The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 216: Interlude - Bridget and Darlae - Part 2

Chapter 216: Interlude - Bridget and Darlae - Part 2

Bridget returned to the inn - the Lamb’s Slumber - in a state of rosy bliss. Her body felt so relaxed and tender, but with spots of soreness that were just right for Darlae to show her a little aftercare...

She’d also picked up a bottle of wine, Darlae’s favorite summer red, to make up for allergies ruining all the fun her wife had been looking forward to.

She found Darlae lying on the bed with a wet cloth over her eyes, and a pile of papers on the small table on the other side of the room.

"Hey sweetie," Darlae said, peeking out from under the cloth. Her eyes looked much better, and her nose was less red.

As soon as she saw the bounties, Bridget sighed. "Oh Dar... I hope you don’t seriously want to do these."

"Rurhi passed them to me. They’re open contracts. And no, I don’t want to do them at all. I just thought it would be rude to give them back."

Rude, and suspicious. People in the city seemed unusually enthusiastic about countering the demonic incursions happening everywhere... and rooting out potential demon servants, sympathizers, and spies.

The holes in reality between Ayther and Hell were growing more frequent; much faster than the last Heavenswar.

Closing them required large amounts of mana, and thus someone like Bridget would be in high demand as a mage more than a witch, but she had no desire to fall back into her old role.

Catching a missing cat was obviously out, since it only paid a silver and had a low chance of success. So the only real curiosity was-

"Isegart? I know the pay looks good but I thought we were waiting for a ship, since the teleporter is expensive."

Rates for going anywhere were up, and the teleporter could only work once or twice a day for sending before needing replenishment.

"That’s still the plan," Darlae said, folding her fingers together over her tanned, rippling abs, "but we both know our purses are getting a lot lighter than expected."

Bridget sighed. Darlae wasn’t wrong... But Isegard? Bridget hated snow, and she hated the idea of a place that was dark or day for entire halves of the year.

"If we did this, we’d have to take the teleporter. That or wait for another sailing fleet, and who knows how long that will take."

"With how slow the boats are dribbling in? I give it another month at least."

Bridget bit her thumb, as she did when she thought sometimes. "It’s three weeks to Isegard, and there’s no Adventurer’s Guild there... We wouldn’t be able to get any messages to Kir."

With some diligence, the two parents had written letters to Kir, and sending them by scrypen had been another expense that had eaten into their funds. Technically, they’d sent them to the Academy addressed to Kir. It wasn’t concerning that they hadn’t heard back from him during the semester, but now it was summer - no matter how cool the weather was getting - and their son hadn’t seen fit to send a message, even though they’d told him where they would be?

Maybe he was just having that good of a time. Making friends. Showing off his vast and strange, yet surprisingly true, perception of how the world worked...

"For the record, I don’t think we should take any of those quests. But it might be nice to see if we could grab a contract for monster hunting."

"We can’t, the Guild only grants those to locals - and even then, I heard they favor beastkin over people like us."

"Figures," Darlae tsched.

It wasn’t all that atypical. Cities with high populations of only certain races tended to protect their own. Even if she didn’t agree with it, she understood why. Bridget had founded Darlbridge entirely out of a promise to protect humans, and her hope was that it would pay off in a future where humanity was no longer dying out.

The more cosmopolitan cities tended to be further south and coastal, and Nyandor, for all that it was a heavily visited place, did not make things easy for non-beastkin to actually live there.

"Dar... I know Nyandor isn’t working out like we thought... but maybe-"

"Maybe what? We’ve been on the road for months chasing rumors about someone who isn’t even the person we’re looking for! And now all of a sudden I’m allergic to cats?! I love cats! It’s like the whole universe is out to get me."

"Are you saying we shouldn’t be doing this?" Bridget felt hurt. "What about Kir?"

"I’m not-" Darlae scraped her hands through her hair as she sat up, letting the wet cloth fall onto her lap. "I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing this, but I feel like everything just got infinitely harder now that the Heavenswar is in full swing. I just... I want to know if we’re prepared to do what we have to, not just what we want to, while we continue this search."

Bridget sighed. She’d been holding the bottle of wine the entire time, and only just now set it on the table as she sat on the small stool next to it. Darlae barely glanced at the wine before returning her gaze to her wife.

"We promised each other, no more wars. I’ll protect myself if I have to, but I’m not sure I want to get involved with any of the sides, no matter what they’re offering."

Darlae reached across the gap, taking her hand. "If that’s your stance, I’m with you. I just wanted us to be on the same page."

For a long time they talked, sharing their feelings and speculating about what might happen.

"Worst case scenario, if we don’t find something over the next week then we take the caravan job. We’ll be a month or so off schedule but it’ll be good, solid pay," Bridget concluded.

"Agreed," Darlae said, pulling her into a kiss. "Now how about we enjoy that wine?"

As they began to kiss, they could not have known that smoke was rising over the harbor.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.