Chapter 75: The Price She Didn’t Name

Chapter 75: The Price She Didn’t Name

Elyra slid down the turtle’s flank and landed lightly on the broken flagstones. Behind her, the colossal shell began to sink, folding down into the ground like a stone settling into water, until there was only a cracked patch of floor where it had been. The red light overhead stayed.

She walked straight to Silas and held out her hand.

The pearl-white seed lay in her palm, its red heart pulsing.

"Here," Elyra said.

Silas looked from the seed to her. "What?"

"You want it," Elyra said. "You’ve been looking at it like a hungry child at a bakery window." She pushed her hand an inch closer. "Take it."

"Why?" Silas asked.

"Because you’re weak," Elyra said, as though it were obvious. "Too weak. You keep nearly dying, and I haven’t finished working out how you keep not dying. I’d rather you were alive until I do."

Somewhere behind Silas, Tavi made a small choked sound. Leander had stopped halfway through checking his communicator. On the ramp, Alden had turned to look, and Gareth, a few steps above him, had gone completely still.

Silas didn’t take it.

I just decided to stay away from her.

He had meant it, too. Yet the seed was right there, offered freely, and he couldn’t bring himself to refuse. What if she took him at his word? She might shrug, put it back in her pocket, and leave him regretting the most expensive moment of good judgment in his life.

Take it before she changes her mind.

He reached out and closed his fingers around the seed.

The instant it became his, knowledge came from the seed itself: its identity, its rank, and what it would do. No voice announced it to the others. Silas alone received the information as its new owner, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

Supreme Regeneration. An SS-Rank Trait.

Not Super. Supreme.

He knew the difference. He’d read the wiki pages, years ago, back when this world was only a game. Super Regeneration had been Alden’s S-Rank reward, the one players called broken: wounds closing as you watched. Absolute Regeneration was the far end of it, a thing the wiki described in one awed paragraph: a body that could rebuild itself from a single drop of spilled blood.

Supreme sat between them. The seed told him that plainly. As long as he was alive, his body would repair itself. Destroyed organs. Severed limbs. Torn nerves, ruined spine. Blood loss that should kill. Wounds that should kill. It would not bring him back from true death, and it would not rebuild him from a drop. But short of that, it would put him back together.

He thought of Lydia in the dark. Of lying on his own floor, feeling himself drain away.

"You’re giving me this," Silas said. His voice came out strange. "Do you know what this is?"

"Yes," Elyra said. "That’s why I’m giving it to you."

She smiled. It was a small, satisfied smile, the smile of someone who had put a coin in a machine and was pleased to see what came out.

He looked down before she could see how much that smile unsettled him.

Fuck, he thought. I’m going to be paying this back for the rest of my life.

She hadn’t named a price. There was no contract, only her interest in him. That ought to have reassured him, but he could already imagine how difficult refusing her next question would feel with this gift between them.

"Thank you," Silas said, and meant it, and was terrified.

He looked around.

Tavi was staring at the seed. So was Leander, more carefully. Isolde was watching from beside the dead guardian, her hand resting on her own pouch. And on the ramp, Gareth was looking at Silas’s closed fist with an expression that held nothing at all.

Nobody reached for it. With Elyra beside him, he doubted anyone would dare. He didn’t think Alden would rob him, or Leander, but he didn’t know everyone here that well. And once they got outside, people would talk. Someone was bound to want a treasure handed to a C-Rank bearer.

Silas had no intention of carrying it around while he found out who.

He put the seed in his mouth and swallowed it.

Tavi actually yelped. "You just—"

"Yes," Silas said.

Elyra laughed, delighted.

It hit a moment later.

Warmth spread from his stomach and traveled down his arms and legs into his fingers. His right forearm, which had been aching since the duel with Oskar Halden, stopped hurting. He turned his wrist, expecting the familiar catch, and felt nothing.

That was only the start. The warmth went deeper, into places he hadn’t known were still wrong: the faint pull of old scar tissue from Lydia’s attack; a dull, low heaviness through his chest and belly that had been there since the day he woke up in this body, so constant he’d stopped noticing it. The months of poison had left their damage in him, and he’d assumed he would carry what remained of it forever.

He felt it go. All of it.

He took a breath, and it went all the way down, deeper than any breath he’d taken in this world. He flexed his right hand. It closed clean and opened clean. Nothing caught.

He rubbed his forearm, then pressed a hand to his side. Nothing hurt. There was no stiffness when he straightened, no lingering discomfort beneath his ribs. The changes were hidden under his clothes and deep inside his body; anyone watching would see only him checking places that had stopped bothering him.

He’d grown used to deciding which discomfort was serious enough to mention. Mara had worried, the physician had examined him, and he’d kept telling himself he was improving. He hadn’t realized how much of being unwell he’d accepted as normal.

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. It came out of him short and startled.

"Better?" Elyra asked.

"Yes," Silas said. "Much better."

He was still frightened. He was also, for the first time since he’d opened his eyes in that poisoned studio, completely well. He let himself feel both.

His mana was as low as it had been a minute ago. His Core hadn’t changed. Somewhere behind his ribs, Nim stirred through the bond, curious, then settled again.

Silas flexed his hand once more just because he could. Even after the warmth faded, the ease remained. For a few breaths he let himself enjoy it without trying to guess what Elyra would ask of him next.

"Rooke," Leander called. "If you’re finished, we have people to move."

They did.

Up on the landing, Dagna was helping Bellamy to his feet. Hesta had her good arm round the shaking apprentice. Doran was walking on his own, grim and pale. Perrin waited on the litter with Alden at one end, and Caelan stood ready at the other. Gareth went back up the ramp to where the knife-grinder lay in Silas’s coat, and lifted him again without a word.

Silas climbed up to take the front of the litter from Alden, leaving Caelan at the rear handles. Alden shifted to Bellamy’s side to help him down the ramp. Isolde took the rear guard, her seed still sealed in its pouch. Maelin came to Silas’s left, ready to steady Perrin if the litter tilted.

She looked at him sideways. "What was it?"

"Something good," Silas said. "Really good."

Ahead of them, the arch was full of white light, waiting.

At the foot of the ramp, Leander checked the line once more. Ten volunteers. Five living civilians. One dead man, carried with care.

"Together," Leander said. "Close order. Let’s go home."