The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 51: Is there a way to differentiate between love and Stockholm syndrome?

Chapter 51: Is there a way to differentiate between love and Stockholm syndrome?

"You’re an author?" I asked without hiding my surprise.

Natha looked at me, also in surprise. "You didn’t know?"

Zia too, looked at me in surprise. "You didn’t know?!"

Hey—am I supposed to? Wait...was that why she always holed up in the library? Not just because she was engrossed in reading novels? Or was she like them so much that she started to write one on her own?

"Why don’t you know? I gave you my book!" Zia pouted, hands on her hips.

"...when?"

"It’s on that group of books I brought you the first time!"

What time? Which one? Those books about brides? Are you kidding me? Did she even know anything about brides and marriage? Or love for that matter?

"I...don’t read those kinds of..." I confessed awkwardly. She gasped at that, as if I just betrayed her or something, before sinking herself into the couch with her cookie jar while sulking.

It made me curious and I shifted closer to Natha, asking in a whisper. "Which books did she write?"

Natha then proceeded to mention three titles which upon hearing them, reminded me of those teenlits we had in my previous life. You know, the one with fateful encounters, romance that was soft and sweet like cotton candy, with love conquered all, and everyone lived happily.

"You’re...unexpectedly pure?" I clasped my hand over my mouth, looking at the succubus in a new light.

She glared at me and slammed her hand on the table. "That—that look! I know that look! This is why I hate my family!"

I leaned toward Natha and whispered again. "Interpret for me?"

He chuckled and asked; "What do you think when you encounter succubi or incubi?"

"Mm...that they might try to seduce me so they could prey on my energy?" now that I recalled, I once thought Natha was an incubus—because he was tall, handsome, and looked just like my crush. I had heard that the lust demons could project the prey’s ideal type through mind trick, just like Nightmare could project one’s fear.

"Yes, that! I hate that!" Zia responded to my answer with such intensity that made me blink and scooted closer to Natha as he circled his arm around my shoulder with a small, amused laugh. "Everyone thinks like that—that we are a lust-driven race! Everyone thinks that we don’t know what love is!"

"Are they actually—"

"No, they exactly like that," Natha whispered back, patting my shoulder.

I tilted my head in confusion, and Zia pouted even more. But rather than being aggressive, she sunk in her seat like she was saddened by the world’s injustice.

Ah...so she was the anomaly. A succubus in search of true love. Which was why she read all of that romance stories as if they were her holy scripture, hoping for something like that to happen in her life.

But the prejudice was too strong toward her race. It wasn’t even prejudice, just fact. Lust demons were known to be frivolous, flirtatious, and as far as I know, had no boundary in their sexual activity. Polyamory was the norm in their realm, so the poor princess who longed for one sweet monogamous relationship would feel frustrated at her environment.

"Oh!" I clapped my hand then, as realization struck me. "Is that why she’s running away from home?"

Natha nodded wordlessly with a smile, but it confused me even more. "But how can she try to find love if she only stayed here?"

I mean...there was no one she could interact with here other than golems and Natha’s subordinates. And they weren’t exactly potential love interests seeing that they were adults at least twice her age that saw her as a kid they needed to babysit.

"Who—who said I’m looking f-for that?" she protested vehemently, but her face was red with fluster.

Eyy, girl, you were obsessed with romance enough that you wrote one yourself while running away from home—there was no way you didn’t have any interest in finding that one true love every romance enthusiast seemed to dream of.

At least two of the nurses in internal medicine where I stayed entered the profession because they thought their one true love belonged in white coats.

"If you say so," I shrugged, leaning back into my supposed groom with a grin.

"Although I wondered what kind of story could you cook up without any experience," Natha commented with a grin of a mean uncle.

"Why? People can have a dream! People read to have a dream! I just need to write about what I want to happen!" she snarled like a protective mother defending her child.

Her child being the whole romance books in this Lair.

"Then just write that—why are you trying to snoop around other’s love story?"

"Stingy! So stingy!"

While Zia was fuming, I fell into my own thought. Hmm...finding out that Zia wrote books suddenly reminded me of the author girl who wrote about this world. She was also a teenager...right? I mean, the real teenager in their teens, unlike Zia that already lived for thirty years but was still considered a teenager in the demon realm.

