I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Chapter 661: Nathan’s promise to Ayaka and Akane

”Onii-chan~”

Nathan opened his eyes.

Ayaka was crouched in front of him at eye level, smiling.

Her amber kimono had survived the ceremony in good order. Her hair had developed two small escaped strands that she hadn’t noticed yet.

Akane stood just behind her, composed and straight, though the slight warmth around her eyes communicated that she had found Nathan’s nap considerably more charming than she was going to admit directly.

”You slept through the entire blessing,” Ayaka informed him with cheerful accusation.

”I was aware it was happening,” Nathan said, pushing off the tree and straightening with unhurried ease.

”You were asleep.”

”I was resting with awareness.”

Ayaka stared at him for two full seconds.

”That is the most ridiculous thing you have ever said to me,” she declared, ”and you once told me with a straight face that kidnapping Rena was a reasonable diplomatic strategy.”

Akane made a small sound that she converted immediately into a composed clearing of her throat.

”How was the ceremony?” Nathan asked.

”Beautiful,” Akane said simply. ”Kaguya-sama’s blessing was extraordinary. Even Ryuuji seemed to understand something was happening.”

”He reached for the light,” Ayaka added, and despite her teasing energy from a moment ago her voice carried something genuinely soft recalling it. ”With his little fist. The whole crowd lost themselves over it.”

Nathan absorbed this.

”And Takehiko?”

The warmth in the air shifted slightly. Both sisters’ expressions became more careful.

”He applauded,” Ayaka said. ”Very correctly. Very visibly. And then he spoke to several of the noble families attending — the ones whose samurai allegiances have been ambiguous. He was working the crowd while the ceremony finished.”

”Smiling the entire time,” Akane added quietly.

Nathan looked across the dispersing plaza to where Takehiko was still visible — unhurried, moving between knots of nobles with the ease of a man at his own celebration, orange eyes warm and attentive to whoever he was currently speaking with.

Ahead, the castle’s main gate stood open to receive the ceremony’s principal figures. Takehiko’s white-armored form was visible moving toward it alongside his samurai escort, several castle officials flanking him with the careful body language of people performing hospitality they hadn’t chosen.

Nathan noted this without surprise.

Kaguya had no real alternative. Barring Takehiko from the castle immediately after allowing him to attend the ceremony — in front of the same crowd now dispersing through the capital’s streets carrying today’s events fresh in their memories — would have produced exactly the narrative his faction needed. The gracious returning prince, turned away at the door by the cold divine administrator unwilling to extend even basic family courtesy.

She had to let him in.

It didn’t mean she was without options. It simply meant that today, the options available to her were fewer than she would have preferred.

Nathan watched Takehiko’s figure move through the gate with the crowd cheering at his back — genuinely, warmly, with the uncomplicated enthusiasm of people glad to see a familiar face returned.

”He’s quite popular for a banished prince,” Nathan observed.

”Five years is a long time,” Ayaka said. ”People forget. People forgive. And the capital has had harder things to think about than why a prince they liked was quietly removed from the succession.”

”More accurately,” Akane said, ”most of them never knew the real reasons behind his banishment. They trusted Kaguya-sama’s judgment and moved on. Which means there is nothing specific to remember against him — only the general fact of his absence, which has now ended.”

”As they should trust her,” Nathan replied quietly, his gaze still tracking the distant figure.

Kaguya’s authority in Kastoria was built on genuine reverence — not fear, not political calculation, but the real trust of a people who had watched her serve them faithfully for years. That trust was Kastoria’s most valuable resource right now, more than its army or its Heroes or its divine alignment. It needed to remain intact and undiluted.

But watching Takehiko work the crowd during the ceremony’s final movements — the precise timing of his approach to ambiguous noble families, the warmth he deployed with the efficiency of someone who had rehearsed warmth until it became indistinguishable from genuine feeling — Nathan understood that Kaguya was walking a line now that had considerably less margin for error than it had yesterday.

”It would be straightforward to simply kill him,” Nathan said, quietly enough that only the two of them could hear it.

”Onii-chan!” Ayaka spun toward him immediately, her dark eyes wide. ”You absolutely cannot —”

”Do you love him?” Nathan asked.

A beat of pure silence.

”WHAT?!” The word came out with a force entirely disproportionate to its length. ”No! Absolutely never! I don’t know him and one look is more than sufficient to say he is a complete scumbag — how could you even —”

”Akane?” Nathan turned to his other side with the mild, inquiring expression of someone asking a perfectly reasonable question.

Akane looked at him. Something moved across her face that was as close to undisguised revulsion as her composure ever permitted before she brought it back under control.

”Onii-sama,” she said, the two words carrying volumes of quietly expressed offense at the suggestion.

Nathan laughed.

He reached out and patted Ayaka’s hair with affection of old and long habit, then grasped her hand and pulled her smoothly to her feet from where outrage had somehow landed her on her knees.

