Chương 67: Elven Surprise

POV: Evelisse Ardentia - Moments Before Dinner Feeling ashamed from what I had said to Milo, I rushed to my room to find sis staring out the window. Mel was nowhere to be seen, likely taking a bath. At the sound of the door, sis turned.

"Eve? What's wrong? Were the Hero's party members in such poor condition?" I didn't know what expression I was making, but for her to base her guess on the two hostages, it couldn't have been a good one.

"N-no, they just finished eating. They were only starved and dehydrated. I think they should be all right now." I crossed to the bed and sat down on its edge. Sis turned from the window completely and came toward me.

"Then why do you look so down? Is it about Milo?" I glanced up. Her face held only concern. If it weren't for whatever I was wearing on mine, she'd have been teasing me by now, maybe by bringing up that answer Milo had given her in the dungeon, the one I still hadn't heard.

"Can you tell me what happened?" So I tried my best. I'd gone outside because I couldn't stand watching those two party members being cowed into eating. Milo had come out a little after, and then I'd started thinking about longer-term solutions; one of them being to convince the Church that Milo meant no harm, so that we might all coexist. That unlike the Dark Lords before him, Milo might not be obligated to cause destruction.

"Are you saying it was an obligation for the previous Dark Lords to spread fear, to destroy?" I hesitated, then nodded.

"From what I've been told, it seems so. Milo's said as much himself, that if he doesn't spread fear, he might die. But I still believe he's different from the others. Every Dark Lord before him left death across whole towns within a week of arriving. He hasn't."

"Yes, yes." A faint smirk tugged at sis' mouth.

"We're all well aware your dear Milo is a cut above the rest." Heat climbed into my cheeks.

"Though if that's true," she went on, thoughtful now, "it's a strange thing. Who issues such a rule to a Dark Lord? Is there some higher power at work? It hardly seems like something Lord Luminaryn would arrange." She was right, and it was exactly what I wanted to understand. Some clarity for the whole arrangement. But Milo still needed time to confirm a few things, so there was nothing he could tell us yet.

"And... for a moment, out there, I think," the words came reluctantly, "I think I started to doubt him." At her questioning look, I tried to put it into words. It wasn't anything Milo had done. It was that he'd told me, after the fight with Ywain, that there were things he couldn't share yet, that he needed time to be certain first. And I'd accepted it. I'd chosen to accept it.

But standing out there tonight, hearing Milo saying he could not tell me things yet, with everything I'd walked away from pressing down on me all at once, I felt something that I had thought I had figured out. That I'd handed everything—sis, Mel, all of it—to a single person who might, one day, simply keep the truth from me. Who might turn on us.

"I know it isn't fair to him." My voice was unsteadier than I wanted.

"When I came to help him, I understood the risks, and I chose to trust him anyway. But tonight, I just—" The sentence wouldn't finish. Something had welled up in my chest instead, spreading, climbing, until it reached the backs of my eyes. My breath hitched. A thick, unsteady sound caught in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down and couldn't, and then the tears came anyway, spilling over before I could do anything to stop them.

I scrubbed at my eyes, sniffling like a child, and felt sis' hand settle warm between my shoulder.

"Hey. It's all right. It's normal to think that way." Her voice was gentle.

"There's still so much we don't know about Milo, and since he's promised to tell you everything soon, all we can really do is trust him, and wait."

"I know. I know that." The words came out wet and cracked.

"It's just—I wasn't being myself. It's strange. I've…never felt like this before."

"Well." Her tone shifted, a touch lighter.

"Love has a way of stirring up all sorts of new feelings. Especially around that time of the month." I froze.

"... What?"

"Only a suspicion of mine. We'll know soon enough. But it would explain the state you've been in." I thought back to the last time it had come, and roughly counted, and, the timing seemed to line up. By then the tears had begun to ebb, leaving my eyes hot and swollen. If it really was only that, the whole thing would seem faintly absurd. I felt like a child. Sis drew me into a hug.

"It's all right, Eve. You're new to this…being fond of someone. I think that's a good thing. You've spent most of your life living in a hard, cold sort of way." Her arms tightened.

"It's about time something warm got in." Something in my chest ached at that, in a way that had nothing to do with the tears. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"I believe Milo will keep his word," she said.

"But even if he doesn't, that's what I'm here for." She drew back and looked me in the eye.

"If he turns out to have some ulterior motive, if, worst case, he decides to betray us, then we run."

"... Run?" Sis nodded.

"I brought a few high-grade artifacts with me. Teleportation orbs among them. So if it comes to the very worst, we simply leave. Go back to the Church's side, tell them it was all the Dark Lord's mind-control magic."

"But I don't—""I know. I know you don't want that, and you don't even want to think about it." She squeezed my hand.

"And that's exactly why I'm here. To make sure you never fall into something you can't climb back out of. I won't do a thing but support you, Eve. Think of me as..." She weighed the word.

"Insurance." I looked at her.

"Oh, and one more thing." A spark of the old mischief lit her eyes.

