Morgause was still staring at me from across the table.
“Why did you fall in love with me?”
I had survived monsters, spells, explosions, and a concerning number of deaths caused by the woman sitting in front of me, but somehow that question managed to leave me speechless for several seconds.
I lowered my gaze to my plate and rolled my fork between my fingers. I had told Morgause I loved her so many times that the words had started coming out far too easily. I had shouted them while dodging fireballs, repeated them while she chased me through the halls of her castle, and, on more than one occasion, accompanied them with proposals that probably would have gotten me banned from several respectable temples.
I had never actually stopped to think about what they meant.
“Well... to answer that, I have to go pretty far back.”
Morgause rested one arm on the table.
“How far?”
“To the day I was summoned.”
Her expression shifted slightly.
“I thought you would start with our first meeting.”
“We’ll get there. You need context first. Besides, there’s a part of this story I would very much prefer you never confirm with Blazer.”
Morgause raised an eyebrow.
“You just guaranteed that I’ll ask him someday.”
“I knew I should’ve left that part out.”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair.
I was the last of the five summoned heroes.
When I opened my eyes, Blazer, Monkar, Elizabeth, and Sogard were already there, surrounded by priests, mages, nobles, and enough elegantly dressed people to make me suspect someone had spent days preparing for that exact moment. They all seemed to be trying to process the fact that they had been ripped away from Earth and transported into a fantasy world.
I had an additional problem.
I had arrived as a woman.
First, I looked at my hands. They were smaller than I remembered. Then I noticed the hair falling over my shoulders and, naturally, did what any reasonable person would have done in my situation.
I looked down.
And immediately noticed it.
My penis was gone.
I had a vagina now.
A pink one, at least.
A little small, but pink.
Just like the nipples on my new breasts.
So, in summary, I had just discovered three fairly important things: magic existed, I had been summoned to another world, and my entire body had changed.
The order of importance of those discoveries shifted several times over the next few minutes.
Elizabeth was the first to approach me.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
I looked down again.
“I think.”
Blazer followed my gaze for half a second, realized exactly what I was checking, and made an expression that immediately made me point a finger at him.
“Not. One. Word.”
He puffed his cheeks slightly, as if I had just deprived him of a wonderful opportunity.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
That was the first lie Blazer ever told me.
Back then, I still thought of myself as Arthur. The name Nellie came later, once I started accepting that this body wasn’t a temporary transformation or some side effect that a conveniently placed priest could fix with magic. That day, I was still Arthur inside the mind of a young woman I didn’t recognize at all.
And they didn’t give me much time to process it.
The five of us were gathered inside a massive ceremonial hall, and then the speech began.
We were the chosen ones.
The five heroes brought from another world.
Humanity’s last hope.
Blazer had received the sword. Monkar, the shield. Elizabeth, the spear. Sogard, the bow.
And I had been given the staff.
They told us about ancient prophecies, the war, the balance between nations, and how our glorious destiny was to defeat the demonic forces.
And above all of them, their queen.
Morgause.
Up until that point, everything had been unfolding exactly the way you would expect from a story about summoned heroes.
Then they showed you to us.
“They showed me to you?” Morgause asked.
“The memory crystals.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Humans had several magical artifacts capable of storing images and short fragments of past events. Some preserved only a single still image, while others could replay a few seconds over and over.
They were basically the closest thing that world had to photographs and videos.
One of the mages placed several crystals on a table.
“You must memorize this face,” he told us. “This is Morgause, the current Demon Queen and the greatest obstacle to peace within the human territories.”
He activated the first one.
And there you were.
Morgause slowly set down her cup.
“I’m already beginning to understand where this story is going.”
The first memory showed you after a battle. You were walking among demon soldiers while giving orders. You wore dark armor, and your red hair flowed behind you in the wind.
I remember the commander explaining something.
Maybe your magic.
Maybe your troops.
Could have been the border defenses.
I have absolutely no idea.
Because I was only thinking one thing.
Oh.
They activated another crystal.
You casting a spell.
Another.
You turning toward one of your generals.
Another.
You walking away with your back to the recording.
I remembered that one particularly well.
Morgause closed her eyes for a moment.
