Chapter 94 – An Old Friend.

Iris was dead on the floor, but her head was regenerating anyway.

Noxx watched it with her gun still raised. First came a thread of red flesh pushing out of the stump of the neck.

Then the bone, forming from below, white and clean, rising in layers.

Then the muscle coiling around the bone.

Noxx clenched her teeth.

'…No.'

Noxx bit her thumb again and pressed the blood into Sun's slot.

"Mistress…"

'Load.'

"Mistress, it's already—"

'Load.'

Sun drank.

Three seconds.

Noxx lowered the barrel and fired.

BOOM!

The upper half of Iris's body vanished.

Noxx bit her thumb again.

Loaded again.

Fired again.

BOOM!

The hips. The legs down to the knee. The floor underneath.

Again.

BOOM!

The rest of the legs. A chunk of the wall. The edge of the carpet.

Again.

BOOM!

The floorboards blew downward and a hole almost two meters wide opened in the middle of the room.

The boards gave way under their own weight, and the party dress, or what was left of it, dropped through to the floor below along with splinters, rubble and everything else.

Silence.

Noxx walked to the edge of the hole, her left arm still bleeding and dripping onto the wood, and looked down.

Below was a servants' hall.

And on the floor of that hall, among the debris, there was a puddle.

Nothing else.

A wide, dark puddle, with two or three pieces of something that no longer had a recognizable shape, and a few drops falling slowly from the edge of the hole.

Iris no longer existed.

Noxx breathed.

And then she saw the puddle move.

A strand. A thin filament of red tissue that stretched from one side to the other and anchored itself. Then another. Then something small that started to beat.

Noxx's eyes went wide.

'…Seriously? Still?'

Around the puddle, two maids walked past with a tray.

They did not stop.

One of them looked up, saw the hole in the ceiling, saw Matt and Noxx outlined against the light, understood immediately that this was royal business, and kept walking.

The other took a detour so she would not step in the puddle.

A guard from the corridor poked his head in, looked at the scene for two full seconds, counted two white-haired figures up above, ran an extremely fast mental calculation on what was and was not in his best interest to have seen, and went back to his post.

Nobody screamed.

Nobody called anyone.

At the back of the servants' hall, somebody went on washing dishes.

Noxx frowned and bit her thumb again.

"Stop."

Noxx stopped.

Matt was standing a few steps away, Moon still in his hand and his black pajamas covered in white plaster dust.

Noxx looked at him, confused.

"Why?"

"You already won."

"She isn't dead."

"You already won the duel, Noxx."

"She's regenerating."

"Yes."

"I can keep going."

"I know you can keep going."

Noxx lowered the gun slightly.

"…Then I don't understand."

Matt sighed and ran a hand through his white hair, full of dust.

"Getting this far is fine. Winning is fine. Humiliating her is fine. All of that is normal between vampires and nobody is going to care. But shooting until there isn't enough blood left for her to regenerate, that's something else."

Noxx blinked, confused.

"That's forbidden," Matt finished.

Noxx came over to him, crossing the wrecked room carefully along the edge of the hole, Sun hanging from her right hand and the blood from her left arm running off her fingers.

"Matt."

"What?"

"If she's that weak…"

Matt raised an eyebrow.

"…why don't we finish her now? She's on the floor. She's a puddle. She can't do anything. We could end this and then go after the queen."

Matt looked at her. Then he laughed.

"Ah."

"What?"

"Apparently you didn't see those memories."

Noxx frowned and opened her mouth to answer, but Matt moved. Not toward her. To the side.

A fast twist of the torso, the left arm coming up and the fingers closing on empty air with impossible precision.

SNAP!

Matt caught something.

Noxx had not seen it come in. She had not even seen the window.

Between Matt's fingers there was an arrow. Thin. Black. The fletching short and bent from the speed.

The point was ten centimeters from Noxx's face.

The arrow came apart.

It did not break. It came apart. It turned into black dust inside Matt's closed fist, and the dust stuck to his skin and started to climb.

Matt's hand went black. The fingers first. Then the back of the hand. Then the wrist.

Matt did not hesitate for half a second. He raised Moon with his right hand, aimed at his own left forearm and fired.

BANG!

The hand and half the wrist disappeared.

Noxx jumped back.

"Matt!"

Matt shook the stump once to get the last of the black dust off and looked at it with an expression of administrative annoyance, like someone who has just broken a plate.

The flesh was already starting to close.

"I'm fine."

And then, from the blown-out window frame, a voice spoke.

"Impeccable reflexes, as always."

Noxx turned. In the gap of the window, leaning sideways against the broken frame, there was a vampire.

Gray hair down to the waist, tied in a loose braid. Dark fitted clothes, no ornaments, no house insignia. A longbow slung across her back. High boots. And behind her, still against the night, two enormous black wings that barely moved in the wind.

Selene was smiling.

The vampire stepped in, touched down without a sound, and her wings folded against her back until they disappeared.

Then she bowed.

A deep bow, one knee barely bent and one hand over her chest. The bow of someone who has performed that bow thousands of times, and for one person only.

"It's a pleasure to see you again, young master Matt."

Matt looked at her.

Matt let out the longest sigh of the night.

"…Selene."

"You've grown."

"I haven't grown."

"In some sense, you have."

"Selene."

"Yes?"

Matt raised the left stump.

"Why did you do that?"

Selene straightened up and smiled with insulting calm.

"It seemed to me that Princess Noxx was about to go a little too far with Princess Iris. I wanted to give her a small warning."

