Naga folded her arms and turned her nose up in a huff. “Vile little traitorousss creature. You’re better off donating her to a nice sssoup kitchen.”

  Riza puffed up her chest. “Bloated balloon of venom and evil. You’re so filled with poison that it spills from your mouth.”

  Jessica looked down at her feet and made some popping noises with her mouth as she tried to think of what to say.

  “So Riza, this is Naga.”

  “Your name is as offensssive to the ear as your hideousss voice,” Naga said.

  “And Naga, this is Riza.”

  “I have never seen a creature more fit to spend her life in a cramped cage. A shame you had to take her away from her calling,” Riza said.

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Very cool. And now we are all going to have a funny little friendship montage where we learn to get along so we can all live together. Right?” Jessica asked.

  “I think I might sssee if that pink-haired elf will take me back,” Naga replied.

  Riza snorted. “If there’s any space to put you, you fat noodle.”

  Naga smiled dangerously, slit eyes flickering with rage.

  “I am exceedingly thin for a lamia, thank you! In fact I need to put sssome weight back on. Lizard meat might jussst hit the ssspot.”

  Riza hissed. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  Jessica sighed. No one had told her animalar and monsters hated each other this much.

  She supposed it made sense in that animalar were basically adventurer-lites, and by Naga’s repeated use of ‘traitor’ and ‘betrayers,’ monsters probably felt animalar had sold out to humanity or gotten lucky by being human-looking enough to get a pass. This would have been fascinating to explore were it not two in the morning.

  Jessica had requested Naga be released as soon as possible, partly because she didn’t like the idea of the lamia spending another night in the dungeons and partly because she wanted the matter concluded before Mystiferia could return and complicate things. She was now debating whether that was a good idea.

  For one, while Naga did fit into her apartment, she did so with no extra floor space. Jessica eventually planned to move the bed against a wall and get rid of Melisande’s hefty wardrobe to make room for Naga to coil up. But for the time being the floor was one a bouncy castle of black and neon green scales. The sheer quantity of snake was making her ophidiophobia act up.

  “Can we please just try to get some sleep? We can engage in intersectional discourse about fantasy racism in the morning,” Jessica said, feeling her eye bags physically forming.

  “Fine. But I get the wall with the heating pipesss,” Naga said, slithering over to the wall opposite the bed.

  “No fair! You can’t keep it all for yourself!” Riza cried.

  “Oh yesss I can!”

  Naga’s body pressed to the wall like some kind of snake jigsaw, monopolizing it to the ceiling. Jessica hadn’t even realized there were heating pipes at all, let alone which wall they were on. Though it wasn’t surprising her two reptilian companions found them first.

  Riza grabbed Jessica’s arm. “Fine! Then I call Jessica’s body heat.”

  Naga’s mouth formed a shocked O as she realized too late her mistake.

  “Wait, no, I want Jessssica! You can have the wall!”

  Jessica immediately had two reptile ladies pulling on each arm, demanding her body heat. Meanwhile, she barely had enough energy left to walk to her bed and collapse.

  “If you two don’t stop you’ll both be sleeping outside. How about that?” Jessica said.

  The tugging on her arms stopped immediately. Naga pouted and turned her head while Riza looked up at her with watering tears.

  “Here’s the deal: Either you two both share my body heat, or you can both sleep outside in the cold, so if you want to sleep cozy and warm, you’re gonna have to cooperate and learn to get along,” Jessica said, happy to have found some leverage to force them to be tolerant.

  She wound up sleeping alone that night as both refused to allow the other to have a comfortable sleep.

  The next morning Jessica found Naga draped over the branches of a poor, tortured tree out in the courtyard with several frightened guards nudging her with poles. Her human half lay on the layer branches using her arms as a pillow. With the sun now out and gently baking her, they didn’t seem likely to wake her.

  Riza was more difficult to find but Jessica eventually ran across her curled up in a tight alcove formed by two connecting turrets where—presumably—Naga would be too large to fit. She was curled up in the wool blanket Jessica had sent her out with. Like her rival, she also appeared quite snug now that the sun was out.

  Being both an animalar and also more portable, Riza was an easier sell to the castle staff. The guards had even been shocked when she brought the lizard girl back that Jessica didn’t already ‘own’ one. Naga, however, was going to be a problem.

  “What’re we s’posed to do with it!? Can’t have a monster hanging out in a tree, it’ll scare the children!” yelled a voice from the courtyard.

  The guards were already debating what to do with Naga. That was potentially a serious problem, as the queen had been rather vague about what counted as trouble for her condition that Jessica keep the lamia out of it.

  Before she could give it any thought, however, one of the queen’s attendants came outside to inform her she was needed for statue-dusting duty.

