to their Dark Lady!"

"Alright. Whatever. So?"

"The effects were... significant. One cup and people started confessing their deepest feelings. Two cups and there were several marriage proposals. Three cups and… we locked it away after three cups."

"Why did you bring it here? You should have probably destroyed it. That would be a sensible thing to do," Mo said.

"But the research applications..." Emily started.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"I'm a succubus. I don't need coffee doing my job for me. Destroy it."

While they were arguing, none of them noticed all three versions of Nyx converging on the locked container.

"This is a terrible idea," Present-Nyx whispered.

"The best terrible idea," Past-Nyx corrected, fingers already working on the locks.

"We're going to regret this for eternity," Future-Nyx added, but helped anyway.

The triple assault on the wards was too much—Past-Nyx distracted the protective spells with what had worked before, Present-Nyx picked the physical locks, and Future-Nyx grabbed the pot knowing exactly where Emily would move to stop them.

"NYX, NO!" Emily shouted, but it was too late.

All three versions had poured cups and downed them simultaneously.

The effect was immediate. All three Nyxes shuddered, then spoke in perfect, terrifying harmony:

"Dorian was my first kiss and I've been in denial about wanting him back ever since the Ball even though he's a prejudiced traditionalist nightmare but gods his jawline could cut glass and when he ran from my masculine form it broke something in me that I've been pretending doesn't exist!"

Everyone froze.

"Well," Past-Nyx said dreamily, "since we're sharing..." They looked directly at Lucian. "Your poetry is actually beautiful when you're not trying so hard to be tragic."

Present-Nyx turned to Mo: "I'm terrified you're going to leave us behind when you become too powerful to need friends anymore."

Future-Nyx faced Lucian: "When the ice breaks next winter, remember that shadows can hold more than secrets—they can hold anchors."

"How peculiar…" Emily said. "The coffee's properties were clearly working at full strength. But also, they seem to mix with the aspects of the other blends."

She stepped closer to the three Nyxes, who forgot about everything else for a moment and focused on each other. Emily slowly moved around them with a grace of a scientific predator, collecting every minute detail and reaction.

"She's a keeper, you know," Cordelia elbowed Mo.

Lucian, still radiating volcanic heat, gasped. "Nyx? Is that true? Because I've been…"

"Don't," Valerius said quickly, but Lucian had already grabbed one of the abandoned cups.

"NO!" everyone shouted, but Lucian drank deeply.

His eyes went wide. "You were winter's cruelest wind to Mo, burying her under ashes of hatred! I burned—actually burned—watching you craft suffering into an art form! But Hells help me, even as I composed odes to your downfall, I was already rhyming 'shadow' with 'echo' and 'sorrow' with 'tomorrow' because your darkness made my frost sing symphonies I didn't know existed!"

Valerius went very still. Then, with deliberate calm, he took the cup from Lucian's hands.

Mo lunged for it. "Valerius, don't…"

Too late.

"I was a dick because my parents spent seventeen years telling me that showing weakness meant death," Valerius said in a rush, his usual composure crumbling. "My father beat compassion out of me before I could walk. My mother taught me that affection was currency to be hoarded, never spent. I tortured Mo because she was everything I'd been taught to despise—kind, genuine, refusing to play the games that were beaten into me."

He turned to Mo briefly. "That doesn't excuse any of it. I was cruel because cruelty was safe, and safety was all I knew."

Emily grabbed the cup, trying to secure it, but Cordelia simply plucked it from her hands.

"My turn," the dragoness said, and took a deliberate sip.

The reaction was different from the others—slower, stranger. Cordelia's pupils dilated into vertical slits, then went completely round, then shifted into shapes that shouldn't exist. She spoke in Old Draconic first, a rumbling series of sounds that made the air vibrate, before switching to Common:

"The hoard whispers at night. Not the gold—gold is silent—but the things between the gold. The spaces. The absences." Her voice had taken on an odd resonance, like she was speaking from inside a cave. "Fifty years I've been collecting emptiness, thinking it was treasure."

She blinked and looked directly at Mo, but her eyes seemed to be seeing through time. "You're the first person in decades who wasn't afraid of me. That's why I invested. Not for profit. For the echo of what we had when the dragons were young."

Cordelia shook her head as if clearing smoke. "Also, I can taste colors now. Your…" she made an uncertain gesture pointing vaguely in Mo's direction. "…magic tastes purple, Mo. I expected more umami."

The dragon touched her throat, looking confused. "Did I just... did I tell you about the hoard whispers? Dragons don't... we don't speak of what the hoard whispers. That's the first secret. Before fire, before flight, first we learn to never speak of what whispers between the gold."

She stared at the empty cup with something approaching respect. "This coffee bypasses more than inhibitions. It reaches the lizard brain. The original brain. The part that existed before we learned to lie."

Mo stared at the chaos around her—Nyx's three selves now group-hugging while sobbing about Dorian, Lucian and Valerius kissing with enough passion to create steam clouds, Cordelia looking genuinely shaken by her own revelation.

