Chapter 260: Demon Court, Pocket Brothers, and the Ant with the Booming Voice
Chapter 260: Demon Court, Pocket Brothers, and the Ant with the Booming Voice
Elyn’s POV
I blinked.
"You counted," I said.
"I had to keep records," he replied.
I stared at him for a moment.
The rat head looked back at me with the patient sincerity of someone who had prepared for this meeting and felt their preparation had been thorough.
"Right," I said slowly. I turned to Morthen. "What’s the punishment for stealing a hundred times?"
Morthen frowned, confused.
"There is no punishment for stealing, Your Highness," he said.
I blinked. "I’m sorry?"
"There is no punishment," he repeated.
I looked at him.
Then I looked at Naviel, who adjusted his glasses.
"Stealing is the nature of demons," he said. "We live on vices. That is simply what we are." He straightened. "The issue isn’t the stealing. The issue is being caught."
I stared at him.
"Really?"
"Yes," he said.
I turned this over in my head for a moment.
Then I turned back to the demon in front of me.
"Is that," I asked carefully, "really what you came here for? Because your brother was caught stealing?"
The demon nodded.
Not with any embarrassment. Not with any sense that this was a small complaint. With the full gravity of someone who had traveled to the royal palace, stood in a very long line, and waited their turn because what they had to say was important and deserved to be heard.
"My brother," he said, "does not represent demons the way a demon is supposed to."
I tilted my head slightly.
"In what sense?"
"Demons steal with flair," he said. "With precision. With artistry." He said artistry with great weight, as though it were a value worth protecting. "We are not meant to be caught. If you are caught, you have failed not just yourself but the entire tradition."
From my left, Rin made a sound.
I turned.
She had turned back from the wall to face the room again at some point, and she was nodding.
Genuinely nodding.
With the energy of someone who agreed profoundly with what was being said and felt no need to hide it.
"That’s true," she said, to no one in particular and everyone in general. "Demons should not be caught when stealing." She said it with the firmness of a principle she had held for a long time and found no reason to revise. "You do it discreetly. Cleanly. If you are caught, that is the crime."
I looked at her.
"Catching someone for the hundredth time is what I’d call an absolute crime," she continued, turning to me. "A hundred times, my lady. A hundred." She shook her head. "That is not stealing. That is just embarrassing."
I held her gaze for a moment.
"Rin," I said.
"My lady," she said in reply.
"Why are you here?"
She blinked. Those depthless black eyes stared back at me, patient and unreadable.
She opened her mouth to reply, but I only just smiled at her.
"Go check on the children," I said. "Stay with them."
Her face fell immediately.
"But I was enjoying the court," she said.
I gave her a look.
The look communicated several things efficiently, none of which required words.
Rin’s head dropped.
She turned.
And then, with every step she took toward the door, she turned back to look at me.
Every single step.
The pout on her face was complete and committed — a full, unashamed expression of suffering that somehow made her look more frightening rather than less, because Rin’s face was not designed for pouting and it showed. The combination of the depthless black eyes and the downturned mouth produced something that would have alarmed a stranger considerably.
I did not relent.
Not when she looked back the first time.
Not the third.
Not the seventh.
The door closed behind her.
From beside me, Vaelory chuckled.
I turned to her.
She was still smiling, eyes bright, the laugh still on her lips.
"Vaelory," I said.
"Yes, Your Highness?"
"For the next month," I told her calmly, "you’re on babysitting duty."
The smile disappeared.
Completely.
Like someone had reached over and switched it off.
She stared at me, but I was already looking back at the demon.
"Where is your brother?" I asked him. "I’d like him to be present. I can’t judge this fairly with only one side of the story."
The demon smiled.
It was small and slightly smug.
And then, without hesitation, he reached into his pocket.
I watched this happen.
I watched him reach into the pocket of whatever he was wearing at hip level — which, given his proportions, was somewhere I hadn’t been looking — and produce something from it.
He placed it on his palm.
I leaned forward slightly.
Then I leaned back.
Then I blinked.
The thing on his palm was a demon.
A small one.
A very small one.
A demon who was, by the evidence available to me, half ant — and not the large, impressive kind of ant that one might encounter in certain territories. The small kind. The kind that existed at a scale that made its presence on a palm not just possible but comfortable, with room to spare.
He had legs. The ant kind — multiple, thin, jointed correctly. His upper body was slightly more proportioned toward something recognizable, but only slightly. Two antennae rose from the top of his head with quiet dignity.
He was, objectively speaking, very small.
I stared at him.
I could feel Naviel beside me. I turned to him. He looked at the ant demon on the palm and then pretended not to have seen anything.
I turned to Morthen.
Morthen adjusted his glasses.
Also nothing.
I turned back.
The ant demon on the palm looked up at me, and then I took a breath.
"I’m quite certain," I said, in a voice that came out smaller than I intended, "that you know why I’ve asked for you."
The ant demon nodded.
One small, precise nod.
And then he opened his mouth.
And spoke.
The voice that came out had absolutely no business coming from that body. It was deep. It was full. It resonated in the hall the way sounds resonated when they had genuine mass behind them, rolling outward from the small figure on the large palm like something that had been waiting in a much bigger chest and had simply chosen this one as its current address.
It was the most disproportionate thing I had encountered in the demon realm.
And I had encountered a demon with giraffe legs and a rat head standing in front of me not ten minutes ago.