"An arrow."

"A warning."

"An arrow with disintegration venom."

"A clear warning."

"…"

Selene tilted her head, still smiling.

"If you consider that I overstepped, I will gladly accept any punishment you care to impose."

Matt looked at her in silence.

"Fine," Matt said. "Your punishment is to get out of my sight. Again. I don't want to see you."

Selene put a hand to her chest with a theatrical and completely fake gesture.

"Oh."

"Selene."

"After all this time. Is that how you're going to treat your most loyal bodyguard?"

"I thought they assigned you somewhere else when I left."

"Never."

"I was told they did."

"You were told wrong."

Selene took a step forward, avoiding the hole in the floor without even looking at it.

"I have always been your bodyguard. At a distance, yes. Without permission to come near, also yes. But always."

Matt did not answer.

"The only thing I regret," Selene went on, with a pout that did not suit someone who had just fired a disintegration arrow, "is not having been able to give you a gift at your debut tonight."

"There was no need."

"Unfortunately I was busy."

"There was no need."

"Another time I'll give you a very special one."

"There's no need, Selene."

"I insist."

"No."

"I insist a great deal."

And Selene opened her arms and moved toward him, but Noxx moved too. One step to the side, her body between the two of them, and Sun's barrel raised straight at Selene's face.

Selene stopped.

Silence.

And then Selene lowered her eyes to the gun.

Her expression changed.

The smile stayed where it was, but her eyes opened a little wider and her head tilted slowly, and for the first time since she had come in through the window, Selene actually looked.

She looked at the red gun in Noxx's hand. Then she looked at the blue gun in Matt's hand. Then she went back to Noxx's.

"…Well now."

Selene raised her hands, very slowly, in a gesture of surrender that fooled nobody.

"That's an ego weapon."

Noxx did not lower the barrel.

"Princess Noxx appeared today," Selene continued, speaking to Matt without taking her eyes off Noxx. "Today. A few hours ago. And she already has an ego weapon of her own."

"…"

"By the rumors, you came out of that cave with two."

"…"

"So you gave her one."

Matt looked at her with a blank face.

"That's none of your business."

Selene laughed.

"You haven't changed much."

"Neither have you."

Selene lowered her hands and put that smile of hers back on, softer now, almost affectionate, though with Selene you never knew where the almost ended.

"I'm very glad, in any case."

Matt raised an eyebrow.

"To see that you have another pretty sister at your side now."

Noxx tightened her grip.

"I only hope," Selene went on, "that you won't forget me. Especially now that you're going to have the heiresses of every noble house as personal servants."

Matt closed his eyes for a second.

"That's a nuisance."

"Six heiresses from six different houses, all living near you, all reporting to their mothers."

"Selene."

"Just an observation."

Matt pointed at the hole in the floor with his left stump.

"Go watch that."

Selene looked down. And for the first time in the whole conversation, she went quiet. Below, in the servants' hall, the puddle was no longer just a puddle.

Something was forming at the center of it. Red tissue tangled over itself, the size of a fist, with two dark things inside that could have been organs.

And around that, thin strands stretching out toward the scattered pieces, finding them, pulling them back toward the center.

A maid walked past with a stack of clean sheets without looking. Another one, younger, stood three meters away watching with her mouth open until the first one elbowed her and the two of them kept walking.

"She's going to need blood," Matt said.

"…Yes."

"A lot."

"Yes."

"Handle it."

Selene nodded slowly. Then, before moving toward the hole, she turned her head to Matt again.

"Young master Matt."

"What?"

"Do you really hate your sister Iris that much?"

Matt did not answer right away.

"Enough to let her end up like that…" Selene clarified, pointing down with her chin.

Matt looked at the hole.

"She brought it on herself."

Selene opened her mouth. She was going to say something else. Matt noticed. Selene had that expression of someone with a second question ready, one considerably more annoying than the first.

But then Selene turned her eyes slightly to one side, and saw Noxx.

Noxx had already lowered the gun.

Noxx was not looking at Selene or the hole or the puddle or any of that.

Noxx was looking at Matt.

Only at Matt. With her arm split open from elbow to wrist and still dripping, in her underwear, covered in white dust, and with an expression on her face that was not fear, or guilt, or doubt about anything she had just done.

Selene looked at her for two full seconds.

Then she laughed.

"Ah."

"What?" Matt asked.

Selene shook her head, still smiling, and settled the bow on her shoulder.

"Nothing, young master Matt."

"Selene."

"I hope to see you both again soon."

And without another word, Selene dropped through the hole. She landed below without a sound, next to the puddle, and the maids in the servants' hall moved aside without stopping what they were doing.

Matt looked at the wreck of the room.

The bed split in two. The desk split in two. The window blown out. The curtain burned. A two-meter hole in the floor. Plaster everywhere. Blood everywhere. Mattress stuffing still floating in the air.

Matt sighed.

"…Right."

He turned to Noxx.

"Let's go."

Noxx blinked.

"Where?"

"Another room."

"…"

"This one doesn't have a bed anymore."

Noxx looked down at herself. At the underwear. At the open arm. At the white dust.

"…I don't have clothes."

"There are twenty pajama sets in the wardrobe," Matt answered, walking toward the door. "And the wardrobe survived. It's the only thing that survived."

Noxx grabbed one without looking at which, pulled it on however she could, and followed him.

The two of them stepped out into the hallway.

Below, on the floor of the servants' hall, something that was not yet a body went on pulling its own pieces toward the center.

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