“Of course you do.”
“I would like it officially noted that the recording angles were the humans’ responsibility.”
“And you were a completely innocent victim of circumstance, I assume.”
“Exactly.”
The other four were studying the enemy we were supposed to defeat.
I was discovering that the supposed incarnation of evil was exactly my type.
When the presentation ended, I raised my hand.
“I need to review all of those memories again.”
The commander looked at me immediately.
“Did you notice something?”
“Several things.”
So many things.
“I want to analyze her movements more carefully. I’d prefer to do it alone and without distractions.”
The man’s expression lit up.
I think he had just decided I was the most responsible of the five.
Blazer even gave me an approving look before leaving with the others.
Poor man.
He didn’t know me yet.
I waited until the door closed, glanced one way, then the other, and activated the first crystal again.
Then the second.
Then I went back to the first.
At first, I tried convincing myself it was still strategic analysis. I watched how you moved, how you used magic, where your attention went during battle.
Completely professional.
Then I realized I had replayed the exact same clip of you simply walking seven times.
I decided to stop lying to myself.
And that was when a second problem appeared.
My new body started reacting.
Morgause slowly pressed two fingers to her forehead.
“I do not need every detail of this moment.”
“You asked how it started.”
“With every passing second, I become more convinced that was a mistake.”
I had never experienced arousal in that body before. Everything felt different and, frankly, I had just gone from being a man on Earth to being a woman in a world where magic existed.
Of course I was curious.
Any man who suddenly woke up as a woman would wonder how certain things worked.
At least once.
Right?
Personally, I decided the situation required immediate investigation.
For scientific reasons.
Naturally.
So I began touching my body little by little. First my thighs, then my stomach, and finally, very slowly, I moved my fingertips toward my vagina. I started with my clitoris; I had heard it was particularly sensitive in women, and the moment I confirmed that, I ended up on my knees. The arousal became so intense that I immediately felt my body releasing vaginal fluid while I kept staring at the image of the queen and imagining myself sucking her breasts.
Then it happened.
I slid the first finger into the entrance of my vagina. The pleasure was so intense that I couldn’t stop, so I added a second. Then another, one by one, until I managed to fit all five.
And then, without thinking and completely giving myself over to the pleasure, I pushed my whole fist inside.
I froze in shock.
My mind went blank, and I remember coming. I released so much fluid that I ended up leaving a puddle beneath me.
And then the door flew open.
“Hey, I forgot my glo—”
Blazer froze.
So did I.
Behind me, the projection of Morgause continued walking majestically across a battlefield, completely indifferent to the fact that my dignity had just abandoned this world for the second time that day.
Blazer looked at the projection.
Then at me.
His eyes dropped.
Then immediately snapped back up.
The silence lasted so long that I started wondering whether my first major accomplishment as a heroine would be causing permanent brain damage to one of my companions.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I can explain.”
“ARE YOU DOING THAT WHILE WATCHING THE DEMON QUEEN?!”
“WHEN YOU SAY IT LIKE THAT, IT SOUNDS SO MUCH WORSE!”
“HOW ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY IT?!”
And that was how Blazer and I really met.
Morgause had covered her eyes with one hand.
“And that man actually kept this secret?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
“That doesn’t seem like the sort of information someone forgets easily.”
“I never said he forgot. Just that he had enough survival instinct not to tell anyone.”
Morgause slowly lowered her hand.
“Continue. Before I change my mind.”
“The first time I saw you in person came shortly afterward.”
Our first expedition to the castle was a disaster.
The five of us arrived convinced that being summoned heroes meant we had some kind of special advantage.
You corrected that assumption fairly quickly.
Monkar endured more punishment than any reasonable human being should have been capable of surviving before you finally brought him down. Elizabeth tried taking advantage of your focus on him and ended up flying halfway across the room after you threw her into a wall. Sogard managed to keep his distance for quite a while, until you figured out where he was hiding.
Blazer lasted the longest.
Then he fell too.
And suddenly, it was just you and me.
I still remembered the way you walked toward me.
You didn’t run.
You didn’t look worried.
The other four heroes were down, and you were calmly advancing with the expression of someone who had already decided exactly how this was going to end.
