“I treat your brother very well, believe me, you just have no idea what a slave should look like in my world. What a collar and what else should he wear! Trust me, this collar is the least of what he should really wear! But this is my body too, so I limit myself to just a few attributes.”
“And the collar among them? Yes?”
“Yes!”
“I want you to take it off.”
“No!”
“But is it comfortable for you yourself?”
“Fine!”
“And he feels bad! Take it off!”
“You want to take it off right now you?! Then cut off my head!”
Karina covered her face with her hands;
“Please don't be angry, please. Maybe it's possible to put a lighter collar on him? How much does this one weigh?”
She raised pleading eyes to him, trying to put into her gaze everything that she felt, all the prayer:
“Please! Come on, when we come to Arel at the Estate, you will order this collar to be cut and put on another one, a little lighter. I am not asking to take it off at all, I understand that he is your slave and should be wearing a collar, no matter how absurd it sounds and looks, because you are one whole.”
“I'll think about it,” Nikto said, and Karina saw that he was not going to respond to her request yet.
“Better make a loofah out of a bunch of grass, as you do, to scrub my clothes. Hey? Get down to business. Your brother is fine, I didn’t do with him a hundredth part of what I had to, because I also need this body. That's all. Don't worry about him.”
Karina turned away so that he would not see her tears, and began to tear the grass.
He silently took the twisted bundle of grass from her, went to the water's edge and began to wipe off his boots from the dirt, he was silent and didn’t look at her and clearly no longer wanted to continue the conversation about her brother, about the collar, about slavery and the rules of behavior of the Demon in the human body, and the rules of behavior of the human in which the Demon settled. And she looked at him, and before her eyes there was a picture of a creature scratching its collar with its claws, with a face distorted with despair and hopelessness. Blind and dumb.
“Do you know?” She said suddenly.
“What?” He glanced at her from under his brows, not looking up from his occupation.
“Now for the first time you didn’t start to play around and come up with excuses, you now for the first time admitted that you are a Demon in my brother's body.”
“So what?”
“Nothing. It's just weird why?”
“Well, you anyway think so?”
“Yes. And I think correctly. It's true. And if had said before, I would not have left. If you were afraid to say, thinking that I would be scared and leave, and you needed me for your witchcraft…”
“Ooh, fuck you,” Nikto drawled. He threw away the grass washcloth and looked at Karina very carefully. “Come here.”
“What for?”
“Are you afraid? How are you going to go to Arel? He is more terrible than me in the way he treats women. And Lis is there.”
“And if I tell them everything? That you are a Demon.”
“They know.”
Karina was taken aback:
“Did you tell them?”
“Come here.”
She came up, and he pulled her to him, brought her face close, looking straight into the eyes.
“Tell them what you want, I don't care. And I told you now simply because now it is possible. But don't ask any more.”
He pushed her away lightly:
“Are you going to wash?”
In the evening they came to the Estate, Nikto led them in roundabout ways, literally in vegetable gardens, so as not to catch the eye of rare peasants, however, most of them, apparently, worked in the fields and didn’t meet them. Having gone around a large massive house, Nikto opened some kind of back gate.
“We sneak like thieves,” Karina said.
“Do you want all the servants to stare at you?”
“No.”
And still, in spite of all the precautions, at the very porch they still came across some burly maid, who, seeing strangers coming out from around the corner, gasped, bulging her eyes, and rushed in the opposite direction from them.
Chapter five
Friends
Karina and Nikto entered the house and the main hall of the Estate. Arel and Lis were sitting at the table in front of them. And Lis’ face was crudely painted in the way cheap jesters usually paint themselves at fairs. And in his ears, instead of earrings, jester's bells glittered. The absurd make-up distorted his features, and he could only be recognized by his red hair.
“Oh,” Karina involuntarily burst out at the sight of this.
“Hello,” said Nikto, and looking at Lis, too, couldn’t resist and grunted.
“Nik! Nik! Gods! My Nik!” Arel shouted, jumping up and not paying any attention to their somewhat dumbfounded appearance. He rushed to Nikto, falling on his knees in front of him and hugging his legs, repeating as if instinctively:
“Nik, Nik, Nik! I don't believe in this happiness!”
Nikto bent down to hug him and lift him from his knees. He smiled:
“I'm back,” he said. And Arel showered him with kisses, kissed his hands, and there were tears in his eyes.
Karina sat down wearily on the bench at the entrance. The prince, not paying any attention to her, dragged Nikto with him deep into the room, to the stairs leading to the second floor of the house.
“Come on, come with me,” he literally dragged Nikto behind him, and he, without resisting, followed him.
Karina and Lis stayed in the room together. She was afraid to look up so as not to meet his eyes. He looked so terrible, so shameful. However, Prince Arel didn’t look better. She remembered how she missed them and regretted that she had left the Castle then. As she looked from afar, sitting in the lower Coliseum at the final fight of Nikto. How she worried about Arel when he was beaten during interrogation. And now there they were, close again. Arel was so sharp, impulsive, as always, it seemed to her that he was not sober. Has he ever been sober at all? The prince was now very close, and she felt nothing, no joy or awe. He was dressed bad, without jewelry, also barefoot, somehow all careless, sloppy. His dark hair was not combed, it was disheveled, in tangles, it fell in untidy strands on his face as he spread, crawling in front of his Nikto. And this tattoo of his, she forgot about it, and now she saw it so clearly; a black dragon on his entire cheek, really on half of his face (as it seemed to her) caught her eye. She was generally afraid to look up at Lis, he was also not combed, his hair was pulled away raggedly, he looked better on trial. And now they seem to have completely sunk down. She didn't even want to think about the fact that his nose and mouth were painted red. Arel painted him like a jester, and Lis allowed it to him again. As well as when they put on him a “shameful strip” with bells. What a fool? And so she sat, afraid to move and look up, not understanding what she was doing here and what was next. She looked up only when she heard that Lis was getting up from his place, the bells rang, and he went up to her. Their eyes met, he looked at her from top to bottom, looked with challenge and, as it seemed to her, with anger. In fright and confusion, she lowered her eyes again, and then he grabbed her by the forearm, pulling her upward, lifting her from the bench. He struck her backhand, she clenched her teeth, not uttering a sound. He struck again, throwing her in the middle