Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 728

Chapter 728: Confused Fangirls

Emilia’s hands were shaking again.

She’d noticed it twenty minutes ago when she’d tried to pour water into the ceramic pot on her windowsill and missed entirely, soaking the wood beneath. Now she was on her second attempt, holding the watering can with both hands and focusing on the narrow opening like it was the most important task in the world, because if she focused on the marigolds then she wasn’t focusing on the replay loop burning behind her eyes.

Her phone was wedged between her shoulder and her ear. Leia’s voice came through relentlessly.

"I’m watching it again. For the ninth time. Ninth. And I still can’t figure out what the fuck just happened."

"You and everyone else," Sarah said.

Emilia tipped the can. Water hit the soil. Some of it even went where she wanted.

The replay was still running in her awakened interface, overlaid against her vision like a second layer of reality that she couldn’t turn off because she’d tried three times already and her fingers kept opening it again. Kaiden’s first-person perspective, the mountain ridge, the three Ashborn siblings, the shadows eating the sky, and then Vespera Ashborn stepping out of the darkness like she’d always been there.

The viewer count on the replay sat at three point two million and climbing. The stream had been offline for thirty minutes. Three million people were watching footage they’d already seen because the footage was so incomprehensible that watching it again felt like it might produce a different answer.

It didn’t.

"She kissed him," Emilia said quietly.

"She kissed him!" Leia repeated, and the emphasis she put on it made it sound like she was accusing someone of a crime. "The Shadow Monarch, the woman who just caved in her own daughter’s ribcage, knelt on the ground and kissed Kai on the forehead like he was her favorite person in the world. And then she stood up and beat the shit out of three of her kids. In that order."

"The order is what gets me," Sarah admitted. "She went to him first. Before anything else. She didn’t even look at the siblings until she’d checked on him."

"Checked on him?" Leia’s voice climbed. "She cupped his face. She held his jaw and looked into his eyes like she was making sure he was still in there. That’s not just ’checking on someone’!"

Emilia set the watering can down because her hands weren’t getting any steadier and the marigolds had received roughly four times the water they needed. She dried her fingers on the hem of her skirt and pressed the phone tighter against her ear.

The replay looped again. Vespera stepping from the shadows, kneeling, her hand finding Kaiden’s chin, the kiss in his hair.

"The chat is a war zone," Sarah said. She had her moderator overlay open, Emilia could tell from the way she kept trailing off mid-sentence to read. "Thirty minutes offline and the comments are still going at full speed. I can’t even keep up with the filter. The theories alone would fill a book."

"What kind of theories?" Emilia asked.

"Every kind. Some people think she’s protecting her investment because Kai’s guild is contracted under New Dawn’s banner and she doesn’t want her assets damaged. Some people think it’s political, like she’s making a move against Magnus and Kai’s team is the excuse. Some people think she’s just a psychopath who wanted to beat her own kids and Kai happened to be there."

"That last one is stupid," Leia said flatly. "You don’t kiss someone on the forehead and then beat three people nearly to death for something unrelated. That’s cause and effect. She beat them because of what they did to him."

"Maybe."

"Sarah. She showed up after Luna lost her arm. After Selena took Luna’s arm off. She beat Selena worst, the obvious ring leader of this attack. You do the math."

Sarah went quiet.

Emilia looked at her marigolds. The pot was overflowing now, water pooling on the sill and dripping onto the floor. She couldn’t bring herself to care. The image of Vespera’s hand on Kaiden’s face was playing behind her eyes for the tenth time and it still didn’t make sense.

"There’s a thread on the main forum," Leia said, her tone shifting from angry to sly. "Top post right now. Fourteen thousand upvotes in five minutes."

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