Chương 66: Tears and That Time

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles I was alone on the porch now. Well, not entirely. Luke was curled up asleep beside the house in her Cerberus form, and Evelisse's horse stood a little way off, watching me with a flat, unblinking stare, like I'd personally done something unforgivable to her master. I chose not to meet her eyes and looked out at the darkening sky instead, resting my arms on the wooden railing. A sigh worked its way out of me. I shut my eyes, and the last of the conversation replayed itself.

"Yeah. I know. Don't worry. I'll tell you everything, all of it, once I'm sure. Soon."

"If you didn't, I think I'd be devastated. I wouldn't know what to do with myself. And that's a frightening thing, isn't it? To hand everything you have to a single person, knowing all the while that they could choose to betray you." Yeah I think I screwed up there. Badly. My eyes drifted over the tree line while my mind kept chewing on it; what I should have said, what I might still say to her later to fix it. I'd come out here to comfort her, after she'd had to stand and watch the shield guy and mage girl suffer.

Yet she'd ended up feeling worse, because I couldn't say things properly. It had been less than three days since Greg teleported us out of that clearing, since Lulu laid out the new rules of the sick little game they were running. Within that time, I did not have a proper chance to ask Nyx regarding which part of this ordeal I could safely tell Evelisse. Not that Nyx would know all of it, but at least she could check with Greg about it. I really should've done that already.

If I walked into Nyx's room right now, though, she'd just throw me back out; she'd literally just done that. If I tell her this was urgent because I wouldn't want Evelisse to distrust me, she would be furious, calling me desperate for a girl's attention. Except that was quite important, anyway? We needed trust. A team doesn't hold together without it. Yeah. I'm going to ask Nyx about it. I was pushing off the railing to head back inside when my stomach let out a long, embarrassing growl. Right. Dinner.

I had no actual plan for it. There was still some of Milly's delivery left, plus the meat and fruit sitting in the freezer box; today seemed like the day to use them, and tomorrow, once Arkhay opened up to us, we could restock properly. Maybe I should prepare something in advance to… sort of redeem myself. First things first. I held out a hand and summoned a skeleton up out of the ground, bones clacking together as it assembled itself into shape.

"Go gather some firewood," I told it.

"As much as you can. We'll want a stock for tomorrow too." It gave a rattling little nod and clattered off toward the trees, and I watched it go for a second, still faintly weirded out that this was a normal thing I could do now. Inside the house, I pulled open the freezer box. The cold rolled out over my hands, and I took out a few packets of meat and some fruit. I set the assortment of fruit on the dining table and carried the meat outside. There was already a pile of firewood near the house from an earlier haul.

I stacked some of it together, then glanced over at Luke.

"Hey, Luke. A little help?" One of her heads cracked an eye open, huffed, and breathed a short jet of flame across the wood until it caught. The fire took, warm and orange against the settling dark.

"Thanks, Luke." She grumbled contentedly and went back to sleep. I dug out the skewers Lunessa had brought from her place, threaded the meat onto them, and set them over the flames. The fat began to hiss and pop almost at once, and the smell of it rose up, and my stomach reminded me, loudly, that it approved. I was crouched there turning the skewers when a familiar voice spoke up behind me.

"What are you doing?" I turned around. Nyx was standing a few feet off, arms loosely crossed, weight on one hip, watching me with an expression somewhere between curiosity and mild disbelief.

"Grilling? What does it look like?" She squinted, like she was trying to work out what had possessed me to do this. Which, was fair enough, because in the last two days, meals had been Lunessa's domain. The rest of us just assisted. Then, to my surprise, she crossed over, smoothed her skirt, and sat down beside me on the log. I had expected her to turn on her heel and tell me to call her when the food was ready. Instead she just... sat.

"So, did you fumble it with Evelisse?" Is this what they call a woman's intuition?

"Uh, I'm... not sure. I think so."

"What did you say to her?" She sounded almost incredulous.

