Chương 297: 63. Dinner 2

After the meal broke up, Thornhold finally felt—marginally—like a place a person might survive. Marginally being the operative word. The sensation of stepping straight into an old wound hadn't faded with evening; if anything, the moonlight only worked it further open, letting the smell seep out. The dining hall's scent of roast meat, hot soup, and rye bread drifted along the corridors, tangled with the over-scorched tang of the hearth.

Further off, the metronomic clank of the night watch changing shifts carried through the dark—regular enough to grate on the nerves. I slipped out under the pretext of checking the inner keep's patrol routes. In plain terms: I needed somewhere to breathe. Fina had Charlotte. Ignicia was probably auditing the kitchen with an attitude of if another plate of meat appears, I see no reason to object. Jessi was almost certainly regaling someone with the glorious deeds of "His Majesty the Dragon Emperor."

In peacetime, that woman could have built a career as the court's premier sycophant and earned herself exactly eight characters in the historical record: gifted at flattery; death richly deserved. Truly a legacy to be proud of. I walked the eastern corridor of the inner keep at an unhurried pace. Quiet by day, quieter at night. A few oil lamps guttered along the walls, flames pushed sideways by drafts through the window slits, like eyes on the edge of closing.

I knew every flagstone underfoot—which corner had chipped, which slab rang hollow. I could have walked it blind. That kind of familiarity should have been comforting. But tied to the fact that I came here today to arrest my own family, it left behind only a very specific kind of nausea. Like coming home, opening the door, and finding a knife on the table instead of dinner. At the corner, I stopped before a half-open tall window. Beyond it lay the inner courtyard, moonlight washing the stone well pale.

As children, my siblings and I had chased each other around that well—most of it ending with me shoved to the ground, or someone furious at me. The well was still there. The stone rail was still there. Even the moonlight falling on it now looked like it was keeping vigil for the fortress.

"Knew I'd find you here." I didn't turn when the voice landed behind me. Not because I hadn't sensed her approaching—I had—but because what that voice stirred wasn't alertness. It was something far more troublesome. Familiarity. Too much of it. The kind that makes something in you relax half an inch on pure reflex, and then spend the next second trying to claw that half-inch back. I turned. Lorelei stood at the far end of the corridor, a small lamp in hand.

The warm light climbed her from the hem of her skirt to her waist, and finally her face. Her deep chestnut hair fell to her waist, nearly black in the shadows, catching a soft warm brown only where the light swept across it. Her amber eyes were especially vivid in the dark—honey warmed by a fire, quiet but never weak. She'd changed into a darker dress suited for moving at night, sleeves pushed to her wrists. Right hand holding the lamp, left hand holding a folded coat.... No.

I looked at her hands for half a second and corrected myself: right hand, lamp; left hand, coat. The thin white scar on her right palm caught the light as her wrist turned. My throat tightened, for no reason at all.

"Aunt Charlotte said you'd almost certainly not go straight back to your room, so she sent me with this." She stepped closer, holding out the dark coat, her tone perfectly even.

"The wind's strong tonight. If you get sick now, someone will have to clean up after you again tomorrow."

"The first half of that sounded like concern. The second half sounded like an insult."

"Because both are true." She said it with such total conviction I had nothing to counter with. Not because I couldn't—but because could, but can't be bothered was somehow more dangerous than taking a face full of Ignicia's fire. I took the coat. The moment it settled on my shoulders, she reached up, naturally, to straighten it. She was too close.

Close enough to catch the faint scent clinging to her—not the cloying perfumes noblewomen favored, but clean soap, linen, and a trace of warmth picked up from the kitchen and hearth. A plain, domestic smell. Terrifyingly plain. Because it had been far too long since I'd connected the word domestic to any living person. Her fingers paused when they reached my left wrist. The cuff hadn't sat right since dinner, and a strip of scaled skin showed through—pale scales catching the lamplight like a bad omen.

