Chương 60: I Don’t Know

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles It seemed Lunessa and I had made it back early, or maybe something had happened to Evelisse and Nyx out there. Though I couldn't picture much that would slow those two down since a former Hero and a demon princess sounded like an absurdly strong pairing. Not that I actually knew what 'demon princess' meant.

Last time I'd asked, she'd shut it down before I finished the sentence, but I would ask her again soon; I couldn't keep knowing nothing about her, especially when everything about it seemed to point back at me somehow. Later, maybe, after she was back. After that talk Evelisse wanted to have. I was lying on the rug, which was thin but somehow still soft, the kind of thing you didn't mind being flat on. Mel and Lunessa were upstairs.

The room next to Nyx's was supposed to be Mel's, but she'd gone up with Lunessa instead, and I had a vague idea why; she probably didn't love the idea of sleeping one wall away from the Dark Lord who lived in the living room. Should I be doing something productive? What even counted as productive here? Raising the Terror Level, technically, but Evelisse wanted to talk that through when she got back, and I didn't have a decent idea for how to do it anyway.

Still, brainstorming ideas would be better than lying on a rug doing nothing. I pushed myself upright, sat cross-legged, and had just started turning over ways to spread fear that didn't involve leveling somebody's home, when I caught sight of Mel on the staircase, peering around the corner of the wall at me with a hard, narrow look.

"... What are you doing?" I asked. She stepped out. She'd changed into casual clothes not unlike Evelisse's, a white shirt and shorts, probably from Lunessa's seemingly endless supply. She crossed to the dining table and took the chair nearest me, sitting down like she'd come to deliver a verdict.

"I want to know what you did to Eve."

"What? Which thing? We did a lot together this past week." That came out very wrong. Mel's expression curdled, her mouth pressing into a flat line, and I watched her arrive at the worst possible interpretation.

"No—not—I mean," I said quickly, "I chased off Luke when Evelisse was in danger, and then she came and talked to me, and then we talked again after the attack, and I went to Eremiah and ran into her by accident helping Lunessa, and then she saved my life when Ywain came. That's what I mean by a lot. Events. Things that occurred. In sequence."

"I want to know what you did," Mel said, unmoved, "that made her choose your side." I thought about it.

"... I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Her voice sharpened.

"I know you did something. Everything you just listed, it all happened because of something you must have done to her." The Eye of Love surfaced in my mind, but it hadn't worked. Should I just tell her that? Sit here and explain that I'd tried to force a feeling onto Evelisse, tried to make her love me, and it had failed, so everything after was real? Except… was it real? There it was again, that same worm of doubt. What if the Eye had somehow worked just a little?

Not enough to make her love me, but enough to make her interested, enough to tilt her toward hesitating when she should have struck? If that were true, then everything I'd been telling myself was— No. I needed to check that with Nyx first. Or Greg. One of them had to know whether there was a way to tell.

"Why aren't you answering?" Mel leaned forward.

"Are you trying to invent some excuse—""No! No, I just…I don't know." Her eyes stayed fixed on me, waiting.

"If I had to point to one thing," I said, "it'd be saving her from Luke. The Cerberus. That's where it started."

"And saving someone once is enough to make her abandon the Church? Enough to make her hold back every single time she could have killed you?" Mel's hands had knotted together on the table.

"If she's wrong about you, and I still think she might be, then every one of those hesitations could mean the end of the world. She might be giving up the world for you. Do you understand that?" I turned that over for a moment.

"I don't think you should put it like that."

"Excuse me?" Her voice cracked.

"What do you even know about her? Are you telling me that I—""I don't know much about Evelisse." I kept my voice level.

"Honestly, I know almost nothing. Only that she used to be the Hero. That she has an older sister. That she was given to the Church when she was very young." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Mel's jaw was tight.

"But I think," I said, "I can relate to her."

"... Relate?"

"It's a hunch, mostly. From the start, she seemed…different. From the Heroes I know."

"The Heroes you know?" Mel's brow furrowed.

"You've met the previous Heroes?" Crap. My mouth had gotten ahead of my brain again.

"I mean—my idea of them. What a Hero's supposed to be like." I recovered as smoothly as I could, which wasn't very good.

"The point is, when we first met, she seemed... tired. Like, tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep." Mel said nothing, but something flickered across her face.

"We talked, once. I asked her about it, and she didn't deny it." I met her eyes.