"About what Milo thinks of you. Would you like to know?"

"I—" Then a knock at the door could be heard, causing me to jump. It tried to wipe all the tears away, and when I opened the door, it was Milo. The answer, it seemed, would have to wait until later tonight. PRESENT TIME I'd slept soundly, more soundly than expected. Sis had given me what I needed for that time of the month, and it was, in fact, that time of the month. Strangely, the knowledge left me feeling less guilty than before.

It meant that last night had been me being overly emotional, not me truly doubting Milo's word. To some degree it might still count as doubt, I supposed, but it was doubt stripped of my usual reasoning, my usual trust. A part of me, but not the whole of me. After breakfast, sis and Milo left for Arkhay to deliver the materials to the mayor, which shouldn't take long.

After that, if all went smoothly, someone from Arkhay would carry the message to Astrea within a day, and Astrea would take perhaps another day to make its announcement, and Milo's Terror Level should climb considerably afterwards. We only had to make sure Ywain didn't strike within that window. Sis had raised the idea of slipping Nyx into Astrea to see whether there was any word on Ywain or anything that might tell us what they were planning.

"Do they have any sort of anti-demon measures?" Nyx asked me, in the living room.

"Barriers that keep demons out, even in disguise?" I considered it. Astrea housed the Central Church, and yet there was no holy barrier of that kind. I had never heard of one, and if such a thing existed and could be kept running at all times, surely Astrea of all places would have been using it.

"No, I don't think so," I said.

"Maintaining a spell like that at such a big scale would drain an unthinkable amount of mana."

"Then who should I be? To get in more easily."

"You mean who to shapeshift into?" Nyx nodded. Then she snapped her fingers, and white light swallowed her whole. The light drew inward, reshaping her silhouette into something smaller. When it faded, a little girl stood in her place, in a plain village dress, her hair tied into twin tails. I could hardly believe it. The change had been near-instant, and the result was seamless. Nyx, in her village-girl form, took hold of both twintails and smirked up at me.

"Will this do? I could say I've lost my way or something along those lines."

"Astrea's strict about who it lets in. Without a trusted guardian, you'd likely need proof of origin of your own." Nyx sighed. Then the light took her again, and she became a young man, holding out a card; a proof of origin, complete with a name, a signature, and Arkhay's seal pressed into it. It looked entirely genuine. The name read Barley Barnes, which caught me off guard. It seemed Nyx had a sense of humor after all.

"That should be fine," I said, biting back a laugh at the ridiculous name.

"Good. Then I'm off." Her expression flickered.

"Let's hope I don't come back to anything weird. Got a bad feeling, for some reason. The past few days have been filled with unprecedented stupidity." The light shifted her back into her demon form, and she took to the air and flew off. I watched her shape shrink into the distance, and turned my mind to how I'd spend the time. The house was empty now, save for Mel and the two people from Ywain's party, whom Milo had put under with Sleep Gas last night, which should keep them out for most of the day.

Astrea wasn't far by flight; Nyx wouldn't take long, which made me think, again, of something I couldn't quite settle. No Dark Lord had ever appeared this close to Astrea before. If someone truly required the Dark Lord to spread fear, why place him practically on the Central Church's doorstep? They could have sent the Hero to deal with him at once; it was less than half a day's journey. Of course, I had failed at that task. But if I had succeeded, Milo would have been dead barely a day after he arrived.

What's going on here? Strange, that I'd never truly examined the Dark Lord question before. For years I'd seen them as nothing but forces of pure evil, things to be struck down. It wasn't until Milo that I'd begun to wonder about any of it, like where they came from, who could exert such an influence over them, and why the world was arranged the way it was. Thinking of Milo brought back what sis had told me the night before, murmured just before we'd drifted off.

"Milo said it'd be great to be with you. If you're all right with it." She'd refused to say a word more, insisting it would be far more fun if I heard the rest from him directly, someday. Would that even happen? When would it happen? How was I supposed to react? Was I— Astra nickered softly nearby, and for no reason I could name, I felt my lips curve into a smile, a faint warmth rising in my face.

Ever since I'd come here, living under the same roof as Milo, I felt myself growing less knightly and honorable by the day. I gave both my cheeks a light slap. Everyone else was off doing something that mattered right now. I ought to make myself useful too, instead of sitting here mooning over sappy nonsense. Perhaps I could go check on Mel and see how she was faring. It had been a few days since she came, and— A rustle in the trees.

Luke, who'd been keeping watch beside the house, snapped toward the sound and fired a green ray straight into the forest behind me. It struck something. A female yelp rang out, then the sound of a thud like a body slamming into a tree. Someone was there with a camouflage spell. Ywain? No, that voice had clearly been a woman's. I hurried toward the source of the impact, and there, sitting in the grass with one hand pressed to her back and her face screwed up in pain, was a girl.

"Ouch…damn it," she muttered. She had shoulder-length blonde hair with side-swept bangs, two thin-braids on the temple, emerald-green eyes, and, unmistakably, a pair of long, tapered ears. An elf.