Lorelei looked up.

"Does it still hurt?" I glanced at my own hand and shrugged.

"Fine for now. Give it a few more days and I might grow a tail, go fight Ignicia for territory." She blinked, apparently weighing whether I was joking or simply broken beyond repair.

"She'd knock you down first."

"... You've known her half a day. How are you already this fluent in Ignicia?"

"She's not hard to read," Lorelei said mildly.

"The way she looks at you is the way you'd look at a large, dangerous object that keeps making its own trouble—but that you can't quite bring yourself to abandon." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. I was quiet for two beats.

"That's a fairly rude assessment."

"Unfortunately, accurate." I nearly laughed. It wasn't an especially funny line, but from her it landed with exactly the right weight—not Jessi's chaos-for-sport humor, not Ignicia's fire-laced sarcasm. Something older. Natural. Like the days I used to sneak into the kitchen half-starved, and she'd curse me for an idiot while still pressing warm bread into my hands. The thought irritated me the moment it surfaced. Memory really is the most useless, most viciously well-timed thing the human mind possesses.

"Is Fina asleep?" I turned back to the window.

"Not quite." She came to stand beside me, looking out as well.

"Her mind's still racing—she's just holding still. Too much happened today. Anyone would be the same."

"Mm."

"She's been holding everything in."

"I know." She turned her head slightly.

"You know?"

"Left in a tower for years. No fuss, no crying, no complaints. The first thing she says on seeing me is whether she's a burden. People like that aren't born easygoing. They've simply learned they don't have the right to complain." My voice stayed level. Almost calm. But I knew it wasn't calm. It was only the ash that forms on the surface of something that's been burning far too long. She didn't answer right away. The corridor sat quiet, nothing but wind cutting through the courtyard.

After a few breaths, she said, low:"You've changed a great deal."

"That's usually not a compliment."

"It's not an insult either." She set the lamp on the stone sill, its warm light spreading a small circle between us.

"The old you, however angry, wrote it all over your face before anyone even opened their mouth. You already looked ready to flip the table."

"Sounds like a description of a poorly raised stray dog."

"Not like one." She said it with complete honesty.

"You were one."

"... I'm suddenly amazed you didn't hate me as a child."

"I did." Something faintly amused crossed her eyes.

"When you were annoyed with me, I could tell."

"And you kept following me anyway?"

"Because the way you disliked people was stupid," she said.

"Vicious tongue, but the moment you saw someone actually being hurt, you were always first to charge in. You usually took the worst of the beating for it." Was this woman here specifically to audit my most embarrassing history under cover of night? I nearly shot back that she had no room to talk—the person who caught a blade bare-handed didn't get to judge my decision-making—but the words caught in my throat. Because, as if she knew exactly where my thoughts had gone, her right hand curled slightly.

The white scar lay quiet in the lamplight. Without deciding to, I reached out and closed my hand around her wrist. Lorelei went still. So did I. Her wrist was thinner than I'd imagined—not fragile-thin, but lean. A faint callus roughened her palm. Her fingers were warm. Alive. Not memory, not some rotting relic dug up from this house's ruins. The present. The person standing in front of me. My thumb moved, without permission, across the scar on her palm.

"This," I heard my own voice drop lower than usual, "is still here." She didn't pull away. Her breath simply paused for a moment.

"Scars don't disappear just because you tell them to."

"If you hadn't reached out that day—""You'd probably be missing an eye, or half your life," she said, easy as reciting a long-closed case.

"I'd still do it."

"Why?" The word left me before I could stop it, and I already knew how foolish it sounded. She finally lifted her eyes to mine. The lamplight caught in those amber irises, bright enough to be dangerous.

"Do you really want me to answer that? Right now?" In that instant, I understood. Not the answer. Just this: some things, once spoken aloud, cannot be taken back. The corridor was very quiet. Quiet enough to hear my own heartbeat, striking my chest in a rhythm with absolutely no business being this uneven. The whole scene felt as absurd as something out of a cheap, third-rate romance novel—except I was standing inside it, first-person, no refunds available. I slowly let go of her wrist.

