Nikto didn’t answer anything.

“Do you, perhaps, love him?!”

“Yes.”

Kors shook his head in disappointment.

“Oh! This redhead drove everyone crazy. Karina, you… He does what he wants, considers himself the coolest, how does he do it?”

“No way. He's really cool.”

“Bullshit! And don't love him, he doesn't deserve it! He doesn't care about you, he uses you, he also demands: “Where is my victory?” He is completely insolent! He doesn't love you, Demon!”

Nikto was sitting sad and silent, and Kors physically felt how he yearned for Lis, regretting that he was gone. He wanted his love and recognition.

Kors was stunned by it:

“No-no, I won't leave it like that! I promised to help you, and I will put something else in you, the right thing. I'll squeeze out all the shit that Lis put into you. Firstly, it is unacceptable to talk and communicate like that, and I will take care of your upbringing, your culture of speech. And secondly, I will explain to you that you should not love those who don’t reciprocate and just use you. This is not the case! Do you agree with that?”

“Yes,” answered Nikto indifferently.

“Do you understand that Alis doesn't love you? He probably doesn't love anyone at all!”

“I understand everything,” Nikto quickly touched his face with his right hand several times in a row.

“Maybe he only loves himself,” Kors continued, “and even then, I doubt it very much, looking at how he fights, this is not even courage, it’s some kind of suicide, he doesn’t think where he is going.”

“He thinks,” Nikto tightly grasped his left wrist with his right, trying not to make uncontrolled movements.

And Kors saw it, the way he tried to calm his hand:

“I will help you, Nik, to get rid of this splinter, human weakness.”

Nikto didn’t object, and Kors was inspired:

“You will forget about him, and when we return to the Black City, by this time I will teach you, you will speak normally, because we need this to fulfill my Mission, do I understand correctly? After all, my Mission will clearly be associated with the Upper City, and not with the Lower, of course. What should I do in Lower? This means that you will need to learn to speak the way we, the Supreme Sirs, talk among ourselves, and not the way you, illiterate commoners, talk. I'll teach you, okay?”

“Okay,” Nikto answered.

Kors nodded in satisfaction and took the lists of the dead from the table.

“Oak stump…” He shook his head. “Expressions of the poor, who don’t even have a table, but instead of a table there is a wooden stump!”

Nikto was silent. Kors began reading the lists, bitterly recognizing the names of his warriors.

Nikto pulled his mute Arel to him and hugged him to his chest the way an upset child hugs his favorite toy to be comforted. Kors lifted his eyes from the lists and looked at them, it touched him. And he also really liked the fact that Nikto argued with him, and it seemed he didn’t mind reaching out for knowledge. Kors thought that the devilish cunning was simultaneously combined in Nikto with some childish naivety and a lack of understanding of what was bad and what was good. This clarity of Nikto in the seemingly most ordinary questions and concepts surprised Kors: “No, he is still a little mentally retarded,” thought Kors, looking at such a sincerely upset Nikto. “That's really, really, hellishly wrong, wrong combination of Demon and man. Such a crooked, flawed symbiosis, but by the way, it's even cute!” Kors remembered how Nikto talked in a rather primitive way, although he said the right things: “Okay, I'll teach him, he doesn't seem to mind, he probably understands that he needs it.”

Nikto pressed Arel closer to him and kissed him. Arel immediately responded to the kiss, they were sucked in front of Kors that he felt uneasy. He thought that he probably needed to leave and didn’t leave, didn’t want to leave, continuing to watch Nikto and Arel kissing, how Nikto stroked Arel’s face with slightly crooked fingers of his right hand, very tenderly, and Arel hugged him. Kors realized that now their kiss would turn into something more, and jealousy stirred in him, gnawing at him, but he threw those thoughts away. “Nikto is alien to human notions of morality,” thought Kors, thus reassuring himself. “He's not doing this to make me jealous, offend or spite me, no. Nik also loves me, he is kind and affectionate with me. He just wants to be with Arel now, they have been together for a long time, but this doesn’t mean anything. Nik listens to me, and reaches out to me, he just doesn’t understand now that offends my feelings, and it is indecent to squeeze Arel in front of my eyes. The demon knows no shame, and doesn’t understand human concepts. This is the reason for his behavior. And he didn't tell me to leave. I should not be jealous and offended, Arel is his lover and we are one.” And Kors, explaining to himself everything that was happening, continued to watch how Nikto undressed Arel, began to breathe heavily, pressing against him with groans, and Kors felt that he too was getting up, despite jealousy and resentment. Arel bent over to meet him and clung to his beloved so much, their movements were so complementary to each other, just like in battle, they were one. The action of one smoothly flowed into the movement of the other. Kors now felt not jealousy, but rather envy, realizing how awkward and mediocre his sex with Nikto was. He looked with all his eyes, trying to understand how Arel did this, how such harmony is formed between them. This was beautiful. And one could look at it endlessly, like at fire or flowing water. Nikto fucked Arel for a long time, he moaned, and Kors seemed to be there with them.

