Chapter 56: Zorathys Is No Good At Work…At All
Chapter 56: Zorathys Is No Good At Work...At All
Elyn’s POV
"My lady," Rin said as she rushed up to me.
I had successfully made Zorathys come out of his room and I was determined to make sure that we both did this work together because there was no way he was going to leave everything for me. I refused to do the work alone when he was the reason it was this much in the first place.
"How?" Rin asked in shock.
Morthen looked rooted to the ground, just staring at Zorathys like he had seen a ghost, while the last person... I had no idea who he was.
He was dressed differently, but it suited him. His hair was a mix of colors—like fire. And I don’t know how he did it, but he made it work. His eyes were the same color as well.
He had a scabbard, in which I suspected there was a sword. I tilted my head as I took him in.
"Ah," he said, snapping himself out of his shock. "I’m—"
"Ignivar," Zorathys drawled out. "Surely you didn’t come to my room this morning to get me to work, right?" he asked him.
Ignivar swallowed. He looked like a man who could take down mountains, but he looked small in front of Zorathys. It was like he was scared of Zorathys.
"No... I just came to... I mean it was about work, but I didn’t come to get you to go to work. I and Naviel were going to do what we could. I just wanted to inform you of that," Ignivar told him.
"Oh, that’s good." Zorathys then turned to me. "See, firefly? The work is already being handled. I can just—"
"—finish the work that still remains from five hundred years ago," I told him.
I had no idea how many times I’d repeated the same statement, ’five hundred years ago,’ but Zorathys was determined to turn me into a mad woman.
"Fine," he grumbled out.
Ignivar turned to him in shock.
"You are going to work?" Ignivar asked him.
"Not willingly," Zorathys grumbled out.
Ignivar still couldn’t believe what was going on.
"Wait, hold on a minute. You... you mean you’re really going to work?" Ignivar asked him again.
"No need to look so surprised. I work, don’t I?" Zorathys asked.
"The last time you stepped foot in the office was five hundred years ago..."
That tracks.
"But I worked, didn’t I?" Zorathys asked him.
Ignivar opened his mouth, then closed it. He opened it again, then turned to me, then back to Zorathys.
"Don’t look so surprised, Ignivar. You’re trying to make it seem like I’m lazy. What do you expect firefly to think if you behave this way?" Zorathys asked him.
"I already know you’re lazy, and it’s not even been up to a week since we’ve known each other," I told Zorathys.
"It’s almost a week, and that’s a long time in demon language," he said with a yawn.
Immediately he yawned, Ignivar turned to me with panic.
"My lady, if we are going to be doing some work, then I’d advise we do it now," he told me.
I nodded, then placed a hand on Zorathys, dragging him away with me as I made my way back to the office.
Once we were inside, I made him sit and placed the stack of papers—okay, I made Ignivar and Morthen carry the stack of papers. Morthen still looked minutes away from running out of here, and Rin had decided that she and Vaelory were friends... not in the literal sense.
They made sure to stay far away from Zorathys. I could understand why Rin was scared of him, but I couldn’t understand why Vaelory was scared of him too. Zorathys looked every bit human except for his unearthly and demonic beauty.
But that wasn’t any of my concern. I took a separate chair and sat close by, then I patted the table.
"Get to work," I told Zorathys.
He sighed, then adjusted.
Ignivar made sure to be close by, and at some point, he sent a gargoyle—I had no idea we could send them on errands—to call for Naviel.
Zorathys picked up the first petition. The one I had been reading about sending people to the mines. It was like he just glanced at it, and the next thing he said was:
"Approved."
I frowned and watched him work. And within seconds, he was halfway through the petitions on the table. Ignivar was jotting down the ones he approved and the ones he disapproved, and I was just shocked.
What did Ignivar know that he was jotting down? There was hardly any information regarding the petitions—just the requests with no reason why they even needed them.
And what shocked me even more was that Zorathys was almost done with the work. In the blink of an eye, he had finished more than half of everything—and I don’t just mean the petitions from one year. The petitions from over five hundred years. That had to be over a thousand.
How did he finish the work?
"Wait, no." I said as I immediately placed my hands on Zorathys, who looked like he could not understand why I was stopping him.
"Firefly, if you stop me now there is no way I’m going to get this done," he told me.
"You know," I began, "from how fast I see you work, one would think that you are hardworking and very diligent."
"I can be hardworking when I want to," Zorathys told me.
"This isn’t hard work. This is half-assedness."
He tilted his head, brows scrunched up with a frown. "I do not understand what you mean."
"It means you’re not doing the work at all. You’re just flipping through. You aren’t even going through it," I told him. "Or even trying to understand why."
He pointed at Ignivar. "I don’t need to understand why. Ignivar and Naviel—"
Who still wasn’t here because apparently the gargoyles always forfeit the errands they’re sent on every two minutes, but that was a conversation for another day.
"—will later go through everything and get why the petitions were made and then sort it out," he told me.
I stared at him in horror. "That means you didn’t even work at all."
"Then what do you call what I just did?" Zorathys asked me.
He threw the paper on the table. "I’m tired, firefly. Can I go now? Going through these petition scrolls just made me sleepy," he said with a yawn as he stretched his arms.