  “Her Majesty knows I’m not a maid, right?” Jessica asked.

  The attendant blushed. “I-It was His Majesty the King who asked, a-actually…”

  “Does he know that I’m not a maid?”

  The attendant met her with an awkward smile. “Er… About that.”

  It turned out that not only had the king asked for Jessica to polish the statues in the great hall, he had specifically requested she wear a maid outfit while doing so. She swore in anger all the way to the servants’ hall only to find out that while King Capra had in fact requested this, he didn’t seem to understand why.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  For one, the ‘maid outfit’ was the exact same drab, modest robe that all the other maids wore. It was quite possibly one of the least sexiest outfits Jessica had ever laid eyes on, and that was coming from someone who wore rubber boots and lab coats on the regular. For another, Jessica’s job actually was to wipe down the statues and not to bend over and seductively feather them.

  As the king watched her at work she heard him muttering to his advisors.

  “Why does Magnus have his concubines doing such things? The other maids are just as thorough…”

  This single statement made the indignity worth it.

  While King Capra might have heard about Magnus keeping concubines off-hand, the thing about having them wear maid outfits and polish statues was too specific to be hearsay. Capra had to have some kind of direct knowledge of Magnus’ doings. Possibly even a personal relationship.

  If there was a single person on the face of Tushita who knew of a way to return to Earth, it would be Magnus. Meeting him wasn’t a punched ticket home, but it was her next obvious step. It was possible the way out was easier than she imagined. For once she regretted her lack of interaction with other adventurers.

  Jessica cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Your Majesty. If you have a moment—”

  “The king is a very busy man. He does not have time to speak to concubines,” said a nasally-voiced advisor standing at the king’s side.

  She glanced at King Capra who shot her a sympathetic smile.

  “I’m sorry, Jessica. It sounds like I’m not supposed to,” he said. “Being a king and all.”

  “That’s not— What? You absolutely are supposed to talk to concubines! That’s the whole point of—” At the last second Jessica thought better of amending his current understanding of how concubines worked. “I mean, you’re the king! You can talk to whoever you want!”

  “Chad, is that true?” King Capra asked his advisor.

  “It is an insolent lie, Your Majesty. Kings appear weak and mundane when they speak with their inferiors,” Chad said.

  “Except I’m an adventurer! Can’t you at least get it straight about whether you’re supposed to condescend or be in awe of me?” Jessica said.

  “She makes a good point,” King Capra said.

  Chad sneered. “Any adventurer who would willingly become a concubine instead of going on quests is inferior, Your Majesty.”

  “Oh okay. Sorry, Jessica!”

  King Capra waved good-bye to her as Chad the advisor steered him out of the throne room and off to a state meeting. Jessica looked at the seven other busts she had to clean and bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from knocking them all onto the floor.

  Jessica finished with this duty around noon and headed up to her apartment to change back into regular clothes. She had one arm through the sleeve of one of Melisande’s dresses when there was a knock at the door.

  “Riza?” she called out.

  When Jessica opened the door, her stomach sank as she was greeted with a pink-haired elf whose grin ran all the way up through her one remaining eye.

  “Hello, Jessica! I just got back and I thought you might want to know,” Mystiferia said.

  Jessica tried to close the door. An armored pink boot lodged it open.

  “Aw, you’d try to keep me out? After I was such a hospitable host to you?”

  “What do you want?” Jessica said, barely containing the fear hovering at the edge of her voice.

  Mystiferia forced the door open with more force than her delicate frame had any right to contain. She scanned the room with her pink eye and frowned.

  “Poor Melisande. She deserved better than to have her apartment stink of snakes and lizards.”

  Jessica folded her arms and waited for the warden to finish her posturing. Seeing that Jessica wasn’t playing along, Mystiferia chuckled and shook her head.

  “You’re interesting for an adventurer, I’ll give you that. Most are satisfied with their harem being conventionally attractive elves or animalar. But a pet lamia is very… exotic.”

  Jessica blushed. “I don’t have a harem.”

  Mystiferia laughed loudly. “Oh yes you do! You adventurers just can’t resist. Even when you claim you’re gonna strike it out on your own, you still accumulate your little pets.”

  Jessica swallowed. “If this is about elves—”

  “It’s not about elves. No, no, I don’t mind adventurers at all. I owe my livelihood to them. The only thing that bothers me just a teensy little bit”—she clicked two gauntleted fingers together—“is that they get to reincarnate here while I can’t go over there. Does that seem fair?”

  Jessica assumed this was a rhetorical question and stayed silent until the elf tilted her chin up with a mailed finger.

  “Does it seem fair?” Mystiferia asked again in a low and dangerous voice.

  Jessica swallowed. “No.”

