Chương 52: Stay. But…!

But…!

POV: Evelisse Ardentia After my bath, I changed into something casual, just a white shirt and shorts, and lay down on the bed. It was soft. Wonderfully soft. I had found it strangely amusing, the shower running without any mana crystal at all, and it even had a hot-water option. Mel must have been thrilled; she was still in the bathroom, taking her time. Milo had told us not to question how anything here worked, and since we were guests under his roof, I figured that was the least we could offer him.... Yes.

I supposed we'd be staying here a while. I stared up at the ceiling, sprawled out, and let my mind wander wherever it wanted. I might have made it sound like I have fully committed to whatever I was doing, but it still felt unreal. In a little over a week, my whole life had gone from Hero to... what, exactly? A fugitive? Over a reason so absurd I could hardly say it aloud. What was I supposed to do now? Nyx had made it plain enough: I couldn't keep clinging to the values I'd been raised on.

I wasn't the Hero anymore. I'm with the Dark Lord. And yet Milo had brought up that Fear Consultant idea, and I respected him for it. He was still searching for the path with the least destruction on it. He'd taken all of us in without a second thought. Now that I thought of it, I hadn't properly introduced myself to Nyx yet, and I hadn't really thanked Milo—not properly, at least. So much had happened in so little time. But later, once he was back, I could— My eyelids had gone heavy.

The room was warm, the bed soft beneath me, the light through the window gone gentle and golden. Somewhere below, the house was quiet. All the tension I'd been carrying, in my shoulders, my jaw, the small of my back, seemed to be loosening at once, and I didn't have the will to hold on to any of it. It was the fatigue, I knew. Everything I'd been holding off finally arriving to collect.

Just before sleep closed over me, one last thought drifted past; I was further from the Church than I had ever been in my life, yet I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt this much at home. When I opened my eyes, my first instinct was to sleep again. Then I saw the window, the sun still up, and remembered I wasn't in my own house at all. I rolled over. Mel was asleep beside me, in her green sleepwear, her face slack and peaceful in a way I rarely got to see it—no worry knotting her brow, no guard up.

Just quiet. Had Milo come back yet? If he had, I ought to help with dinner, or something. A bit of common courtesy, at least. I sat up, my head swimming for a second the way it does right after waking, and then it cleared, and I felt… fresh; more rested than I'd been in days. There was still a great deal to think through, but somewhere in my chest, the weight I'd grown used to carrying for the past three years just... wasn't there. I think it was because I wasn't so lost anymore.

Not about my resolve, Milo, nor about how to explain all of it to sis and Mel. I got up, easing the door open so I wouldn't wake Mel, and slipped down the hall to the bathroom to splash my face. The water was cold, shocking against my skin, and it chased off the last of the sleep-fog. I straightened up and caught myself in the mirror. My hair was down, loose around my shoulders; I had taken it out of its tie before the bath and never put it back up.

And for some reason, the thought arrived on its own: Milo hadn't seen me like this yet. Hair down, moments after waking up. Soft around the edges. Was that going to be an ordinary thing now? The two of us crossing paths in the mornings, bleary and unguarded, before either of us had put ourselves together for the day? I felt the heat climb up my cheeks before I could do anything about it, and I quickly cupped another handful of cold water and pressed it to my face until the warmth went down.

Then I dried off and headed downstairs. As I came down the stairs, I caught faint groans from what had to be Nyx's room, a few sharp zapping sounds, and then silence. A moment later, low muttering, and the door pushed open. I had just reached the first floor when Nyx stepped out, her brow furrowed, her mouth set in a hard line, like she'd been wrestling with something unpleasant. Our eyes met. She held mine for a few beats, longer than felt comfortable.

I opened my mouth to say something—a greeting, anything—and she turned away, crossed to the front door, and let it slam shut behind her. I felt distinctly unwelcome, despite Milo had said that everything had been settled. I'd wanted to go after her, to introduce myself properly and talk, but decided to give it a little time. She likely had things of her own to see to. So I sat down in one of the chairs, hands folded on my thighs, like a proper guest, and waited, with only the crackle of the fire for company.

Now that I considered it, I'd assumed Milo's word was final, being the Dark Lord and all. And it was, technically; Nyx hadn't thrown us out. But she plainly wasn't willing to accept that we were here. Wasn't she meant to be his subordinate? Milo had called her his assistant once. Which should still mean she deferred to the Dark Lord, shouldn't it?

Except, aside from that day at Lunareth, when she'd knelt before him, I had never once seen her defer to him at all, and I knew, now, that the Lunareth display had been an act, Milo performing the role to farm his terror levels. So their relationship wasn't quite what I had assumed. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Before I could spin the thought out any further, the door opened again. Nyx was back, two apples and a waterskin in her hands.

"You're still here?" She shut the door behind her.

"Waiting on Milo? He's not back yet." She tossed one of the apples at me, and I caught it on reflex.... Had she gone out to fetch one for me?

"I..." I turned the apple over in my hands.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"Me?" Nyx's brow rose.

"What, you want to hear everything Milo's been saying about you? Dig up some juicy little details?"