He sat at the table, stroking his dick and, swallowing hard saliva, watched how Nikto’s ass smoothly moved back and forth, as he bended over Arel, and he, on the contrary, rose to him, and they sucked again, and blond hair of Nikto mixed with Arel’s dark hair and obscured their faces from Kors. “I fucked him too,” Kors thought. “Our hair was also blended, it's so beautiful.” He tried to hear what they were thinking now and didn’t hear, but not because he could not, but because they weren’t thinking, either one or the other. Kors was amazed at it, their kind of trance and not a single intelligible thought, only a spontaneous flow of pleasure. Kors tried to resonate with them and stop thinking, so he even shuddered when he clearly heard the thought of Nikto, addressed to Arel: “I allow you to come”, Nikto thought, and Arel groaned, trembling in ecstasy. “Oh, that’s how they…” Kors realized, almost cumming with Arel. He saw now how Nikto, with his knees slightly apart, slowly moved up along Arel’s body, fell on his face and, realizing where Arel’s mouth and lips were, seeing Nikto then sitting on his face harder, then rises, resting his hands on the headboard. And Arel, whose tongue has now been freed from the metal cover, caresses Nikto with it, holding his buttocks with his hands, licking, moving his head back and forth, sticking his tongue deep inside, forcing Nikto to moan, and closing his eyes, threw his head back, gasping for air. “Gods, I want that too! I want this damn prince to do me the same!” Kors thought, seeing how Nikto squeezed his cock and came onto Arel’s forehead, sitting deep on his tongue. And Kors came too.

Karina undressed very slowly, took a bath. She didn’t hear Lis come back into the room because water was noisy coming from the open tap. She lay in the bath for a long time, because she took the “restorative” and was very slow. Then she also slowly got out, began to dry herself off, seeing with bitterness that her whole body was covered with bruises, her legs were just blue. Lis didn’t remove the chastity belt from her, and of course it was very inconvenient to wash in it, as well as to relieve herself. Karina got used to it somehow. When she sat down in the bath, water poured through small holes inside the “belt”, then poured out, flowing down her legs. There was no way to wash properly with soap, a washcloth or with the hand, the hole in the front was very tiny – round, with sharp jagged edges, and you couldn’t stick your finger in, a little more behind, and also with sharp teeth. Karina asked Lis to take off her “belt” in order to go out in great need, usually only in the evening, and to wash up. He opened the lock, she went to the toilet, washed, then returned to his room, he fucked her and locked her up again. Everything suited him. She was uncomfortable. And this day Lis was in such a mood that Karina was afraid to even just approach him. She had not eaten anything for the second day, the piece didn’t go down her throat, she only injected and drank wine. During the hike, Karina lost weight again, and in recent days even stronger, and the wide metal belt with a padlock tightened at her waist no longer cut into the skin as at first. Even a finger could be stuck in. Karina slipped in a towel to wipe her belly under the metal. She saw on her waist a purple line of bruising from an iron belt, she knew that she looked thin and pathetic. Today on the wall she didn’t cope and made a small misfire in battle, blunt and stupidly substituted herself, distracted Lis, he immediately backed her up, and then just quickly and silently gave her a blow in the eye. Others saw it, they said nothing. She was, of course, to blame. Karina returned to the room. Lis, without moving, was lying on the made bed, she went to the mirror, well, so it was, her lips had not yet had time to heal completely, and now there was a bruise under the eye. Karina tried to paint over it with flesh-colored dye, she seemed to have succeeded a little. She injected herself again, a dull numbness of fatigue and stress possessed her. Lis was lying on the bed in clothes, in combat ammunition and with a fastened weapon, he didn’t even take off his boots, he didn’tmove, he probably took a drug and passed out. Karina fully dressed and gathered, lay down carefully next to him. As soon as Lis wakes up, she will immediately jump up, only she hasn’t put on her boots, this was quick and he would not need to wait for her. Fully collected, she pressed close to him, inhaling the familiar scent of his hair, and couldn’t resist kissing his cheek with oblique stripes of old scars. Lis stirred and hugged her half asleep, pressing her to himself. Karina buried her face in his chest, in a hard steel bib and closed her eyes.