Chapter 60: Speak of the Devil
This was rather entertaining.
Freya drummed her fingers on the desk with her free hand, waiting patiently for the fox in front of her to come back around.
She found the whole situation fairly amusing, actually. Ever since arriving in this city, something had been steadily pushing her out of her usual restraint.
It was absolutely thrilling!
She brought her fingers to her lips, thinking back to the heat that had run through her entire body and settled low in her stomach.
It was so thrilling... maybe I could... just a little?
She studied the truly exquisite woman in front of her, gorgeously pretty with those pink eyes and their whimsical little patterns~~.
And her body.
Her gaze slid over the shape of her, barely concealed by that outfit, over the heavy chest straining the fabric with every breath, over the narrow waist that opened out into wide hips, and over those full thighs the slit of the dress laid bare to the top with every movement.
And a notification appeared in her field of vision, as it always did.
[ Word of Greed skill activated. ]
She cleared her throat at the sight of it, pulling herself together, aware that she was going off the rails again.
How does it actually work? Is it a skill? Some sort of pheromone she gives off? Is it tied to her race? Or maybe to those eyes that turn on themselves?
And what in the world is a kitsune doing in human territory anyway?
Her finger tapped harder and harder against the desk, faster and faster, under the impatience of wanting to bury the woman in questions.
Easy, Freya. One thing at a time, we’ve got all the time we need here...
Except her eyes had already wandered back.
The kitsune was still sprawled in her chair, head tipped back against the rest, still too dazed to register the position she was in.
Her dress had come open during the shock and nobody had bothered to close it since. The fabric hung crooked off one shoulder, leaving the whole line of her throat bare down to the hollow between her breasts, which rose and fell with her still-uneven breathing.
One of her legs had slipped over the armrest, the slit of the dress ridden all the way up to the hip, and her tails lay slack on either side of the chair, the fur still standing on end in places.
Freya followed the line with her eyes. From the ankle up the thigh, then higher.
This woman is objectively a problem.
She thought back to the fur against her skin. To the heat. To that mouth working its way down her throat, and to what she had very nearly let happen.
Her own breath caught for half a second.
Oh, screw it! Get a grip, Freya!
CLACK—
A slap.
Then
CLACK—
The backhand, sending her head the other way.
Then
CLACK— and CLACK— and CLACK—
"STOOOOOOOP! What even are you?! Are you some kind of monster?!" Kyiara shouted, snapping out of her daze all at once.
"Aaaah. So you were faking it. Good, good..."
"Uhhh?? Uh, oh..."
Kyiara scratched her cheek, visibly uncomfortable at having acted carelessly and gotten herself caught so stupidly.
"Maybe a little..."
Freya raised the weapon toward her again.
"Looks like once wasn’t enough for you."
At those words the kitsune flinched, or perhaps at the sight of the barrel coming up, and she threw herself flat on the floor, prostrating herself entirely.
"IT WAS! SORRY!"
"Good... good... get up," said Freya, a little thrown by the sheer scale of the reaction.
I know she grew up in the lower districts before she became queen. Are these leftovers from back then?
Poor fox... it must have been hard surviving among all those cruel humans...
And her imagination took off on its own.
She saw a tiny kitsune, ears flattened, sitting in a damp alley with a chipped bowl between her paws. No, not Kyiara. Roku. Little Roku, fur filthy, dignified regardless.
And beside him his sister Jūyon, thinner still, sneezing in the cold.
Aaaah, and it’s raining too. Of course it’s raining.
A merchant walked past and kicked the bowl over on purpose. The three small coins rolled into the gutter. Roku dove after them to gather them up and took a glob of spit across his back for it.
"Get out of here, you filthy little animal."
And Roku said nothing. He picked his coins up one by one, wiped them carefully clean, and went back to sit against the wall, pulling his sister close to keep her warm.
Then evening fell. They shared a crust of bread pulled from a bin, and Roku gave the bigger half to Jūyon, claiming he wasn’t hungry.
"Eat, little sister. One day we’ll have a home."
"Big brother..."
Freya felt her throat tighten.
Nooooo! That’s too sad! How can the world be this cruel?! I swear the moment I get back you’re both getting the nicest room in the dungeon!
Then the image came back to her of the child who’d tried to steal her suitcase to eat, and whom she’d sent to his death without so much as blinking a few hours earlier.
The same situation. The same hunger. Just a poor child.
...
Anyway. It’s situational, I suppose?
And with that, she decided this particular thought held absolutely no interest at present. She most certainly did not drop it because it didn’t suit her. Not at all.
She looked at the fox sitting on the floor, only her upper body raised, watching her with frightened eyes.
The queen of a thousand pleasures had vanished completely, and in her place there was simply...
A second puppy?
