I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

”Right.” Yuwa’s smile took on a different quality, something sharper underneath the warmth of it, like a blade wrapped in cloth. She turned to Nathan with that look fully in place now. ”Games.” She tilted her head. ”Would you like to play one?”

”Now that is interesting,” Shige said, leaning forward with the fire catching the excitement in his eyes. ”What kind of game did you have in mind, Yuwa?”

”A drinking game,” she said, lifting her bottle with a casual flourish. ”Sake. I would wager there will be competitions over drinks at the festival as well, so consider it practice.”

”Definitely,” one of the men across the fire said, nodding enthusiastically. ”Drinks, food, sumo as well. I am genuinely looking forward to all of it.”

”A sake competition,” Shige repeated, rolling the idea around with visible pleasure. ”Now that I can get behind.”

”The rules are simple,” Yuwa said, that sharpness still sitting just beneath her smile. ”The winner gets to make a request of anyone they choose. No refusals.”

That landed around the fire like a stone dropped into still water. A beat of silence and then the group erupted into agreement, bottles raised and voices overlapping each other in enthusiasm.

”I would rather not drink,” Hanzo said, her voice cutting through the noise with quiet firmness.

The man beside her, Noru, nudged her shoulder with a grin. ”Come on, it will be fun.”

”Don’t force her,” Sana said from across the circle, not unkindly.

”Nobody is forcing anyone,” Shige said, spreading his hands in a gesture of open generosity. ”You can still take part without drinking. The game works either way.”

Hanzo had no idea what that meant exactly, but she gave a short nod rather than press the question.

”What about you?” Yuwa turned to Nathan and held a fresh bottle out toward him, her eyes expectant.

Nathan looked at it for a moment, then reached out and took it.

”Wonderful.” She looked genuinely pleased. ”Longest continuous drink wins. No stopping, no lowering the bottle until you are done.”

”Raise them up!” someone shouted.

Bottles went up around the fire, Nathan’s included, though he held his with the same unhurried stillness he held everything.

”Go!”

The group threw their heads back and the sound of enthusiastic gulping filled the clearing, a few of them already making exaggerated sounds of effort as they pushed through it. Nathan drank too, but not in the spirit of the thing. He took a measured sip and lowered the bottle without ceremony, perfectly content to let the game happen around him while he watched.

And he was watching carefully.

Something had been sitting at the edge of his attention since the road and it had not gone away. These people had killed before. He was certain of it the way you become certain of things when enough experience has sharpened the part of you that reads other people. The way they moved, the way they watched, the particular patience in how they had arranged themselves around the campfire without ever making it look intentional. These were not ordinary travelers with rough edges. There was something underneath all the warmth and the sake and the easy laughter.

And yet they had done nothing. Every opportunity had been right there and they had taken none of them. No hostility, no sudden shift in energy, just this sprawling performance of camaraderie that didn’t quite fit the people performing it.

They were playing with them. That much felt true. But toward what end Nathan hadn’t fully worked out yet, and that uncertainty was the most irritating part.

He glanced at Hanzo across the fire. She was sitting with her back straight and her sake untouched, wearing an expression of polite neutrality that gave absolutely nothing away. But her eyes were doing the same work his were, moving carefully around the group, reading the edges of things.

She seemed to know something.

More than him who thought immediately as enemies to eliminate with the strange intense gazes they received.

One by one the others started dropping out, bottles coming down amid groans and breathless laughter, hands pressed to chests in mock defeat.

”I give up.”

”No more, I cannot.”

”This is genuinely too much.”

The circle contracted as people lowered their bottles until only Shige remained, still drinking with his head tipped back and his throat working steadily, the firelight making the whole thing look almost ceremonial. He held it for another long moment before finally bringing the bottle down with a satisfied exhale and raising it above his head.

”Done and won again!” He laughed loudly, looking around the group with undisguised triumph.

”Nobody ever beats him.”

”The man is simply a drunkard, there is no other explanation,” Yuwa said, laughing despite herself.

”Anyway, I won so the request is mine to make,” Shige said, settling back with the comfortable authority of a man who had expected this outcome from the beginning. ”That was the agreement, yes?”

A few groans went around the circle, the resigned kind that come from people who have played this game enough times to know there is no arguing with it.

”Go ahead then,” one of the men said, waving his hand.

Shige smiled slowly and let his eyes travel around the fire, taking his time with it, dragging out the moment with obvious enjoyment. Then his finger extended and landed on Sana.

”Sana. You pick someone and you kiss them.”

”How cruel!” Sana pressed a hand to her chest in theatrical protest.

”Those are the terms,” Shige replied, spreading his arms generously. ”I leave the choice entirely to you. And you have a very broad selection to work with tonight.”

Sana sighed and looked around the circle with an expression of deep deliberation that convinced nobody. Her eyes moved from face to face with the performance of someone genuinely undecided, and then settled exactly where everyone could see they were always going to settle.

”I choose this mysterious and handsome man,” she said, her gaze sliding to Nathan beside her.

