Chapter 55: There’s No Way My Villainess Can Be This Hostile

The night before the feature bout, I climbed the north tower to visit Serena’s room.

The facts, as I understood them, were these:

One. Serena had sponsored me into the tournament.

Two. Serena had warned me about Greywild’s counter-technique.

Three. Serena had handed me Aldric’s weakness on the morning of the match, free of charge.

Any way I added it up, the answer came out the same. Serena Frostfall was, at least in some way, my ally. A secret ally who called me "mutt" and looked at me like garbage, but I’d written her personality myself. That was simply how she expressed goodwill... Hopefully.

So the sensible thing to do, with our match twelve hours away, was to go and ask her what the plan was.

The tower had one hundred and forty steps. I counted them on the way up.

I knocked. The door opened before I got to the third one.

"Mutt."

"Frostfall. We should talk before tomorrow. Strategy. Coordination." I lowered my voice. "Ally things."

Her eye twitched.

[She’s embarrassed. Classic.]

"Come in."

Her room was three times the size of mine. She stood by the window with her arms crossed while I sat down and laid out my proposal.

Plan A: she throws the match convincingly, I take the Benediction, she receives one favor of reasonable size and legality.

Plan B: we choreograph a close bout. She batters me for four minutes, I land one lucky hit, the crowd goes home happy and both our reputations survive.

"I’m flexible," I concluded. "So. What’s the plan? You’ve obviously had one all festival."

Serena didn’t say anything for a while.

Then she crossed the room in four steps and bent down until her nose was a finger’s width from mine. Her eyes were glowing red. Mana users can do that when they’re sufficiently emotional. I wrote that rule at fifteen and forgot about it until it was pointed at my face.

"You want to know the plan?"

Her voice was quiet.

[Quiet Serena is worse than loud Serena. That’s also a rule I wrote.]

"Yes?"

"The plan, mutt, was THIS!!!!!!!"

She stopped being quiet.

"This moment! This bracket! This bout! Why do you think I sponsored you? So the committee couldn’t scratch you off on paperwork! Why did I warn you about Greywild? Because if she’d snapped your arm in the round of thirty-two, I would have gotten NOTHING! Why did I hand you the prince’s weakness? Because watching that mannequin flatten you in the quarterfinal was an unacceptable outcome!"

"Eh?"

"I have been FATTENING you. For SLAUGHTER!!!"

"EH?"

"Every rank you climbed! Every match you won! All of it exists so that tomorrow morning, in front of four thousand people, at the very peak of your run, I can destroy you PERSONALLY!"

[Oh.]

I blinked, finally realizing:

[We’re not allied at all.]

Ten years of professional plotting experience, and I’d misread every clue on the board.

"Now then." She straightened up, raised one hand, and started counting on her fingers. "First. I freeze you into a block of ice from the neck down, then shatter you out of it one limb at a time. In alphabetical order."

"Alphabetic-"

"Second. I pin that tail to the arena floor with an ice spike and let you run circles around it until you learn, publicly, the exact length of your own tail."

"H-Hold on-"

"Third. I bury you in a hailstorm. A small, personal one, the size of a coffin, that follows you around the ring until you stop moving."

"You can’t just-"

"Fourth. I freeze the water in the air around your ears. Both ears. And then I flick them."

"NOT THE EARS!?" I flinched. "How long is this list?!"

"Eleven."

"ELEVEN?!"

"Fifth." She ran out of fingers and moved to the second hand. "I hit you with everything I have until there’s nothing left but a mutt-shaped dent in the arena floor. Then, after the healers pry you out, I pick you up by the scruff, carry you to the edge of the ring, and drop you over the line from a height of one inch, so the official record states that you lost by ring-out to a gentle breeze."

"That last one is just humiliating!"

"Six through ten are violent. Eleven is humiliating." She narrowed her eyes. "I reordered them for dramatic effect."

There was a sheet of paper on the desk behind her. It had numbers down the left side in very neat handwriting. The top four lines were crossed out and written again underneath.