He looked at both of them properly for the first time since the ceremony ended.

”Both of you look truly beautiful in kimonos,” he said simply.

Ayaka’s indignation evaporated. The flush that replaced it traveled from her cheeks upward with a speed she was clearly annoyed by and entirely unable to prevent. She looked away briefly, then back, then away again.

Akane had a quieter reaction but also blushing happily.

Neither of them had thought he would notice. Less still that he would say it plainly, without preamble or qualification, in the same tone he used for factual observations.

”Your mother would be proud of you,” Nathan added. ”Both of you. Everything you’ve become here.”

The shift in both their expressions was immediate.

Their mother had been his stepmother for years. He had known her gentleness, her determination, the specific and fierce love she had directed at her daughters. He carried that knowledge the same way they did as something that couldn’t be replaced and didn’t need to be spoken about often to remain completely present.

”You should have worn something appropriate today as well, Onii-chan,” Ayaka said after a moment, a small laugh in her voice as she recovered herself. ”You looked very out of place.”

”I’m not fond of those clothes,” Nathan replied, walking again.

”You always think about being able to fight,” Akane said, falling into step beside him. ”Even at ceremonies.”

”In this world you always have to,” Nathan said. Then he slowed, and turned slightly, and reached out to rest his hand against Akane’s cheek gently.

Akane went still immediately, her dark eyes meeting his.

Nathan glanced at Ayaka as well, holding them both in the same moment.

”Neither of you ever drop your guard,” he said, his voice turning serious. ”Your lives are precious. Tenebria borders Kastoria but the distance is still real. I cannot be there immediately if something happens.”

He paused briefly.

”I trust that you are capable enough to handle most threats — you have both grown considerably and I know what you can do. But if something comes that exceeds that — something genuinely dangerous, something that doesn’t feel manageable — I will come. Without question and without delay. That is not a promise I make lightly.”

He let a small smile reach his expression — quiet, unguarded, carrying the specific quality of the smile they had known since childhood when he had still been the older stepbrother and the world had been considerably less complicated.

”I will be there,” he said simply.

Akane reached up and took his hand in both of hers. She held it against her chest and looked up at him with the rare, completely unguarded smile she showed no one else in the world.

”You only need to ask,” she said softly, ”and we will be with you. Forever. Wherever you go.”

Nathan looked at her. He knew what she meant. The full weight of it, the depth of what lived underneath those words, he understood it completely and alway known it.

”I know,” he said.

But not yet. The thought completed itself quietly, privately, in the part of him that ran the longer calculations.

Kastoria was safer than Tenebria by every honest measure. Tenebria was the demon kingdom, the target of divine displeasure, the center of every conflict currently reshaping the world. He already had too many people he loved gathered in the eye of that particular storm.

Ayaka and Akane were here. Growing stronger, growing into themselves, protected by Amaterasu’s institutional weight and the relative stability of a kingdom that was complicated but not yet at war.

He was selfish enough to want them beside him always. He knew that clearly and didn’t pretend otherwise.

But he also loved them enough to want them safe more than he wanted them close.

When Eurynome’s palace was finished. When the war with the Light Empire had run its course and the board looked different. When he had enough power consolidated around him to guarantee rather than merely promise their protection.

”When it’s finally the right time, I will call for you, then if you still feel the same way th—”

”You are too stupid, Onii-chan!”

Ayaka’s voice came out sharp and frustrated and slightly breaking at the edges.

She stepped forward, not gracefully, not with the composed deliberateness she might have wanted for a moment she had probably imagined differently — and kissed him.

It landed slightly off-center because Nathan had been turning his head when she moved, and her hands grasped his shoulder with the awkward urgency of someone who had committed to an action before fully working out the mechanics of it. She had never kissed anyone before and it showed in the best possible way — completely unpolished, completely real, carrying in its imperfection everything that practiced confidence could never have conveyed.

She held it for three seconds.

Then she pulled back with a face so thoroughly, brilliantly red that it reached the tips of her ears, looked at Nathan for exactly one moment with an expression that contained defiance and terror and something luminously, helplessly open and ran.

Nathan stood where she had left him.

He had not reacted. Not because nothing had registered — everything had registered with complete and immediate clarity but because his mind was still completing the recalibration that the last four seconds had initiated.

Then Akane was there.

She moved without rushing, without the impulsive break that had carried Ayaka forward but with a different kind.

She kissed him the way she did everything gently, precisely, with a completeness that asked for nothing and offered everything simultaneously. Her eyes were closed. Her hands didn’t grasp or hold. She simply gave him the truth of it in the most direct language available to her.

When she drew back, she opened her eyes and looked up at him with a bright small smile.

”I love you, Onii-sama,” she said. ”I always have.”

She held his gaze for one long, unhurried moment letting it be seen, letting it be real, making certain he understood she was not frightened of his knowing it.

Then her face turned red and she turned and walked away as well.