Chapter - 24

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Breathe in, breathe out. Cycle the air through his lungs, across the heart and along the veins. Settling firm fingers over his pounding temples, Sirzechs massaged soothing circles. Keep calm and carry on.

Nope.

Kicking out a leather clad boot, Sirzechs smashed his father's three hundred year old armchair. The crackling of snapping wood couldn't quite cover the sound of his ringing shout. "Fuck." The Satan cursed, grinding the heel of his thigh boot into the splinters. "Fuck!"

Grayfia tilted her head, considering the wooden ruin before dismissing the other servants with a look. While the silver haired maid and Queen might usually scold her husband for the lack of control, sometimes it was just better to let him rage. Bottling up emotions rarely did anyone any good, and it did Sirzechs in particular even less good.

Despite his overall laid-back approach to life, Sirzechs was rather hot blooded. It might be because there were so many other things that Sirzechs was willing to let roll off his back, but he was unable to cope so calmly with the problems that struck near to his heart. A bad investment that ended up costing him a dozen tons of gold? Such was life. Having to bargain his son's marriage off for politics? If only heads could roll.

It wasn't that conceptually Sirzechs hadn't been aware of the possibility. His own marriage for love was an oddity in the Underworld, even if it had managed to become somewhat of a folk tale for the commoners. But his parents had married for political alliance, and so had their parents. Even concubinage was often motivated by potential political benefit. It was the norm for the nobility, and the Satan Lucifer was aware that it probably would have been in his son's future too.

But he hadn't expected to have to engage Naruto so soon. The boy was only thirteen! If someone had told Sirzechs' he'd be bartering off his son's hand when the boy was still young, he would have at the earliest expected to be doing it when Naruto was sixty. Thirteen, and getting married by the age of twenty; was scandalously young. Devils aged the same as humans for the first fifteen years, but after that they only gained about a year in appearance for every fifteen they lived until they were sixty. Anything earlier than that resembled feudal human traditions of child weddings.

If not for the implicit blackmail, Sirzechs' wouldn't have agreed come Heaven or high water. But ensuring that peace continued was more important than the happiness of any one boy – even if that boy was Sirzechs' son.

Azazel had come through and managed to deal with Kokabiel. The total disappearance of the fallen angel made Sirzechs suspect the Governor-General of the Grigori had assassinated him. Kokabiel's disappearance hadn't disbanded his adherents though – it had emboldened them, and even three years later Gehenna was still suffering the price.

Fallen angels continuing to quietly plunder the human world had blown back and left a steaming pile of shit in Sirzechs' lap politically speaking. While the other Satans backed him to the hilt and relentlessly supported his peace efforts, that didn't make the Crimson Satan an unassailable dictator. He was merely one of four generals of the devils' armies, and only had a vote equal to that of any other Duke-ranked lord in the Diabolical Senate. Like the four Dukes in the Senate, the Satans had some voting power, but having three votes per Satan out of the total pool of eighty four in the Senate didn't exactly make their power bloc the majority.

The Great King Bael alone had equal power to the Satans or the Dukes with twelve votes. The single Archduke had six votes, and three Princes with four votes each could form a bloc to equal the four Satans. The six Marquises had two votes per elector and eighteen Counts who were each given a single vote and tended to attach to the larger political blocs.

This original draft for the Senate that was creation after the rebellion against the Old Satans had thirty-three electors for the thirty-three remaining clans, but seventy-two total votes in honor of the 72 Pillars that were assigned based on title. Sirzechs and his friends had been riding high on their victory when they'd proposed it, drunk on dreams of a more egalitarian future. It had been a bit of a shock when the Senate expanded the voting pool and gave them equal voting power as the Dukes.

At the time, Sirzechs had thought it a gesture of camaraderie. Years later and much more jaded, the Crimson Satan knew the truth. By giving them votes, the Senate had managed to integrate them into the system. Doing so staved off any potential Satan revolt aimed at restoring the original power associated with their rank, because they knew the New Satans would prefer schmoozing to warfare, and by opening the avenue to politicking, they closed the avenue of armed conflict.

Sirzechs' had needed votes to quell the motion that would have legalized covert control of human governments once more and demanded an amendment to the working peace treaty with the fallen angels and Heaven. The Satans had been backed by their clans, Sirzechs' uncle Lord Bael, and Marquis Belial, but they'd only managed to reach five votes short of the majority.

They'd needed more support. Support that Marquis Phenex was willing to provide as soon as Sirzechs agreed as Naruto's father to betroth him to the man's daughter, along with the consent of Zeoticus as head of the Gremory clan.

It was a deal with a devil, as the humans were inclined to say. Lord Phenex had brought his collection of small lordlings into the fold. Archduke Agrares' motion had failed, but now Sirzechs – and Naruto by proxy – were bound into a strangling compact.

Ravel Phenex was an unknown quantity. Rumors painted her as a slightly spoiled if good natured girl, and a pretty child that would grow into a beautiful woman one day. The bloodline she brought to the Gremory family and the potential power of immortality were legendary. She was by traditional expectations a good match.

But Naruto hadn't chosen her, and that made Sirzechs feel less like a triumphant statesman and more like a failure as a father.

"He is not going to blame you." Grayfia offered as her husband's ire slowly began to wind down. The Queen of Annihilation was not any more pleased at the prospect of her son's engagement, but she was more pragmatic, and had been prepared for it long ago. "Naruto is a good boy. He will be shocked. He may even be angry for a time. But he will not refuse. Not when the future of the clan and the peace you've worked so hard for hangs in the balance."