Nathan was sitting completely still, and he turned his head just enough to fix Hanzo with a look of absolute neutrality from across the fire. The message in it was clear and unhurried. If it had been his decision they would have found their own camp two hours ago and none of this would be happening.

Hanzo received the look and said nothing. She kept her expression composed and directed a silent but pointed wish in his direction that whatever happened next would not involve anyone bleeding.

”Are you shy perhaps?” Sana asked, turning toward him with a smile. She lifted her hand and rested it gently against his cheek, fingertips light against his jaw as she leaned in.

Nathan turned his face toward her and closed the distance before she finished closing hers.

Sana made a startled sound against his mouth, her eyes going wide for a half second before something else entirely replaced the surprise. Her hand stayed against his cheek and she kissed him back as her eyes fluttered shut, her free hand coming up to rest at his shoulder.

Whistles erupted around the fire. Someone let out a long, impressed sound.

Nathan wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her closer, and the kiss deepened into something that made several people around the fire go very quiet in a respectful sort of way. It went on for long enough that the whistling died down into attentive silence, and when they finally parted Sana sat back looking thoroughly undone. Her face was flushed deep and warm, her lips still slightly parted, and she stared at Nathan with the glazed and admiring expression of someone who had just been pulled briefly out of ordinary reality and was not entirely sure how to get back.

”That,” Yuwa said, laughing softly, ”was an exceptional kiss.”

”Yes,” Sana agreed after a moment, her voice slightly distant. ”It was.”

”Your turn now, Sana,” Shige said.

Sana smiled and her eyes drifted around the circle with that same manufactured deliberation as before, though this time they traveled further before stopping. They landed on Hanzo, who had been watching the whole thing from across the fire with an expression that was carefully neutral and gave away nothing at all.

”You,” Sana said simply.

Hanzo’s brow lifted a fraction. ”Me?”

”I want you to kiss someone here as well,” Sana said, her smile carrying the satisfaction of someone who had chosen well.

The men around the fire immediately made their feelings on this known at considerable volume.

”Absolutely not,” Hanzo said. ”I do not kiss people.”

”Your companion accepted,” Sana replied, glancing at Nathan with color still high in her cheeks. ”You agreed to be part of the game.”

Hanzo opened her mouth and found herself without a clean argument to put in it. She looked at Nathan. Nathan looked back at her with the complete and unhurried calm of a man who had been dragged into a group camp against his preferences and had decided that the consequences of that decision belonged entirely to the person who made it.

He was not going to help her.

”Come on!” The group had taken up a collective chant of encouragement now, voices layering over each other, and Hanzo found herself surrounded by expectant faces and no graceful exit.

”I...I...” She looked around the circle, her composure fraying at the edges in a way that was clearly unfamiliar to her, her thoughts not assembling themselves the way they usually did under pressure. Her eyes moved from face to face and then, following some instinct toward the least complicated option available, came to rest on Nathan.

”Again him!”

”I am jealous!”

”Don’t be bitter, he is simply better looking.”

”That is genuinely unkind.”

The complaints from the men were immediate and abundant but carried no real heat. Hanzo stood and walked toward Nathan with the careful stiffness of someone doing something they have not fully made peace with yet, her arms folded against herself, an apologetic expression sitting on her face that she was trying to keep from showing.

She stopped in front of him and looked down at him, mouthing the words quietly enough that only he could read them. ”I am sorry.”

Nathan said nothing.

Before she could find her footing, Yuwa reached out and grabbed her arm with cheerful ruthlessness, pulling her forward so that Hanzo stumbled and landed on Nathan’s lap with a small sound of surprise, one hand pressing flat against his chest to catch herself. She looked up at him from that position with wide eyes and an expression caught somewhere between apology and mortification.

The group erupted.

Nathan looked at her calmly and closed the distance between them.

Hanzo’s eyes shut on instinct as his lips met hers, and the sound that came from her was small and involuntary, a quiet murmur at the soft and unfamiliar warmth of it. She had told herself it was just a kiss and that framing had seemed reasonable enough a moment ago. It seemed less so now. His lips moved against hers slowly, unhurried in a way that was somehow more disorienting than anything forceful would have been, and she found herself unable to pull back the way she had half planned to.

”Hmm~~”

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his kimono.

His arm came around her waist, settling there with an ease that made the whole thing feel less like a game and more like something else entirely, and she was still trying to decide what to do about that when he deepened the kiss and pulled her lower lip gently between his.

A soft sound escaped her that she would have preferred to keep to herself.

Then his mouth moved to her chin, slowly, and she felt the warmth of it travel further than it had any business traveling. When he trailed his lips lightly along her neck and she felt the faint suggestion of his tongue against her skin, her hand tightened hard against his kimono and something between a breath and a sound pressed past her lips before she could stop it.

And then he stopped.

Hanzo blinked her hazy eyes open.

There was a silence around.

She held Nathan’s black eyes before she hurriedly stood up from his lap.