The Mist and the Lightning. Part 13 - стр. 17

“I can't do that. He turns me on.”

“Yes, damn it, you are mirroring what they put into you,” Kors thought, “we need to somehow untie you from him emotionally. Have you and Lis been lovers for a long time?”

“We are together now,” Nikto answered gloomily.

“When do you have time?!”

Nikto was silent.

“You're upset. You let him yell at you, now you sit sad. Maybe I don't understand something? After all, he is also your slave, you just have to order, and your Lis will bend down in front of you.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you bend him over now? Didn't show him who is in charge? I don’t understand!”

Nikto didn’t answer anything.

“Do you, perhaps, love him?!”

“Yes.”

Kors shook his head in disappointment.

“Oh! This redhead drove everyone crazy. Karina, you… He does what he wants, considers himself the coolest, how does he do it?”

“No way. He's really cool.”

“Bullshit! And don't love him, he doesn't deserve it! He doesn't care about you, he uses you, he also demands: “Where is my victory?” He is completely insolent! He doesn't love you, Demon!”

Nikto was sitting sad and silent, and Kors physically felt how he yearned for Lis, regretting that he was gone. He wanted his love and recognition.

Kors was stunned by it:

“No-no, I won't leave it like that! I promised to help you, and I will put something else in you, the right thing. I'll squeeze out all the shit that Lis put into you. Firstly, it is unacceptable to talk and communicate like that, and I will take care of your upbringing, your culture of speech. And secondly, I will explain to you that you should not love those who don’t reciprocate and just use you. This is not the case! Do you agree with that?”

“Yes,” answered Nikto indifferently.

“Do you understand that Alis doesn't love you? He probably doesn't love anyone at all!”

“I understand everything,” Nikto quickly touched his face with his right hand several times in a row.

“Maybe he only loves himself,” Kors continued, “and even then, I doubt it very much, looking at how he fights, this is not even courage, it’s some kind of suicide, he doesn’t think where he is going.”

“He thinks,” Nikto tightly grasped his left wrist with his right, trying not to make uncontrolled movements.

And Kors saw it, the way he tried to calm his hand:

“I will help you, Nik, to get rid of this splinter, human weakness.”

Nikto didn’t object, and Kors was inspired:

“You will forget about him, and when we return to the Black City, by this time I will teach you, you will speak normally, because we need this to fulfill my Mission, do I understand correctly? After all, my Mission will clearly be associated with the Upper City, and not with the Lower, of course. What should I do in Lower? This means that you will need to learn to speak the way we, the Supreme Sirs, talk among ourselves, and not the way you, illiterate commoners, talk. I'll teach you, okay?”

“Okay,” Nikto answered.

Kors nodded in satisfaction and took the lists of the dead from the table.

“Oak stump…” He shook his head. “Expressions of the poor, who don’t even have a table, but instead of a table there is a wooden stump!”

Nikto was silent. Kors began reading the lists, bitterly recognizing the names of his warriors.

Nikto pulled his mute Arel to him and hugged him to his chest the way an upset child hugs his favorite toy to be comforted. Kors lifted his eyes from the lists and looked at them, it touched him. And he also really liked the fact that Nikto argued with him, and it seemed he didn’t mind reaching out for knowledge. Kors thought that the devilish cunning was simultaneously combined in Nikto with some childish naivety and a lack of understanding of what was bad and what was good. This clarity of Nikto in the seemingly most ordinary questions and concepts surprised Kors: “No, he is still a little mentally retarded,” thought Kors, looking at such a sincerely upset Nikto. “That's really, really, hellishly wrong, wrong combination of Demon and man. Such a crooked, flawed symbiosis, but by the way, it's even cute!” Kors remembered how Nikto talked in a rather primitive way, although he said the right things: “Okay, I'll teach him, he doesn't seem to mind, he probably understands that he needs it.”