Chapter 40: Her wish

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: Her wish

Seris could not sleep. How could she when her heart was pounding the whole time as Allan’s words from earlier kept circling in her head? He said he would "make her" and "Lira" his.

She was a slave. A pitiful slave, which House Oakwood endorsed, and now he was offering her something comparable to a wife’s position. Even thinking about it made her feel a tightness in her chest. Yes, she was aware he found her attractive, as she cleaned herself well, wore enough revealing clothes near him, and used the flowery scent she squeezed out from the flowers he coveted. Everything, just so he could look at her one more time.

At last, her wishes had finally come true. But...

She also recognized his thought process; he was no normal man who would easily fall into lust and love. He measured everything, and evaluated gain against risk before taking action. Logic above all, results above all. One of the reasons she even fell for him. So that’s why she knew what he had said before they slept. He wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t meant to. She did not want to examine too closely why that mattered so much.

Then she turned to him and put her arms about his body. She felt the solid warmth of him underneath the thin blanket and clung to it. Then she saw that there was an empty space on his other side. Lira had vanished.

Maybe she’s gone to the washroom, she thought.

And Lira would walk when her thoughts grew loud. It had happened before, a dozen times. Each time it was harmless, so she closed her eyes shut again. A small light on Allan’s neck halted her sleep.

She looked closer at it. A thin, glowing blue mark, dark at the edges. She placed her thumb against it. The color did not smear or disappear. It lay under his skin, like it had grown there.

"What is this..." she whispered. She let it go, trying to go back to sleep, but Lira was taking her time. Hoping she wasn’t out there crying somewhere, she was out of her bed before she had completely decided to move. Her feet moved cautiously along the cold floorboards, as she didn’t want to wake Allan up.

The washroom was empty. The room after that wasn’t.

Lira rested against the wall with a book in her lap. Her eyes were now a completely black color, no white or irises visible from the top of her eyelid to the bottom. Seris instantly knew the symbol; the symbols on the open pages corresponded with the mark on Allan’s neck, stroke for stroke. Her lips moved with a low, constant chant. The phrase was about love and binding, keeping other women away.

It didn’t take much time for Seris to put two and two together.

"Lira..."

The chant died away mid-syllable as her eyes cleared like something emerging from the depths of the ocean, but the book remained open in her hands. For a brief period, less than one second, she appeared to be unaware of her surroundings.

Seris spoke with a voice that was both low and hard, and it shook more than she wanted. "Why are you doing witchcraft again? On him? Do you understand what will occur if this is found?"

Silence...

Lira looked away, unable to lock eyes with her. "Too many women already view him as I fear." Lira’s fingers slowly pressed the cover shut, like she was holding something down. "I had to do something before it happened too quickly."

"You marked him down with your voodoo magic, why?! What do you think will happen if Allan knows, and you and I both know, Allan always knows everything in the end."

"It... it was a weak spell. He could resist it if he wanted, but he said those words anyway."

"I don’t care how weak it was." Seris went across the room and fell to her knees. She held tight to Lira’s wrist. "Stop it. Now. Undo it."

"No! Don’t you want his love too? You didn’t see it, but I did. How other women look at him, that adventurer, that damn mage, they all wanted a piece of him, I know it!"

Seris saw it in Lira’s eyes, burning inside of her, trying to come out.

"Of course, half the maids here do the same. He is a lord, a man who brought riches to this state of course women would be all over him... but that..." Seris paused. "That doesn’t mean we should covet him like this, using black magic of all things."

The argument which then ensued was not lengthy, but it was not clean either. Forceful sentences. A surge of Lira’s voice that shattered into sobs. The old fear, at last, expressed aloud.

Seris’s rage was not to be appeased. Only it made space, unwillingly, for something more akin to mourning. She sat on the cold floor opposite Lira, not attempting to comfort her immediately.

The light thinned, guttered, and went out. They sat in darkness for a very long time without speaking after that. At length, Seris’s hand reached Lira’s knee. Lira covered it with her own, less forgiveness than two people too tired to be afraid alone.

The morning light filtered through the shutters by the time either of them had finally just hugged each other.

Allan woke to the feel of the mark still slightly warm on his neck, and a sense of something weird in his chest that couldn’t be explained by any pain, though it was less than it had been the night before.

