Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP Chapter 372: Two Questions for a Stolen Face

Kessiri hissed through her teeth. "Why are there this many pests crawling underfoot tonight? It’s genuinely starting to grate on me. And now a maid, of all things, finds the nerve to mock me to my face. Fine. I’ll repay this insult. I’ll repay every single thing that’s gone wrong this evening, down to the last drop."

The aura pouring off her dropped a cold weight of fear over the whole room. Most of the spectators were already scrambling for the exits the moment they felt the danger coming, though a rare few stayed put to drink it in. One of those few was Rora, bellowing at the very top of her lungs, "Kill! Kill! Kill her!"

The two girls flanking her answered in flat unison. "Shut up."

Rora turned, her sluggish brain taking a moment to register exactly who she was standing between. The two princesses. Seraphina and Elira. Both wound tight as bowstrings, and after firing one withering look her way, they snapped their eyes straight back to the scene.

"What in the world is that man planning now?" Elira muttered. "Because I find it very hard to believe a clingy little first-year earns a punishment like this just for some flirting."

Seraphina was busy gnawing the edge of her nail. "There’s a reason behind it. There’s always a reason with the professor. But whatever he’s reaching for here, it’s going to land him in a horrible spot. The other professors plainly hate this, and the only thing keeping them in their seats is not wanting their names added to Lord Claude’s little list of troublemakers."

Elira’s gaze flicked to Lysandra, whose fist was clenched white at her side. "Even the headmistress is biting her tongue for that man’s sake. And what does our dear professor do with all that goodwill? Plant himself dead center of yet another disaster." She frowned. "Has he genuinely forgotten he’s already on thin ice with Astrid?"

Across the floor, Kessiri tore her swords free of the lock and the close-combat master came down on Cleenah like a storm given hands. Hundreds of strikes inside half a minute, every last one swung to end a life, and not one of them so much as grazed skin.

The exchange between a humble maid and the woman hunting her left the watching crowd frozen. Their eyes couldn’t follow a thing. All anyone caught were the showers of sparks bursting off two blades that moved faster than sight.

When Kessiri finally pulled back, her swords were a pitiful sight, their edges worn down to nothing and the steel itself glowing a dull red from the heat of so many clashes packed into so little time.

She grinned anyway. "Hah. A simple maid, in the service of some commoner, riding out an assault like that without breaking a sweat? You’re hiding a great deal under that uniform." The fury bled back into her voice. "Who are you?"

Cleenah only smiled. "A simple maid, exactly as you said. The name is Belle. And at the moment I’m serving Lilith breathing free of charge, on account of an old debt I owe her and her family."

"Keep your little riddles, Belle." Kessiri flipped her ruined swords into a reverse grip, holding them like a pair of daggers. "I have no interest in who you are or what you’re tucking away beneath that apron. All I see is a woman who chose to plant herself in front of that demon coming in my way. That makes you the wall, nothing more, and the wall is simply what I break to reach what’s behind it. So hold your ground well. Walls only stand until something hits them hard enough to fall."

She lunged.

"ENOUGH."

Both blades had barely risen before they froze stiff in the air, halted by a single voice that rolled across the hall and crushed every whisper, every shuffle, every sound, flat into silence.

Claude stepped down off the final stair. "What exactly is unfolding in my hall? Who found the courage to spoil my beloved’s birthday? And this little duel, what is the meaning of it? Have the pair of you forgotten where your feet are planted, or have you simply grown tired of living?"

Kessiri moved on him first. No bow, no deference, just protest, her rage doing all the talking. "You ask who spoiled the birthday, Sir Claude? Then drag your eyes off of me and put them where they belong. On the man you welcomed into this hall. The one standing over my little sister this very second with a blade pressed to her throat."

Claude turned his head to follow her pointing hand and found Jax, sword raised above a cowering catfolk girl.

"Forgive me," Kessiri went on, "but I will not stand quietly while my sister is treated like this. Threaten my life. Strip my rank and my title. Do whatever pleases you. I am not walking out of here without that man’s head in my hand. Tell me honestly, if it were your daughter on that floor, would you have done a single thing differently?"

Claude shut his eyes. The whole crowd braced for some brutal verdict to come crashing down on Jax. Inside his skull, though, ran something else entirely. ’Why must the boy stage a circus at a moment like this? I cannot afford to go soft here. Whatever I rule, it tips off the wrong people, and a hundred ugly questions come crawling out behind it.’

He opened his eyes and looked past Jax. There stood Astrid, striking a wildly overdramatic furious pose, one that screamed, plain as daylight, I will vanish from your life forever if you do something stupid.

’These two children,’ Claude thought wearily, ’hand me migraines that not one of my rivals ever managed in years.’

He let out a sigh and raised his voice. "I ask Professor Jax to lower his sword and offer his side of the story, before I hand down any judgment on this matter."

