Chapter 56. Two Words in a Circle I Can’t Read: ’Offered’ and ’Hand’

Chapter 56: 56. Two Words in a Circle I Can’t Read: ’Offered’ and ’Hand’

Sylvara found me in the quiet of late afternoon, sitting in the shade of a tent with my back against a post and my eyes half closed. She lowered herself onto the ground beside me, with a faint rustle of purple silk, and held out her hand.

"May I?"

I gave her my wrist.

She pressed two fingers against the pulse and shut her eyes. The tiny lights that drifted around her dimmed and gathered close, as if they were holding their breath.

I felt that same strange hum... the thin, deep vibration I’d felt in the canyon, and I tried not to fidget.

A faint circle of light bloomed in the air above my wrist, pale lavender, thin as a thread.

Letters ran around the rim of it in a ring, strange curving symbols that glowed and shifted as I watched. I couldn’t even read a single one.

"What is... that?" I asked.

"A lunar glyph... It shows me what is hidden."

"You cannot see it, I think... Only I can." She was frowning slightly, tracing the circle with her eyes. "It surrounds the thread, the one I told you about..."

"I cannot read most of it... It is very old, or very foreign. But I can see two words."

"Which...?"

She hesitated.

"Offered," she said slowly. "And hand."

I went completely still.

’Offered...? Hand...? The fuck is that even mean?!’

I thought about the palm I’d held out to Millie in a dirty market stall, and the one I’d held out to Bryn, and the one I’d held out to every poor soul who had knelt in the snow in front of me.

I thought about the way it worked, and the way it didn’t... and the cold voice of a system that kept telling me that free will wasn’t negotiable.

"I honestly do not know what it means," Sylvara said softly.

She withdrew her fingers and the glyph faded. "I will not pretend to, though... But I have noticed something."

"The blue crystals, the gold ones, the seals on Millie, and the thread in you... they all respond to the same thing."

"Choice and safety. The act of reaching out, or being reached for."

"There is a pattern, and... I cannot yet name its shape."

She turned to face me, and her purple eyes were serious, and a little sad, and very kind.

"I would like to know what you are, Leon Levarion," she said. "Not because I fear it..."

"But because I think you may be the answer to a question I have been asking for three hundred years..."

I didn’t know where to look. Or to even start at this point.

There was a sudden, absurd urge in me to tell her everything. To pour it all out, the system, the rules, and the reason I’d been so careful about who I let close.

She was gentle, and she was clever, and she was looking at me like I was something precious. It really makes me feel at ease... almost like she’s the one that I trust the most around here.

But... a cold little voice in the back of my head said: ’Don’t.’

I’d made that decision a long time ago, in a freezing hole in a rock, and I’d made it again every day since. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her or anything.

It was that I’d seen what people did with secrets, and I’d seen what happened to people who held the keys to someone else’s survival.

I didn’t know what Sylvara would do if she knew... and yeah, I didn’t know what anyone would do.

Even if Sylvara is fucking beautiful with that milfy body... I can’t tell who I am and what I was. The system stays with me, same like any other main character who didn’t spit out their secrets.

"It runs on something," I said at last, but of course... I made it up to sound, somehow trustable.

It wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t the truth either. "My gift..."

"The one I used in the canyon... It takes more than I have when I push too hard, and I don’t know where the limit is."

"And... That’s all I know."

She studied me for a long, quiet moment. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she could see right through the careful edges of the sentence... to the shape of what I wasn’t saying.

"I see," she said.

"I’m sorry, Sylvara... I’d tell you more if I could, but I really can’t reach deep inside myself right now."

"No, no... You do not owe me an explanation." She smiled, small and warm, and rested her hand lightly on my sleeve. "I have waited three hundred years, Leon..."

"I can wait a little longer... and when you are ready, I will be here." She said with that motherly smile.

It was the kindest thing anyone had said to me all week, and I felt my throat go tight. And my cock suddenly twitched because... man... she’s my type. A motherly beastwomen.

"Thank you," I said.

"Do not thank me yet... Just do not die." She rose to her feet and brushed the dust off her robe. "Because that would be a very great waste."

She left, with her three small lights trailing behind her, and I sat there in the shade for a long time, feeling both lighter and heavier than I had in days.

...

Bonette caught me at dusk, as I sat on a log mending a strap on my pack with fingers that were only ninety percent useless.

She sat down on the other end of the log without a word. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she was watching Millie, who was crouched in the grass a little way off helping Eira wash a cooking pot.

There was no teasing in her expression at all. She looked very tired.

"I know I am not the strongest of this company," she said quietly. "I know I am no great warrior as well..."

"I have one purpose... and I have had it for twenty years."

"Don’t put yourself low... to me, you’re plenty strong," I said. "I watched you take on three wolves at once with a pair of kitchen knives."

"Silver knives."

"Eh... They looked like kitchen knives to me."

A tiny smile crossed her face. Then it faded.

"When she was small," she said, "Her Highness would not sleep unless someone sang to her..."

"She was afraid of the dark... Every night, she would ask me whether the moon would stay with her until morning." She stared at the grass. "I would tell her... yes."

"I told her yes every night for two years. And then the night came when I could not keep that promise..."

I didn’t know what to say hearing that story. And so... I put down the strap and just listened to respect her courage to try and tell that to me.

"Leon Levarion... I would like a trustable human to promise me something," Bonette said.

"Anything."

"If I am ever no longer at her side... you must keep hold of her hand." Bonette looked at me serious in the eyes. "Whatever happens..."

"Whatever you see... or hear... or are told... You must not let go."

A chill ran through me. And... I don’t even get why she said to me.

"Oh, come on now... Don’t talk like that," I said. "Nothing’s going to happen to you."

"We’ll stick together as usual and came home safe... back to Elarune where we can ignore any problems, yeah?" I smiled.

"Of course not." She smiled at me, gentle and a little sad. "But promise anyway."

I looked at her for a long time.

At the plain brown hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a kitchen knife, at the dust on her robe, at the worn, patient hands that had sewn up my cloak.

At the same hands that had held a silver thread up to the moon.

"I promise," I said. "Anything for the safety of any beastwomen, including you... and Millie."

Bonette’s mouth for a full second and then she closed it just to smile. "Thank you."

Oh wow... I didn’t know that Bonette can be this cute with a smile like that. But eh... maybe it’s because my fetish with beastwomen anyway.

She stood and brushed off her skirt, and for a moment she hesitated, looking back toward the tents. Her voice dropped.

"I have been trying all day not to think about how the name leaked," she said. "The queen did not trust many people..."

"There were very few who could have known it."

I waited.

"There was one," Bonette said slowly, "that she trusted almost as much as she trusted me."

"Someone she loved... I have been trying all day not to think about that person." She stopped, and swallowed. "I do not wish to say the name..."

"I am not sure of anything..." She then coughed. "Ehem... Forget I spoke."

She walked away without another word.