"This is what I meant about destroying it," Mo said, watching her friends' deepest secrets spill like wine at a demon bachelor party. "It is like we just weaponized therapy. In the most unsafe environment."

Emily clutched the nearly empty pot. "It may be. But this is also exactly why you aren't going to destroy this stuff." She carefully sealed the remaining aphrodisiac coffee in three separate containers, each with different enchanted locks. "But as soon as I'm back at Blackthorn Keep, I'm hiding these in three different dimensions. And I'm not telling anyone which ones."

***

On the morning after the aphrodisiac coffee incident—which everyone agreed to never discuss despite the fact that Lucian and Valerius were now closer than before—Mo woke to find the Academy Tribune already materialized on her bed table.

The headlines practically screamed for attention:

"LESSER DRAGON CLANS CLAIM THE HOARDS REQUESTED REPRESENTATIVE DISTRIBUTION"

Mo skimmed past that kind of stuff—demon realm politics as usual, really. Dragons fighting over gold, servants demanding rights, ancient houses squabbling over who got rights to what first. Standard Tuesday in the demon realms.

Then she saw it, buried on page three:

"BLACKSTONE DOMAIN MOBILIZES ARMIES—'D.E.V.I.O.U.S. IS AN ACT OF WAR'"

Below it, a smaller headline:

"LORD BRIGHTWATER'S DEVIOUS EXPERIMENT SPREADS TO THREE NEIGHBORING TERRITORIES"

"Oh, hell," Mo muttered, sitting up properly.

Nyx materialized in her doorway—finally back to a singular form. The temporal split had worn off after twelve hours of embarrassing confessions.

"Seen the paper?" they asked.

"Just the headlines about my framework apparently causing war."

"Skip to the editorial," Nyx said grimly. "Page four. Darian's outdone himself. I wonder if that's Dorian's bile rubbing off of him."

Mo flipped to the editorial section and immediately wished she hadn't:

"The nouveau-magique plague spreads unchecked, transforming loyal servants into demanding pseudo-equals. But let us be clear about what these creatures truly are: tools that have forgotten their purpose. One does not negotiate with a hammer that refuses to strike. One does not debate with a mop that demands wages. The Nightshade approach treats these implements as if they were people, as if generations of breeding for servitude could be erased by a magical accident.

When goblins gain magic, they remain goblins—automatons, creatures designed for labor. With their small statures and quick fingers that evolved specifically for cleaning narrow spaces and sorting papers. When kobolds manifest abilities, they are still kobolds—beings whose highest aspiration should be maintaining their masters' estates. To call them 'people' is to demonize cattle. To give them rights is to declare your furniture deserving of a vote.

The comparison is not cruel; it is accurate. Just as one would not consider the feelings of cockroaches before extermination, one should not hesitate to restore order among servant species who have forgotten their place. They are vermin who have learned tricks, nothing more.

History teaches us what happens when inferior species gain power above their station. The Crimson Purges of 1823. The Necessary Corrections of 1456. Or even the Feast of the Void that happened almost two thausand years ago but still looms over the High Council. Each time, society learned the same lesson: hierarchy exists for a reason. Some are born to rule. Others to serve. And those who refuse their natural place must be reminded of it, by blade if not by boot.

The Nightshade Empire's 'D.E.V.I.O.U.S. framework' promises equality where none should exist. The is quite fitting, but it hides the real ugliness of the approach. It isn't about hiding the purpose from the servants. It isn't about taxing them for the benefits they get. The real DEVIOUSness comes from compliance of those few demonic Houses, who shortsitedly think that their short-term profits justify betraying the whole demonic society and tradition.

But nature abhors such perversions. The correction, when it comes, will be swift and thorough. One does not negotiate with cockroaches. One exterminates them."

Mo's hands shook. She'd read about this before, on Earth. Rwanda. The radio broadcasts calling Tutsis cockroaches. The deliberate dehumanization that preceded genocide. How calling people insects made it easier to justify killing them. Darian wasn't just writing inflammatory nonsense—he was laying groundwork for mass murder.

She threw the paper across the room, where it flew through the open door, barely a few centimeters above Nyx's head, and landed in the common room of their dorm suite.

"Isn't that a bit of overreaction?" Nyx asked. "I know you don't appreciate that kind of language with your Earth sensibilities. But it isn't an unlikely example for a demonic newspaper either."

"He's calling servant species cockroaches," Mo said. "Saying they're tools that forgot their purpose. Vermin who learned tricks. I've seen too many examples of that kind of rhetoric—not in demon history, but Earth's. Every genocide starts with making people sound like pests. First comes the language, then comes the killing."

Nyx's form solidified instantly, all pretense of cheer vanishing. Their edges went sharp, dangerous. "Well, when you put it this way… that's probably not just bad journalism anymore."

"No. It's not."

"So, that's what? Preparation?"

Mo picked up the paper again, studying Darian's byline. This wasn't passion or prejudice. This was strategy.

"He knows exactly what he's doing," she said. "But we don't know if he's just testing the ground, or if there's something more dangerous behind that."