Lis obediently pulled Karina by the forearm.
Until the morning she cried in the room. Until Arel came for her.
“We talked all night, he is very kind. Go, you can talk to your brother, the Demon left him. He can do this for a while, but he must always return. I begged him to leave for just an hour. I can't take it anymore. He said that when I calmed down and began to trust and not be afraid, he would leave for a longer period. He says that he himself is sick of everything here and that he is still holding on because of me.”
“Later I want to talk to the Demon too,” said Karina, sadly with tears. “Ask him to leave my brother when he leaves. When he finishes all his business here,” Karina tried to wipe away her tears; she looked tortured. “All your tasks. And return his voice and vision.”
“Come on, talk to your idiot. I hate him!”
“But for what?!”
“For making Nik weak.”
“Do you think it's really her brother?” Lis asked, he spoke slowly, but did not lisp at all.
“So what?” Arel didn’t understand.
“Maybe he's just making fun of her. Breaks comedy?”
Arel laughed:
“Maybe so. You're already talking, Lis, great!”
“Yes. But it really hurts.”
“And in my opinion, you got out, as always!”
Karina cautiously and embarrassedly entered the prince's room. Nikto, to her surprise, was not sitting on the bed as usual, but just on the floor next to her, with his back against the wall. He lifted his head in response to her steps. And for a second it seemed to her that she was there again, in the prison tower. And Nikto sat the same on the floor in front of her, just not on the dirty straw, and his hand was not twisted, chained to the wall. But he was still shrinking, sick, lonely.
“Gods,” she whispered, taking out the prepared notebook and pencil. “How can I withstand this… Hello.”
He only smiled slightly in return. Very tortured, very crooked. The Demon did it better.
Karina sat down next to him:
“Why are you sitting on the floor?” She tried to make her voice cheerful. “Maybe we can sit on the bed?”
But he literally recoiled from her, and she was frightened.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't think. I didn't think it was so painful for you…”
He extended his left hand, his left hand really worked better. She put their means of communication in his fingers. He quite confidently wrote to her: “Hi Karina.” Then he hesitated a little and added: “Please leave. Go away. Get out of here. Save yourself!”
He wrote and wrote as if trying to convey the meaning to her in different words.
She shook her head, forgetting that he didn’t see her:
“No. No, I'm not leaving! Don’t worry about me! I will talk to the Demon, I will ask him to leave you when he finishes all his business here. Do you understand? And Arel says that he has not much to do. You are still young. You will recover. I want to ask the Demon to return your eyes and voice. But even if he doesn't, I thought… Dr. Balthazar Nate will be able to repair the ligaments, and the eyes …”
Nikto shook his head violently and quickly wrote: “He's fooling you! He's fooling you. He fooled you.”
“I understood you. But I want to believe in the best. Please listen to me! Obey me now, don’t interfere with him, don’t resist, let him do everything that he was ordered to do and leave. It seems to me that it would be better not to disturb him. Don't you understand? Otherwise, he will completely destroy you.”