"How does a person even manage to mess things up with a girl who's already head over heels for him?"

I wasn't nearly as sure about the head-over-heels part as she was, but I gave her the rough version of what had happened; Evelisse wanting to eventually approach the Church, to convince them the current Dark Lord meant no harm so we might all coexist; me telling her there were things about the Afterport I had to confirm first, before I could explain any of it; and how I'd told her more or less the same thing once already, right after Greg brought us back.

Nyx huffed a short laugh through her nose, which made me wonder. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard her laugh. Had I ever? Was this the first time?

"You really are hopeless," she said.

"So this is what, then? You've decided to play house-husband? Puttering around doing pointless little chores, hoping she looks over and sees how sorry you are?"

"I don't know, okay? What else am I supposed to do?" I turned a skewer.

"I'd actually meant to come ask you how much I'm allowed to tell her about the Afterport stuff. Then I got hungry, and this just kind of... happened." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"I'll have to run it by Greg first." She watched the fire.

"We should have an answer by tomorrow." Oh, thank God. At least that wasn't a long wait.

"Thanks, Nyx. Sorry for the trouble."

"I'm not doing it for you." She said it fast, flat.

"It's that if you two keep tiptoeing around each other, it drags down everything we're trying to do."

"... Thanks anyway."

"... Whatever." We fell into silence after that, and I worked the skewers over the flames. Somewhere in it, without a word, Nyx started helping—reaching over to turn the ones on her side, nudging a piece off the hottest part of the fire before it caught. I didn't understand it. Some part of her had shifted, just for a while; the sharp edges filed down to something quieter, easier.

I couldn't have said when it happened, or why, but sitting there, the two of us tending a fire in the evening without needing to talk about stuff, it felt... familiar. Before long, everything was ready. Nicely seared meat arranged on skewers around the fire, waterskins lined up along one end of the log, and a bowl of the fruit I'd carried out from inside. Off to the side, I'd set out raw meat and vegetables for Luke and the horse, too. I went back in and up the stairs to fetch the girls.

The shower was running in the second-floor bathroom, one of them probably in there, though I had no idea who. I decided not to let my brain go anywhere with that, and walked over to the bedroom door and knocked.

"Dinner's ready." Silence. A good ten seconds of it, longer than it should have taken anyone to just open a door. Then it swung open, and it was Evelisse, still in the underlayer she usually wore beneath her light armor. Her eyes looked red. Like she'd been crying. Crap. Had I really botched it that badly? She caught me noticing, and immediately scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, which I didn't think actually helped the situation any.

"I—I just dozed off!" She swept past me and hurried off down the hallway. I glanced back into the room. Lunessa was sitting on the edge of the bed, and she met my eyes and gave a small, resigned tilt of her head, the kind that told me everything: yes, Evelisse had been crying, and yes, the two of them had talked about it. Then she got up, crossed to me, and set a hand on my shoulder.

"It'll be fine." A light pat.

"Just have another quiet word with her later." We headed out and settled around the fire to eat, and the silence was excruciating. Today really had been wall-to-wall awkwardness. Normally, dinner had a rhythm to it; Lunessa and Nyx trading remarks or ganging up to give me a hard time, Mel and Evelisse murmuring to each other, and Evelisse tossing me the occasional bit of small talk. Tonight, there was none of it. Mel was still upstairs in the bath. Evelisse wouldn't so much as look at me.

Nyx ate in silence, and Lunessa did too, though hers was the silence of someone sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Mel came down a little later, and immediately wanted to know how dinner was already made before she'd had the chance to help with anything. Lunessa took the opening at once.

"Milo decided to get a head start on dinner all on his own tonight," she said brightly.

"In hopes of impressing someone, perhaps." Across the fire, Evelisse choked on her water. Beside me, for reasons I could not explain, Nyx choked on her meat. Why her too? I passed Nyx her waterskin. She snatched it out of my hand and drank like she was putting out a fire. Mel, meanwhile, looked mildly lost, until her gaze landed on Evelisse's slightly puffy eyes. She crossed straight to her, leaned in, made sure she hadn't misread the situation, and asked, low, if she was all right. Evelisse said yes.

