Chương 62: I Question Nyx

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles I have to say, cutting down a two-headed, dual-element wyvern felt pretty great. For a moment there I felt like an actual adventurer, the strong, capable kind, who'd fly back into town and get showered with rewards, or celebrated in the square as the hero who saved the day. Sure, I had caught a fireball to the face, but it barely did any damage.

Nyx and Evelisse had veered off in the other direction, most likely to land, so I angled my head down, kicked hard against the air, and dropped after them fast. Near the ground I flared out, turning my body upright and easing off until I was drifting, then settled the last few feet and touched my boots down onto the soil. They were already there. Nyx stood off to one side, rolling one shoulder and stretching out the joint like someone who had just worked a long shift.

Evelisse approached me, and before I registered what was happening, she had reached up and set her hand against my cheek, her fingers curving along my jaw, her face tilted up toward mine with concern. My heart did something complicated.

"Are you all right? That fireball hit you dead-on." She brushed her thumb across my cheek, wiping away what I assumed was soot from the blast, her touch light and careful. I was suddenly extremely aware of my own pulse, and had absolutely no idea what my face was doing.

"Y-yeah. I'm fine."

"Good." And then, maybe she caught whatever expression I was failing to control, she went still, and drew her hand back. A faint flush had climbed into her cheeks, and she turned her gaze off to the side, somewhere that wasn't me. I couldn't stop looking at her. For half a second her eyes flicked back, darting to mine and away again just as fast, before she angled her face further aside, the red in her cheeks deepening. That was... really cute. Nyx cleared her throat.

Both of us jumped like we'd been caught doing something. Which, to be fair, we did? Sort of?

"Are you planning to stand there like an idiot all day, pig-brain?" Nyx said flatly.

"Take us back, then the two of you can find a room and finish up whatever that was. We'd rather not still be standing here when the thing respawns."

"Respawns? It comes back?"

"It's a guardian. Of course it comes back." Huh, that sucks. Though, it meant running from that dragon at the Foaming Lair had been the right call all along. Killing it would've accomplished nothing; the thing would just respawn. We'd gotten the Pyrathite, and that was what mattered.

"Right. Right. Did you get the, uh, the plant thing?" The name had gone straight out of my head again.

"The Rosemarots." Nyx nodded at the backpack slung over Evelisse's shoulder.

"In there."

"Great. Then let's go home." I held out my hand, so they can hold my wrist easier. Offering it felt less awkward than standing there silently and making them come and grab onto me. Evelisse looked at it. Then at me. Then at my hand again, and then she took it. Not my wrist, my hand; her fingers curled around my palm, and without really deciding to, I folded my hand over hers. Crap, I just did that subconsciously for some reason. Her hand was warm.

I felt her fingers twitch, once, at the contact, but she didn't pull away. Should I let go? It felt like I should let go. But letting go now might be weirder than not, like I was making a thing of it, and she might think that I—"Are we leaving, or would you rather stand here holding hands until it comes back to eat us?" Nyx's voice cut clean through my thoughts. I glanced over. She had a firm grip on my wrist, the way this was supposed to work.

I probably looked like a complete idiot, so I teleported us out before I could make it any worse. The world shifted, a sharp lurch behind my navel, and then solid ground pressed up under my boots. The grassland and the wyvern were gone; we stood at the front of the house. The instant we landed, Nyx released my wrist and walked toward the door without a word. Lunessa and Mel were out on the porch, leaning over the wooden rail. The moment they saw us, they came at us in a hurry. Evelisse slipped her hand from mine.

Lunessa reached her first and pulled her into a tight hug, while Mel hovered close, watching the two sisters. Mel must have told Lunessa that Evelisse had been hurt. I could only imagine how that she might have been feeling. It had been one day since they joined me, and gathering the rare materials had been Lunessa's idea. If Evelisse had come to real harm chasing it, she would have taken that weight entirely onto herself.

I could picture the two of them on that porch while we were gone, Lunessa quietly blaming herself and Mel unable to talk her out of it. They held on to each other a while. Then Mel noticed the burns across Evelisse's hands and the bruising along her arms, and told her, gently, that they should get inside and see to it; she could manage a few healing spells. I followed them in a moment later. On my way to the dining table I glanced toward Mel's room, my old room, where the door was open.

Lunessa and Evelisse were sitting on the edge of the bed, and I saw that Evelisse had taken her chestplate off.

"You can't come in," Mel said, materializing in the doorway, and shut the door. I didn't plan to go in there anyway. I knew they needed to check her over and do whatever they needed to do. Guess the talk with Evelisse would have to wait a little longer. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I scanned the living room. No sign of Nyx. She must have gone straight back to her room. Talk about being a shut-in.

Which brought the whole demon princess thing back to mind. I had asked about it maybe two days ago, and she shut me down flat. Yeah, I should try again. If it had something to do with me, and every instinct I had kept insisting it did, then I had a right to know. I got up, crossed to Nyx's door, and knocked. To my surprise, it opened. I'd braced for her to ignore me entirely, or shout through the wood asking who it was.

Instead there she was, standing in the gap, one hand on the doorframe and the other on the door itself, regarding me with the specific loathing of someone yanked out of the best dream of her life.

