I AM A MAGE BUT WITH MILF SYSTEM

Chapter 894: Intimate battle

“Then the court will drag your house into the mud,” she said. “Choose.”

The room felt smaller under the weight of that choice.

The Duke took one hard breath, then another.

When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.

“If I agree to this, it does not mean I will force Kraven.”

The Queen Mother raised a brow. “Explain.”

“I will not stand in your way,” the Duke said, each word clearly costing him. “I will not expose what you are doing, and I will not use my authority as his father to stop you from approaching him. But you will have to make Kraven agree yourself. I will not order my son into your bed.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “So you accept the demand, but place the difficulty on me.”

“I accept enough to keep you from burning this house down tonight,” the Duke answered. “That is all. If Kraven refuses you, that is his refusal. Not mine.”

For a moment the Queen Mother studied him in silence. Then the shrewd smile from before returned.

“How noble,” she said. “Even in surrender, you try to keep one clean hand.”

“Call it what you like.”

“I will,” she replied. “Very well. I accept those terms.”

She paused for a moment.

“But you will not warn him in a way that turns him against me before I even speak. And if he asks whether you know, you will not play the righteous father and pretend this arrangement never touched you.”

The Duke’s mouth tightened. “And in return?”

“In return,” the Queen Mother said, “I keep your treason in my throat instead of pouring it into the King’s ear.”

The Duke looked away first.

“Then we have an understanding.”

“We have the beginning of one,” she corrected. “Whether it holds depends on how wisely your son answers when I come for him.”

Neither of them spoke after that.

**

Outside the hall, Julian had his mind racing.

This was a change of events that he could not have predicted even in a million years. He had returned to the guest wing expecting some kind of political secrets.

Instead, he had uncovered a buried treason and a demand that dragged both father and son into the same net.

The blackmail was not aimed at the Duke alone. It was aimed at Julian too.

If the Queen Mother were to truly release the Duke’s secret and Kraven’s old scandal together, House Astran would not merely suffer embarrassment.

It would be destroyed overnight.

The present King’s friendship would mean nothing against a story of treason with a former queen.

The combination of old crime and the son’s notorious desires would be enough to strip legitimacy, isolate allies, and turn every rival house into a circling blade.

Vanessa’s engagement would collapse.

Liam would not even need to act. The house would do half the work of ruining itself.

Julian could not allow that.

**sigh**

The closer he came to his true goal, the more difficult the path became. That was the pattern forming around him now. Every step toward the Servant of Death seemed to open another fracture inside the duchy.

He exhaled slowly.

“Well, I could agree to her demands,” he told himself.

The thought arrived cleanly. If the price of silence was submission, then paying it might preserve the structure he still needed.

From a purely strategic view, endurance was sometimes cheaper than open conflict.

But…

He shook his head almost at once.

That would be a double-edged sword.

No. A triple-edged one.

Agreeing would not end the threat. It would hand the controller of their doom to someone else. The Queen Mother would no longer need to guess whether Astran could be pressured. She would know. One night would become a precedent.

And from the conversation he had just heard, she already showed the marks of obsession. Not simple lust.

A woman who could wait decades, then demand both father and son in the same breath, was not a woman who would be satisfied by a single carefully negotiated surrender.

There was no telling what she would demand next.

If she could use treason once, she could use it again. If she could use Kraven’s reputation once, she could reshape it whenever refusal angered her. Agreeing might buy silence for a week, a month, perhaps even through the royal visit. It would also place a collar around the house and give her the string.

Julian’s eyes narrowed in the dark.

There was another problem. The Duke had already yielded enough to let her approach “Kraven.”

That meant the next move would come toward him directly.

She would test him. And because Julian was not truly Kraven, every response would have to be measured twice: once as the role he was playing, and once as the man hunting a far greater enemy behind the Crown Prince’s shadow.

He could refuse her outright and risk immediate exposure of the Duke.

He could play along just far enough to learn her limits.

Or he could turn the blackmail back on her before she finished setting the board.

None of those paths were clean.

Julian stayed against the wall a moment longer, listening for the movement.

Inside the side hall, chairs shifted. Footsteps could be heard.

The private meeting was ending. Soon the Queen Mother and the Duke would leave that room, and the corridor would no longer be safe for lingering.

He drew his presence tighter, already preparing to vanish before they emerged.

One thing was certain now.

The royal visit had stopped being only a matter of troops, marriage, and the Servant of Death. A second war had opened inside the house itself, and the Queen Mother intended to fight it in the most intimate battlefield she could find.

Julian would not hand her the victory just because the first strike had been unexpected.

But he also could not ignore the truth she had forced into the open.

If House Astran fell before he finished his hunt, then every careful step he had taken in Kraven’s body would be wasted.