Then Mel turned and shot me a glare that could have curdled milk. Wonderful. Back to being the bad guy. Not that she was wrong. After everyone had eaten, things arranged themselves in a suspiciously convenient way. Nyx finished first and announced she was going to take a bath. Then Lunessa hauled Mel up by the arm, claiming she needed help with something, and Mel went along, reluctant and confused. And just like that, it was me and Evelisse.

Sitting across from each other over the crackling fire, and for a solid thirty seconds neither of us said a word.

"Um," we both said, at the same time.

"Sorry—" Also at the same time. I had the distinct feeling this exact thing had happened to us before, more than once, too.

"Y-you first," I said. Evelisse hesitated, then looked down.

"I just... I wanted you to know that I'm okay. Really." She turned a bit of fruit over in her fingers without eating it.

"I don't entirely know what came over me earlier. It might just be... close to that time, for me." A flush climbed into her cheeks.

"So I was a little more... vulnerable than usual." Close to that time? I wanted to ask what she meant, but cutting in right then would've been rude, and I'd never seen her look quite that embarrassed before, so I let it go.

"I'm sorry things got so strange," she went on.

"I really am okay. And I—I trust you, Milo. I don't want you thinking I've been doubting you." A pause. She seemed to run out of words there.

"Y-yeah. It's okay." I turned a skewer we weren't going to eat, just to have something to do with my hands.

"And I'm sorry too, for putting it so badly. The last few days have been…a lot. I haven't really had a chance to confirm anything. But I asked Nyx to help me look into it, and I should be able to tell you more tomorrow."

"Okay..." She kept her eyes on her own hands, fingers twiddling in her lap. She didn't look convinced. Or maybe that was just leftover embarrassment from before. I couldn't tell.

"Evelisse." I said it so she'd look up, and she did, meeting my eyes.

"I won't betray you. And I will tell you everything. Maybe not all in one go, but it won't be long. I promise." She didn't answer, so I kept going.

"I know how much you've given up to be here. You keep saying it was your choice, and I believe that, but it doesn't change that you're standing in an unfair spot right now. The Church is against you, and from where you're sitting, I probably look like I'm keeping things from you." Something moved across her face.

"But I swear it. I swear on everything I've got, I won't betray you. In fact—" the idea came to me and I ran with it "—I can have Luke lead us back to where the Mooncleaver is and give it back to you. That way, if it ever comes down to it, you'd have the means to just kill me if I ever—""Stop." I stopped. Her expression had gone tight, almost pained.

"I don't want that."

"... You don't?"

"If I did that…if I kept the Mooncleaver as some kind of insurance against you betraying me, then it would mean I don't trust you." She held my gaze.

"And it would mean you don't trust me either. That we're only holding together because one of us has a weapon pointed at the other."

"That's not what I—""Then we don't do it." She stood, and instead of leaving, she came around the fire and sat down beside me. Close. Close enough that when she turned to look at me, there was hardly any distance left between us. And then, before I'd quite registered it happening, her hand was over mine.

"I trust you, Milo." Her voice was quiet.

"I'm sorry for whatever happened to me today, but I trust you."

"Yeah." My throat had gone a little tight.

"I'm sorry too. And I'll make all of it right. Soon." I was fairly sure we'd both said versions of these exact words about six times in the last few minutes. I decided I didn't care. She nodded once, and then neither of us said anything, and we just looked at each other; a few seconds that stretched out longer than a few seconds usually did. Heat crept up my face. I was fairly certain hers had gone red too. She let go of my hand, stood, and briskly smoothed down her skirt.

"Right. I'm—I'm going to go ask sis for the things I need for, um, that." She hurried off inside. I stayed where I was, staring into the fire for a good few seconds, and then it finally clicked, what she'd meant by that time.... Oh. Oh.