Chapter 728: Confused Fangirls

Emilia’s hands were shaking again.

She’d noticed it twenty minutes ago when she’d tried to pour water into the ceramic pot on her windowsill and missed entirely, soaking the wood beneath. Now she was on her second attempt, holding the watering can with both hands and focusing on the narrow opening like it was the most important task in the world, because if she focused on the marigolds then she wasn’t focusing on the replay loop burning behind her eyes.

Her phone was wedged between her shoulder and her ear. Leia’s voice came through relentlessly.

"I’m watching it again. For the ninth time. Ninth. And I still can’t figure out what the fuck just happened."

"You and everyone else," Sarah said.

Emilia tipped the can. Water hit the soil. Some of it even went where she wanted.

The replay was still running in her awakened interface, overlaid against her vision like a second layer of reality that she couldn’t turn off because she’d tried three times already and her fingers kept opening it again. Kaiden’s first-person perspective, the mountain ridge, the three Ashborn siblings, the shadows eating the sky, and then Vespera Ashborn stepping out of the darkness like she’d always been there.

The viewer count on the replay sat at three point two million and climbing. The stream had been offline for thirty minutes. Three million people were watching footage they’d already seen because the footage was so incomprehensible that watching it again felt like it might produce a different answer.

It didn’t.

"She kissed him," Emilia said quietly.

"She kissed him!" Leia repeated, and the emphasis she put on it made it sound like she was accusing someone of a crime. "The Shadow Monarch, the woman who just caved in her own daughter’s ribcage, knelt on the ground and kissed Kai on the forehead like he was her favorite person in the world. And then she stood up and beat the shit out of three of her kids. In that order."

"The order is what gets me," Sarah admitted. "She went to him first. Before anything else. She didn’t even look at the siblings until she’d checked on him."

"Checked on him?" Leia’s voice climbed. "She cupped his face. She held his jaw and looked into his eyes like she was making sure he was still in there. That’s not just ’checking on someone’!"

Emilia set the watering can down because her hands weren’t getting any steadier and the marigolds had received roughly four times the water they needed. She dried her fingers on the hem of her skirt and pressed the phone tighter against her ear.

The replay looped again. Vespera stepping from the shadows, kneeling, her hand finding Kaiden’s chin, the kiss in his hair.

"The chat is a war zone," Sarah said. She had her moderator overlay open, Emilia could tell from the way she kept trailing off mid-sentence to read. "Thirty minutes offline and the comments are still going at full speed. I can’t even keep up with the filter. The theories alone would fill a book."

"What kind of theories?" Emilia asked.

"Every kind. Some people think she’s protecting her investment because Kai’s guild is contracted under New Dawn’s banner and she doesn’t want her assets damaged. Some people think it’s political, like she’s making a move against Magnus and Kai’s team is the excuse. Some people think she’s just a psychopath who wanted to beat her own kids and Kai happened to be there."

"That last one is stupid," Leia said flatly. "You don’t kiss someone on the forehead and then beat three people nearly to death for something unrelated. That’s cause and effect. She beat them because of what they did to him."

"Maybe."

"Sarah. She showed up after Luna lost her arm. After Selena took Luna’s arm off. She beat Selena worst, the obvious ring leader of this attack. You do the math."

Sarah went quiet.

Emilia looked at her marigolds. The pot was overflowing now, water pooling on the sill and dripping onto the floor. She couldn’t bring herself to care. The image of Vespera’s hand on Kaiden’s face was playing behind her eyes for the tenth time and it still didn’t make sense.

"There’s a thread on the main forum," Leia said, her tone shifting from angry to sly. "Top post right now. Fourteen thousand upvotes in five minutes."

"What does it say?"

"The title is ’Did Kaiden Grey bang Vespera Ashborn?’"

Emilia choked.

