Ch.29
Riser looked at the gauntlet on my arm the way you'd look at a dog that had done a trick you didn't ask for.
"A Sacred Gear," he said. He turned the word over like it was mostly beneath him. "A Twice Critical, if I'm not mistaken. The doubling type." He looked at me. The smirk came back. "How quaint."
I didn't correct him.
"He thinks you're carrying a toy," Ddraig said. The amusement in her voice was thick enough to taste. "Don't correct him."
Wasn't planning on it.
Riser had already lost interest in me. He turned back to Rias and the smirk widened and his hand came up again and he touched her cheek. She didn't pull away this time. Her jaw was locked and her eyes were flat and she stood there and let him touch her face while her peerage watched.
"The ceremony will be held at the Phenex estate," Riser said. His thumb traced her jawline. "Your mother has already approved the flower arrangements. Orchids and fire lilies. I thought of you when I chose them."
He listed things. The venue, the guest list, the reception order. He talked about Rias's future the way a contractor talks about a renovation, gesturing at walls he planned to knock down. Who would attend. What she'd wear. Where she'd stand. His voice was casual and certain and his hand was on her face and Rias stood there behind her desk and took it.
Akeno's hands were behind her back. Her fingers were sparking. Tiny arcs of yellow lightning jumping between her knuckles, invisible to anyone who wasn't watching her hands. She was smiling. The dangerous one.
Koneko was still on the couch. Her gold eyes were on Riser and her face was blank and her hand was wrapped around the arm of the couch and the wood was creaking.
Kiba hadn't moved from the window. His expression was pleasant and empty and his right hand was resting on his thigh and the air around his fingers was doing the shimmer it did when he was one second from manifesting a blade.
Riser didn't notice any of them.
Then he kissed Yubelluna.
He turned from Rias, caught his Queen by the waist, pulled her in, and kissed her. Open mouth, tongue visible, one hand on Yubelluna's hip and the other still warm from Rias's jaw. Yubelluna received it dutifully. Her body cooperated. Her mouth opened. Her hands came up to his chest. The kiss was long and wet and deliberate and every second of it was aimed at Rias.
Rias watched. Her face didn't move.
My hands were at my sides. The Boosted Gear was still on my left arm, humming faintly, the green gem pulsing with my heartbeat. I was standing and my shoes were still off and the bread manga was on the couch behind me and Riser Phenex was tongue-kissing a woman in front of my girl to prove that he could.
Yubelluna's eyes were open during the kiss. Half-lidded, habitual. But her pupils moved. While Riser's mouth was on hers and his hand was on her hip, her eyes slid sideways across the room.
To me.
She was looking at me over her King's shoulder while he kissed her, and her expression was flat and professional and her eyes were not.
Riser pulled back. Wiped his mouth with his thumb. Smiled at Rias.
"You'll learn to enjoy it," he said. "They all do."
I spoke before she could.
"You're loud for someone who's about to lose his fiancée."
My voice was even. I hadn't raised it. The Boosted Gear's gem pulsed once on the last word and the green light washed across the room.
The room stopped.
Riser turned. The smirk was gone. His blue eyes found mine and his mouth was a flat line and the temperature in the room jumped by ten degrees because the air around his body was heating.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me."
His hand moved. A flick of his wrist, casual, barely a gesture, and fire shot from his fingertip. A lance of orange flame, narrow, fast, aimed at my chest. The heat reached me before the fire did and my skin went tight and my eyes dried.
Ddraig's training kicked in before my brain did. My body shifted. Left foot back, weight transferring, torso rotating. The flame passed my right side close enough that the fabric of my sleeve singed and I could smell my own hair burning at the edges.
The fire hit the wall behind me. The plaster cracked and blackened and a chunk of it fell to the floor. The candle shelf above it caught and the flames licked up toward the ceiling before Grayfia raised one hand without looking and the fire snuffed out.
I was still standing. Untouched. My heart was going hard and my left arm was shaking and the Boosted Gear was pulsing green in quick rhythmic bursts and Riser was staring at me with eyes that had gone narrow and sharp.
That was supposed to hit.
He knew it. His peerage knew it. The two girls behind Yubelluna were exchanging glances. Yubelluna herself was looking at me with her staff held at a different angle than it had been a second ago.