The scene reminded her exactly of the moment Medor had begged for his life in her dungeon.
She decided it made sense, really. After all, even if people in stories tended to keep their dignity to the bitter end, who in real life would be stupid enough to cling to their pride instead of taking any chance at all of seeing another morning?
She stood up, cutting her train of thought short to refocus on the present, and began pacing the length of the room.
"Right. What we’re going to do now is keep all of this between us. Okay?"
"Yes, madam!"
"I know you might be saying that just to say it, but I promise you it’ll be better for both of us. Well. Mostly for... you."
Kyiara raised her pink eyes toward her, not following.
"I told you I was already taken, didn’t I?"
She nodded, waiting for the rest.
"Weeell... to be completely honest with you... she’s a little jealous. Like, just a tiny bit."
"So where’s the problem then?"
"Does irony not exist down here or something?"
Freya sighed, then dragged a hand down her face.
"Fine, okay! I admit it, she’s completely unhinged and utterly jealous. Like, genuinely borderline insane, you know?"
She started pacing again, faster than before.
"For instance, first time I summon one of my workers, cute little foxes a bit like you actually, but anyway, that’s not the point. She was jealous that I petted them and gave them names. Can you imagine?! Jealous of a few little pets!"
Kyiara opened her mouth to reply. Freya didn’t notice.
"Same thing, one time I see a village getting attacked by bandits who turned out to be Baron Frarken’s men, but again, not the point. The point is that I’m comforting two little girls whose mother had just died. They were literally crying in my arms. And you should have seen the look on Aria’s face!"
She stopped dead and turned toward her.
"It was normal, mind you. Same as always. But there was that little something, you know? That little something that makes you flinch and understand you need to stop what you’re doing immediately!"
Kyiara had pushed herself up onto her knees. Her ears had lowered slightly.
"Same again, another time, I summon an A+ rank knight. And Aria tells me she’ll take her on a tour of the dungeon so she can find her bearings. And at that point you’d think everything’s fine, right? Perfectly normal?"
She set off in the other direction, hands in the air.
"Well, would you believe that when I come back she’s morally harassing the woman, at her age, literally putting her in her place. And I’m certain I missed the worst of it! I don’t even want to imagine what she said to her behind that curtain!"
Kyiara’s tails had gone completely still behind her.
"And then there was that time when—"
"Okay... okay... calm down... I see...!"
"No, no, I promise you that you don’t see!"
Freya stopped, slightly out of breath, and it was at that moment that Kyiara understood the woman in front of her wasn’t really talking to warn her anymore.
She was unloading.
There was something in the way she listed them off, in that pile of examples she had clearly been keeping to herself for a long time, that gave away a weight nobody had ever heard her set down before.
The queen of the underworld stayed perfectly silent, with absolutely no idea what to do with what she was watching.
"The problem, you see, and not a small one..."
Freya came back toward her and lowered her voice, as though she were a little afraid of it herself.
"She’s SSS rank."
A silence.
Kyiara blinked.
"...I’m sorry?"
"SSS rank."
"Wait, wait—"
"I know."
"S rank is already the ceiling for ordinary mortals, there aren’t even ten of them in the whole kingdom! SS rank is for mythological beings!"
"I know."
The little fox’s face tightened slowly, her understanding shifting from shock into something far colder.
"...SSS?"
"Yes. SSS rank."
Freya dropped her voice further still.
"I promise you I’m not lying. That’s why, as much as I wanted you, I couldn’t go through with it, you see."
She let out a small laugh that had nothing happy in it at all.
"Even I am terrified of what would happen if she found out."
At those words the fox went off, dropping her upper body back down against the floor.
"I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT BUT PLEASE DON’T TELL HER! LET’S FORGET MY BLUNDER, LET’S FORGET EVERYTHING! I CAN’T WAIT TO SERVE YOU BODY AND SOUL! NOOO I MEAN JUST SOUL! YES, TAKE MY SOUL! BUT NOT MY BODY, PLEASE!"
"Wooow... wooow... calm down... calm down... Besides, she’s—"
Freya’s body, or rather the replica, stopped dead mid-sentence.
Kyiara raised her head to see what was happening, and went cold all over.
The woman who had been so sure of herself from the very beginning had gone completely white. She was shaking from head to foot as she stared at her, making frantic, desperate gestures for silence, one finger against her lips.
Because over where her other body was, the one that had let itself get absorbed in the conversation and in that other thing which it was now forbidden to say out loud, including in the narration, just in case... she had completely forgotten to keep an eye on her butterflies’ screens.
Sprawled on her back across Kumoko, she heard a voice travel down the corridors of the dungeon, and her whole body flinched.
"Miiistress~~ I’m hoooooome..."
A silence.
"What were you talking about~~?"