[She reordered them for dramatic effect, which means she rehearsed this alone in a tower at night.]

"Now," she said, getting nose-to-nose with me again. "Any questions?"

I raised one, trembling finger.

"S-Six through ten. Could I hear-"

"No. You’ll experience them chronologically."

She walked to the door and opened it.

"Sleep well, mutt. Be at your best. I spent weeks building you into an opponent worth destroying. Don’t disappoint."

I stood and walked out on unsteady legs. In the doorway, my mouth acted without authorization.

"You know, most girls just write a letter."

The door slammed hard enough to blow my bangs back.

I stood alone in the corridor for a while.

I could hear her moving around on the other side of the wood, back and forth across the room. Then it stopped, and I took that as my cue to leave.

I started walking down the steps. Soon, I began working out the fact that this entire time, my dear villainess had been personally walking me to the gallows.

Lily was sitting cross-legged on her bed when I got back, oiling my practice sword. She’d started doing that a week ago without asking and I’d decided not to bring it up.

"Welcome back. How did it go?"

I fell face-first onto my mattress.

"Kohaku?"

"I’m going to die tomorrow."

"You’re not going to die."

"I’m going to die eleven times." I turned my head sideways. "Seriously. Serena has a whole numbered list. She counted them off on her fingers, ran out of fingers, and kept going on the second hand."

"Serena threatened you?"

"Threatened is too small a word." I rolled onto my back. "The sponsorship, the warnings, the tips. All of it was marination. I went to go ask my hot ally what we were gonna do, when she basically declared war against me. Now I’ve got twelve hours to work out how not to get frozen, shattered alphabetically, and dropped over a line by a gentle breeze."

Lily didn’t say anything.

I glanced over. She’d stopped oiling the sword.

"Hot."

"What?"

"You said she’s hot."

"That’s your takeaway? Eleven methods, Lily! She reordered them for dramatic effect."

"... You’ve never called me hot."

"I... what?" Lily set the sword down, pouting as she looked away. "Lily, she was very close to my face when she said it! Proximity distorts judgment! There were glowing eyes involved!"

"Her eyes glowed?"

"K-Kinda!"

"Hmm."

"Lily. My match is at nine in the morning, against the strongest first-year in the academy, who hates me. Can we schedule the adjective trial for after I survive?"

Lily crossed her arms, but she turned that dangerous pout of hers away.

[Honestly, unbelievable. I mean, why does Serena even dislike me this badly?]

I tried to give it a bit of serious consideration.

I mean, aside from a little bit of bratty behavior, I hadn’t really done anything to her, huh? In any case, it was kind of over.

No, really. I ran the numbers.

Against Fenna, I’d trained. Against Perrin, I got lucky. The backbend dodge worked exactly once, and the TAUNT only put him over the line because he was already off balance. Against Aldric, I got even luckier.

Training, luck, luckier.

And now the person across the ring was the one who’d taught me how to make Aldric freeze up, watched the backbend, and probably knew Sabine’s drills better than Sabine’s other students did. There was no fourth rung on that ladder. Serena had seen every card in my hand because she’d dealt half of them.

The strongest first-year in the academy. Rank SSS. Seven weeks of preparation. Eleven methods, alphabetized where applicable.

No training would cover the gap by morning. No luck existed at that altitude.

I sighed, turning over onto my side.

Yep, it was over.

[Unless...]

I blinked.

Then, I sat up.

[Hold on... That could work!]

A plan was brewing in this dense little skull of mine. One that, if it worked, would get me a one-way ticket to the finals. But, if it didn’t, I would lose.

[Then, really, there’s no reason not to go for it. If it doesn’t work, I lose anyway.] I figured. [Yeah... I’ll have to try this.]

Lily glanced at me from her bed.

"Kohaku?"

"Nothing." I lay back down. "Go to sleep."

She watched me for a while. Then she blew out the lamp.

I stared at the ceiling in the dark, and this time, the ceiling and I had a lot to discuss.