Summoned To Have Tea With The Demon Lord, I Guess I'll Defeat Him

Chapter 19: Lapsang Souchong

  When I come to, I feel like I've been transported back to the demons' prison. I'm in a cell with Izumi and Mamoru, and we're all a tangled mess of limbs. We must have been thrown down without a care. There's not even a cot for one of us to monopolize. It's cramped, and the smooth, rocky floor is cold to the touch. At least we aren't bound.

  My stirring awakens the other two, who are just as quick to try detangling themselves from each other. They gaze around, glassy-eyed but no doubt trying their best to figure out the situation.

  "Hiyori?" Izumi asks in a quiet voice.

  "I'm here."

  "And what am I, chopped onions?"

  Mamoru can make even a kidnapping about himself. I swear, once that Chosen Hero crap goes to your head, you're insufferable forever.

  Izumi ignores him and wraps me in a hug. Her breath tickles my ear as she whispers, "I think we found our Theives' Guild."

  Snake masks askew, their real faces showing, half a dozen men and women are gathered around a table, loudly eating their evening meal. It smells marvelous.

  A nervous whinny lets us know that, somehow, Mamoru's horse has been stolen away along with us. That unfortunate beast. Has anyone even thought to give him a name? When we get out of here, I'm going to treat him to all the carrots he could possibly want.

  "Hey, look here! The nosy foreigners have woken up!" a voice cuts through the rowdy conversation. "Who wants the first crack at 'em?"

  We're right here, I want to say, but I also don't want to get on the bad side of the man who approaches us with twin daggers at his hips.

  "No, Styx, I'll handle them."

  Another voice pierces the silence. It sounds like a young woman, but she's just a little too far away for us to see her properly. She pulls her mask back across her face before walking over. Her weapon of choice is a single longsword.

  "I don't know who you are or why Windwood hired you, but you need to get out of town now." She shakes her head and telltale red curls bounce at the nape of her neck. "I won't be taken away from my real family."

  My stomach sinks. "Lilah?"

  "What of it?"

  "He misses you so much," Izumi says. "Why are you here? How could you call them your real family?"

  "They took me in long before he did." She doesn't sound convinced of her own story. "And took care of me long after, too."

  "So why agree to be his daughter in the first place?"

  "I don't have to explain myself to strangers like you. Look at that awful starting gear. What are you, low-rent mercs?"

  "Adventurers," Izumi corrects her.

  "Whatever. Trying to make a name for yourself by sucking up to the rich, doing their little fetch quests—"

  "I told you!" Mamoru interrupts, pointing at Izumi. "It's a fetch quest, not an escort quest!"

  I can't see her expression beneath the full-face mask, but I can guess from her tone that it's one of scorn. "Eyes over here. Listen up. You're going to forget you saw me, you're going to tell my— "

  She's going to call him her father. I know it. We just have to press harder. Maybe if we reveal our true identities it will be enough to convince her. Then again, she fits in well here – too well. Maybe she's like Maaya. Maybe she prefers it here.