The sun was setting, casting everything in an orange glow.

I walked down a stone road with a map in my hands. A map to my new house. A map covered in slime. Brad’s slime. Wonderful.

I assumed I was headed the right way. The drawings were so crude, it was more or less impossible to tell. Brad should probably stick to his tentacle-grabbing day job.

I glanced up from the map to Violetta walking next to me. I was actually feeling a little nervous. I never thought I’d be living with a busty girl in leather, but life threw curveballs from time to time.

Violetta smiled at me. “So? What do you think?”

“Think of what?”

“Of Hellacia, silly.” Violetta giggled. “Our city.”

I looked around at the wall of multi-story buildings surrounding us on both sides of the road. Although they had slight medieval touches to them, they were basically just modern apartment buildings. Not exactly the sights you showed people to show off how awesome your city was.

“It’s… neat.”

Violetta put her hands together like she was fighting back bursting into applause. “Isn’t it though, Mr. Ryley!?” I guess even demons had city pride.

“By the way, you can stop calling me that.”

“Oh goodness,” Violetta gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m not really sure how to speak to royals from your world…”

“…Huh?”

“You know, I’m not sure whether I should be using your last name or first… It’s just a lot of names to remember!” Violetta’s speech seemed to get faster and faster as she spoke. “We commoners only have one name to worry about, after all.”

It took me a second to piece together her frantic little rant. “Wait, you guys don’t have last names?”

Violetta stopped here where was. “Of course not! Only royalty can have last names, silly. Did you forget, silly?”

First of all, she just said ‘silly’ twice in a row. Second, having an assistant constantly thinking I knew things when I didn’t was going to be disastrous. I didn’t need a repeat of the whole ‘oh, demons can use magic by the way’ fiasco.

In any case, I decided it was best to let them keep thinking I was royal. After all, that might have factored into the king deciding to offer me a job instead of executing me… again. Besides, a royal assassin law expert from another world had a much better ring to it than a ‘regular college guy from another world’ did. Who would want to hear a story about that?

“I know,” I said. “I’ve, uh… mostly been around royalty my whole life, so I don’t think about commoner’s lack of last names.”

“That makes sense!” Really? Does it? Lucky for me, Violetta wasn’t the brightest demon crayon in the demon coloring box. She continued on without even batting an eyelash. “So would you prefer Mr. Allard instead?”

“Just call me Ryley.” Yeah, I hadn’t used ‘Mr.’ or “Ms.’ the entire trial. It didn’t really feel right to ask someone I was going to be around this often to do it.

“If that’s what you’d like!” Violetta picked up her pace to get back next to me. “I’m so excited to be working with you!”

“…Cool.” I focused my attention back on the map. “Let’s just figure out what hellhole they’re letting us stay in before we get too excited.”

As we drifted farther away from the castle and deeper into the side streets, a smell caught my nose. I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew this smell. It was the herald of summer. The familiar scent of comradery. The smell that reminded you that, while you might have been stuck at your family reunion being reminded that no one will ever accept you as an adult, you could at least rest assured that dinner would be delicious. Yes. Barbeque.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Uh-oh, not good. I was over describing how food smelled. I suddenly became painfully aware that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

Violetta jumped when she realized she was walking alone. “Is everything okay?”

“Do you smell that?” I asked. “Want to get something to eat?” This wasn’t a question. I was getting that barbeque if it was the last thing I did.

“Good idea, Ryley!” Violetta nodded. “You know what they say, all work and no food makes Jack dead!” Good saying.

“Alright, let’s find where that’s coming from.”

I started jogging. Up ahead, I could see the path opening up to what looked like a courtyard. There was a small garden and benches around a fountain. Except the fountain was filled with lava. I… suppose it was nice to have around during winter.

“Look, over there!” Violetta pointed. There were food stands lining another street that branched off from the courtyard. No doubt, that’s where my barbeque treasure awaited.

Before I could take another step, I heard the sound of feet behind me. “Hey look!” a squeaky little voice said. “It’s the ‘trial’ guy!”