"The theory," Leia continued, flat and clinical, "is that Magnus Ashborn has been targeting Kai not because of guild rivalry but because Kai slept with his wife, and that Vespera showed up on the mountain to protect her lover from the consequences of a jealous husband’s revenge scheme."

"That is disgusting," Emilia said instantly, the shaking in her hands turning to indignation. "He would never. Kai has girls who love him and he loves them. He has no reason to ruin anyone’s marriage, let alone get involved with a woman old enough to be his mother."

"It has fourteen thousand upvotes, Em."

"I don’t care if it has seven billion upvotes! He would not do that!" Her voice rose and she caught herself, pressing her free hand flat against the windowsill to steady the tremor. "Kai is a good person. He takes care of the people around him. He paid us so much money because he thought we deserved it. That is not the kind of man who sneaks around with married women."

"I’m not saying I believe it..." Leia clarified. Then her tone shifted. "But..."

Sarah scoffed. "Marriage. What those two have isn’t a marriage, it’s an alliance. Just look at how contradicting they are. Magnus sends his children to ambush Kai’s team, and Vespera shows up and beats those same children. How does that make any sense? They’re fighting each other. Whatever Vespera’s deal is with Kai, the simpler explanation is that she and Magnus are on opposite sides of something we can’t see."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Leia jumped on it, her chair creaking as she leaned forward. "That’s the real story. Forget the cucking theory, though it’s really funny and I’d die laughing if true. Forget whatever the forums are smoking. What I would pay to have an insight into New Dawn’s inner workings right now!! Can you imagine? Their co-guild leader just beat three of their fighters on live television. The Shadow Monarch, one of the two people who run the whole guild, just showed up and publicly destroyed the people Magnus sent to do his dirty work. It must be pure chaos in there."

"...Yeah." Emilia stepped back from the window. Her apartment was a studio with a kitchenette, a bed, and a desk where she did her moderating work, but she’d filled every available surface with plants. Herbs on the counter, the marigolds on the sill, a trailing pothos that had colonized the top of her bookshelf and was making a slow bid for the ceiling.

She tended them when she was anxious. Which meant she’d been tending them a lot lately.

Being a religious viewer of Valhalla’s Sinners had not been easy on the heart since the competition began nearly a month ago.

She moved to the pothos and started checking its leaves, her phone still pressed between her ear and shoulder, her fingers running along the vines.

The replay cycled in her interface. Four million.

"Look at the numbers," she said softly. "The stream’s been off for half an hour and there are more people watching the replay right now than most awakened combat streams get in a year of broadcasting."

"Because nobody can look away," Leia said. "This is the biggest thing that’s happened in the competition. Forget the biggest thing. This is the biggest thing that’s happened in awakened media this year. A legendary fighter appeared out of nowhere, kissed a rookie on the forehead, and then beat three veteran-track fighters until their bones broke. On camera. With millions watching. That doesn’t happen. That has never happened."

"And nobody knows why," Sarah finished.

Vespera kissed him, beat them, and the stream went dark. Nobody knew why.

Emilia’s fingers paused on a yellowing leaf. She pinched it off carefully and set it on the edge of her desk.

"I just want him to be okay," she said, and her voice was very quiet. "Kai and the girls. Luna lost her arm. Kai was transforming into something. They were hurt and bleeding, and then the stream cut. We don’t know if they’re safe or if the monsters got to them or if those siblings woke up and..."

"They’re alive," Leia said with absolute certainty. "Vespera Ashborn does not show up to save someone and then leave them to die. Whatever she is to Kai, she protected him. That’s the one thing we know for sure."

"We don’t know anything for sure," Sarah murmured. A lid twisted open on Sarah’s end of the call. Then the unmistakable, aggressive crunching of someone going at a Nutella jar with a spoon like it owed her money. Emilia didn’t comment. When Sarah reached for the Nutella, words had failed and calories were all that remained.

"I know one thing for sure. The next time that stream goes live, I’m going to watch it so hard my eyes will go dry like a desert."

Emilia almost smiled. Almost.