The recollection of that previous night, his own words, the moment when he meant them. A promise he had given.

A System window opened before his eyes had fully adjusted to the light.

[A residual trace detected: love-binding attempt (incomplete).]

"Haaa..." He sighed. He knew instantly who did it. He knew her well enough that he could no longer ignore it.

But he could sit on it longer than he wanted to admit. He didn’t call them immediately. He dressed first. He required the usual movement of it, in order to get something into his hands.

When he actually did sit with them in the main room, the light of morning was not thick and warm enough for what it was to discuss.

"Ummm..."

He realized he couldn’t express what he had intended to say. Rather than speaking immediately, he paused for a long time, and when he spoke, his voice wasn’t as even as he wished.

"You did this while I was sleeping at the jungle, right?" he said, pointing to the mark on his neck.

Lira flinched, as though she had been struck by the hand of someone.

"Haaa... I don’t know which parts of last night were mine, but I need you to understand what that..."

"It was weak," Lira interjected, "whatever you said, they were just some muddled words bound to come out one way or another..."

"That’s not the point, and you know it." He looked at her for a long time, long enough that she would look away first.

Pause...

"Okay, I will say it now... no spell attached, I love you. I love you both. And this remains true, no matter what... but I will not forgive this kind of behaviour later on. I hope you understand that."

Lira’s tears finally came out as she nodded, while Seris patted her. She did not try to make it easier for her. She simply said softly,

"He’s going to make it big. We do not try to pull more from him than he is willing to give. You need to understand that."

No one answered that directly. Allan took Lira’s hand. He did not kiss her. He simply took hold of it so that he could mean something and stop the moment from being erased by what had just been said.

He looked at those soft hands, Lira’s and Seris’s. Normally he would kiss their hands and be done with it. But he knew it was time.

"Come here..." he said, pulling both of them into his arms. And looked at both of them. Toward the two gorgeous women who loved him, and he loved them.

He came close, his lips touching Lira’s as both of them felt the warmth and the slight wetness. And then he took Seris’s lips as well.

"I mean what I said. I love you both."

It felt weird saying that, as in his past world, women would have burned him alive for saying this. But it seemed, looking at both of their smiles and flushed cheeks, that it was indeed normal here.

Finally, he let them go.

"I’m going out again..."

"Where to now?" Seris asked. "There is still a pile of papers that needs your review."

"To visit the duke." He paused briefly, looking back toward the entrance before continuing on. "I have something planned." With those words, he was already far away.

Seris sighed. "When is he gonna ever rest?"

"After he becomes the seventh god or something, did you forget?" Lira said, now with a smile.

"Yeah," Seris nodded. "I still remember."

*****

The streets were already filled with the noise of the morning markets, carts, criers, the smell of bread wafting from the ovens near the west gate. None of it seemed to have any effect on the tightness that Allan felt in his chest.

He moved along with his expression set and his mind elsewhere, still remembering their smiles. So much so, he forgot Lira was already awakening her witch factor, and she was growing stronger every day.

"...but how did she accomplish that? This kind of enchantment needs a mediator item, a clover book," he muttered. "I will tackle that later."

The study of House Arclight smelled of old paper and the special cold that clung to rooms with too many windows and not enough fires lit. Lord Arclight didn’t stand from his desk. He never did anything for Allan, a deliberate act of discourtesy that both parties had long since stopped pretending to be an accident.

"Have you made the decision regarding your marriage with my daughter?"

Allan allowed the pause to remain before adding, "I haven’t come about Lady Amelia today."

That got the man’s attention away from the ledger in front of him. "Then why are you here?"

"I will be straight. I came here to ask an ’if’ question, what if there’s a group working from within the empire? I don’t think I have the shape of it fully yet, and there are no names to be given at this stage. But it exists, and it is much nearer to the throne than anybody likes to admit, and it is one of the core reasons behind your son’s sickness.

You must have heard of it, the noble plague, where most of the nobility are getting sick — no one else but the nobility."

There was no change in the older man’s face, but his pen stopped moving. "You’re telling me this, why?"

"I’m telling you first." Allan held his gaze. "Because I want an audience with the great duke whom we all serve."

An extended pause.

The man put the pen down completely. "Crafty one, aren’t you? Now, if I don’t take you to the duke, I might get hanged for withholding information."

"...indeed."