Chương 55: The Eye of Love

POV: The Hero, Ywain Valebryn I woke on a bed, feeling… fine. The ceiling above me was familiar. Pale stone worked with gold inlay that ran in fine, looping lines from corner to corner, and a chandelier of something clear and faceted hanging at the center. I sat up and looked around, and that was familiar too. Lulu's room. Sparse, in a way, but every single thing in it was worth more than everything I had owned in my entire life on Earth. White stone. Draped fabric. A low table.

Tall windows opening onto a view I had never once been able to focus on properly. It always struck me as the bedroom of a Greek princess, not that I had any idea what that was supposed to look like. It was the impression it gave. I was shirtless. No bandages. No pain anywhere. How did I get here? I made myself go back through it. I'd had Milo cornered, my hand around his throat, squeezing the air out of him. Then something hit me and threw me into the trees. The Cerberus and a bald man riding on its back.

I had attempted to attack him, and he'd swatted me away like nothing, and then there had been a white flash, and then— Nothing. That was where it stopped. Who was that? What kind of attack was that? I shouldn't be capable of losing to some— The doors creaked open. Both of them, tall and heavy and gilded, swinging inward. Lulu stood there with her caretaker behind her; a silent woman dressed, for reasons I had stopped asking about, exactly like a maid out of an anime.

"Oh, you're awake!" Lulu crossed the room quickly, the doors swinging shut behind her on their own.

"You've been out nearly the whole day. I was beginning to worry that—""Who was the bald man?" She settled onto the edge of the bed.

"Oh, you mean Greg? You needn't concern yourself with—""He ruined everything." I looked at her.

"You told me I would get everything I wanted in Lycora."

"And you still will, Jaden. It's only—""I've told you not to call me that. You're reminding me of every single thing I hated back there."

"Oops." She smiled.

"Slip of the tongue, sorry." She said it lightly. She always did.

"But truly, there's no need to think about him anymore. He's an employee of the Afterport, that's all. The one who dropped Milo into Lycora in the first place."

"What do you mean, no need to think about him? He came into Lycora and attacked me personally."

"And he won't be doing that again." Then she explained it, and I listened. The Afterport's higher-ups had noticed how many blessings had been spent on me. That was a violation. She'd been let off with a warning; her uncle had been persuaded to pull the necessary strings, and the result was that Lycora now belonged to her outright. The only thing she hadn't managed was removing Milo from the board.

"So there's nothing to worry about." She patted my knee.

"Once you've recovered, we go back, we kill Milo, and you are celebrated as the Hero who saved the world. All the glory will be yours."

"Without the blessings I had, it'll be harder." I frowned.

"Evelisse is on his side now. He still has the demon woman and the Cerberus. Ordinary elite knights and court mages aren't going to be enough against that."

"Oh, there are far more powerful things in Lycora than knights." She waved a hand.

"The elves, for instance."

"Elves?" Now that she mentioned it, I'd never seen a single elf since arriving. Which was strange, for a world built like this one.

"Yes. The Elven Kingdom of Silvanis. I'll tell you more later, but they can make marvelous allies. Provided you can persuade them."

"Did the previous Heroes have elven allies? I've been through the records. There's never been an elf in a Hero's party."

"There are... reasons for that." Her smile didn't move.

"Nothing that a few strings can't work around." So she'd be cheating again. Somehow. I only hoped I wouldn't be the one left holding it if the Afterport caught the tampering a second time. I came here to have the life the last world took from me. Not to be somebody's plaything again. Plaything. The word snagged on something. What if that was all this was? What if I am a plaything to her, something to be enjoyed and then set down when the novelty runs out?

I'd wondered the same thing before, standing on that street under the lamppost, right before she pushed me into Lycora. She'd promised me I wasn't. But could I trust that? I trusted Alina, and I came home to find another man in my bed.

"Jaden." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. That name again.

"I told you not to call me—"I looked up at her, and I stopped. Something about her was different. She was still smiling. But it was off, somehow, in a way I couldn't put a name to. Her golden eyes had brightened, lit from somewhere behind them, and she tilted her head slowly to one side as she held my gaze.

"Trust me," she said. And the thought I'd been holding simply... let go. It didn't feel like being convinced. It felt like the doubt had been picked up and put away somewhere I couldn't reach, and the space where it had been was quiet now. Pleasant, even. I found I didn't want it back. I looked down at the bedsheet instead; the mattress shifted. She moved up behind me, and then her arms came around my chest and she pressed herself against my back.

"I will never betray you." Her voice was at my ear.

"Not ever. I keep my word. You'll have everything in Lycora, and once we've taken it, I'll open other worlds to you. When I said you could be my piece to change the world, I meant every syllable of it." I still didn't entirely understand what she meant by changing the world. She'd described it, more or less, as me standing at the top of these places. Some kind of world-hopping Genghis Khan. But when I'd pressed her on the actual shape of it, on what it was for, she'd said— What had she said? I couldn't remember.

I'd asked her. I know I asked her. Her arms tightened. I could feel her heartbeat against my back. It was fast. Much faster than it should have been.

