Chapter 1750: The Real Sisters
Chapter 1750: The Real Sisters
Her violet eyes were on Ayame, her expression the same unreadable mask she wore to battlefields and breakfast alike, but her hands kept meeting, steady and quiet, and the pride burning behind that flat face was so obvious that anyone who knew her would have called it the loudest thing she’d ever done.
The guilt hit Ayame like a fist to the chest.
It arrived without warning, cutting through the joy and the love and the grin and everything the clapping had given her, because the woman walking toward her was the sister she had chosen not to save.
When the decision had come down, when the hours mattered most, Ayame had told Quinlan and the others to use this chance to become stronger instead of rushing to Black Fang’s rescue.
The tactically sound call. The right call, probably. The call that had left her sister getting brutally tortured in enemy hands while Ayame grew stronger.
Ayame’s eyes were already stinging when her body moved before her mind could talk her out of it.
She began to drop into a bow, bending at the waist with her arms at her sides, the full formal apology of a samurai who knew she had failed someone who mattered.
But she never got to finish it.
Black Fang moved like lightning.
The clapping stopped, the distance between them vanished in a blur that most of the arena couldn’t track, and her hand was under Ayame’s chin before the bow reached its lowest point, lifting her back up with a grip that was firm and impossibly gentle at the same time.
"Don’t stop me!" Ayame managed, her voice already fracturing. "You don’t know what I did!"
"I know."
"N-no, you don’t! I chose to let you suffer, I told them not to come for you, I told Quin we should use the time to grow stronger instead of-"
"I know."
Two words, flat and final.
No anger behind them, no accusation, no hurt.
Just acknowledgment, delivered with the same calm Black Fang brought to everything, and it stopped Ayame mid-sentence as completely as a blade across her throat.
"...Black Fang..."
Ayame stared up at the woman, searching the violet eyes for fury, for betrayal, for anything that matched the guilt that had been eating her alive since the words left her lips, and found nothing but quiet warmth in a face that almost never showed it.
Black Fang knew.
She had known this whole time, and she was still here, still clapping, still looking at Ayame with pride burning behind that mask.
"You made the decision I hoped you would make," Black Fang said simply. "Good job."
Ayame broke.
The cry that tore out of her was raw and sudden and ugly, nothing like the composed half-laugh she’d given Quinlan, nothing dignified or graceful about it.
Her katana clattered to the frost, dropped without a thought by a samurai who had forgotten she was holding it.
She threw herself into Black Fang’s chest with both arms locked around her waist, sobbing into the fabric while her whole body shook, and the words that spilled out between the heaving breaths were the same ones over and over.
"I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry..."
Black Fang’s eyes widened.
For one unguarded moment, the Venomborne Terror looked genuinely taken aback, blinking down at the girl clinging to her as if she hadn’t expected the apology to come with this much force.
Or at all.
Her arms stayed at her sides, her posture rigid, the scariest woman on the continent standing perfectly still while her little sister fell apart against her chest.
Her gaze darted once toward Quinlan, who offered absolutely no help whatsoever, just a grin that stretched from ear to ear, and then toward the hundred thousand spectators watching the most feared assassin alive get ambushed by a hug.
Then, slowly, her arms rose.
They closed around Ayame, stiff and awkward and uncertain, holding her the way her arms had never held anyone.
"It is the elder sibling’s duty to protect the younger one. You have nothing to feel guilty about," Black Fang said quietly, and Ayame’s sobs changed.
Black Fang was claiming her.
In front of all these people, the woman Ayame had left to be tortured was calling herself the elder sister and saying that every hour of suffering had been worth it.
Ayame had been carrying that decision since the moment she’d made it, and Black Fang was standing here telling her it was exactly what she’d wanted.
The apologies stopped.
Her breathing slowed into longer pulls that still trembled on the way out, and Ayame’s fists uncurled against Black Fang’s back, fingers pressing flat.
The guilt left them.
What remained was something lighter, something warm and aching and relieved, and the arms around Black Fang’s waist tightened until neither sister could tell who was holding whom.
On the duel ground, five paces from the sisters, Kaede watched.
Blood seeped from her stump, pooling beneath while the cold ate deeper into her body with every breath, but the one-armed duchess barely felt any of it, because the woman she had grown up with, the sister she had shared a home and a name with, was embracing another woman and acted like she was the only sister she ever had.
She had been replaced.
Not by force, not by decree, not by the machinations of elders or the demands of a relic.
Ayame had found a real sister, and Kaede was watching the proof of it bleed warmth across a frozen duel ground while she bled everything else.
In Quinlan’s lap, Blossom clapped along with her master, hands smacking together so fast they blurred, her blue eyes shining with starry adoration as she bounced in place.
*Clap!! Clap!! Clap!!*
"A magnificent duel!!" she decreed with fervent, absolute conviction while her tail wagged so hard Quinlan’s throne vibrated beneath them.
Her oldest friend had won, and the dogkin didn’t care one bit that the kill they’d chased together had been claimed by Ayame alone.
Then her blue eyes darted from Ayame to Black Fang and back, and the realization hit her all at once, ears shooting straight up.
"Ayame has a big sister now too, just like Blossom has Poppy!!" She tugged at Quinlan’s sleeve with both hands, vibrating with the discovery. "Elder sisters are the best!!"
On Quinlan’s other side, Vex watched the sisters on the frost.
The most possessive woman in Quinlan’s life, the yandere witch who had fought tooth and nail against every girl who so much as breathed in her hubby’s direction, had just watched him pour open, unguarded pride over another woman in front of the entire continent.
Every instinct the Hexwitch owned should have been screaming.
Vex smiled at Ayame instead, warm and genuine, without a trace of jealousy anywhere on her face.
"As expected of the first woman who stole hubby’s heart," she said softly, and brought her hands together. "Well played, Ayame."
*Clap. Clap. Clap.*
Still buried in Black Fang’s chest, Ayame turned her head just enough to see past her sister’s arm.
Her cheek pressed against the fabric, her eyes red and wet, and from that angle the colosseum unfolded sideways, tiers rising into the winter sky full of people who were clapping for her.