Ch 94: Waiting For Me

Olivia looked around curiously as she walked through the morning street. The sun was rising in the east, casting long shadows of houses across the path she followed behind Lucien. The sky burned a warm red and the houses gleamed in the early light. The shops were still opening, the street was not yet filled, and the windows remained obscured by curtains that had not yet been drawn back.

Joseph walked closely beside her while Lucien led at the front, his hands casually tucked into the pockets of his black pants, his black shirt rippling and shifting in the morning breeze that came suddenly and dissipated just as quickly as it had appeared.

She could not help but fix her gaze on Lucien's back. His clothes were still intact and new. There was not a single drop of blood on his clothes nor were his clothes torn like hers despite the fact that he had slain more than a hundred miasma beasts. He had simply emerged out unscathed with that impassive face. Though she could not see his expression from behind, the way he walked, with his back straight as a pillar and his pace unhurried, told Olivia plainly that he was enjoying every bit of the attention being drawn to him.

The street was not yet crowded, and only a handful of people were out given how early the dawn still was, yet Lucien, rather than thinking of some way to help the elven twins pass through unnoticed, was boldly parading Olivia and Joseph in plain sight.

Shouldn't he at least give us something to cover our ears? Olivia thought as she caught the curious gazes being thrown their way, particularly at their ears, and more than a few passersby wore their shock openly on their faces. LIkely due to seeing how badly they were dressed and more likely due to them being elves.

Elves kept themselves within the borders of their own kingdom and rarely visited other nations, so stumbling upon one in the street could have been counted as a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, had it not been for the grim fact that elves were trafficked and kidnapped and sold illegally, and thus most humans living in the city would have encountered an elf at least once in their lives.

She clenched her fist at the thought. She hated that her kind were being sold and taken from their homes. The elf kingdom had fortified its borders and posted knights at every passage, and yet her people were still being taken.

They were not entirely helpless and had sent their own to retrieve those who had been stolen, but it was not working. The elven kingdom, though formidable in its own right, was not strong enough to oppose the empire completely, and the empire, vast and powerful as it was, had made elf slavery illegal under the terms of the peace treaty, yet that had done little in practice.

Elves were still being sold secretly, and the emperor, for whatever reason, had been unable or unwilling to stamp it out entirely. Part of the difficulty was that the empire permitted other forms of slavery. To abolish only elf slavery while allowing the rest to continue was a contradiction that solved nothing. To truly end it, the empire would have to abolish slavery altogether, and that was never going to happen so long as the feud between the empire and the beastkin kingdom remained unresolved. Beastkin slaves were bought and sold openly, and the empire did nothing, because the empire was clearly trying to make a laughing stock out of the beastkin kingdom.

Olivia shook the thoughts from her head. Dwelling on it now would accomplish nothing, though she could not resist sending a few silent and very colourful curses in the direction of the empire and its emperor. Fuck this empire. I am going to take over this empire one da-. Her thoughts stumbled to a halt as her eyes landed again on the back of Lucien.

Maybe not. Olivia quickened her pace and moved up to walk beside him. She was not sure why she had been trailing behind him at all, since he was only walking now and not covering great distances at an unnatural speed, and so keeping up with him should have presented no difficulty whatsoever. With that reasoning settled in her mind, she stepped forward and fell into pace at his side.

He turned his face toward her slowly, and as she had expected, it was entirely impassive and stoic, not a flicker of emotion anywhere in his expression.

"Can we eat something," Olivia said, gesturing toward one of the inns lining the street. Her stomach had been churning for a while now, its thin walls pressing in on each other and threatening to growl at any moment, and she very much wanted it not to do so in front of Lucien. Not that she considered herself a shy person. Far from it, she had always prided herself on being no less bold than her brother and hated the idea that girls were supposed to be shy while men were supposed to be brave. She had never felt shame for the ordinary inconveniences of the body. But standing beside the northern blade while her stomach growled in hunger was something she could not bring herself to imagine as the kind of embarrassment she would feel would be totally disastrous.

She waited patiently and had already begun thinking about what she might order, when Lucien, who had followed the line of her finger toward the inn with his eyes, simply shook his head. "No."

Olivia felt certain her ears had not heard correctly. She had half-expected him to already be steering her toward the inn before she even had to ask. He had listened to the full account of what she and her brother had been through, and surely he understood well enough how long it had been since either of them had eaten a proper meal. She was grateful for the potions he had given them, truly she was, and they had worked with remarkable effect, but gratitude did not fill a stomach, and her stomach was making that point with considerable persistence.

"Did I hear that right," she asked, not quite willing to accept it.

As if to confirm it, he added, "Yes, you heard correctly. I am already late and she is likely waiting for me." He offered the explanation plainly, and though some part of her wanted to hear the rest of it, her mind snagged on a single phrase and refused to move past it. She is likely waiting for me. Who is waiting for him?

She only returned to herself when her brother nudged her out of her stupor, and when she looked around she found that Lucien had already walked several paces ahead, and the few people nearby were watching her with quiet curiosity, probably wondering what on earth the northern blade had said to make her stand there like a statue fixed on the ground.

She pressed her teeth together and turned to look at her brother, who immediately raised his hands with an expression that very clearly said he had done nothing to deserve it. She said nothing, only stomped one foot against the cobblestones and marched off after Lucien, leaving Joseph standing behind her, thoroughly puzzled as to what had just happened.

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