Chương 28: It Was Confusing!

POV: Evelisse Ardentia We drifted through the market a while longer, avoiding the games, since Milo seemed to have this talent in breaking things. We stopped for a skewer of grilled pork, and Milo, in the act of biting into his, managed to get a streak of sauce clean across the front of his shirt. I handed him my handkerchief; there were crescent moons stitched along the border. He looked at it for a long while.

"What's wrong?" I asked. He studied the handkerchief for a few beats, then looked up at me.

"So... this won't, like, instantly evaporate me? It doesn't have holy properties or anything?" The laugh was out of me before I could stop it.

"No. Why on earth would it?" I pushed the handkerchief closer. He accepted it by pinching one corner, holding it at arm's length like it might still go off.

"See?" I said.

"You're fine." He dabbed at the stain, which, to his credit, mostly came out. Then he stared at the handkerchief again.

"What now?"

"Sorry. I've just... never been handed a handkerchief before." He frowned at it, genuinely stumped.

"Do I give it back? I already used it, though. To wipe."

"You can keep it." He turned it over in his hands a moment more, then folded it, carefully, and tucked it into his pocket like it was something that mattered. We decided to head back after that. It was getting late, and the last thing I needed was sis getting ideas. We barely spoke on the walk. I kept catching Milo stealing glances at me, and the trouble with catching someone doing that is that to catch them, you have to be looking too. The realization sat oddly warm in my chest, and I did not care for it at all.

This was wrong. The whole evening, I hadn't done a single thing I was meant to. I should have pressed him on his plans, found out whether he had really crossed paths with sis by accident. I should have tried to stop him from spreading fear in Arkhay, if that was still on the table. I should have told him about the attack in two days' time. Should I? The fact that I was even weighing it was proof enough of how far I had drifted from the path I was supposed to walk on. I had hesitated against the Dark Lord.

I had warned him of an ambush once. And now, here I was, turning it over a second time. I had come to Eremiah to talk to my sister about all of this, and instead I was spending the night having fun with the Dark Lord himself. Fun. I couldn't remember the last time I had any fun with someone else other than Mel or sis.

"Hey, Evelisse." I turned toward his voice faster than I meant to. He had stopped walking, so I did too. We were past the market by now, out where sis' house sat at the quiet edge of town. No one was around. Just us, and the lanterns thinning out behind us.

"I think," he said, "I should make something clear." What?

"These past few days, I've been thinking about you." Huh? My heartbeat picked up, and then it was all I could hear, loud in my own ears, drowning the rest of the night out. He stepped closer. My eyes went wide. I stepped back without deciding to. He didn't stop. I took another step and my shoulders met something solid; the brick wall of a closed shop. Nowhere left to go. Heat flooded my face.

"W-wait, Milo, what are you—" He was close. Too close. I could almost feel his breath. Or maybe I imagined it. I couldn't tell anymore. He leaned in. I shut my eyes.

"What do you think about being my Fear Consultant?" I opened my eyes.... What? I cleared my throat and asked him, plainly, to explain what he meant. He wanted to reassure me about his work, he said. He thought that if we planned out how he spread fear together, I would see he meant to keep his word about not killing. We were still standing on the roadside. I told him we could discuss it on the way back, quietly.

"Milo, doesn't this strike you as strange?" I said as we walked.

"You, consulting me on your Dark Lord schemes?"

"I know. I couldn't think of another way to get you to believe me. I keep saying I won't kill, but saying it isn't—""I'm not allowed to believe you, Milo. I'm the Her—" I stopped before the word was out. I'm not the Hero. Not anymore. I turned my face to the road and left it there.

"Look," he said, "I know your purpose, your morals, all of it runs straight against mine. But I really want this to work."

"What is this, exactly?" A pause.

"Um. Our... relationship?" I stopped walking. The heat shot up into my face before I could do a thing about it. How many times was that now, tonight?

"W-what do you—""Our partnership!" He nearly tripped over the correction.

"Our potential partnership. That's what I meant. Partnership." I let out a long breath through my nose and started walking again.

"It won't work, Milo."

"Why?"