The memory crystals hadn’t done you justice.
Not even close.
I should have been looking for a strategy, preparing a spell, or thinking of some way to survive.
Instead, my first thought was:
Oh my God. She’s even prettier in person.
My second:
She is definitely my type.
And the third arrived when you raised a hand surrounded by magic.
Ah. I’m going to die.
All three turned out to be fairly accurate.
Morgause watched me for several seconds.
“So you started coming back simply because you found me attractive.”
“At first, yes.”
There was no point lying.
“You were beautiful, dangerous, powerful, dominant, and you had horns. I was practically doomed from the beginning.”
“I don’t know whether I should feel flattered or concerned.”
“You can feel both. I do constantly.”
The corner of her mouth curved slightly, though she erased the smile before I could celebrate it.
“But that doesn’t explain everything else.”
“No.”
That was the complicated part.
The first few times, I came back simply because I wanted to see you.
There was no profound reason.
No romantic destiny.
No divine revelation.
I found you unbelievably attractive, and I wanted to get close to you again, even though getting close usually ended with me on fire.
But eventually, I started staying longer.
Sometimes I entered the castle and didn’t go looking for you immediately.
Morgause narrowed her eyes.
“You spied on me.”
“I prefer to call it discreet observation.”
“You illegally entered my castle and followed me without my knowledge.”
“When you describe it like that, you completely remove the romantic element.”
“Because there isn’t one! That’s practically harassment!”
“Details.”
“They are not details.”
At first, I only wanted to see you without immediately getting into another magical fight.
Then I started noticing things.
I watched you spend nearly an hour listening to a soldier who was so nervous he could barely explain his village’s problem properly. I watched you personally review requests from towns most humans probably didn’t even know existed.
One night, I found Hellista practically asleep on top of a mountain of paperwork while you tried to force her to go rest.
Morgause made a small sound of resignation.
“And she lost the argument, I assume.”
“Completely. Although you waited until she left before finishing the rest of the documents yourself.”
She fell silent.
“I also saw you feeding that little creature that lives near the eastern garden.”
Her head immediately turned toward me.
“Wait. No one is supposed to know about that.”
“I do.”
“Because you were hiding in the bushes.”
“The bushes provided an excellent strategic position.”
“You were spying on me!”
“Discreet observation.”
Morgause shook her head, though this time she failed to completely hide her smile.
I learned things while we fought too.
You never used an attack that might hit your own soldiers, even when it meant losing a chance to hit me. Whenever our fights moved too close to an occupied part of the castle, you always tried to steer them toward empty courtyards or corridors.
And over time, I started doing the same.
I could have used far more destructive spells to force my way inside.
I never did.
You could have used much worse attacks against me.
Usually, you didn’t.
Without realizing it, each of us started learning the other’s rules without ever sitting down to discuss them.
Eventually, you started recognizing my routes.
My spells.
My tricks.
Even my schedule.
“Because you were a recurring security problem.”
“But you thought about me.”
“I thought about how to stop you from appearing inside my bedroom.”
“You thought specifically about me.”
“That argument isn’t going to become romantic just because you repeat it enough times.”
“Let me have this.”
Morgause exhaled through her nose.
And while I was telling the story, I suddenly realized something I had never really stopped to analyze.
I had started by desiring her.
That much was obvious.
I still desired her, probably far more than I had at the beginning, but somewhere along the way, too many other things had become tangled up with that desire.
I liked seeing her smile when she thought no one was watching. I liked discovering the little things she hid behind that terrifying Demon Queen image. I worried when she looked tired. I wanted to know what she thought about when she stared out a window for too long, and what things could make her laugh when I wasn’t around to provoke her.
I wanted to know her.
Not just conquer her.
And after hearing her talk about Kaia, after watching her cry in my arms, and after waking up that morning in her bed because she had personally decided to carry me there...
The word love started feeling much heavier.
For months, I had used it as if it were simple.
I love you.
I said it while running from her spells. I shouted it through windows. I used it as justification for illegally entering her bedroom.
But now that Morgause had asked me why, I couldn’t hide behind a pretty declaration anymore.