"Let me handle it," she murmured.

"You don't need to question things, or wear yourself out thinking about them. I promise you it will all go beautifully." I let that settle.

"Fine," I said. She held on. A minute, perhaps longer. Neither of us said anything, and in that silence there was nothing to hear but her breathing and the two of us, and both our hearts seemed to climb, gradually, together. Then she released me and slid back to the edge of the bed as though nothing had happened.

"Now, why don't you rest and keep me company for a day or two, before we send you back?"

"What?" I turned.

"That gives Milo more time. You told me he's at Terror Level thirty. If he reaches fifty in a few days, in the state I'm in—""It's fine." She smiled.

"Whatever he does, you'll win." But I had just lost. How could she possibly be so certain?

"Besides, even if I can't hand you blessings the way I did before, there are a great many other ways to win. We might not even need the elves." She rose and crossed to a tall chest of drawers. I heard her open one and rummage through it, and then she turned and tossed something underhand across the room. I caught it, and I recognized it. Not from anywhere I'd been. From one of the visions she'd shown me a few days back, when Milo had first met Evelisse. Pink, round with an eye worked into the center of it.

"Is this—""Yes, the Eye of Love." She'd already moved on to the low table, where she plucked up a small bunch of grapes.

"Why are you giving me this?" She came back and sat on the edge of the bed again, tearing one grape loose and holding it out to me between two fingers.

"Only to reassure you. I have ways of ensuring your victory. In fact, maybe I should've given it to you previously to make things easier." I reached for the grape, and she drew her hand back an inch, out of reach. I looked up. She had that smile on; she wanted to feed it to me. It wasn't worth the argument. I opened my mouth, and she placed it on my tongue with great care, her fingertips brushing my lip, and made a small pleased sound as she watched me take it.

I chewed and turned the artifact over in my hand; the Eye of Love. It could make anyone fall for you, so long as they looked into the center of it. Milo had tried to use it on Evelisse and failed. How had Lulu gotten hold of it? Was that drawer full of these things? A whole collection of artifacts, each with its own effect, sitting in a chest in her bedroom?

"Would using this count as cheating?"

"Hmm, I think not. Not a trinket of that caliber, at least. It isn't something granted through my blessing; it's simply an object that does a thing, and a trivial one, at that."

"Trivial?" I looked at her.

"Forcing someone's feelings is trivial?"

"Love is trivial, Ywain." She selected another grape.

"Aside from mine, obviously." She held it out, and I took it from her fingers again.

"Especially the love of people in places like Lycora. Love is a weak thing. It shifts constantly. It rearranges itself the moment something more convenient comes along." She tilted her head.

"You should know that better than most." Of course I did. Alina and I had that love; built one day at a time, one small thing at a time, carefully, the way you're supposed to build something. Every late shift I took so we could afford that flat. Every night she waited up. She'd told me to text her before I left work, so she'd know I was on my way. So she'd know when I was on my way.

"My love, though," Lulu said, "is different." She reached out and turned my face toward her with two fingers under my chin, gently, so that I was looking at her.

"I love you. I want you, and it doesn't change, ever, because it isn't the kind of thing that can." Her eyes searched my face, delighted with whatever they found.

"I love you so completely that I don't even mind if you want other people. Take as many as you like. Let them fawn over you, all of them. It genuinely doesn't trouble me." Her thumb moved once along my jaw.

"So long as you never actually leave me. That's all." I found that oddly reassuring, coming from her.

"In fact," she went on, brightening, "doesn't this strike you as an opportunity? The old world took something precious from you, by force, without asking. Why not take something precious from someone else? By force? This time you'd be the one doing the taking."

"You mean Evelisse?" I looked down at the pink stone in my palm.

"You want me to use this on her?"

"Oh, use it on whoever you please. I'm only making suggestions, since you loathe Milo." She smiled.

"I hate him too, and Evelisse does seem to be coming along nicely with him. I can feel the love on her from here." Something twisted behind my ribs. She'd chosen him. She'd stood in that clearing and put herself between me and him, and she'd chosen him.

"And from what I can see," Lulu continued, "Milo is quite desperate for a girlfriend, painfully so. The two of them have something forming already. It isn't remotely far-fetched to imagine them ending up together." My hand closed around the artifact. She noticed. Of course she noticed. Her smile widened.

"All of which becomes meaningless, naturally, the moment you use that on her. She'll abandon every last one of them and come to you. Willingly, gladly, of her own accord as far as she'll ever know." She leaned in.

"Picture what that does to Greg's little boy. Everything he's built, collapsing in front of him. Then you strike. Or, better, you have her do it for you." …

"Oh, or the sister! Lunessa, is it? She struck me as the clever one. Use it on her and watch what happens to that little household." Lulu pressed her fingertips to her mouth, and her eyes went distant, working through the possibilities, and then she laughed. Bright and genuine and pleased.

"Ohh, it's exciting! That's what love is for, with these people. It's for our amusement." I looked down at the Eye of Love sitting in my palm; it was warm and heavier than it looked. This is it. This is how I can fix things. I nearly smiled.