"Do you really need to ask?"

"... Sorry. I just wanted to try." I didn't answer. Because the truth was I had thought about it; a few days ago, the idea had crossed my mind, helping him meet his fear quota or whatever it was so long as no one died. But that's all it had ever been. A thought, turned over in the dark and set back down. How was I supposed to live with myself, knowing I'd helped the Dark Lord do his work? This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

We reached sis' house before long. I had a key, so I let us in. The front room was dark and empty; sis must have gone to bed. I toed off my boots and stepped inside, and Milo did the same behind me.

"Evelisse. About the consultant thing—""You're still on this?" I turned on him.

"I can't, Milo. I don't know how to make you understand it."

"Then what will you do?" There was no heat in it, just a kind of helpless honesty.

"What are we supposed to do? Fight to the death?"

"I— I don't..." The words wouldn't assemble. Because what would I do? That was the very thing I'd come here trying to answer.

"I told you before." His voice softened.

"I want you to do what you want. If the consultant thing won't work, fine. And if you decide we should just... fight, then…we'll deal with it when it comes. I'm not going to force your hand." He paused, and breathed out.

"I figured you didn't actually want me dead. Back in the forest, when you came alone, and I'd given up, and you just... didn't. You had the chance and you let it pass. In fact, you could have killed me today." He looked at me.

"So I thought maybe we could find a way through this. Together. Survive it. Push back against this…system, or whatever's running it."

"You want me to turn against the Church."

"I want you to do what you want, Evelisse." He held my gaze.

"So, what do you want?"

"I..." I don't know. I haven't known since the day I struck down the last Dark Lord. I thought freedom was the thing I was after; then they took the Hero's title from me, and all I felt was a hollow where it had been. I thought all I wanted was for Milo not to kill; and I still can't bring myself to accept that he exists at all, that the Dark Lord is him. I thought I wanted him gone; and every single time the chance has been right there in my hands, I've faltered. I don't know what I want.

We simply stood there, neither of us moving. I could feel Milo's eyes on me, and I couldn't bring myself to meet them. I kept my gaze on the floorboards. Then a door creaked open. Sis padded out in her nightgown; thin, loose, not the sort of thing a woman usually let a guest lay eyes on. She didn't seem to spare it a thought. She rubbed at one eye, half-asleep.

"Oh, you two are back." She yawned.

"How'd it go?"

"Uh… great," Milo said.

"It went great." His voice climbed half an octave. Sis smiled and crossed to us.

"You should stay the night, Milo."

"What?" I said.

"No!"

"Eve." She gave me a look.

"Milo did me an enormous favor today, and it's the middle of the night. I'm not about to send him off to Astrea at this hour." I wanted to tell her. That he was the Dark Lord. That he could fly, that he'd be in Astrea before long, that he didn't even live in Astrea. The truth was right there at the back of my teeth. I couldn't get any of it out. I couldn't begin to picture sis' face if she learned the man who had saved her was the very thing the whole kingdom was bracing against. So I said nothing.

"There's a room for you in the corner, Milo. Bathroom's inside. Come on." Sis got behind him and started steering him toward it with both hands. The door clicked shut behind him. And then sis sank onto the couch; she leaned back with legs folded under her, an easy, settled sort of posture, a small smile aimed straight at me.

"So." She patted the cushion beside her.

"We should talk." I sat down beside her but said nothing for a while, trying to assemble the words. I had come all this way to talk to her, to untangle the mess knotted up in my head, yet now that I was here, beside her, I couldn't find where to begin. Should I just tell her? About Milo, the Hero stuff, all of it?

"It's about Milo, isn't it?" Sis' voice pulled me away from my thoughts. I flinched.

"I'd say just go for him," she said.

"W-what are you—" The words tumbled out too fast.

"You can't rush these things. And you barely know him yourself, so you've no business — and it's not about him." Sis let the silence sit. She had a particular way of doing that, of saying nothing until I heard how I had sounded.

"... That was three different denials," she said.

"For something that isn't about him." I opened my mouth. Closed it. For a moment, she just looked at me; it was the same look she had given me when I had splinters in my hands and insisted they didn't hurt.

