The Demon Emperor's System: I Rose From a Dead Body

Chapter 2: The Demon Wants Him Dead

Adrian threw his head to the left.

It wasn't a plan. His neck just did it, the way a hand jerks off a hot pan.

Steel hit stone. The crack sounded like a dropped plate, and chips of floor sprayed across his cheek. Something warm ran down the side of his face and dripped off his ear.

Seraphina looked at the blade. Then at him.

"You moved."

"Yeah." His voice shook. "Sorry."

Her red eyes narrowed a fraction. Nobody had ever apologized to her for that before. He could see her filing it away.

"Don't be sorry." She wrenched the sword out of the floor. A thin trail of grey dust followed it up. "Be still."

She lifted it again.

His legs still weren't working. His arms were barely better. The wet shirt had gone cold against his stomach, and every breath pulled at the hole under his ribs like a thread caught on a nail. He had one more dodge in him, maybe, and she knew it. He could see it in how she stood. No hurry at all. A cat with a mouse that had run out of corners.

*Think.*

He was good at one thing, and it wasn't fighting. He remembered. Every page he'd read, every patch note, every stupid line in the stupidest quest log. His head kept all of it, like a drawer that never got full.

So he looked at the room. Fast. The way he used to scan a game screen for the hidden door.

The candle first. The flame still leaned sideways, hard, toward the middle of the room. A draft. But the only window was shuttered, an iron bar across it, and he could see no gap in the wall.

That left the door. It stood behind Seraphina's left shoulder, open a hand's width. Black in the gap.

Then the dog.

One bark, then nothing. A memory surfaced, thin and fast, like a bubble coming up from deep water. The east kennel. Four mastiffs the size of ponies. They screamed at the wind. They screamed at the cook. They screamed at a falling leaf.

Four dogs don't stop after one bark.

"Your employer isn't late," Adrian said.

"Quiet."

"He's here."

The blade stopped. Not by much. A hand's width above his chest, trembling very slightly in the candlelight.

"Careful," Seraphina said. "Liars die first."

"Look at the flame." He kept his eyes on hers and off the steel. "It's leaning toward you. The door behind you is open. Was it open when you came in?"

Her eyes didn't move. Neither did the sword.

"You're careful. I can tell. You tidy up your cloth. You'd have shut that door."

"Maybe I wanted a way out."

"Maybe." He swallowed. His throat felt like paper. "The dogs, then. Four mastiffs in the east kennel. They bark at the cook. One bark, a couple minutes ago, and then they quit. Dogs don't quit on their own."

"Dogs sleep."

"Not those."

"And how would you know?" Her voice was flat. "Two nights ago you couldn't remember which fork to use."

"It's my house."

A beat. The candle popped.

"Why would a man pay you thirty thousand crowns to kill a debtor?" Adrian said. He was talking fast now, too fast, but if he slowed down he'd think about the sword. "Why's he late? Why's he quiet? Why's the door open and the dogs dead?"

Seraphina said nothing.

"Because the second half isn't coming. A dead lord can't say who ordered it. You can." He licked his lips. "You're the one loose end in this room."

The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.

He watched her face. Not a muscle moved, but something behind the red eyes went very cold and very still. Like a pond skinning over with ice.

"Eleven years," she said quietly. "Eleven years I've done this. Nobody has ever tried to cut me out."

"Maybe nobody ever hired you to kill a Vale."

Her jaw tightened.

"The man who hired me wore a hood," she said. "Spoke through a cloth. I didn't ask his name. Nobody asks."

"That's probably why he picked you."

"That's a guess."

"Yeah. It is." His heart slammed against his ribs. It had been dead twenty minutes ago and now it was doing the work of ten. "So listen. Just listen. If I'm wrong, you stab me in four seconds and lose nothing. If I'm right..."

"Hush."

She hadn't raised her voice. She'd done something worse. She'd tilted her head, the tiniest degree, toward the door.

Adrian shut his mouth.

Door, dog, flame. Three small things. He had just bet his second life on three small things, and one of them was a bark.

The room went quiet. Really quiet. He could hear the candle fizzing in its own wax. He could hear his own heartbeat, fast and heavy. He could hear something else, too, far off and faint.

A floorboard. In the hall.

Slow weight. A pause. Then another board, a little closer. Dust sifted down from the black beams and landed on his face. He didn't dare blink it away.

The blade moved. It slid from his chest up to his throat and settled there, the point resting against the soft place under his jaw. A bead of cold ran down his neck.

"If you've lied to me," Seraphina murmured, "I take your head first."

"That's fair."

"Not a word."

He didn't say one.

She turned. Only her shoulders. Her feet stayed planted, her eyes sliding sideways to the door, the point of the sword never leaving his skin. Even like this, even half looking away, she didn't leave him any room.

Out in the hall, something metal touched wood. A scrape. Like a belt buckle brushing a doorframe.

Another step. And another, two sets of boots now, maybe three.

Adrian stopped breathing. Not because he'd decided to. His fingers scraped the stone floor, nails catching on the grooves, searching for anything at all to hold.

"Seraphina." A man's voice, warm and easy, from the dark beyond the door. It had the sound of someone smiling. "You can come out now. It's all taken care of."

She didn't answer.

The man laughed, softly. "Come on. We've got your coin. All of it. Plus a little extra for your trouble."

Seraphina's eyes went to Adrian. Then back to the gap in the door. Her thumb moved along the sword's grip. Once.

"Three of them," she breathed. So quiet he almost missed it. "Maybe four."

"Can you take four?"

"Not with you talking."

"He's lying," Adrian whispered.

"I said not a word."

A long shadow slid across the floor from the doorway. It stopped at the edge of the candlelight. Then it split into three.