Chapter 04 [arc three]

After her freakout at dinner, the interactions between the two were sparse. The man appeared to be avoiding her and sending Lilibet in his place to keep her company. The blonde apologized for her inaction, stating that she should have stepped in when the conversation took such a turn. This was one of the rare moments the bubbly demon behaved seriously. She made sure to express that the way the man spoke about her was wrong. Even though he meant to be kind, his choice of words and his general outlook were incorrect.

"I won't let that happen again." Lilibet stood in front of her with a guilty look in her eyes. She struggled to stay still as she continued. "I know that you want to leave. And even though you can't, I will try my best to make your stay loving."

It hurt Karilyn that the demon wasn't willing to stand up for her to the king. To speak up and say that she deserved to be let go. But she knew that the demon was in a similar position. The ogre king was her employer and had been for centuries. He gave her a job high up in a society where she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to. The man gave her a place in society that millions of women would beg and plead to have. And at the end of the day, the two were strangers. The two weren't anything to each other, but friendly.

"I don't get WHY I'm so valuable. Why can't he just get another girl to take my place who actually wants to be here? I can't live in a cage!" She cried out in frustration and shook her head. It had been weeks, and she still wasn't used to her new life.

The blonde shrugged her shoulders, her hoop earrings shaking with the movement loudly. "Sacrificial Maidens aren't chosen at random. They're picked out by our most respected shaman. If the king wanted another, he'd have to wait for multiple years and pray for her arrival."

She felt her eyes water at the information. It only made her feel worse knowing some anonymous figure forced this upon her. "Is it possible that the shaman he went to chose the wrong woman?"

Seeing how distraught the conversation was making the younger woman, the demon moved to sit next to her. She took off the long fur jacket she was wearing and wrapped it around the slave. It made her feel safe as she hugged herself in tears. Her emotions had been a mess since the dinner and it sucked. At random, she would burst into tears and hide in the bed's blankets. Or worse, Karilyn would start throwing things around in a sudden blind burst of hatred. She had an inner battle happening in her mind, and it pained her.

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The rest of that night, the two just sat there. It helped to have company, but still, she felt like she was incredibly alone. Her body felt exhausted as she went on with the day after and the day after that. She struggled to communicate to the blonde that she needed to be given freedom. Karilyn wasn't some fragile little dove. She was an adult. And to be a functional adult, she had to be given a chance to spread her wings. Her chest ached badly as she forced herself to smile and behave. It was noticeable that she was suffering, but no one could give her the only thing she wanted.

Thankfully, she was given proper access to the rest of the palace. The blonde stated the ogre king wanted her to get a proper education, so the library was all hers. Not only that, but Lilibet revealed that there was a garden, pool, and exercise room for her to use. She could open all the doors with her hand when the circle turned green, like her room. And they would always be accessible as long as she wanted to use them. This helped her a tad bit, but her depression remained, no matter how many books she read. They ended up reminding her about the life she had lost.

The slave girl's body had some basic reading compression, so the easiest books she could read. But the more hard novels that had hundreds of pages she couldn't understand very well. When she shared this with Lilibet, the demon offered to give her lessons. Eagerly she accepted, and they spent her afternoons learning how to read. The strange futuristic characters the demons wrote intrigued her. When spoken, they sounded like a mix of American English and broken Japanese. Her tongue felt funny when forming the words.

"Our mother tongue is quite difficult to learn outside of infancy, so this is a more casual version to speak day to day. Most demons who aren't from royal families speak this way." Lilibet shared during one of their later lessons in the library.

The redhead nodded and finished the paragraph she was writing. Her grammar was still at the level of an elementary schooler. "Does the king speak formally, then? Since he's a royal."

With a small smile, the demon looked over the writing and nodded approvingly. "Not really. He speaks informally at times and formally at others. It really depends on who he is with." She handed her another paper with words to read and copy.

"With you, he tends to speak informally, like he's with a friend. But with me, he keeps it professional despite the fact we've become close over the years." She added with a little smirk and laughed.

This made Karilyn take a moment to think about what she said. The fact he spoke informally to her like they were peers was surprising. She assumed he was keeping his walls up and pushing her at a distance due to the circumstances. But now that she was finding out that wasn't the case, she was puzzled. The king was someone that frustrated her greatly. She didn't know when she could trust him and when she had to put up her guard. Sighing, she got back to studying the words she had to write in the demon tongue and focused.