Chapter 120
“Why are you pretending to be a god? What for?!”
It wasn’t as if he had bad intentions, and Zynie had been hopping around in delight just moments ago. So why was Fay angry? Alnazir truly didn’t understand.
His expression slowly twisted with wounded frustration. He hadn’t betrayed Fay. He hadn’t said he didn’t care whether the people of this city lived or died.
All he had done was listen proactively.
“She’s not going to stay like that forever… right?”
“No.”
“That’s a relief. How long until she returns to normal?”
“That state will pass quickly. Humans continue to age, after all.”
In other words, ‘staying like that forever’ was impossible precisely because humans kept aging.
Fay’s mouth fell open.
“This is unbelievable. Why… why would you do something like that?”
“Fay, you’re speaking as though I granted her wish just to make trouble for you and the young witch.”
Only then did Fay realize her mistake. She hadn’t meant to lash out at him. She was just shocked, something completely beyond common sense had just happened, and she’d panicked.
“I’m sorry if it sounded that way.”
She backed down immediately.
She had been inside the bathroom, ear pressed against the door, eavesdropping. But toward the end, their voices had been too quiet for her to catch.
Judging from what she had heard earlier, perhaps Zynie—full of complaints about her older sisters—had asked Alnazir to make her older.
“I should have listened properly before accusing you in the heat of the moment.”
As she apologized, the crooked line of Alnazir’s mouth slowly returned to normal. But his eyes were still faintly sulky.
“Still… can Zynie return? To her original age?”
Alnazir didn’t particularly want to answer.
Even if she apologized now, his feelings had already been hurt. To mend that, he felt he deserved a gift of his own.
“Lord Al.”
Fay called his name anxiously, taking his hand. He glanced at her face, then laid out a condition.
“If you promise to keep wearing that cloak.”
He had sensed her earlier struggle in the bathroom of her attempts to remove it. Though the cloak was a transformed fragment of his discarded tentacle, the sensation was still faintly connected to him.
She had tugged at it, nearly tried to rip it apart with her staff.
That was no way to treat a gift he had made with effort and time. If he listed every offense, both his anger and the argument would never end.
But if she would simply accept the cloak and wear it quietly, he was willing to overlook the rest.
“You want me to wear this forever?”
Fay’s hesitation was plain on her face and in her voice.
He didn’t like that she was still wavering, but he chose to see it positively. Compared to her outright refusal earlier, this was progress.
“Fay, this is for your sake too.”
He softened his approach, shifting tactics. He deliberately arranged his face into a worried, slightly sad expression.
“Your witch friend may have secured a promise that there won’t be another invasion. But do you think the emperor will keep it?”
With the emperor mentioned, Fay—who had been poking his side impatiently—froze. Seizing the moment, Alnazir clasped her hand and continued.
“He may be insignificant, but he’s still the ruler here. He’ll want compensation for the humiliation he suffered. There’s a high chance he’ll try to retaliate against you.”
“Why me?”
“Because I cut off his head and gave it to you as a gift.”
“I didn’t cut it off…!”
“Do you think the emperor will care about that?”
“….”
“Fay, I guarantee you this, what he’ll need is someone he can easily take revenge on.”
He wouldn’t be able to defeat Alnazir by force. So he would target someone easier first. That was Alnazir’s argument.
He would try to cut off her head in retaliation. And if he succeeded with her, he might attempt the same against the other witches. That was how revenge worked.
To reinforce his claim, Alnazir elaborated on the kinds of things the emperor might attempt.
“That’s why I even made a hat to protect your neck.”
If only he would stop talking.
Fay stared at him in disbelief. His attempt to instill fear was absurd.
What did protecting her neck have to do with making a hat? If anything, he should have reinforced the collar area, not made a hat. It was slightly better than claiming he had lengthened the arms for defense, but still ridiculous.
“It’s a familiar’s duty to protect their witch. I want to fulfill my duty.”
No matter how she looked at it, he was just attaching a convenient reason after the fact.
Fay narrowed her eyes and glared at the man who was pretending once again to be nothing more than a devoted, well-meaning familiar.
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