Chapter 55: Paying With Emotional Labor

Lucien swallows his mouthful of pastry and introduces Val to the surrounding picnic.

"Everyone, this is Valgereth. My business associate, and I would like to think, close friend."

"HELLO VALGERETH!" the villagers call out, greeting him back in perfect, cheerful unison, a chorus that seems to catch even Val slightly off guard.

"Why aren’t you dead?" Val snarls at Lucien.

Lucien pouts, wounded by the words. "Not exactly a warm good morning, Val. Especially after you nearly executed me yourself last night."

"Morning, Val." Serenith floats overhead, already chuckling. "Our favorite Demon Lord somehow talked the entire village into summoning their patron demigoddess just to confirm he’s actually who he keeps insisting he is." she pauses, genuinely baffled that she has to mention the next part, "Which he keeps saying. Insisting he is the ruler of the Ashland. Outside his own territory. Repeatedly. Loudly. " She adds, entirely too pleased with herself, "I’ve also filed an official grievance regarding a hostile work environment. A certain flatulence-related incident."

Lucien nearly chokes on his next bite of cream puff.

Val looks between Serenith and Lucien for a long, considering moment, then grabs his belly and bursts out laughing, slapping Lucien hard enough on the back to send him coughing up half-digested pastry across the grass.

He turns fully to Serenith, pointing between them as he speaks.

"Knew there was something special about him the second he stumbled into my cave." He says, grinning, proud of himself, "A Demon Lord talking about investment opportunities. He’s a crazy son of a bitch..."

A cluster of canine-folk women nearby gasp in unison, mouths, chests and pearls tightly clutched.

"How dare he!" A wolf-kin woman gasps in offence.

"Sorry! So sorry!" Lucien jolts upright, apologizing profusely for Val’s speciesist outburst. "He’s simply not familiar with beast-kin customs. He has much to learn. Please forgive us."

Kamiko, who’s been biting back laughter this entire time, finally loses the fight.

"Valgereth talks to himself too? This is too much!" she cries, slapping her knees with laughter.

Val turns to her, then to Serenith, who is also failing to hold it together, and snorts a small, embarrassed puff of smoke from one nostril.

"Hand me a pastry before I eat someone." Val snarls.

Lucien shoves an entire plate toward him without hesitation, the universal peace offering of desperate men everywhere.

"You’re buying his cooperation with pastries," Serenith says, already reaching for one herself.

"Is it working?" Lucien asks.

"Disturbingly well." Val mumbles.

That’s when a group of otter-kin arrive to announce the summoning ground is ready.

"Alright folks!" Mayor Grumly calls out, dusting cake crumbs off his tusks, "Time to start the summoning. Don’t forget your torches. Leave the pitch forks at home please. I’m sure we all remember what happened the last time."

The crowd groans in unison, grumbling about having to abandon a perfectly good picnic, packing up blankets and half-finished plates with visible reluctance.

Val watches, in growing horror, as every scrap of food within reach gets swept away before he can even reach for it. He ends up flicking a warning burst of flame at a cat-kin woman reaching for a plate of sandwiches. She flinches back, and he snatches it for himself without breaking eye contact.

"No hurting the villagers!" Serenith scolds him sharply.

"Can’t do summoning without snacks." Val retorts, already smuggling platters magically into his own shadow.

A while later, nearly the entire village has gathered in a wide clearing around a massive unlit bonfire, beyond the farms.

A great stacked pyramid of logs as tall as Val in his dragon form, ringed by torches and lanterns staked deep into the earth. Almost every adult in town was present and accounted for. Conspicuously, no children in sight; the parents who marched their little ones home earlier wore the particular grim expression of people who know exactly what kind of night this is about to become.

The air smells of pine sap, crushed grass, and something faintly metallic that Serenith decides, for her own peace of mind, not to investigate further.

Lucien stands in a marked ritual circle, draped in a ceremonial robe that makes him look, he privately thinks, extremely handsome and extremely bored. He spends the wait working on Serenith’s last nerve.

"You might not love me." he mutters, just loud enough for her to hear. "But do some to love watching me."

"That was not..." Serenith croaks, cheeks going red. "Shut up! I hope the Beast Mother eats you!"

"Is your hand ok?" he asks, dripping with smugness. "The way you were staring at it—"

"I will smite you!" Serenith snaps, heat pouring out of her face and neck, "one more word—"

"It was beautiful though." he continues, unbothered by her threats, "The face you make when you..." he breathes, chuckling softly to himself.

She flushes red thoroughly and completely, wings twitching with barely restrained energy.

He leans in, softer still, "Glad to know I was a part of that."

Her halo flares and sparks, wings vibrating, her entire body flushing so fully and so red that it faintly glowed.

"I will call down a holy fire upon you, Lucien Vale!" she snarls, arms pinned to her side, face like a glowing tomato. "Not even the Spirit Mother herself will be able to scrape your soul back together!"

"Oh!" Lucien suddenly perks up, "There’s a Spirit Mother too?"

"You’re impossible!" she barks, stomping empty air with her foot.

"You’re the impossible one." He replies, smirk firmly in place. "Couldn’t have gotten here without you." he gestures to those around them, to the circle of beast-kin, waiting in a clearing, to summon a goddess.

Finally, worn down entirely, Serenith stops fighting it.

"You love this," she accuses. "All of this. The... the chaos."

"I do." He grins, but something in it softens halfway through. "It’s how I do business. But this... you, me, whatever we got going... this has been one of the best parts of my new life. It just... works. Better than I expected anything to."

Her blush deepens further, and she meets his eyes properly this time. He’s grinning, biting back some joke or tease. Already planning to embarrass Serenith further.

But then he catches the look in her expression, something open, something real.

His heart stumbles clean over itself and he suddenly feels like her whole presence is pulling him in, gravity rewritten around a single point between her lips, bending reality around them, sucking him in completely.

A sudden, deafening cacophony of animal cries shatters the moment with a wall of sound.

A ring of beast-kin men and women had joined hands around the bonfire.

After their startling introduction, they begin to chant low at first, guttural, rising in pitch and speed until it settles into something rhythmic, primal, the kind of sound that seems to bypass the ears entirely and go straight for the base of the spine.

Lucien blinks, the moment between him and Serenith cracking just enough for him to remember, distantly, that he’s about to be judged by a goddess.