Chapter 104. Held Out My Hand a Hundred Times, and Elarune Finally Held Theirs Out Back

Chapter 104: 104. Held Out My Hand a Hundred Times, and Elarune Finally Held Theirs Out Back

My heart stopped.

"More than fond..." she said it carefully, in the same clipped, formal tone she used for reading orders. "I have considered the matter at some length..."

"I believe I can state it plainly that I am... very fond of you."

"And now... I do not intend to take it back."

I couldn’t speak. Every muscle in my body had locked.

This is a confession... and she said that to my face. I feel kind of bad, especially after I had sex with Velora the night before.

But still... every SSS-rank beastwoman is mine anyway, so I don’t see any problem with that.

"Do not make it a joke," she said.

I had five jokes ready... I always do to cover how shocked I am.

They lined up in my head like soldiers, bright and sharp and ready to go, and I could feel every one of them tugging at my tongue.

But in the end... I didn’t use a single one.

"Okay," I said instead.

I put my hand over hers, and I could feel it was cold. I held it between both of mine, and she turned her fingers over and held on.

"I was first..." she said, after a moment.

"What?"

"I was the first." Her voice was almost inaudible. "On the first night... I intend for that to be recorded as an achievement perhaps..."

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it.

It was soft, and a little wet, and I turned my face into her hair to muffle it. It was the most Elsbeth thing in the world.

She had just poured out her heart under the stars, and in the same breath, she’d made sure that her priority was on the record.

"It’s recorded," I said. "I swear... I’ll carve it on a rock."

"Good."

"In the Hall of the Covenant."

"That would be acceptable."

She was smiling. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it, a faint curve against my shoulder.

We sat like that, with her head on my shoulder and her hand in mine, and watched the embers die.

I didn’t notice that someone had come up behind us until a heavy cloth settled over both our shoulders.

It was a wool blanket, thick and warm. I looked up, startled, in time to see a tall, slender figure in a white coat walking away, with her back to us and her ponytail swaying.

She didn’t turn around. And she didn’t say a word.

But I saw that her ears were pink.

’Oh,’ I thought. ’This is going to be a problem...’

’But hey... I remember she said that she’ll share me with any beastwomen.’

So... I didn’t mind. I pulled the blanket tighter around Elsbeth, and she sighed and settled closer.

...

Elarune rose out of the valley at noon the next day, green and white and shining, and I’ll admit that it took my breath away a second time.

I had been there before, in a tight, hunted, half-dead blur, and I’d missed most of it.

Now I rode through the Red Gate at the head of a long, dusty column, and I saw it properly. The tall stone walls.

The terraced fields climbing the slopes. And the copper dome of the great hall, gleaming in the sun.

The wide silver ribbon of the river, glittering between the rooftops. It was beautiful... It looked like a place that people had loved for a very long time.

Nobody blew a horn.

I noticed it as soon as we reached the gate.

The guards on the wall, a dozen women in dark blue tabards, stood at attention as the column passed, and not one of them raised the brass horn that had shrieked at me on the first morning.

A few looked at me with narrow, careful eyes. And a few looked away.

But no one sounded the alarm.

Word had come ahead of us.

I learned later that the survivors we’d sent south had told their story in every tavern and marketplace in the valley, over and over, to anyone who would listen.

And the story had changed along the way. It had grown and softened and become something close to a legend.

’The human who held out his hand.’

I wasn’t prepared for what that meant.

We rode down the main street toward the Hall of the Covenant, between rows of crowded, whispering onlookers.

Most of them just stared. I could see the doubt on their faces, the old hurt, and the stubborn distrust.

I didn’t blame them... I had no right to anyway.

But as we passed, I noticed something strange.

A woman on the curb, an older catkin in a flour-dusted apron, was holding out her hand. She wasn’t reaching for me.

She just had it lifted, palm up, open, in the cold air, at the level of her waist.

She was looking straight at me, with a hard, wary expression, and she did not smile. She only held it there, like an offering, and watched me go past.

I stared.

Two doors down, a young foxkin girl did the same. Then an old woman leaning on a cane.

Then a little otterkin girl of about eight thrust her hand out so hard that she nearly lost her balance.

One by one, as I rode past, people held out their open hands, copying the gesture I’d made a hundred times without thinking.

Some did it solemnly... Some did it with defiance, as if daring me to say something.

A few did it with tears in their eyes.

I nearly fell off my horse again just by seeing a lot of those. It’s hard to process that in a single day after you came back from a battle.

"What is... happening?" I whispered.

"They are returning it," Sylvara murmured, beside me. Her voice was soft. "It is how you taught them to say I am here."

I couldn’t answer that at all. I held up my own hand, with my fingers shaking, and I turned it over, and I held it out to the street.

"YOU CAME BACK!"

The scream came from somewhere low and to the left and was followed immediately by an impact against my leg that nearly knocked me out of the saddle.

It was Pip. She had attached herself to my boot like a limpet.

She’d come hurtling out of the crowd at full speed with her russet tail flying and her gap-toothed grin split wide, and she’d wrapped both arms around my shin with the force of a small, determined tornado.

I nearly fell off, but thank god I grabbed the pommel with both hands.

"You promised!" she shrieked. "You promised you’d come back! I knew you would!"

"I did promise," I said, laughing. "Hold on, let me get down now."

I slid off the horse, with some difficulty, and knelt in the road so that I was eye to eye with her.

I pushed up my sleeve. There, on my wrist, on its length of red cord, hung a tiny, lopsided wooden fox.

"Look," I said. "I’ve been wearing it."

She stared at it.

Then she let out a scream that could probably have been heard in the next county. She flung herself at me and hugged my neck, and I picked her up and swung her around, and she shrieked with delight.

A little way off, a slender russet-haired woman in a plain brown dress stood watching with her arms folded.

Seraphine’s eyes were bright.

She didn’t smile. But she gave me a deep, formal bow, a bow that a soldier gives to a commander, and she held it for a long moment.

"You are thin," said a cracked old voice from the nearest porch.

I looked up.

An old woman with the curling horns of a ram was standing at the top of the steps, leaning on a gnarled cane. Her face was like a walnut.

She glared at me with fierce, cloudy eyes.

"You are thin," she repeated. "You are bandaged... And what in the name of the moons have you done to your hair?"

I touched it. It had gone white at the tips, in a ragged halo, a mark of the pillar that had nearly killed me.

I’d forgotten about it.

"It’s fashionable these days," I said.

"It is a disgrace." Marrow thumped her cane against the boards.

She came down the steps, one slow stair at a time, scowling, and stopped in front of me. She looked at my face.

She looked at my hands, still wrapped in dirty linen. Her mouth thinned.

"Give me those."

"What?"

"Your hands, boy! Give them to me."

I held them out. She took them, gripping my wrists in her gnarled fingers, and began to unwrap the bandages.

I stared at her.

"You said you’d never touch me," I said.

"I said I would not touch you then." She didn’t look up. "But I will touch you now."

"Do not make it strange."