Chapter 74: Too Much

I made it back to the room, kicked my shoes off, and dropped onto the futon flat on my back.

I stared at the ceiling. There was an old water stain up in the corner, and I looked at it for a while, blinking every few seconds.

The door slid open.

"There you are." Lily came in with her sleeves tied back and her hair still damp. "I’ve been looking for you for like twenty minutes. Marisol told me you went off to seduce someone by the horses. I-I mean, I knew that was a lie, but I checked the stables anyway."

"Mm."

Lily stopped in the middle of the floor.

"Second bell went ages ago, by the way. It’s river fish tonight, the whole thing with the head still on. Fenna’s saving you a seat, she’s got her arm out and everything. So... are you coming?"

"Yeah."

"... You’re not getting up, though."

"Nope."

She sighed.

Lily knelt down beside the futon and put a hand on my forehead. Her palm was warm from the bath. Her sleeve slid back off her wrist, and when she leaned over me her collar hung open far enough that I could see most of her chest. I looked, because I always look, but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t even be horny right.

"You’re not warm," she said. "Is it your chest? Is it the forest thing? There’s a healer here, I’ll take you over. I’m serious, I’ll carry you."

"No."

"Kohaku."

"Yes?"

"... What’s up with you?" She sat back on her heels with her eyebrows up, squinting at me. "Are you alright?"

"Yep."

Lily’s mouth opened and shut.

Then, with her face six inches from mine and her hand still hovering over my forehead, my brain served the whole thing up again.

Lily had her knees planted either side of Serena’s hips and her tongue halfway down Serena’s throat, working at her mouth like she was trying to get something out of it. Serena had her by the hair at the back of the skull, holding her there. They came apart wet enough that a string of it hung between them for a second, and Lily licked her own lip clean and went right back in. She caught Serena’s bottom lip in her teeth and pulled on it. Then she got her mouth on Serena’s neck and sucked hard enough to leave a mark that would still be there in the morning, and the whole time she was riding Serena’s thigh in slow drags, twice, three times, until Serena locked up underneath her and Lily kept going without noticing a thing.

I nearly screamed.

[Get out. Not while she’s touching me!]

Lily reached up and pushed one of my ears back upright with a finger.

"Uh huh," I said.

She gave up on me, stood, and started refolding blankets that were already folded.

I stayed on my back and stared at the water stain some more.

I wrote those two girls in a notebook when I was fifteen, which I then published at seventeen. Lily got one sentence’s worth of legitimate characterization: sweet commoner girl, works hard, everyone underestimates her. I never wrote down where Lily lived before the academy. I never wrote down who Serena had working in her house. Why would I? Nobody was ever going to ask, and I had a duel scene to get to.

So the world filled it in for me. A great noble house needs staff. A poor girl with an adopted mother in service needs a placement. There was a hole in Serena’s backstory, and the world decided Lily fit it perfectly, so the world put Lily in Serena’s wing at thirteen and left the two of them there for four years.

And they, uh... Made those years count.

[So that’s why Serena will kill me if Lily gets anywhere near her big secret.]

Because they literally broke up over Serena not wanting Lily, someone she presumably cares about, to see the worst of her. Her Big Secret.

[This is way too much.]

"Fish," I said.

Lily turned around.

"What?"

"The one with the head. Let’s go."

"You’re so annoying." She threw the blanket down. "Get up, then."

I sat up. My tail was thumping against the futon behind me, so I flattened it under my leg and put on my very best face.

"Lily, my dearest roommate, light of my miserable little scholarship life, take me to dinner."

"Oh, thank the Saint." She hauled me up by both hands. "You were being really weird just now."

"It’s been a long night of research."

---

Fenna had the end of the bench, and her arm came down across my shoulders before I’d finished sitting.

She dropped a fish onto my plate with her free hand. The head was still on it. The eye had gone white and cloudy from the fire and it pointed straight up at me, so I pointed my chopsticks back at it and started poking.

"They gave you the big one," Fenna said. "I made sure. Two of the noble boys had their eye on it, so I went over and had a word with them, and now they don’t."

"Mm."

Eight tables down, Serena Frostfall was sitting across from Prince Aldric Stellaris-Vane with her back straight and her hands in her lap, taking the smallest bites I have ever seen a person take.

[That’s the hand that was down the back of Lily’s skirt.]

I stabbed the fish.

It took me a while to notice Fenna had gone quiet. When I looked over, her ears were pinned flat back into her hair and she was turning her cup around and around on the table.

"So, the steward’s wife runs a place down at the river crossing," she said. "Shellfish, and only shellfish, which sounds like a bad idea until you actually eat there. It’s the season for it, too. I-I heard it’s good. I haven’t been or anything."

"Mhm."

"It’s about an hour on foot, but it’s flat the whole way, so it’s not like I’d be marching you up a hill or something."

"Sure."

"... Sure?" Her arm tightened. "That’s a yes? You’d really come? Because I’ve asked you about three things this week and you said sure to all of them and then you fell asleep standing up in the archive."

"Yep."

Fenna drank half her cup in one go and put it down too hard.

"Good. Right. That’s a real thing that’s happening now, then." She cleared her throat. "And, um. While we’re on it. My aunt’s going to be at the crossing next week with the delegation, and she’s the one who keeps the book for our clan, the record, the... you know. So if we were already down there. And she happened to see you. She could put your name in it next to mine."

"Uh huh."

"O-Officially! It would just be convenient, is all I’m saying."

"Uh huh."

"You’re not listening to a word of this, are you?"

"Yeah."

"Kohaku." Fenna leaned down until her face was right next to mine, and her braid slid off her shoulder and landed in my lap. "I just asked you how many pups you wanted."

"Sounds great."

"FIVE?"

I looked up.

Eight tables away, through all the steam and the lantern light, Serena was glaring at me. She had her jaw set, her eyes narrowed, and she held it long enough that Aldric turned around to see what was behind him, which was a fox girl holding a fish. It didn’t slow her down. I raised my eyebrows at her and that didn’t either. She just kept going, like I’d personally done something to her that evening.

[What did I do? I didn’t do anything! I climbed some stairs and I listened to you talk, which is the nicest I have ever been to another human being!]

Then I remembered that about twenty minutes after the stairs, I’d watched her ex-girlfriend ride her thigh in a chair.

[She can’t know about that. Eat your fish.]

I put my chopsticks down.

I’m not built for moping. I’ve had one heart attack and one near-death by forest monster so far in my career, and I was up and walking inside a week both times, so two teenagers making out six years ago wasn’t going to be the thing that finished me off.

I stood up on the bench.

"FIGHTING!" I shouted, with both fists in the air.

The whole hall went quiet. Fenna’s arm slid off my shoulders. Somebody over in the Knight Course section shouted it back at me, which I appreciated, and then the steward’s assistant started walking toward our table, so I sat down and ate my fish.

Dawnlight was buried somewhere out here, and Lily needed it in her hands before the Calamity Queen showed up. None of that changed because my sweet hardworking heroine got her innocence surgically removed by the villainess at sixteen. The plot didn’t care. I wrote the plot, so I’d know.

---

I caught Lily on the walk back to the east hall, in the dark, with her arms full of dishes that weren’t hers.

"Hey. You know that mountain the steward keeps telling us not to go up?"

"... Yes? He says it every single morning, Kohaku, it’s practically the only thing he’s ever said to me."

"How do you feel about going up it?"

She blinked.

"WHAT!?"