I kind of wonder now...

Usually, wouldn’t the one being transmigrated to a world of a novel would be the author? Wouldn’t it make more sense than me if she was the one who came here? She even died before me, and if being dead was one of the prerequisites to crossing between worlds, then she should be more than qualified.

And so, suddenly I was thinking;

What if that was the case?

What if...she did come to this world too?

"Sweetheart?" Natha patted my shoulder, and I almost flinched as my heart had been beating fastly for a while. "You’re thinking hard," he tilted his head to peer at me.

I blinked at the sight of his silver eyes, and tried to answer swiftly to avoid suspicion. "Oh, something just came to my mind suddenly,"

"And what’s this pretty head of yours thinking so hard of?" he asked while pulling me up, and I realized that Angwi had come to call us for lunch.

"Umm..." although it was a lie, what I was about to tell him wasn’t completely false either. There was indeed something that had been popping out in my head, especially last night. Even though I told myself that it didn’t matter, I still found myself thinking about it.

"Yes?"

"Natha, in your dia—I mean, notebook, you mentioned a war between humans and druids. It seemed like the druids lost, right? And the kingdom got destroyed?" I looked at him, waiting for his reaction first, and continued after he nodded. "Do you think...one of my parents comes from there?"

We were already inside the dining room, and I felt everyone pause to look at me. Natha tilted his head with a smile, his answer came easily. "That’s obvious," he said. "It’s an easy guess just by looking at your history. I am actually amazed it took you this long to wonder about it."

Ugh—that wasn’t my fault! It was Valmeier that had no interest in his ancestry. He didn’t even try to utilize his druid bloodline and stuck to the priest’s teaching.

And so I thought why should I care about it if the body’s original owner had no interest?

But then, I was thinking about it again when I woke up this morning. This bloodline was a bit special, wasn’t it? So I was worried about whether the usual method of elemental cultivation should be changed or not.

"Then," I asked again as I sat down, turning my body on the chair to face him. "Do you also think I have royal blood?"

Again, I felt everyone’s gaze on me, but I focused myself on Natha’s face. I could see Zia and Angwi’s stunned gazes from the corner of my sight, but Natha was as nonchalant as ever.

Again, he answered with a smile, while his hand took mine and rubbed it on my palm. "The artifact blessed by God could only be used by those whose blood received the same blessing," he suddenly spoke something that sounded like an instruction manual. "There is no way you can use the Sacred Spear if you don’t have royal blood, Val."

What...What? So that was the case? I mean...I thought that already last night but...you mean...

"You already know?!" I gasped. Zia gasped. Angwi gasped with her widened eyes.

Oh, good, so I wasn’t the only clueless one.

"I had conjecture," Natha said nonchalantly. "But I’m only completely sure of it after you tell me about your mana purifying today."

Oh, as expected of our Lordship.

"And yet you never told him?" Zia asked in an accusing tone. I saw the silver eyes glint and the thin lips stretched into a deep smile at that, and both Zia and I gulped. "W-why?" she asked carefully.

He crossed his hands and answered casually. "Because I’m a bad person," he shrugged. His eyes shifted at me, perhaps to gauge my reaction. But I only stared at him blankly, not really sure about what I should feel.

"Frankly, I don’t really care about that," he smirked. "And I thought he didn’t care too, seeing how he lived this far without any interest in it."

Well, at any rate, that was true in Valmeier’s case.

In my case...well, I didn’t care about the status of being a royal or whatever. What I care about was the different constitution that I might have.

"But, that—" Zia tried to rebut more, but Natha cut here with an additional reason.

"If I have to elaborate, then I just don’t want him to have any thought of chasing over his ancestor and leaving me," Natha said, just as stern and firm as the deep silver eyes. There was no doubt or reservation in his voice, and I felt like listening to the Demon Lord that he was. "I don’t want him saying he wants to go to another realm to live with some druid tribes."

Zia, although with a slight tremble in her voice, managed to speak. "But...isn’t that...too selfish?"

Natha tilted his head, smiling deeply with glowing silver eyes. "So? He’s mine."

Zia looked at me, her eyes quaked a little bit. It meant I should be scared, right?

But what to do?

My heart was beating so hard in delight.

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