Murphy was no longer the sheltered little lord he had once been, but this was the first time he had truly made a divine appearance before a crowd.
The vampire lord cared a great deal about appearances, so he had even done his homework, finding an empty place to rehearse a few times and make sure his "debut" went off without a hitch. But in truth, Murphy knew it was all just "going through the motions."
After all, as the God of the Underworld, the Lord of the Yellow Springs, and the Master of Decay, his authority over the underworld and the affairs of the dead was absolute and beyond dispute.
He could have woken up one day after sleeping with Triss or Adele—or all three of them—then, driven by some uncontrollable morning grumpiness, declared a few unlucky souls enemies of the underworld. But there was no denying that ritual mattered.
Murphy felt he was now a major figure on the continent. Whatever he did, shouldn't he have at least a little dignity?
And that was how Lady Effie had ended up risking herself to lure two golden undead out of hiding.
But as it turned out, Lord Murphy's authority over the dead really was as useful as a rule of the universe.
The moment his projection appeared, the two ancestral undead, who had already raised their weapons to hack Effie to death on the spot, immediately began convulsing. Their deathly energy went berserk, forcing the mighty golden beings to their knees.
And as soon as Murphy said, "You are free," the deathly Bind Source had personally placed upon the two golden undead shattered in an instant, as easily as a sheet of paper pierced through with a finger.
Lady Effie, standing right there, could even clearly hear the inaudible