I woke up to the sound of banging at my door and Danzel's voice repeatedly calling at me. I opened my eyes in the room dimly lit by the light that managed to enter through the cracks in the blinders. I tried to sit up on my bed, but two surprisingly warm arms wrapped themselves around my neck and shoulders as the soft, sleepy groan of a certain devil-looking woman reached my ear.

Memories from the previous, hot night soon flooded my mind, but they were quickly interrupted when Denzel shouted, "that's it. I'm entering," from the other side of the door, before opening it wide, letting the light of day invade the room.

I squinted my eyes at the sudden brightness, before my mind registered the situation in full and I quickly covered myself with a sheet, with way too much delay. When I finally managed to look at Denzel without my eyes complaining about the light, I saw how he was frozen at the door, staring, not at me, but at the woman next to me.

"Phoebe Akather," he said, with hatred in his voice, following with what I understood was him asking why she was here.

She waved him off and gave him a half laugh, before replying.

He shouted, "get out!" at the top of his lungs, his face red from the strain.

Phoebe laughed again and said, "yes, yes." The next moment she was out of the bed, fully clothed, even though I was sure that just a moment before she was stark naked. She casually walked out of the room, giving a little boop on Denzel's nose as she exited.

"What… was that?" I asked, very confused.

"None of your business, that's for sure," he snapped at me.

"Excuse me?! I think it is my business if you start having issues with who I bring in my bed," I said, just a bit pissed off.

"Oh, fuck off, it's not all about you." He probably saw my raising eyebrow accompanied by a good degree of anger as he quickly added, "I'm just not on the best terms with her, ok? It's late, go to work," before leaving.

I was still way too curious about what had happened so, after playing around with the kids, I went to the only one that could have helped me. Arvia was still tagging along for my choreographing training with the guards, and had told me that I could go to her place in the middle district, not too far from the guards' barracks, to ask her anything I might have had doubts on, in exchange for a lunch out. She had obviously meant it as helping me with the language, but she seemed to know enough about the gossips of the city to be able to tell me something.

As we were eating some meat and vegetables skewers, together with some light beer, on the benches in front of a stall, I asked her about the relationship between Phoebe and Denzel.

She laughed a bit before saying, "oh, that's actually an amusing story. When Denzel was barely over twenty years old, he was already a well known merchant and land owner around the city. The opportunity came for him to become even richer when a war started and families became unable to pay their debts, since their men were at the front. He started buying houses and buildings left and right. One of those buildings happened to be an orphanage that had stopped receiving funding because of the costs of the war. When he bought it, he kicked out the kids and staff to fend for themselves in the slums and turned the building into a brothel.

"What he didn't know, was that the King's Lyre, that's what people called Phoebe Akather at the time, and some still do now, although the name King's Bitch was also popular, especially between the kingdom's enemies, used to play with the kids at that orphanage and bring them gifts and food from time to time. When the war ended and she returned from the front, she found out what had happened to the orphanage. In the span of a single year, Denzel, the official of that district of the city, a few magistrates, and the king's regent during the war found themselves in the middle of a street with only a pair of pants to their name. Denzel was actually the only one who managed to recover from that, but it still took him fifteen years to regain the amount of wealth he had during the war."

"Holy shit! No wonder he hates her guts!" I said, almost spitting out the meat in my mouth. "Wait a moment, though," I said, as I realized something was off, "you're saying that she was some kind of important military figure when Denzel was in his twenties?"

She nodded. "Yeah, she held a special rank that put her directly under the king, as did a few other powerful mages. She still does, although now she mostly spends her time screwing around."

"Wait, how old is she?" I asked, a bit unsure if I wanted to know the answer.

Arvia shrugged. "She's probably around two hundred years old."

I spat out my beer. "Two hundred?!"

"Well, that's one of the shorter estimates, actually, as the records of her working for the kingdom go back about a century and a half ago. The others are much higher, some even say that she's over five hundred, but that's unlikely as helelins don't remain that youthful for that long."

"Helelin?" I asked

She nodded. "That's what she is, probably. They're half demons. But it's difficult to say, as there are very few around and they vary a lot depending on the demon and the race they're a mix of. Still, I've never heard of helelins living longer than elves, so she must be at most four hundred. The bets are still open, though, and they've been for decades. If you go to any tavern in town, they probably have a tab with all the bets."

"And I thought I was getting popular," I said, before taking a sip of my beer.

She scoffed. "Humans just like to gossip and mind other people's businesses a lot. It helps distract them from their own problems."