Vassal by Sterling D'Este (ebook reader computer TXT) 📕

Of course, he was more interested in Enyo, bloodthirsty, and unpredictable.

“Well,” Alphonse murmured, too tired and too happy to argue. She yawned and slipped onto her side, and then her back, using Delyth’s lap as a pillow, her amber eyes once more fixed upon the heavens above. She didn’t seem to have a care at all. Etienne scowled.

“I think it’s nice, and being grouchy about it won’t change my opinion, Tristan,” she said.

༄

In the shadows of the night, the healer’s hand on the opposite side of the fire, hidden from view, slipped to brush over Delyth’s braced against the ground.

Delyth looked down at Alphonse and smiled, sliding her hand closer so that their fingers could entwine. “It is nice.”

And she supposed the thing about the Gods was too.

When she looked up, Etienne was brooding into the fire, and Tristan was rolling his eyes. Fairly typical evening behavior.

“How do you know so much about the different Gods?” she asked. Tristan had proven himself knowledgeable in the ways of the old world more than once on their journey. Was it the mysterious master he had mentioned to Enyo?

The fighter just shrugged. “I’ve done a bit of traveling.”

Etienne shot him a dark look. “So enlightening…”

“You learn a bit from the world and the people you meet.” Tristan leaned back. “A lot more than books can teach you, clearly.”

Delyth sighed. That had the sound of a new argument just starting. With the two men distracted, she ran her thumb over Alphonse’s, where their fingers pressed together and brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. It was such a simple thing to sit with her like this. Simple and perfect.

❀

Amber eyes, heavy with fatigue, drifted away from the stars and into Delyth’s own icy blue ones. Alphonse smiled and nuzzled her cheek against Delyth’s leg, even daring to lay a kiss on it with her face turned away from the light and the onlookers.

She didn’t think she could say those three simple, devastating words aloud now, with their audience, but she did hope that Delyth somehow knew she was thinking them.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Slowly she blinked, warm and fuzzy, and so very comfortable. The fire’s crackling was soothing, and Etienne and Tristan’s snarling just background noise. No more important than the roaring of a river. Easy to let go…

Alphonse yawned. She should get up. Talk with Etienne. Though not quite yet. Perhaps in a minute. For now, she could just… close her eyes. Rest. Enjoy the feel of Delyth’s fingers through her hair.

✶

Etienne broke off mid-sentence, halfway through arguing that Tristan was being insufferable on purpose and that he should just admit where he had learned so much about the Gods. Through traveling. Hells. They’d been traveling for moons without learning anything except for just how horrible Enyo could be.

Only, Tristan wasn’t paying any attention anymore. He was watching Delyth and Alphonse across the fire.

Alphonse had fallen asleep, it seemed. Delyth was gathering the healer into her arms with slow care, letting sleep-loose limbs curl over her forearm and bronzed curls press into her shoulder. She stood and turned, pausing a minute before completely leaving the light of the fire. Her face was half-illuminated, turned towards Alphonse with an expression more soft and open than Etienne had ever seen on the warrior’s usually stoic countenance.

Then, she slipped into the dark of their tent, vanishing from sight.

“A bloody waste, isn’t it?” Tristan’s eyes were on Etienne again, his cruel half-smile in place.

“What is?” Etienne sounded defensive even to himself. Anger and revulsion boiled within him before he was even sure of the cause, quick as Enyo’s blizzard.

“Two perfectly fine women in love with each other.”

What?

Etienne found himself jerking back into the direction Delyth had gone.

They couldn’t be…

In love?

Since when? How?!

He knew they had been getting closer but had it really gone that far? And without Alphonse telling him? Had she really given up enough on their quest to get rid of Enyo that she would let herself get involved with someone working against them?

“Damn shame.” Tristan’s words cut through Etienne’s thoughts. The other man was standing, shaking his head in the direction of the girls’ tent. Then he too left to sleep, leaving the mage alone by the fire.

⥣          ⥣           ⥣

Etienne did not sleep that night. When the fire went out, he rose more out of a desire to move than to head to his tent.

His mind was full of the images of the last few days:

Alphonse stood over the body of a thin, dirty farmer, his chest bloody and gaping where she had reached in past bone and sinew to pull out his hot, beating heart. She’d looked at it like the finest delicacy at a nobleman’s table. Licked her lips. Squeezed till the blood ran down her arm.

Maybe that had been Enyo.

But when she and Delyth had rejoined them, she’d been herself. She’d been happy. As though she had not just killed a man, while Etienne stumbled, his mouth still acidic with bile and his eyes full of broken bodies.

He supposed it made sense now.

She cared more for the halfbreed than her own humanity.

That very day had started out with her lapping up his blood and ended with Delyth and Alphonse laughing, cooking together.

Etienne pulled at his hair through clenched fists. Alphonse had been good and gentle. A healer. The death of that man should have torn her apart.

But that Alphonse was dead.

It could not be clearer. The Goddess had already won. Had broken apart his dearest friend until only echoes remained.

She was dead.

And he had killed her just as surely as Enyo had. His pride, his fucking hubris, had invited a disease into Alphonse’s gentle soul, and it had destroyed her from the inside. Even her body, emaciated and weak, was proof of her illness. Now, all that was left was for the echoes to disappear as well, for the