"Mira," Riser said. He didn't look away from me. "Handle this."
One of the girls behind Yubelluna moved. Short blue hair, athletic build, a bo staff in her hands. She stepped around her Queen and crossed the room toward me and her grip on the staff was professional and relaxed and she was already mid-swing when she reached striking distance.
The staff came at my ribs. Fast. Clean technique, good rotation, the kind of strike that would crack bones on a normal human.
I caught it.
My right hand came up and closed around the shaft mid-swing. The impact jolted through my wrist and up my arm and my fingers tightened and the Boosted Gear's stored power hummed through my muscles. Five Boosts stacked and held from weeks of training with Ddraig and two power-loop transfers that had pushed my reserves past what any human body should hold.
I squeezed. The wood cracked under my fingers. A long split ran down the length of the staff from my hand to the middle, and then it snapped. Two pieces. The bottom half clattered to the floor. The top half stayed in Mira's grip for a second before she stumbled backward, her eyes wide, her mouth open.
The ORC was silent.
Riser was staring at the broken staff. Then at my hand. Then at the gauntlet. His jaw was working on nothing.
One of the girls behind Yubelluna whispered to the other. Yubelluna's grip on her staff had shifted again. Grayfia was watching from her position by the wall, hands folded.
"Enough."
Grayfia's voice cut through the room. The word carried the weight of the Lucifer office and every person in the room heard it.
She stepped forward. One step, and she was between us.
"Lord Riser. Rias-sama. The confrontation has reached the limit of diplomatic courtesy." Her red eyes moved from Riser to Rias. "I have been authorized by Lord Sirzechs Lucifer to propose a formal resolution."
Riser straightened his coat. The smirk was reassembling itself, slower than before, and it didn't reach his eyes.
"A Rating Game," Grayfia said. "Rias-sama's peerage against Lord Riser's peerage. Standard format. If Rias-sama wins, the engagement is annulled. If Lord Riser wins, the ceremony proceeds immediately."
"Ten days," Grayfia continued. "Lord Sirzechs will preside as witness. The result will be binding under the authority of the Lucifer office."
Riser laughed. The sound filled the room and it was genuine and it was ugly. "A Rating Game? Against my full peerage?" He spread his arms. Fifteen women against five servants and a Twice Critical nobody. "I've won eight Rating Games, Gremory. You haven't won one. Your Rook is a child and your Pawn is a human with a toy on his arm."
He looked at me. The smirk was back. The narrow look from before was buried under it, but I'd seen it and he knew I'd seen it.
"Fine," he said. "Ten days. I accept."
He turned to Rias. "Start planning the wedding, my dear. The outcome is already decided."
Fire erupted. The Phenex circle blazed to life and Riser stepped through it with his peerage filing in behind him. Yubelluna was last. She paused at the edge of the flames and her half-lidded eyes found me across the room one more time and then the fire took her and they were gone.
The room exhaled.
Koneko unclenched her hand from the couch arm. There were finger-shaped dents in the wood. Akeno's lightning stopped sparking. Kiba's shimmer faded. Asia, who had been pressed against the far wall the entire time, took a breath that shook when it came out.
Rias looked at me across the room. Her fists were at her sides, unclenched now. Her jaw was set and her blue-green eyes were bright and wet and she was standing straight.
"You can't be in the Rating Game," she said. Her voice was level. Controlled. The heiress. "You're not in my peerage. The rules don't allow it."
"I know."
"So what exactly is your plan?"
"Then I'll be at the wedding," I said.
Rias blinked. Her mouth opened and nothing came out and her eyes went wider and her chin trembled once before she pressed her lips together and locked it down.
Grayfia was watching me. Her red eyes were steady and her hands were folded and she said nothing.
"Ambitious," Ddraig said. Quiet. "You plan to crash a High-Class Devil wedding in the Underworld as an independent human with a Sacred Gear and no political cover."
Yes.
"…I've had worse hosts. But only two of them survived."
I picked up the bread manga from the couch. The spine was cracked from where I'd dropped it. Solar Hands. Competitive bread-baking. The main character had been in worse situations than this.
Probably.