I Sealed the Demon Lord for a Hundred Years, Now He Wants His Jailer novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: I Am Keeping You

"The shard," Chenjue said. "The chip in my ring. It's not a trophy. It holds the night."

Wuhen sat on the edge of the bed with his hands flat on his knees.

"Which night?"

"The one on the ice."

The room had gone very quiet.

Chenjue told it plainly, with his eyes on Wuhen's face.

The blizzard.

The red smoke tearing out of his own skin.

A man in a torn white robe saying, I know you would.

The seal going down, and the same man on his knees with his forehead on the ice.

"Sleep a hundred years," Chenjue said. "I'll pay for it."

Wuhen did not move.

He had thought, for a hundred years, about the day this would come out, and in every version he had a clever line ready.

He could not find one.

"You've been inside my head," he said at last.

"I've been inside your worst night."

"That's worse," Wuhen said.

"You were weeping."

"It was cold. My eyes run in the cold," Wuhen replied.

"Your eyelashes froze."

"They do that too," Wuhen answered.

"Wuhen." Chenjue's voice cracked. "I stood on that shore and watched my own claw open your side."

"And then I dreamed for a hundred years that your face was dry."

"I'd have thought so, too," Wuhen said.

"You told me it was ten years. You knew it was never going to be ten."

"I suspected," Wuhen said.

"You sat in a hut for a hundred years, and you did not once tell me why."

"You'd said you would rather rot," Wuhen replied.

"I was eating my own core!"

The shout rang off the black ceiling and died.

Chenjue put his hands over his face.

His shoulders shook, once.

Wuhen looked at the huge man kneeling on the floor with his horns down and his hands trembling.

Something in him that had been bolted shut for a century came undone.

"You thought I was keeping you for payment," Chenjue said into his palms. "You thought you were a debt I'd come to collect."

"I thought you wanted your property back."

"I wanted you back," Chenjue answered.

"That's what I said."

"It's not the same!" Chenjue said.

"It's very close."

Chenjue dropped his hands.

His eyes were red, but with weeping, not the other thing.

"I am keeping you," he said. "I'm not putting back what the seal took because I owe you."

"I'd keep you if you had every year and every sword you ever had."

"I'm keeping you, Wuhen, and you can hate that as much as you like."

Wuhen's throat worked.

"Say it again."

"I am keeping you," Chenjue said.

"I'm a prisoner who insults you at every meal."

"I've noticed," Chenjue replied.

"I'll do it for another thousand years."

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