The mansion's eastern tower had seen better days.
By "better days," I meant "literally any other day in its centuries-long existence that did not involve dragons, betrayal, or me having a breakdown in the garden."
The door, once a proud oak thing carved with the Agro family crest, a snarling wolf surrounded by thorned vines, was now a splintered mess hanging off its hinges like a drunkard at a wedding. The stone walls were scorched black in places, streaked with soot in others, and decorated with what I really hoped was mud but was almost certainly not.
"Charming," Malphas observed from behind me. "Your family really knows how to make an entrance."
"We prefer 'intimidating grandeur.'"
"This is not intimidating. This is 'we forgot to pay the maintenance fees.'"
I shot him a look. He returned it with the serene expression of someone who had never paid a maintenance fee in his immortal life and never intended to.
