Their faces were close. Too close.
Sera had been so concentrated on the work – the mana push, the careful increments, his system accepting it in grateful pulls – that she hadn't registered the lean. Hadn't noticed herself closing the distance until his finger twitched against the stone floor and something foreign traveled up her wrists.
She looked up.
Rian's eyes were closed – and then, slowly, he opened them, directly staring into hers.
She thought, again, somewhat stunned, that his eyes were very pretty. Amethysts. A gem she had always been rather fond of.
Up close, the rest of him was too.
His brows were dark and well-defined, strong without being heavy – the kind of feature that gave his face a determined architecture. The sharp line of his nose, the bridge of it catching the temple's wrong light. And across the top of it, bleeding up to his left cheek and forehead – the burns. The corrosive damage that had just occurred a few hours earlier. Thin new skin pulled tight over what the liquid had done, the tissue beneath still tender and healing, a redness that hadn't decided yet what color it was going to settle into. Prone to break at the slightest touch.
She found him beautiful, not in spite, but because of it. There was something in them she didn't have a name for yet. Not pity. Not quite admiration. Respect, maybe. Something adjacent to both – the feeling of looking at the evidence of a resolute decision and understanding, in some wordless way, why he had made it. The willingness to pay a price. He had accepted the cost before the cost arrived.
She recognized that.
She wasn't sure what to do with the recognition.
It sat in her the way unfamiliar things sat – present, unexamined, waiting for her to decide whether to ignore it or look at it directly. She had been filing things for years. The filing was automatic. Fast. Efficient.
It didn't come.
She was very aware of how close she was to him. Aware of the inches between her face and his. Aware of the focused quality of his attention – steady, unhurried, the same careful precision she had noticed from the periphery, but now, up close. No distance. Just – her, in the full weight of it. His gaze was mildly intense and unrelenting.
Felt her ears burn even though the temple was cool inside.
She registered the duration a beat too late – a couple of seconds at minimum, both of them still, staring at each other, neither of them doing anything about it. The encampment moved around them without touching this specific pocket of marble and column and wrong temple light.
Her eyes widened fractionally. She shifted – straightened and sat back. Increased the gap deliberately – reestablishing the distance, the professional margin, the thing that made sense.
Rian didn't move. He just followed her with his eyes.
Sera cleared her throat and broke the silence first.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
She aimed her gaze at his collarbone. Opted for any conversation at all, keenly aware his gaze hadn't moved from her face. Her heart was doing something weirdly distant and irregular. She ignored it.
"Alright," he said. His eyes traveled from her eyebrows down to her nose, carefully taking in the landscape of her features. He thought that it was nice to wake up from a terrible raging moment into this one – the anger, the resentment, the perpetual sadness in his chest eased in some strange way he didn't yet understand. Maybe something surrounding relief and wonder. Lost in soaking up the features that he had previously watched from a distance. It felt a little awkward to look at her directly, hence he had avoided it – he didn't know why. But now, the moment had presented itself by fate and he found that he didn't dislike it.
Enjoyed it really. Strange feeling.
"The corrosive residue is mostly cleared." She kept her eyes on his chest. "Your pollution is minimal now, too. I think you're almost done. I was just topping up." She looked up at him, hesitated a little, before speaking again – directly. "The burns will scar. But…I think you prepared for that."
"I did," he said, his gaze doing a curious tour around her mouth.
Sera swallowed.
Felt something in her stomach flip that had never flipped before. Not the foreign flutter from before – this was different. Faster. Less dignified. A sensation that had never happened before happening for the first time and her body registering it before her mind caught up. Thought distantly of her former lover, prince of Ratiora, who she retained nothing about. Thought about her bastard Instructor.
She didn't have a category for it – had no memories of this feeling. She didn't know what to do with something new. Something was occurring between them – clearly. She could tell that, but she didn't know what to do with it. Should she run? Fold what was happening and deal with it later, when she had time to think.
The encampment was right there. Ophelia was three columns over. Rena was somewhere behind her giving instructions. The raid was real and present and had things that needed doing.
She held his gaze for one second. Then shifted, moving to stand.
His hand caught her wrist, gently wrapping fingers around it. She stilled.
"We should talk," he said, his eyes focused entirely on her.
She looked at him.
His face was doing the work his words weren't. Both of them knew. He had felt her push extra mana into his vessel – something that wasn't possible with guide work, had lain still and let her do it, and was now looking at her with quiet expectation – waiting for her to tell the truth of the matter.
Normal guides recycled. Pulled pollution and returned clean mana. That was the limit. What goes out, is what goes back in. They couldn't push more – that was antithetical to guiding. If they could, then that wasn't guide work.
Sera had not done guide work.
"Talk about what?" she replied. Obliquely. Perfectly calibrated.
