Chapter 42: My Guests Want Answers Part 2

Roman was next. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he seemed perfectly casual when Sally opened the door. He acted as if he hadn’t just tried to kill me a few hours earlier and even engaged me in a bit of small talk before I finally asked him the question that had been haunting me for ages.

“When did Eros first tell you to start plotting against me?”

“What makes you think Lady Eros has ever personally graced me with her presence before today?” He didn’t deny the claim or show any sign of being rattled, but I knew. I’d known ever since Eros first appeared.

“You didn’t fall down. Humans can’t stand being in the presence of a god unless they’ve already built up a resistance.”

“Well then, couldn’t I ask you the same question?”

“When did Eros first tell you to start plotting against me?” I repeated myself, refusing to allow him to lead the conversation.

He seemed taken aback by the harshness of my tone. Even after everything I’d done today, it seemed like he still expected me to play his silly little games, but I was done with games. I wanted answers. He realized that, and for the first time in ages, his mask dropped completely. He didn’t try to hide his emotions after that.

“Two years,” he responded, looking genuinely remorseful. “But it didn’t start out like that. Initially, Lady Eros just told me that there was a young woman in need of my help.”

“Holly?”

“Yeah. I looked into her. She deserved better than the life she was living, so I spread some rumors that were picked up by her father.”

“The same father who kicked out her pregnant mother and treated her like garbage?”

“Lady Eros didn’t tell me that part,” Roman replied sheepishly. “When I asked later on, she said it was a necessary evil for the sake of ensuring Holly’s best life.”

“And at what point did Eros tell you that Holly’s best life required me to die?”

“Last week,” he explained, while refusing to look me in the eye. “Before then, she’d implied that you’d be happier if Holly took over as saint and queen. You didn’t want those roles anyway. We both knew that, so I thought I was helping. I thought it’d all work out in the end.”

“And what about after she told you. Did you still think everything would work out in the end?”

“She is a goddess,” he replied, defeated. “What choice did I have?”

“I’d have hit her.”

“You can’t hit a god,” he replied, flabbergasted, as if the very idea was absurd.

“What if I told you I did? What if I told you I spent ten long years repeating this day over and over again and that in one of those loops, I was so sick of her interference I struck her with a spell powerful enough to break that stupid face of hers.”

Roman stared at me in shock for a few long moments before he burst out laughing.

“I think that would actually explain quite a bit. You certainly aren’t the same helpless little girl you’ve been all my life.”

“Ten years of trying not to die will do that to you.”

“Well, I’m glad you got a hit in during that time. Honestly, you probably needed it after everything she put you through. Still, if you did that to a god, I’m terrified to imagine what you did to me during those ten years.”

“I convinced Leo that we were having an affair and tricked him into executing you. That was fun for me, and surprisingly easy. I could probably even do it again right now.”

“I am...glad I could help,” Roman responded with a complex expression on his face. “Though that seems like a reason worth dying for.”

“What are you...” I began, but before I could finish, Roman’s face returned to his default mask, and he turned to walk away.

I learned later from Logos that in the first loop, when I’d gone to Roman for help, he hadn’t killed me. Instead, he’d drugged my tea and tried to smuggle me out of the academy, but the prince had caught on and executed us both. Part of Roman had truly wanted to save me, but he was terrified of betraying Eros. Thus, he only risked making a move when he believed her attention was focused elsewhere. Logos was unsure why he chose to drug me, rather than work with me, but I suspect that he didn’t want me to thank him after all he’d done to betray me. He wanted me to hate him, though he’d never admit it.

“Oh, by the way. I never lied about you bullying Holly. You did hit her in magic class and knock her down the stairs.”

“Why would I have ever done that? I didn’t even know about the affair.”

“I never said it was intentional. The magic misfire was just a result of some rather poor aim on your part, and I believe you knocked her down the stairs while rushing back to your room after class. I doubt you even noticed her, but when Leo found out, he was convinced it was all intentional and told Holly that you were trying to kill her. She probably still thinks that, so I’d be careful around her.”

I stared dumbfounded at the door as he walked away. I had actually, even if unintentionally, bullied Holly. Heck, I had spent a decade cursing her very existence for framing me when she was just a victim in all this. The only person responsible for any of this, besides Eros, was Leo himself, who just happened to be my next guest.

Part of me had hoped that now that the game had ended, he had calmed down and come here to apologize, but no. Instead, he spent five full minutes ranting about how he hadn’t forgiven me for bullying Holly and how he would destroy my life if I ever laid another hand on her.

“You’re an idiot,” was my reply once he finally shut up long enough to let me get a word in.

“What?”

“You believed that I bullied Holly because it made it easier to forgive your own infidelity. Well, I won’t let you do that. Our engagement was never based on love. We both knew that, and you could have ended it with a conversation. Your father wouldn’t have objected, and mine would have demanded nothing more than some minor compensation, but instead you chose to believe these lies and take my life because that was easier for you. Well, I don’t care how close you are to being a god. To me, you are nothing more than a pathetic little coward who has no right ruling a farm, let alone a country.”

“You can’t speak to me like that,” he stuttered in shock.

“Then kill me,” I demanded. “Either kill me or just get out already. I have dealt with you for far too long, and I’m sick of it. I would be perfectly happy if we never saw each other again for the rest of our lives.”

He stormed off after that, while spewing out some vague threat against me, but I didn’t care. As far as he knew, I was untouchable to him, which meant he was afraid of me and my magic. He wouldn’t make a move until he figured out how to counter my strange and unexplainable magic. I doubted this was the end of it, but I hoped that Roman and Holly could eventually calm him down.

Surprisingly, Atlas hung back after Leo left to shake my hand and congratulate me on winning our duel. He apparently had no hard feelings for how I’d won, and all his injuries were perfectly healed. Given the complexity of some of them, I knew that Holly had to have done it and that her experience likely rivaled my own. I didn’t think she’d learned Restore yet, but I was sure she would soon. I wasn’t sure if she’d ever stop being afraid of me, but part of me wanted to chat with her about healing magic over tea someday.

As for Atlas, he was unchanged. He was still loyal to Leo, despite the man threatening to kill his father just a few hours ago. According to Atlas, a knight’s job was to follow his master regardless of his order, and while that seemed like a wildly dangerous philosophy, part of me did admire the simplicity with which he lived his life. Atlas didn’t need to think. He just did as he was told and thought nothing of the consequences, much like I had before I became a pawn in the game of my final guest.