"N-no, I just—I wanted to introduce myself properly. We rather barged in on you. Milo said it was all right for us to stay, but you live here too, so I—""Ugh." She stepped closer.

"I already know who you are. And your sister. Milo's yapped about the both of you plenty."

"... He has?" Nyx shot me a flat, tired look, then dropped into the chair across from me.

"See? There it is. You want to know what he said about you. Like some lovesick maiden in a storybook."

"I—" The retort died in my throat, because nothing came to fill it. And for some absurd reason, my mind went to the little bottle of perfume from Astrea's Central District, still sitting untouched in my room back home. Maiden's Yearning. I found myself wondering, ridiculously, whether I'd ever get the chance to go back for it. Nyx sighed and slumped back against her chair, taking a bite of her apple.

"Stupid romcom plot," she muttered. I didn't know that word. Romcom?

"He told me you mattered to him," she said. The heat rushed to my face before I could stop it.

"He—""Which, frankly, annoyed the hell out of me." She chewed, not looking at me.

"Because there were people coming to kill him, and the only things he cared about were whether I'd killed anyone at Eremiah, and you. Whether you and your sister might hate him now. Whether he'd ruined everything. On and on." She trailed off, and her eyes flicked to me, and something in them looked almost—"... What?" I said. Nyx looked away. Something pained crossed her face, there and gone.

"Nothing. You've just got a dumb look on your face." I pressed both hands to my cheeks, as if that could do anything about it. We sat in silence for a while, broken only by the small sounds of her eating. I had expected her to get up and leave. Instead she stayed, and after a moment I understood, oddly, that perhaps she was staying for my sake, so I could say whatever it was I'd come down to say. Right. Milo aside, I needed to make this clear.

"Um, thank you. For letting us stay." I straightened.

"I know it's all very sudden, and I know we're taking up your space and your resources, but we'll help however we can." Nyx said nothing, so I went on.

"Milo said it was fine. But if…if you're not actually all right with this, then I don't think we should stay. I won't force it."

"Are you trying to guilt-trip me?" she said.

"No! Not at all." I shook my head quickly.

"I only mean, if we can't stay here, then that's all right. I'll find another way." I hesitated.

"Mel should be fine regardless; she wasn't really part of the last attack, and she's not a relative of mine, so the Church won't have cause to pursue her. She only came to make sure I'm all right. And if it's just sis and me... I think we can manage…somehow." Another silence settled. Nyx was down to the last of her apple; I hadn't touched mine, just sat turning it over in my lap.

"To be honest," she said, "I don't like you." I looked up. I hadn't expected it said so plainly.

"You act on this ridiculous sense of justice. You do things because they're right, and then the moment something comes along that challenges what you were taught was right, you falter." She said it without heat, like she was reading off a report.

"Though I suppose I can't hold that against you. They've been drilling it into your skull since you were little." She took another bite.

"Which was fine. That was your whole purpose here." My purpose?

"Right up until Milo saved you, because he's an idiot. And then he got dumber. You've made my job harder ever since. Now, every time he sits down to plan something, you're in his head. He gets insecure. He built an entire scheme around your feelings for him, for Devil's sake." She shook her head.

"It's exhausting." I didn't follow all of it. Some of it I could piece together; the rest slipped past me.

"You've probably worked this out already," she went on, "but he's hopeless around women. Desperate for the company, and terrible at it. A bit of a creep, honestly. If he'd been the one to save me, my first assumption would've been that he had some ulterior motive."

"I think he's..." I hesitated.

"I don't think he's that bad." Nyx gave me a long, flat look.

"Sure. I'm certain you've got a whole list of lovely things to say about him, which I do not care to hear." She set the apple core down.

"The point is: he's head over heels for you, for whatever reason. And if you left now, he'd blame himself, or blame me, or blame the weather. Nothing good would come of it." She looked at me directly.

"So stay. I'm... fine with you staying, if that's what you've been fretting over. I only ask that you actually help us with what's coming." Her voice hardened, just slightly.

"I've been telling Milo he needs to kill to get stronger, and fast. He won't hear it, and I don't want you becoming one more obstacle in the way of keeping him alive." She held my eyes, and there was something almost like a challenge in them.

"You and he seem to believe there's always some perfect, clean way through everything. Fine. Then show me. Show me how he grows strong enough to survive the next attack without trampling those precious justice values the two of you cling to, because I couldn't find it." She stood.

"I hope you manage it better than I did." And she walked back to her room, and shut the door. I sat there with all of it landing on me at once. She'd said so much, so fast, tumbled out almost like she wanted the conversation over and done with; and yet, underneath the mess of it, the meaning came through clear enough. She didn't dislike us being safe. She disliked what our presence did to Milo's focus, and she… also didn't want Milo to die. There were a hundred questions still crowding my head.

Where Milo had truly come from, what the Church had been hiding, why a Hero had been handed powers no Hero should have. All of it mattered, but they would have to wait. Because Nyx had just handed me the first real problem to solve: how does Milo grow stronger without becoming the thing I can't let him become? And the strange part was, sitting there with the fire crackling and her door shut, I thought I might already have the beginnings of an answer.