Sirzechs breathed heavily, tortured syllables winding up from his throat. "I know. That's what makes it even worse."

*

Drawing her white fur coat tighter around her shoulders, Rias exhaled and watched the mist of her breath sweep away in the cold night breeze. Winter in the human world was striking with all the fury nature could muster, and the frost seeped so deeply into her bones that the Ruin Princess wondered if there might be a Yuki-onna nearby.

"Put your hat on before you freeze, ahou." Sasuke groused, shoving Rias' pale bearskin ushanka down over the crown of her crimson head. The frowning crinkle around the Uchiha's lips told a tale of annoyance, but the careful way Sasuke adjusted her cap and coat divulged a warmer truth.

Her Pawn was… odd. It was difficult for Rias to put one label on the young man. Cruel words came easily to Sasuke's mouth, but his actions were generally far more considerate. He seemed to swing between treating her like a naïve child to be looked after and a more mature but distant colleague. Emotions were held at arms' length, except when Naruto was involved.

It was frustrating beyond measure that Rias had him in her household for three years but still felt like she was only just scratching the surface of whatever secrets he kept locked up behind his coal dark eyes. Secrets that he seemed to freely share with her nephew, for whatever reason. The only real comfort was that Sasuke rebuffed every offer she'd made to trade him to Naruto's peerage. For whatever reason, the Uchiha seemed to prefer to serve under her rather than serve under his friend.

A final tug of fur below Rias' chin, and Sasuke backed off with a vaguely satisfied look. It was little more than the easing of the tightness in Sasuke's face and a quiet softness to the Uchiha's eyebrows, but Rias was learning to read those expressions.

Her reading was still less than Naruto's apparent ability to translate the most minute changes in her Pawn's voice or face into prose, but it was miles ahead of what Rias had been able to do when she first met him.

Eying Sasuke as he closed up the button of his own fur-lined overcoat, Rias gave him a breezy thanks.

The Uchiha just grunted in reply, wordless syllables escaping his tight jaw.

Rias shrugged and turned away to scan the tree line.

The territory of the Gremory family in the human world was far more fractured than their unified enormous domain in Sheol. Enclaves here and there all across the world required far more effort to monitor, but her clan ensured it was done. Disturbances were relayed nearly instantly, which was why Rias had bestirred herself from her private estate and crossed into the human world.

Any sign of aggression from Heaven or the Church needed to be thoroughly investigated. The trilateral peace treaty may be inching ever closer to being signed, but it was not signed yet, and a large discharge of holy power on Gremory lands was a cause for concern.

Snow crunched beneath their boots as Rias stepped forward. Sasuke's footfalls were heavier, breaking louder under the pressure of his military thigh-highs. Touching the wellspring of destructive power running through her veins, Rias briefly debated summoning a light before dismissing it as unsound. They didn't truly need it, especially with the moonlight, and if there were humans from the Church stumbling around Rias didn't want to give them warning of their approach. The howling wind would cover their footsteps, but only a blind man would miss it if she lit up her fingers with sorcery.

Silence hung heavy as the pair of devils moved through the trees. Wind howled through the Hokkaido night, biting at the exposed skin of their faces, but neither gave into the urge to conjure a warming flame.

"There." Sasuke directed, settling a gloved hand over the hilt of the katana she'd gifted him and motioning with a chin through the tortured twisting of the leafless trees. It took her a moment to catch sight of what her pawn was talking about, but there it was.

Breaking up the smooth white carpet of midwinter snow was a flash of cream and blue-black. Rias turned towards it, cautiously moving past bare trunks and over the rolling banks of snow creating by the shifting winds. The blur slowly resolved itself as she came closer, Sasuke on her heels when she crested over the last bank.

It was a young human boy that couldn't be any older than Naruto was. Snowflakes piled up over his form, almost completely burying the blonde in an icy grave. Rias didn't consider herself a leading authority in the biology of humankind, but even she could tell the boy was dying.

The stink of holy energy over the young body was thick, but dissipating by the second. If she had to guess, Rias would assume the dying child was the source of the disturbance in her family's wards.

Less of a dramatic discovery than Naruto might have wished for, but it was what it was. As soon as the blonde expired, Rias was confident the wailing of the clan wards would cease.

Such a sad world though. Children were supposed to be cared for, not sacrificed on the altar of power or sent out to die on the battlefield for the sakes of their ideologue caretakers.

Rias decided bearing witness to his quiet passing in the sleet was the least she could do, Sasuke's looming impatience behind her be damned. Was that man's heart made of steel? He could use a spot more compassion, especially considering it had been kindness that motivated Koneko to pull him out of the river in the first place.

The creak of joints in the quiet air seemed absurdly loud as the boy begin to move. Achingly slowly at first as the bone and cartilage in his neck ground, but painfully gaining hard-won speed. Clenched eyelids beneath thin wheat-yellow brows trembled and crept open.

Grey eyes that burned met her sea-green gaze. The hunger in the boy's light steel orb was breathtaking. It was the craving for life and power and vengeance all wrapped together in painful determined tangle. The blonde child was only able to hold the stare for a heartbeat before the strength left him and his young body surrendered to death.

Such aching resolve shouldn't be wasted, Rias decided, lips quirking in a bitter smirk.