"As much as the Church means to her, I think the weight of it had started to crush her. I think she'd been carrying it for a long time and never once let herself say so."

"But Eve knows what it means to be the Hero." Mel's voice had risen, defensive.

"She's known since the day she took up the mantle!"

"Of course she knows. That's exactly the problem. She knew, so she never complained. She just kept shouldering it, quietly, until it started eating her alive."

"And you don't think you're the one who put that idea in her head?"

"I don't know. I keep telling you that because it's true." I spread my hands.

"All I ever did was ask her what she wanted."

"I think you influenced her." Mel's words came fast now.

"I think you made her believe your idea of what she wanted was really hers."

"I asked her a question. I never—" I stopped. The Eye of Love flickered up again, and I felt the hypocrisy of it, and I made myself finish anyway.

"I never forced her into anything." Mel opened her mouth.

"Listen." I interrupted before she could begin.

"What she did, it could be for a dozen reasons, and every one of them is hers, not mine. I know you're suspicious of me. I get it, since I'm the one who benefits from all of this, so of course you are suspicious of me. But I didn't do anything underhanded to Evelisse. Maybe she's here out of responsibility. Maybe she was worn down by a role she never chose and finally got tired enough to step out of it." Mel watched me, quiet now.

"You think I enjoy this? The destruction?" I shook my head.

"I don't. I hate it, but it's the only way I get strong enough to not die. Neither of us picked the parts we got handed. That's why I can relate to her. That's why I noticed something was off, and why I asked. Because I recognized it." The words were coming more easily now, and I let them.

"Whatever her reasons for choosing this side, she made it as clear as anyone can that she chose it herself of her own free will. I know it's going to be hard on her, which is exactly why I'm going to do everything I can to make sure she never regrets it." I held Mel's gaze.

"I'm not going to fail her. Whatever it takes. And if you're staying here too, I will do my best to not fail you too." Mel didn't answer right away. She sat there looking at me, and whatever she'd walked down those stairs expecting to find, I got the sense it wasn't this; a Dark Lord who couldn't tell her what he'd done to her best friend, because the honest answer was…something, yet hoped to be nothing. Slowly, some of the hardness went out of her shoulders. Not all of it, but some.

"Maybe once she's back, you should talk to her about this yourself. I've said what I can." Right as the words left me, I felt the mental link click into place, Nyx's voice threading into my head.

"Where are you?" I got to my feet and walked toward the door, passing Mel, who I imagine wore a fairly baffled look at me abruptly standing and wandering off mid-conversation.

"We're done. Back at the house," I thought back.

"You finished out there?"

"We got the plants. But there's a monster chasing us, and it won't quit. We figured putting distance between us and the peak would shake it off. It didn't."

"A monster? Like a boss guarding the loot?"

"A two-headed wyvern. Enormous. Evelisse took a hit, but—""What? Is she okay?"

"Of course she's the first thing you—" A beat.

"—shit. Crap. I mean. Let me finish."

"... That sounded weird."

"She's fine. Should be. She got knocked down and I've been keeping the thing's attention off her since. The point, pig-brain, is that this monster is stronger than we counted on, and it is giving us serious trouble."

"I'm coming. Can you send me your location, the way you did last time?"

"That's exactly what I'm about to do. Get here fast. It's big, so once you're close you'll spot us flying circles around it, or whatever it is we're doing by then." The link cut out. I went back in. Mel had returned to her chair, hands clasped together on the table, watching me.

"Evelisse is in trouble. The peak's guardian went after them." I was already moving.

"I'm heading out to help." Mel was on her feet at once.

"What?" She came around the table toward me.

"Let me come too!"

"No. Stay here." I shook my head.

"I can fly faster if I'm alone""But—""It'll be all right." I could understand where she was coming from, more than she probably realized. She'd sat here the whole day while the rest of us went out and did the work, and now her friend was hurt somewhere she couldn't reach, and it had happened right on the heels of me standing there more or less lecturing her, in a way that could easily have sounded like I was telling her she didn't care enough about what Evelisse wanted.

I was fairly sure that wasn't true, but I could see how the words might have landed that way. Still, if a former Hero and a demon were struggling against this thing, there was nothing Mel could do up there.

"I'll bring her back safe. I promise." I held her eyes when I said it. Mel stared at me a moment, the worry plain on her face, warring with something else. Then, slowly, she nodded. I summoned the location-sharing window, and there it was—Nyx's location, pinned somewhere out past the mountains. Then I took off.