Chapter 41: In-Kind Compensation

Serenith flies back into camp a while later, hair still dripping, damp strands clinging to her neck and shoulders, wings glossy and heavy with river water.

She smells faintly of wildflowers and cold stone, scrubbed clean of the night’s chaos, and there’s a lightness in her chest that has nothing to do with the bath and everything to do with the fact that she’s decided, very firmly, not to think about any of it.

The camp is already packed up, the tent folded away, bedrolls strapped to their packs like nothing unusual happened here at all.

She settles onto a flat rock at the edge of the clearing, unnoticed, and watches Lucien and Val crouched over a spread map on the ground, heads bent close together, arguing in low, frustrated tones about which direction is actually east.

Neither of them looks up.

Lucien jabs a finger at one corner of the parchment.

Val jabs a finger at the opposite corner.

Neither finger is anywhere near the other.

"This is ridiculous," Val finally snaps, straightening up in his perfectly tailored shadow-formed suit. "I’ll just fly up and get a look at where we actually are."

Ash magic erupts from the ground around him in a violent black spiral, swirling up his legs, his chest, his throat, crawling over his tailored vest like living smoke. Bones crack and lengthen. Shadow peels outward in sheets, and Lucien watches in open horror as the mature, debonair man beside him rapidly unfolds into fifty tons of Elder Shadow Dragon, scales rippling into being one after another, crimson streaked wings unfurling to fill the entire clearing edge to edge.

"WAIT!" Lucien shrieks, flailing both arms over his head, scrambling backward from an approaching claw that’s almost as tall as him. "You can’t show up looking like that! The locals will think we’re hunting them! Or Invading! Either way it’s terrible for public relations!"

Val doesn’t hear a word of it.

He spreads his wings to their full, monstrous span, and the resulting downdraft flattens half the trees around them, scatters the map into confetti, and catches Lucien square in the chest, sending him cartwheeling through the air like a poorly thrown binder, arms and legs flailing uselessly through the forest.

The dragon barely clears the treetops before a piercing whistle cuts across the clearing.

Val’s head snaps around mid-flap, wings stalling awkwardly.

While Lucien hits the dirt a full second later in an undignified heap, coughing, spitting out a mouthful of forest floor as a small glowing mushroom sat up slowly to scowl furiously about the current, thoroughly compromised state of it’s dignity.

"Relax!" Serenith calls to them, arms crossed, entirely unbothered by the chaos, wings still faintly damp and gleaming in the morning light. "I already scouted ahead after I was done bathing. There’s a village not far past the treeline. Population, agriculture, the works. I did your job for you. Feel free to thank me."

Lucien stops listening somewhere around the word bathing.

He scrambles to his feet and jogs over, grinning, brushing leaves out of his hair.

"I would love to bathe too. Especially after Val just through me through a bush. Saw a talking mushroom, might be the concussion. Perhaps," he adds, voice dropping into something smoky and smoldering, "You’d be so kind as to guide me down to the river yourself. We could even—"

"Breakfast first!" Serenith cuts in flatly.

His whole face lights up with anticipation. Then, sheepishly, he raises a finger.

"Just to confirm the order of operations." he says, biting back the grow grin on his lips, "Are you saying breakfast first... and then we bathe?"

She gives him a look that could a wither a witch.

"Breakfast. Then village."

Lucien lets out a long, defeated sigh. "Of course."

He digs through their packs, muttering to himself, and returns a few minutes later with an actual plate featuring dried meat arranged in a neat little fan, stale bread cut into something resembling triangles, a handful of berries he’d clearly picked that morning with great personal risk to his fingers, and a cup of sweet wine balanced carefully alongside it all, one leaf tucked in as a garnish because apparently even a de-powered, half-starved demon lord in a forest still has standards.

He hands it over with a small, hopeful grin, watching her face closely for a reaction.

Serenith notices, despite herself, that he’d genuinely put effort into the presentation. A level of care she wasn’t remotely prepared to encounter this early in the morning, from a man who, five minutes ago, was being used as an involuntary projectile.

"Are you," she asks, one eyebrow raised, "trying to seduce me with food now?"

"I lost my powers." Lucien shrugs, entirely unashamed. "I’m working with what I have."

She scoffs, though the smile tugging at her mouth rather ruins the effect, and takes the plate gratefully. "Thank you, Lucien."

He bows with theatrical flourish, one hand pressed to his chest. "I live to serve."

"You," she says, biting into a berry, chewing thoughtfully, "are frustratingly persistent."

"You’d be persistent too," he says, leaning in, "if you saw yourself the way I do."

She goes red instantly, averting her gaze and stuffing a piece of bread into her mouth like it might physically stop the blush from spreading further.

Lucien’s grin widens, hands on his hips, thoroughly pleased with himself as he watches her chew. "You know, you’re even cuter with stuffed cheeks."

Serenith flushes completely, nearly chokes on a mouthful of bread, and has to thump her own chest twice before she can properly breathe again, glaring daggers at him through watering eyes the entire time.

"Go annoy someone else!"

"There’s no one else out here to annoy," he points out reasonably. "You’re kind of my only option."

"Then annoy a tree."

He just chuckles, low and satisfied, and turns away toward Val, who has finally finished folding himself back down into his humanoid form a short distance off, scales retracting into skin, wings collapsing into shoulder blades, the last of the ash magic sizzling away into the morning air.

He straightens his rumpled suit, plucking a stray twig from his collar like it personally offended him.

"Are we going," he asks, visible irritation creased into his brow, "or are you two going to stand their flirting all day?"

Serenith ends up choking on a berry this time, while Lucien laughs, loudly, as if he’d just signed off on a great corporate merger.