"Okay, Milo aside, what if…I weren't the Hero anymore?" The teasing went out of her. She straightened a little on the couch.

"Is that what's been eating you?" I didn't answer. Which was an answer. For a moment she was quiet. Then she let out a breath — and it wasn't a worried sound, or a careful one. It was relieved.

"Eve. I'd be glad." My head came up.

"... glad?"

"Glad." She said it without a flicker of doubt.

"You want the truth? I've hated that title since the day they put it on you. I had brought you to the Church since it was much safer there, but then they said you would be a Hero candidate." She shook her head slowly.

"Everyone called it an honor, and I was supposed to be proud, but deep down, I thought it was unfair to you."

"Unfair…to me?"

"Unfair to you." She nodded.

"You never had a say in any of it. They groomed you into the Hero before you were old enough to know what you were giving up; a normal life, the kind I think you deserved. The kind every child deserves." Her voice dipped.

"Not that we had a choice. Aunt Lesley and I... we couldn't give you that life ourselves. We couldn't keep you safe. The Church could. So we told ourselves it was for the best, and we let them take you." I stared at her. I had never heard her say anything close to it.

"So if the Hero's gone," she went on, softer, "then maybe my sister gets to come back. That's all I've ever wanted, you stubborn girl." Something pressed hot behind my eyes. I looked away before it could become anything. She let me have the moment. Then, lighter, steering us off the cliff's edge: "So. The night market. You haven't told me how it went."

"It was..." I searched for the word and couldn't land on one.

"I don't know."

"You don't know."

"It was confusing."

"Mm." She tucked her legs up under her.

"Let me try an easier one. Did you have fun?" I opened my mouth to deflect, but stopped, because she'd know, and because the honest answer was already sitting there.

"... Yes," I admitted.

"I think I did." It felt strange just saying it. Almost guilty. As though fun were a thing I had to account for to someone.

"Then there's your answer," she said gently.

"My answer to what? You don't understand, sis, it's…it's not simple. Milo is—" The Dark Lord. The words crowded up and I swallowed them whole.

"—complicated. There are things about him that make this impossible."

"Impossible according to who?" I didn't answer that one either. She didn't push on it.

"You've spent fifteen years doing what you thought you were supposed to do," she said.

"Maybe now it's all right to do what you want to. To just... live a little. You're allowed. You've earned it ten times over and never once taken it."

"I don't even know what I want," I said.

"That's the whole — that's the thing I can't get past."

"Then go find out. You don't sort a person out across a dinner table glaring at them." She nodded toward the corner room, where Milo was presumably either taking a bath or was already asleep.

"Spend the day with him. The night market worked, you had fun, so now, try to understand him better, and let him understand you." The thought arrived with its own immediate problem.

"... How would I even ask him that?" The words came out before I could dress them up.

"I can't just— what would I even say? Come spend the day with me? That's—" I heard myself and stopped, mortified. Sis was grinning.

"You really are out of practice." She waved a hand.

"You don't have to make a thing of it. Use a pretext. Pick up a job off the board at the hall; something small, a delivery, a stray monster, whatever's pinned up. Tell him you need a second pair of hands. Two birds." Her grin widened.

"A day on the road tells you more about a person than a month of careful little questions ever will. And if it turns out you can't stand him after all, well, then you'll know that too, won't you?" A quest. A pretext. A whole day, with Milo, to learn what he actually was. It was a transparently bad idea. He was the Dark Lord. Every part of my training, everything the Church had built into me, said to put distance between us, to go home to Astrea, to make the choice I was supposed to make.

And yet, for the first time, supposed to didn't feel like reason enough.

"... Maybe," I said. Sis hauled herself off the couch with a satisfied sound.

"That's the most yes I've gotten out of you all night." She paused beside me and tucked the loose strand of hair behind my ear.

"Get some sleep, Eve. And do me one favor."

"What?"

"Stop deciding what you want by asking what you're allowed or what you think you should or or feel." She smiled.

"Just once. We'll talk again tomorrow." Then she padded off to her room. I sat a long while, the word still turning over in my chest.