SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 105: 105. A Glove With a Hole in the Thumb and the Smell of a Dead Goat

For a second, nobody spoke. And I can see the lantern popped.

Laura, who never moved when she was thinking, had gone very still.

”Second question,” Eveline said, in a slightly higher voice. ”If I say no, do you still need me beside you on the road...?”

”I need the best scout in this group, of course. I’ll make terrible jokes next to you either way.”

”They are terrible.”

”I’m aware.”

”The one about the goat and the bishop was the worst.”

”That one was great, and you know it.”

A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, and she bent over the notebook again to hide it. ”And the third...”

”Alicia, Laura. I’m sorry, I’m going to ask this directly, because it’s easier than being polite.”

”Are you actually all right with this? Not as a duty. And also not as a favor to him.”

Alicia took her time. I’d seen her answer a hostile council in four steady sentences, but this time she folded her hands and looked at the lantern for a while before she spoke.

”Somebody has to look after the whole arrangement,” she said, ”and I volunteered, so I get to tell you how it works.”

”Nobody is a prize... Nobody is a reward for winning a fight.”

”Everyone chooses, every time, and anyone can walk away without being asked why.”

”If it ever starts to look like a collection instead of people, I’ll be the first one to stop it, and Roland knows I mean that.”

”She does,” I said. ”It’s terrifying.”

”It should be.” Alicia’s mouth curved. ”I’m happy, Eveline~! I wouldn’t tell you that if I weren’t.”

Laura had crossed her arms.

”I’ll be less poetic,” she said. ”I didn’t like it at first...”

”I thought it would make me smaller, and I told him so, but turns out... It didn’t.”

”I’ve got a better sword arm than I had a month ago and a better idea of who I am, and I’m not sorry.”

”If I were, I’d say so, because I’m not good at pretending.”

”That’s true,” said Alicia. ”She’s a bad liar.”

”I’m an excellent liar... I just don’t like to.”

Eveline laughed, wet and shaky, and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. Then she looked at me, and the laugh went out of her face, and what was left was very quiet.

”Do you love them?” she asked.

”Yes.”

I didn’t dress it up. And I didn’t need to.

Alicia’s eyes lowered, and Laura looked at the wall, and Eveline nodded slowly, as if I’d confirmed a thing she’d already known.

”Do you... want to love me?”

That one hit somewhere under the ribs. I thought about every smooth, safe answer I could give, and I put them all down.

”I want to find out without cheating,” I said.

She sat very still. Then she closed the notebook, set it carefully on the floor, and folded her hands on top of it.

”Okay,” she said. ”That’s a good answer.”

”I’m not going to tell you what I think tonight... I’ll decide after the mission, with my own head, and I don’t want any help with it.”

”Not from the curse, and not from you.”

”Wasn’t planning to.”

”Good... Because I’ll know.”

”I believe that.”

Alicia stood up, with a smile so sweet that it made the hair on my arms rise. ”I think that’s enough for tonight.”

”Roland, go and walk around the camp! Do it slowly... For about an hour.”

”What? I haven’t done anything.”

”Then it’ll be an easy walk.”

I went.

Behind me, as I climbed the cellar steps, I heard a thump and a muffled groan, and when I glanced back, Eveline had buried her face in both her ears and was folded over her knees like a small, mortified origami swan.

I did walk around the camp, slowly, and that’s how I ended up eavesdropping.

I’ll say in my defense that it wasn’t deliberate. I was walking the east wall, thinking about nothing at all, when I saw a tiny orange glow in the shelter of a broken buttress and two figures sitting beside it.

One had orange hair and a bad shoulder. The other had ears.

I should have turned around. I stopped instead, behind a fallen slab, and became a very quiet part of the landscape.

”...and then she said, Somebody has to look after the whole arrangement.” Eveline was talking fast, with her hands in her lap. ”Like it was a library... I almost fell over.”

”And Laura said she’s a bad liar, but she’s an excellent liar; she just doesn’t like to.”

”That sounds like Laura,” said Sharon.

”Aren’t you going to say anything?”

”About what?”

”About me... About him... About all of it.” Eveline’s voice shrank. ”I didn’t tell you the details.”

”They’re his to tell, not mine... But you know there’s a curse, and you know what I was asking, and I thought you’d be angry.”

”Or jealous. Or you’d tell me I was being stupid.”

”Why would I be jealous?”

”I don’t know... You’ve been so close!”

”The two of you... At the front, in the chapel...”

”Eveline.” Sharon turned and looked at her. ”I’m going to say this in the simplest way I know.”

”I’m not jealous, and I’m not judging... You’re my little sister in every way except blood, and I’d feed anyone to a dragon for hurting you.”

”If Roland turns out to be an idiot, I’ll throw him in the nearest one, and I won’t even take my boots off.”

”If he isn’t, then you get to be happy, and anybody who has a problem with it can take it up with me.”

”That’s... the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”

”It’s not nice; it’s more like a threat.”

”It’s still a nice threat.”

”Don’t tell anyone.” Sharon dug into her belt pouch and pulled out something small and soft and gray.

It looked like a glove, old and a little ratty, with a patch of stitching on the thumb and a burn mark across the cuff. She held it out between two fingers, with the air of a woman handing over trash. ”Here... Take this.”

Eveline blinked at it. ”What is it?”

”My old gauntlet liner... Half a pair.”

”I lost the other one in a river, years ago, and I’ve been carrying this one ever since.”

”It’s got a hole in the thumb, and it smells like a dead goat... You can have it.”

”Sharon, I can’t...”

”You can, and you will.”

”Put it inside your jacket... When you get scared tomorrow, which you will, put your hand on it and think Sharon’s right behind me.” She pushed it into Eveline’s hands. ”Give it back when you’re done being scared.”

”What if I’m never done?”

”Then I guess you’ll have to keep it.”

Eveline made a small choked sound, and then she did something I don’t think either of them had planned.

She flung both arms around Sharon’s neck and held on. Sharon went stiff as a board.

She said, ”Oh, for the love of...” and stopped, and after about three seconds, she lifted her good arm and patted Eveline’s back with the awkward force of someone trying to flatten a dough.

”Okay,” she muttered. ”Okay... That’s enough! Go to bed.”

”You’re blushing.”

”I’m not.”

”Your ears are red.”

”I don’t have the right kind of ears to be red!”

Eveline pulled back, grinning through tears, and her own ears gave a small, happy twitch that I could see from forty feet away. She got up, brushed off her knees, and walked toward the cellar with the glove clutched against her chest.

Sharon stayed where she was. She watched the small fire for a while.

Then she lifted her head and looked, for a moment longer than a person looks at a thing they don’t care about, straight across the dark toward the tent where I was supposed to be sleeping.

’Oh shit!’ I ducked behind the slab so fast that I nearly dislocated my neck.

I told myself I’d imagined it and decided that was a problem for another day... Possibly another year.