  “Mm-mm. Not really. But that’s okay. From what I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like I could have the job I do on Earth, and I really like my job.”

  Mystiferia let Jessica’s chin go and wandered around the room, picking random things up. Eventually she settled on the pile of Melisande’s letters Jessica had been reading in her off-time. Mystiferia idly swirled the letters around on the desk.

  “I know you adventurers like to imagine that people who do bad things are secretly traumatized or have deeply personal reasons. Like maybe I enjoy torturing and imprisoning monsters because the Demon King killed my parents or a monster clawed my eye out… Well, that last part is true. But no, I’m not like that idiot Hayek. I don’t need a separate reason. I enjoy my work for its own sake, because it’s rewarding, like cleaning a house but on the scale of an entire world. To me it’s been fun watching everything become so clean these past hundred years.”

  “And what, it wasn’t enough? You wanted to see if you could kill an adventurer too?” Jessica asked.

  “Kill you? Gods no. I figured an adventurer would only let herself get imprisoned if it was what she wanted. Maybe because you wanted to prove how great you are by single-handedly overcoming adversity through your oh-so-powerful skill and quick-thinking and access to Earthly knowledge, or…”

  Mystiferia turned sharply and cupped her cheek. “Because you wanted to have some fun down there. Don’t think I don’t know why you asked for your slimy little snake to be released. You seemed to be having a lot of fun having your ‘back cracked’, after all.”

  Jessica’s nostrils flared. “You don’t know a damn—”

  Mystiferia held a finger to her lips and softly shushed. “No, no, no. I’m not done monologuing yet! Because you see, something interesting happened when Hayek put you up on that stake. Or, I should say, didn’t happen. You didn’t aura-farm. You didn’t break free with magical powers. You didn’t take violent vengeance on the man who wronged you. And I was there thinking, ‘Now isn’t that strange? Is she really going to let herself die?’”

  Jessica’s heart thudded. “I’ll tell you what I told Hayek, I am an adventu—”

  “I know, sweetie. I know. But that’s not what I’m getting at. Why didn’t you use your magic to save yourself? Why did you need to rely on that peasant boy with a bomb?”

  Jessica’s throat croaked as words refused to come.

  “Now here’s something you may or may not know,” Mystiferia said, mouth curling up in a wicked sneer. “The Demon King’s chief alchemist invented a potion to take adventurers’ powers from them. It was too late in the war to be of much use, but to this day it’s still the only way to do it. And there’s only one person who knows how to make it.”

  “I didn’t use magic because…”

  Mystiferia stroked her cheek. “Because Morkal took it from you. Oh, you poor thing. I could help you get revenge if you like.”

  Jessica slapped Mystiferia’s arm away from her face, palm throbbing where it smacked against metal. The pink-haired warden smirked.

  “I expected as much. An adventurer in league with the Demon King’s officer. How… fresh. Very progressive. You know, I’ve never gotten to play with an adventurer before. You all are a protected class and even when I’m allowed to lock adventurers up for, ‘character development,’ I can’t even have any fun! I’m prohibited from harming a single hair on your head lest the Adventurer’s Guild swoop in and have my head.

  “But suppose I had a good reason? Like, say, extracting information which could lead to the capture and execution of the only monster who can take magic away from adventurers? Then the guild might look the other way. Especially if this same adventurer was wanted for harming not one, but two other adventurers.”

  Jessica hadn’t even given the Adventurer’s Guild a second thought since escaping into the queen’s good graces. Mostly because adding any more stress to her plate would send her spiraling, but a part of her had hoped to establish herself before word-of-mouth got around about what she’d done to Akuhara and Min-woo. And if she was being honest, she'd maybe even bought into the idea that adventurers were too special to be harmed.

  In one sentence Mystiferia had shattered those illusions. Jessica was in a lot more danger than she realized.

  Mystiferia rubbed Jessica’s back. “Not to worry. I can’t just snap my fingers and have the king’s concubine whisked away to my dungeons. Even if I could, that would be too easy. The chase is just as fun as the catch, you know. Or maybe you don’t. Most adventurers are essentially predators. but you, my dear little Jessica, are undeniably prey.”

  The warden balled Melisande’s letters into her fist and stuck them in her pockets. Somehow, this last bit of cruelty felt the most insulting.

  “Why? Why would you do that?” Jessica said.

  “Becuase I know you wanted to read them. And now you can’t.”

  Jessica wanted to slap the elf more than she wanted to keep living, but Mystiferia’s wide grin told her the elf was counting on that. No doubt it would give her grounds to have Jessica arrested again. When Mystiferia realized it wasn’t going to happen, her grin drooped.

  “Oh well. Another time then. You’re always welcome in my dungeons,” Mystiferia said, ripping up Melisande’s letters as she left.