I turned to see three children, two girls and a boy around 7-years-old. They all looked human other than the horns on the sides of their heads and zigzag eyebrows.

“How cute!” Violetta squealed, kneeling down to their level. She obviously liked kids a lot more than I did. “Did the three of you see the trial today?”

One of the little girls shook her head no. “We just heard about it from Ms. Suza!”

“Ms. Suza?”

“She’s the matron at our orphanage,” the other girl piped up. She turned around, putting her hands around her mouth. “Ms. Suza!”

A woman with shoulder length blue hair made her way over from across the courtyard. Like the kids, she lacked in the not-having-horns and straight eyebrow department.

“I lose sight of you kids for one moment and the first thing you do is start making trouble.” The woman’s pink lips curled into a smile as her sapphire eyes landed on me. “Hello, Mr. Allard. I’m quite the fan of yours.”

Holy shit this girl was cute. She had to be around my age, maybe a little older. Why were all demons so attractive? Well… the human looking ones were, anyway. No offense to Brad or Repair Shark.

I cleared my throat, trying to play it cool. “You must be Suza.”

“The kids were just telling us that you were at the trial today,” Violetta added as she stood back up.

Suza smiled. “I was!”

The boy look a step forward, looking up to me with something like admiration in his eyes. “Is it true you started dancing as soon as the song ended?” he asked. Fuck. I knew someone was going to notice that.

“Now, now.” Suza placed her hand on the boy’s head. “Be nice to Mr. Allard.”

I forced a laugh. “P-Please, just call me Ryley.”

Wait a minute. If Suza had been the only one to see the trial, then that meant she had included that when she told the kids about it. Well… hopefully that was the only embarrassing detail she included.

“Is it true that all your clothes were burned off in front of everyone?” One of the little girls asked. Alright, what the hell!?

“Sorry!” Suza let out a hearty laugh. “You know kids, they focus on all the weird details.”

“…Yeah.” Why would she even include those details in the first place? My Suza crush was progressively dissipating.

“So these kids are all orphans?” Violetta asked. Not exactly tactful, but I suppose it would further the conversation all the same.

“That’s right,” Suza said. “We all live at the Orphanage for Horny Folk.” Wow. I didn’t even know where to start with that one.

“Horny… Folk?”

“They’re a type of demon, silly,” Violetta said, once again demonstrating that she intended to call me silly several times per day. “They’re one of the most common ones too. No magic though…”

“No magic?” I asked.

“Don’t underestimate us.” Suza stuck out her tongue a little, an overall meaningless gesture, but cute all the same. “Even the queen was a Horny Folk, you know.”

“The queen, huh? That reminds me… what was with the prince and princess? They said something about me being ‘just like mom’.”

“The queen’s… gone now,” Violetta said. “But she was very kind, and a very peculiar Horny Folk.”

“She wasn’t very horny?”

Violetta nodded. “That’s right.” Wow, really? I was just trying to be a smartass.

“She didn’t have horns,” Cyana clarified. That made more sense than what I had been thinking. “And… she wasn’t affected by magic.”

“Did she… have squiggly eyebrows?” I asked.

Violetta put her hand on her chin. “You know, now that you mention it, she didn’t. I suppose that’s pretty strange too!”

A Horny Folk without horns… with regular eyebrows… that wasn’t affected by magic. Come on, I didn’t need to be a master detective to figure this one out.

“I’m gonna level with you…” I narrowed my eyes. “I think the queen was actually human.”

“Ryley!” Violetta slapped me on the back. “That’s rude! Our queen was a demon through and through!”

“That’s right!” the kids echoed.

Yeah, okay. Seriously though, she was a human for sure. If that was the case, then learning about her could be the best way for me to figure out how to get back to Earth. I would have to talk to Yaika about it later.

Just then, I noticed Suza’s eyes dart behind me. Then, there was a shout from the food stalls.

“Thief!” they screamed. “Barbeque thief!”

Not on my watch, mother fucker.