Jax drew the blade back from the girl’s throat, and the gap was all Lavinia needed to scramble away and bury herself in her sister’s arms.

Jax lifted a single finger. "Let me keep this simple. I won’t defend myself. I won’t say one word in my own favor. Because whatever I say, you’ll set it on the scale against a sobbing girl, and a sobbing girl wins that weighing every single time. I’d lose the argument before my mouth ever opened."

He lowered the finger. "So I won’t be the one to speak. Professor Kessiri should. I only ask that she put a few private questions to her sister. The kind only the two of them could possibly know the answers to. And once she’s done, she decides for herself. Whether I kneel, or whether I lose my head the way she keeps promising."

Kessiri’s eyes narrowed. "And if I refuse to play along with your nonsense?"

"Then I’m afraid this exclusive little offer expires on the spot," Jax said.

Kessiri looked down at the terrified girl trembling against her, then back up. "Lord Claude. You heard the man’s terms. See to it that he keeps his word."

Claude gave a slow nod. Kessiri cupped the weeping girl’s cheek and lowered her voice to a whisper. "It’s alright now. Big sis is right here, and big sis will protect you. Just answer a couple of questions for me, and then all of this ends. I promise."

She eased Lavinia out of her arms, turned to the watching crowd, then to Jax, and lifted her voice loud enough to carry to every corner. "You said I could ask anything I please. So you don’t get to come slithering in with questions of your own, prying into what’s ours."

"I wouldn’t dare," Jax said. "I’m perfectly satisfied, so long as whatever you ask is a secret kept between the two of you."

Kessiri smiled thinly. "I don’t know what game you think you’re winning. But here is my first question." She crouched to her sister’s level. "Lavinia. Tell them. Who was it that dealt the final blow to the monster we used to call our father?"

Lavinia took her time with it, then answered, brimming with confidence. "It was you, sister. You’re the one who finished him. With your sword."

Kessiri went rigid. Because she was the only living soul who knew the truth of that night. It hadn’t been her sword at all. It had been Lavinia, blind with rage, who had slammed their father’s face in with the rim of her shield, again and again, until the breath finally stopped rattling out of him.

Her heart began to pound. She understood now, all at once, exactly what Jax had built with this little arrangement, what every move of his had been aiming at. And yet the sister buried in her refused to let it land.

’She’s only lying to keep the world from knowing she killed her own father’ Kessiri told herself. That’s all this is. That has to be all this is.

So she pressed on. "Good. Now answer me this. What was the pet name our mother always used to call you?"

This time Lavinia hesitated far longer, and every silent second drove Kessiri’s panic up another notch.

Then the girl spoke. "S-sister, why would you ask me something like that, here, now? You’re frightening me. You already know the name yourself. And you know how people will laugh if they hear it. Why are you testing me like one of those horrible examiners?"

Kessiri cut through it, hard as iron. "Answer the question, Lavinia."

The girl twitched, then pulled a wounded little face. "It’s... lava. Lavania." She caught the shock blooming across Kessiri’s face and switched tracks in an instant. "I mean, levi—" And that one landed nowhere either.

Kessiri’s sword snapped up and leveled at her throat. "Who are you. What have you done with her. Where is my sister?"

Loki, her performance finally collapsing, only leaned harder into it. "What do you mean, big sis? I’m standing right here in front of you."

A handful of the audience had seen where Jax was steering this from the very start. Now, at last, the rest of the room caught up.

Kessiri watched the thing wearing her sister’s face shuffle toward her, sobbing all the while. "Drop the act. I know full well you aren’t Lavinia."

She swung. The sword screamed halfway through its arc, then died, frozen, because she could not force her own arm to carve into whatever was wearing her sister’s body.

Loki pounced on the hesitation. Her own small dagger slid free and arced straight for Kessiri’s skull.

It missed. It claimed only a few loose strands of hair, because Jax had already hurled himself in, shoving Kessiri clear and crashing down on top of her, pinning her flat to the marble.

As Jax pushed himself back up, the thing in Lavinia’s skin wore a vicious little smile. "That was terribly rude of you, professor. You’ve gone and interrupted my play a second time. I only wanted to pass a little time, and here you are, ruining all my fun. Such a meanie."

Loki stepped backward, stretching both arms wide, and the body began to come apart and remake itself. The eyes drowned over into deep green. The hair bled white from root to tip. And when the last of the change finished settling, she let them all stand witness to her true form at last.

That was the moment a cluster of Order members came tearing across the hall toward Claude, raw fear stamped across every face. "My lord, we’ve been attacked! The entire estate has been swallowed by some forbidden spell, the whole grounds drowning in it, and..." The man swallowed hard. "And we’re surrounded. On all four sides. By numbers we cannot begin to count."