I lowered my eyes to my hands.
“I think I know that I care about you.”
Morgause said nothing.
“And I know I want to keep getting to know you. I want to be with you when you’re in a good mood and when you’re unbearable. I want to know what makes you happy, what scares you, what you like eating when Hellista isn’t making sure you behave like a proper queen. I want to be someone you don’t have to be the Demon Queen around all the time.”
I looked up.
Morgause was watching me differently.
It almost made me lose my nerve.
Almost.
“But now I’m not sure that means I already know how to love you properly. Maybe I don’t. Maybe all this time I’ve been saying I love you when really... I’m still learning how.”
For the first time since I started speaking, Morgause seemed unsure how to respond.
And coming from her, that frightened me a little.
I took a deep breath.
“So... Demon Queen Morgause.”
Her eyes closed for a second, probably on instinct.
“Please allow me to become someone worthy of loving you.”
When she looked at me again, red had already begun spreading across her cheeks.
But this time, I wasn’t trying to provoke her.
Not yet.
“And if someday I discover that what I feel truly deserves to be called love... I want to do it right. I want to be someone you can trust. Someone you can tell things to without wondering whether they’ll someday use them against you. Someone you can get angry with, argue with, laugh with... someone you can look for when you don’t want to be alone.”
Morgause lowered her gaze slightly.
My chest tightened.
“And, if possible... I’d also like to become someone worthy of being loved by you.”
Silence.
Not an uncomfortable one.
One of those strange silences where you know something has changed, even if you still can’t quite say what.
Morgause was red.
I probably was too.
For the first time since I had started chasing her, I wasn’t trying to get a date, a kiss, or some imaginary victory I could brag about to Orbit later.
I just wanted her to understand me.
Maybe I still didn’t know whether everything I felt deserved to be called love.
But I wanted to become capable of loving her.
And I wanted Morgause, someday, to be able to look at me and think that I was worth loving too.
It was beautiful.
Really beautiful.
The kind of perfect moment any person with even the slightest amount of intelligence would have protected carefully.
And for approximately three glorious seconds...
I was that person.
Then my brain made the mistake of thinking about what I had just said.
If Morgause loved me someday...
We could date.
Dating meant kissing.
Kissing meant sleeping together.
Sleeping together meant marriage.
Marriage meant—
Oh.
There it was.
Regular programming had resumed.
“Although, now that I think about it, I also don’t want you interpreting all of this as meaning we have to spend the next five years staring shyly at each other from opposite ends of a table. We can learn while making progress. We start with a normal date, a real one: dinner, wine, maybe a walk through the gardens, and absolutely no deaths at the end. Then a second date, which seems like a perfectly reasonable time for our first kiss. The first would probably be too soon for you, and making me wait until the third feels unnecessarily cruel. And obviously I want the kiss to be beautiful. At night, maybe. You pull me closer by the waist, I put my hands on your shoulders... although I’d also accept being pushed against a wall. I don’t want to restrict your creativity.”
Morgause’s ears started turning red.
Perfect.
I was on a roll.
“After that, I could start staying here officially. No more tunnels, windows, or teleporting behind your guards. You give me a key, Thundery stops suffering every time she hears my name, and I start waking up beside you every morning. You’d try to get up early for work and I’d hug you from behind and convince you that another five minutes won’t destroy the kingdom. Then ten. Then twenty. Hellista would knock on the door asking why you’re late, and I’d explain that Her Majesty is dealing with matters of extreme national importance. I’d need a wardrobe too. Maybe two. And eventually we’d have to start planning the wedding, although I can be reasonable: I don’t need a gigantic parade. Orbit will, obviously. Blazer will drink for free, Elizabeth will turn some wedding tradition into a competition, Sogard will bet on who cries first, and Thundery will spend the entire ceremony checking the windows because she’ll still be convinced that even on my own wedding day I’m going to sneak in through somewhere forbidden.”
Morgause had been staring at me for several seconds as if trying to determine exactly when she had lost control of the conversation.
Probably around the word kiss.
I still wasn’t finished.
Not even close.