"What?"

"We need to talk." Her expression flattened.

"Again? Shouldn't you be off talking with your sweet Evelisse?" I didn't understand why she had to say it like that. And she sounded genuinely irritated, too.

"I think you're keeping things from me. Things you shouldn't be."

"Such as?"

"The demon princess thing. Tell me about it." She shut the door in my face. What the fu— I knocked again. Nothing. I knocked a third time, harder, and finally the door swung back open.

"I told you." Her face came closer to mine with each word.

"That. Is. None. Of. Your. Business."

"Then why does it feel like it is? Like I've got something to do with it, somehow?"

"You're getting ahead of yourself."

"I'm asking so we can work better as a team. You can't keep hiding important things and expect us to—""You don't want to know about those things."

"That's for me to decide."

"And what I decide," she said, "tends to be more correct than what you decide."

"That's not how any of this works. How would I even know that, when you won't tell me a single thing?"

"Because it wouldn't matter anyway."

"If it doesn't matter, then why can't I know it?" Nyx opened her mouth. Closed it. It seemed like for once, she didn't have anything ready.

"Nyx, please. I have to know. If you don't want to tell me everything, fine, just part of it. Or just answer yes or no. Anything." She said nothing, her jaw set, eyes fixed on me.

"Things are about to get harder for us, and lately, you haven't been yourself."

"You talk," she said slowly, "like you've known me a long time."

"I haven't. But it feels like I have." Something shifted in her face.

"... That doesn't make any sense." She said it quietly. Not sharp, but almost unsettled. Which was strange enough that it caught me off guard.

"Look, I just think you're different. Even from the you I met that first day. I need to—"" Ugh. Fine. Come in." She turned and walked back into the room.

"And put the two goons in a deeper sleep while you're here." I followed her in and shut the door. She dropped onto the edge of her bed while I crossed to where Ywain's two party members lay. Still unconscious, but their lips had gone pale and cracked. Dehydrated, probably.

"Should we wake them up?" I asked.

"I'm worried they'll die if this keeps going."

"They'll be fine. Gas them, and we'll figure out what to do with them later." So I did. I breathed a thin cloud of Sleep Gas over the pair of them, putting them into deeper slumber.

"Okay, done." I turned back to her.

"Now, I'm hoping you'll tell me about... whatever's going on with you."

"No."

"What? You just said—""I said you could ask. I didn't say I'd answer." She folded her arms.

"You can ask questions. I'll decide whether I feel like answering them." Which meant she'd probably just refuse everything. I hoped not. But at least she was giving me something, which was more than I'd had five minutes ago.

"All right. This demon princess thing. What is it? Are you a princess who got handed a job at the Afterport? Did your dad, the demon king, or whoever, send you off to learn some workforce skills so you could inherit the family business one day?"

"None of your business." I'd known she was going to say that.

"That's not fair, you said—""Ask something else." Fine. The other thing that had been gnawing at me, then. Why she'd stayed. She'd wanted out since the day we met, complained about every second of it, and then Greg had held the door open for her, and she'd refused to walk through it.

"Why didn't you leave? When Greg offered you the way out." Nyx went still.

"That's—""Please don't say it's none of my business." I kept my voice even.

"Nyx, you've done so much for me, even when you clearly didn't want to. You've saved my life. I know you keep saying it's all just to protect your paycheck, but if Greg was offering you somewhere else, somewhere better than this, why on earth would you turn it down?" She was quiet, working out what to say.

"Was it because there's something you need to do here?" I pressed.

"Or was it, somehow, because of me?"" W-what?" She recovered fast, but that did not seem smooth.

"You think everything's about you? What are you, the protagonist of some isekai story?"

"If it's not about me, then tell me that. If there's something you're trying to do here, tell me that. You've done so much for me. The least I can do is help you get whatever it is you came for."

"It's..." She looked away.

"It's not something you can do anything about." Well. That was definitely something.

"What does that mean? Am I too weak? Is that it? Is that why you keep pushing me to level up, so I can help you get whatever this is?"

"It's something you can't do. Full stop."

"But—""Your turn's over." She sat up straighter.

"Now I get to ask you something." Damn it. Still dodging, but I'd gotten a thread out of her, at least. Maybe I could keep pulling, a little at a time.

"Fine. What do you want to know?" Nyx looked at me for a moment.

"Have you ever heard the name Arbor Amoris?" Huh? I turned it over. It didn't ring any bells at all. It sounded like an incantation out of Harry Potter, if anything.

"... No? I don't think so." Nyx's eyes widened, just slightly. She drew a breath, slow, and I caught the flicker of something crossing her face. Disappointment, maybe, which quickly folded away before it could fully surface. Whatever she'd been hoping to hear, that hadn't been it.

"Should I know that name?" I asked.

"You could just tell me what it is, then maybe I'd—""Out."

"What?"

"Question time's over. Get out." There was no point pushing her any further. Not tonight. She'd give me nothing more, and I'd already gotten more than I'd expected to. So I let it go, stood, and stepped out, pulling the door shut behind me. Evelisse was in the living room, sitting on the chair.