Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 966

Chapter 966: Proud

"Walk away?"

Damian’s breath stopped, because that was not the voice he had braced himself for.

Kaiden had his head tilted, smiling. There was nothing behind the smile that belonged in a conversation with a kid bleeding on a loading dock floor.

"They said that about Aria where you could hear it, and you think I’d tell you to walk away." He turned the idea over out loud, in no hurry whatsoever. "No. I would never tell you to do that."

Damian did not move. He had both hands flat on the ground beside him and his good eye still screwed shut.

"It was your duty to stand up for that wonderful girl who has done everything for you. She worked herself down to nothing keeping you and Lux fed, and she has never once made you feel it."

Kaiden shrugged.

"Somebody spits on her name in front of you and you stand up."

"Damian."

"...What."

"That was outstanding."

The eye opened.

For a moment the boy only looked at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence, the part where it turned around and became the other thing.

"...What?"

"You went at him." Kaiden was grinning, and there was nothing gentle in it, only delight. "Three of them. He’s got forty kilos on you, and he’d already put you down twice. You got back up and told him to say it again."

"I lost."

"And?"

"I got beaten up. Behind a smoothie place." Damian’s voice was climbing and breaking at the same time. "I didn’t land anything. I’ve never landed anything. You watched the whole-"

"Did you know you were going to lose?"

"...Obviously."

"You swung anyway."

Kaiden laughed, once, and it was pure delight.

"For the first time knowing you, I’m proud of you."

Calypso got there before the boy could argue with any of it.

She folded down onto her heels beside Kaiden so that her horns came into his field of view, took his chin between two fingers, and turned his face toward the light to have a proper look at what had been done to it.

"Oh, this is good work," she said, delighted. "Look at the eye. Who did the eye?"

"...The big one."

"The one whose arm came apart." She let go of his chin and sat back, enormously pleased with the entire evening. "Little brother, listen to me."

"I’m not your-"

"Darling has already said the true part, so I will say it again with the volume it deserves. A man’s duty is protecting his blood, his family. Somebody spat on your sister’s name in front of you, and you were outnumbered three to one, and you went at the biggest one first."

Her tail came around and thumped the concrete once.

"You did your duty. You did it badly, because you are small and soft and you have no training whatsoever. But you did it, and where I come from that is the part that counts."

"...I didn’t win."

"Demonfolk would have carried you out on their shoulders and then fought each other over who got to buy you a drink."

"I fell over. Twice."

"You got up. Twice."

"That’s not the same as-"

"It counts," Calypso said, with total finality.

Bastet had not come any closer.

She stood where she was with her arms folded and looked down at the boy long enough that he began to shrink under it, and when she finally spoke it was to the boy himself, in the tone she used for delivering a verdict.

"No wonder Aria is so proud of you. Good job, kid."

Then she looked off toward the daylight, having said the whole of what she intended to say, and it landed on Damian harder than either of the other two.

Kaiden reached into his pouch and came out with a vial the length of his thumb, capped in silver, the liquid inside it moving slower than liquid had any business moving.

He held it out.

"Here. Drink it before that eye closes all the way."

Damian looked at it, and his hand did not come up, because he had spent his whole adolescence reading everything there was to read about the awakened world and he knew exactly what he was looking at.

"That’s-" His voice quit on him. He tried again. "That’s more than I make in a year."

"In a smoothie stand? I think it’s more than a lifetime’s income."

"...For a black eye."

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