"... Pretend I didn't ask." Lorelei looked at me. She didn't smile, didn't press further. She simply drew her hand back and folded it in front of her, like pressing something that had nearly crossed a line back into place.

"You're still the same," she said quietly.

"How so?"

"You always want to know most of all. And you always stop, right at the very last step." The line went in like a needle—not heavy, but exact. I looked at her, and after a long moment, managed to tug one corner of my mouth up.

"Did you come out here to deliver a coat, or to put me on trial?"

"If I wanted to put you on trial, the chair in the reception hall would suit better." She answered instantly, then softened.

"I just... wanted to make sure you were all right." Wanted to make sure you were all right. Such a plain sentence. Which was exactly what made it lethal. In a life like mine, plain things are rarer than swords, and far harder to defend against. I turned my gaze back to the well below and let out a slow breath.

"I'm not all right," I said.

"But I'm not broken past use yet." She was quiet a moment—then, improbably, followed my terrible line all the way through.

"Then don't run yourself past capacity, young master." Young master. From her mouth, that title bore no resemblance to Jessi's chaos-stirring teasing. No mockery in it. No irony. Just age. Just wear. The word carried the shape of my worst years—the hungriest nights, the moments I least wanted anyone to witness. She'd stood there, back then, calling me that, as if no matter what I eventually became, in her eyes, at least, that person was still me.

That was more dangerous than Ignicia putting a claw through a city gate. I was quiet a long while before I spoke.

"Don't call me that." Her lashes trembled.

"Why not?"

"It puts me in a bad mood."

"Liar."

"... Your nerve really has grown."

"Well. Someone did say today that following orders 'doesn't carry a death sentence.'" She mimicked my own line with unfair accuracy, tone deliberately flattened. I nearly reached out to knock her on the head. In the end, I just laughed. A short one. So short it might have been imagined. She saw it, and the corner of her own mouth curved—faintly. That small warmth carried more of the temperature a living person ought to have than every lamp in this fortress combined.

Then, from somewhere out in the dark, a sentry's call rang out. Reality always did have impeccable timing. She stepped back half a pace and lifted the lamp again.

"Tomorrow will be a long day."

"I know."

"I'll watch over Fina. Aunt Charlotte's there too. You don't need to worry." I nodded. She hesitated, then added: "And... whatever you have to do tomorrow, whoever you have to deal with—at least tonight, get some sleep." She said it softly. But I heard what went unsaid beneath it: At least tonight, don't destroy yourself along with them. Looking at her, I felt a sudden, foolish urge to reach out and keep her there. Not from any cheap impulse. Something worse. More complicated.

Like a traveler at the end of a long road, spotting a lamp that belongs to an old house—knowing full well there might no longer be a place for him behind that light, and still unable to stop himself from stepping closer. Wanting to check. Wanting to reach out and see if it burns. In the end, I did nothing. Because I knew one more step, right now, and this would no longer be merely dangerously familiar. It would become something else entirely. Something I wasn't sure I could pull back from.

"... Lorelei." She stopped and turned.

"Yes?" I looked at her, and in those amber eyes holding lamplight, I saw a hesitation I had no wish to acknowledge. After a long moment, I said: "Watch your step going back. Don't hold the lamp too low—there's a crack in the stone along this stretch." She blinked, then seemed to understand something, her eyes softening by half a degree.

"I know," she said.

"You always used to trip there too."

"... You didn't need to add that last part."

"But it's also true." With that, she turned and walked away, lamp in hand. I stood where I was, watching that small warm light shrink down the corridor until it slipped around the corner and vanished. Only once I could no longer see it did I slowly raise my hand. The pads of my fingers still seemed to hold the impression of that scar on her palm. Faint. But startlingly hot.