“Then we’d have children. I have no idea exactly how that would work, but we live in a world where people can reconstruct themselves after dying, so I refuse to believe two women in love are the true limit of magic. We’ll research it. I’m surprisingly good at studying when I have the right motivation. They could have your hair, your horns... I definitely hope they get your horns. If they also inherit my personality, we’re going to have to secure every window in the castle. You’d be the responsible mother and I’d be the fun one. Although I can be responsible. Sometimes. Under extraordinary circumstances.”
Morgause still wasn’t saying anything.
That should have worried me.
Instead, I discovered the next logical stage of our future.
And probably the most dangerous one.
“Naturally, before the children, we’d have our first night together. And you wouldn’t need to worry because I don’t expect everything to be perfect right away. Part of the fun would be figuring it out together. Learning what you like, what gets rid of that serious expression, which places make you lose your composure... I already know your horns are sensitive, so we have an excellent starting point. You could discover all of that about me too. If you want to take the lead, go ahead. I’m extremely cooperative when a beautiful woman takes me to her bedroom with questionable intentions. And after that, naturally, we’d need to repeat the experiment several times. We can’t draw scientific conclusions from a single night. That would be irresponsible.”
Morgause’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
Her face had been red for a while, but then I noticed something different.
Her breathing.
The slight shift in her posture.
How tightly she was holding her legs together beneath the table.
I stopped talking.
Just for a second.
My eyes dropped.
Then slowly came back up.
Oh.
That was new.
I had made Morgause blush plenty of times. I had made her yell at me, stumble over her words, chase me, and kill me.
But this...
This wasn’t only embarrassment.
A smile slowly spread across my face.
And that was exactly where I should have stopped.
“So... technically, we don’t even have to wait until the wedding. Or even our first date. We could go up to your room right now, close the door, undress, and spend a while looking at each other naked. Then we could move closer and touch each other slowly until you start touching my vagina while kissing me and squeezing my nipples. Then I could grab your ass, move my hand down to your vagina, slide one finger inside you and then another while you do the same to me.”
Morgause remained completely still.
I kept going.
“Then I’d lower myself in front of you and start licking your vagina until you came all over me. And instead of pulling away, I’d keep your fluids in my mouth, stand back up, and kiss you so we could share them together. We’d keep them between our mouths while we kissed, and when we both decided we’d had enough, we’d swallow together in one go.”
“ENOUGH!”
The word exploded out of her so violently that it cut me off.
Morgause shot to her feet. Her chair scraped loudly against the floor, one hand still planted on the table while the other trembled slightly at her side. Her entire face was red all the way to her ears, and she was breathing as though she had just run halfway across the castle.
I blinked.
Once.
Twice.
And then, because apparently thirty-three deaths had taught me absolutely nothing, I smiled.
“Does that mean you liked the idea of—”
I didn’t finish.
Morgause’s eyes lit up.
Ah.
I knew that glow.
“Wait, wait, I haven’t even gotten to the part where—”
The air around her suddenly grew hot.
“Morgause, love of my future li—”
A fireball appeared directly in front of her hand.
“Oh.”
That was the precise moment I realized I might have overused the word future.
“We can talk this—”
The explosion hit me head-on.
I didn’t even try to dodge.
First, because I was too surprised.
Second, because it was already far too late.
And third, because a small part of me was much too busy celebrating the fact that Morgause had actually endured my entire description before trying to kill me.
The world vanished behind a red blaze.
For a fraction of a second, I could still see her through the fire: completely mortified, still breathing unevenly, wearing an expression that suggested her dignity had suffered considerably more damage than I had.
And then I died.
Again.
There had been no warning.
No countdown.
I don’t even think Morgause had consciously decided to kill me.
It was a reflex.
Like closing your eyes when something comes toward you too quickly.
Except in Morgause’s case, the reflex was incinerating Nellie.
After thirty-three attempts, her body had developed a fairly efficient emergency response.
Too much embarrassment.
Too much Nellie.
Fire.
And while everything turned red, I had time for one last thought.
I had started that conversation wondering whether I truly knew how to love Morgause.
I still didn’t have a definitive answer.
But I had just discovered something important.
I could make the Demon Queen completely lose control just by talking about our future together.
That definitely counted as progress.