Chapter 197: The Demorazzi and the King Who Hates Them For Inconveniencing His Wife
Chapter 197: The Demorazzi and the King Who Hates Them For Inconveniencing His Wife
Elyn’s POV
The world had gone silent.
The kind of silence that followed disaster.
The kind that pressed against your ears until your heartbeat sounded too loud.
I turned slowly toward Zorathys.
His hand was still wrapped around mine.
His shadows were not.
They had extended outward in thick, sinuous tendrils across the carpet of doom, lifting dozens of demons into the air like grotesque decorations. The so-called reporters—if that was what they were—hung upside down, their jeweled devices dangling from trembling fingers.
His gaze, however, was not on them.
It was on me. His eyes assessed me as if searching to see if there was anything wrong, or if I was hurt.
I swallowed nervously.
"What is going on?" I asked carefully.
His ruby eyes softened just a fraction when they held mine.
"I am preventing the stupid demons from killing you with their incessant noise."
I blinked.
"Killing me?"
"Yes."
"With noise."
"Yes."
He said it so seriously that for half a second I almost believed the flashes of light and screams of excitement were a legitimate assassination attempt.
"Zorathys, where has it been seen that one died from noise?" I asked him.
"It’s the demon realm. Many have died from something far less than noise," he told me.
Um... he really did have a point there, and that question I asked was a stupid one. But even so, just because the reporters—or paparazzi—were noisy didn’t mean he could kill them. It was their job to be noisy and nosy after all. Oh, and also annoying. Extremely annoying.
"Zorathys," I said slowly, "are you trying to prevent them from harming me—or like you said, killing me with their noise—by actually killing them?"
His expression did not change.
"I have always hated the demorazzi."
I stared at him.
"The what?"
"The demorazzi," he repeated flatly. "Every time there is an event like this, they hound others with those ridiculous devices." His shadows tightened slightly around a few floating demons. "They take pictures incessantly. They scream. They invade personal space. They lack discipline. And did I mention they are noisy?"
I made a face at that.
I almost laughed out loud. And this was not because it was obvious Zorathys disliked these pa—no, the demorazzi—because they were noisy. It was because they were referred to as demorazzi.
That sounded dangerously close to paparazzi.
He glanced down at me.
"What?"
"Nothing."
But my mind had already drifted.
In my previous life, they had been relentless. Cameras shoved into faces. Cars chased down highways. Homes invaded. Lives dissected and sold for profit.
There had been one celebrity—an actor, I remembered vaguely—who had been stalked to the brink of madness. His privacy stripped. His relationships twisted into scandal. Headlines fabricated. Stories printed without proof.
He had taken his own life because of how much the paparazzi disrupted it. It was only after his death that the lies had been exposed.
Only after it was too late.
I exhaled slowly.
The flashes of jewel-light from the demons’ devices felt different now.
"Demorazzi," I muttered under my breath, barely holding back my laugh. "How fitting a word for the paparazzi."
They were demons, all right—especially with how they invaded people’s lives.
"Firefly."
Zorathys’ voice cut through my thoughts.
I blinked and refocused.
He was studying me again.
"What is a papa... papazzi?" he asked me.
I smiled at him. "It’s paparazzi, not papazzi. And it’s just a play on words. Paparazzi sounds similar to demorazzi, don’t you think?" I asked him.
His face scrunched up as if in thought, then he nodded. "I can’t fathom the fact that you still work even when you are off duty."
"How is that me working?" I asked him in shock. "I just explained that it was a play on words."
"How did you even think about it? Your brain is always working, firefly. It’s honestly scary. How did you even come up with a word like that?" he asked me.
I just shook my head. If only he knew I didn’t come up with the term.
Instead, my attention shifted back to the demons hanging in midair, wheezing and struggling.
"Let them go," I said.
He shook his head immediately.
"No."
"Zorathys."
"They should remain where they are," he replied calmly. "They are noisy."
"Yes," I said patiently, "because that is their job."
"That is not a real job."
I stared at him.
"They take pictures. They conduct interviews. They publish articles."
"They harass, too, and disrupt sleep," he corrected.
"But it’s their job, and they make money from it," I told him.
He shrugged lazily.
"I do not care if they do. They disrupt sleep," he told me.
"What sleep, Zorathys?" I asked him. "We are on the carpet of doom. They did not disrupt your sleep."
"Firefly, I planned to sleep here, but with their incessant noise, I can’t," he told me.
I stared at him in shock.
"Wait, you planned to sleep on the carpet of doom?"
"You cut my sleep short. I was willing to take chances," he told me.
"Zorathys, how did you even think you’d be able to sleep on the carpet of doom? Did you plan to sleep while standing?" I asked him.
"It would not be the first time," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.
I shook my head at him. "You are unbelievable."
"I know that," he told me.
I inhaled and then pinched the bridge of my nose. Every day I asked myself if it was really okay to continue the plan of getting married to this demon who carried his laziness with pride.
"Let them go," I told him.
He did not move.
His shadows tightened slightly again, and a few demons gasped louder.
I turned my head and noticed one goblin struggling more violently than the others. His skin had gone from green to an alarming shade of red. His clawed hands clawed uselessly at the shadow coiled around his throat.
"Zorathys," I said sharply.
He looked at me again. He was calm and composed, entirely unbothered by the fact that one demon was gasping for air.
"What?" he asked me.
"You know what. Release them," I told him.
"Why? They deserve it. They made you uncomfortable and disturbed my plans to sleep. That’s a crime punishable by death," he told me.
I sighed. "Zorathys, they were excited."
I could not believe I was protecting the demorazzi right now. Anyone from my previous life would laugh at this. The same paparazzi who sometimes pushed people to their deaths—okay, so maybe they were not exactly called the same thing, but it was similar, and they did the same work after all. But how absurd was it that I was protecting them right now?
"They were overwhelming," Zorathys told me.
"They were doing their jobs."
"There are other jobs to be done in the realm. Being a demorazzi is not a job. It’s like being a child—and that’s another form of being a nuisance," he told me.
I couldn’t argue with that. I am not referring to the part about children being nuisances—that’s a lie, and it doesn’t matter what Zorathys says or believes. I don’t believe children are nuisances. They are just cute. But anyway, the fact that demorazzi are nuisances—yes, I agreed with that. There was no arguing that fact at all.