She returned his gaze. Calm, ruby red eyes refusing. Rian didn't back down – kept his gaze on her, his face set in a gentle, impassive expression. They stayed silent like that for a while. Then Sera's mouth quirked into a half-smile.
"Is it an S-rank thing?" she asked, quietly, slightly sly.
"Is what?" he returned, slightly confused.
Sera leaned in towards his ear. Rian shivered when he felt her breath on the edge of it. "Peeking at vessels without permission," she whispered, before pulling back quickly – a mischievous look in her eye.
"What about you?" he said, violet eyes mildly indignant. His ear burned. He set it aside.
She blinked. "About what?"
His hand was still on her wrist. He didn't move – didn't lean. Just looked at her with that same steady attention. A pause before he answered.
"Putting things in vessels without permission."
Said level. Same voice he used for everything.
Sera's heart did the unfamiliar thing again.
The corner of his mouth moved – barely, gone before she could catch it.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
"That's guide work," she lied.
"Is it," he replied.
His gaze moved down to her body and arm – taking in her injuries. His hand was still around her wrist, which was wrapped in a bandage. He gently brushed his thumb against the fabric.
"Formation in twenty!"
Rena's voice bellowed across the encampment – flat and carrying.
Sera's eyes moved toward the sound. Then back to him, briefly.
Rian dropped her wrist and she stood up – hurried to the rest of the guides.
He watched her go.
Underneath the surface of the moment, quiet and unhurried, Rian was aware of her mana still moving through his vessel – the last of what she had pushed in, her signature present in his system, something cool and particular that didn't belong to him. He could feel it the way he could feel the new ceiling. The evolution's sensitivity making it legible where it hadn't been before.
Slowly dissolving and transforming into his own mana the way all foreign things eventually transitioned – absorbed, naturalized, becoming indistinguishable from what had always been there.
He let himself feel it before it was gone. Didn't examine why. Breathed out long and slow, and began gathering himself to head to the commanders' tent.
He had just gotten his feet under him, still in kneeling position, when a pair of boots stopped in front of him.
He looked up.
Arlen, hands in his pockets, looking down at him with a curiously devious expression that Rian knew all too well meant that Arlen had seen something interesting. Fuck, he thought.
"What was that," Arlen said.
Rian looked away. "What was what." Obliquely.
A beat.
Then a slow grin spread across Arlen's face – the shit-eating kind. The kind that meant Arlen wasn't going to let this go.
"Oh," Arlen said. "Oh."
"Don't."
"Is this why you asked about that session?"
"No."
"Rian." Arlen extended a hand to help him up. Rian grabbed it. "I never thought I'd see the day."
Rian looked at him.
"Do you even know how to kiss properly," Arlen said, conversational, pulling him up. "Genuinely. I've been wondering. We've been friends for eight years. I've never seen you–"
"Arlen." Rian stood to his feet.
"–and Rena handles your sessions, which, no offense, but she's not exactly–"
"Arlen."
"–so I'm just curious whether–"
"Arlen."
"–maybe Rena should give you pointers. She's very capable. I'm sure she'd–"
Rian pressed his palm flat over Arlen's mouth.
"Be quiet."
Arlen's eyes crinkled above his hand. Pleased with himself.
Rian held the palm there for one more second. Then let it drop and started walking toward the commander's tent.
Arlen fell into step beside him.
"I'm just saying," Arlen said. "If you need anyone to–"
"I will leave you here."
"You won't."
He wouldn't. They walked together towards the tent.
✦ ♡ ✦
The commander's tent had been pitched at the rear of the encampment.
It wasn't really a tent. More a configuration – two of the supply tarps rigged between columns and a folding map table dragged in from the supplies. Rena had the table covered in their working materials: the scouts' rough sketch of the temple's entrance hall and the ornate door, casualty figures, the squad rotation chart she had been adjusting in increments since the flower fight.
She and Joel were leaning over it when Rian and Arlen pushed through the flap.
They both looked up.
Rena's eyes moved across them – Arlen first, bright and pleased about something. Then Rian. His face was neutral, but the set of his shoulders wasn't. Something was bothering him. Probably Arlen.
She set down her stylus.
"What's going on," she said.
Flat. Diagnostic. The voice she used on field anomalies.
Arlen opened his mouth.
"Rian has a cru–"
Rian's palm hit Arlen's mouth before the word finished, stifling his words with a soft thwump.
"I will end you," Rian muttered, turning his eyes towards Arlen, violet flashing almost imperceptibly.
A pause.
Arlen's eyes did the crinkling thing again. Pleased with himself – again. Possibly more pleased than before, because now he had an audience.
Rena watched this with a flat expression.
Then something in her face softened. Barely. Gone as quickly as it came.
She had seen Rian wear many expressions across many lifetimes. Most of them weren't this one. The mutedness that she had seen settle into him since he woke up in this life was concerning. The lights were still on but something dimmed behind them.
What sat in his face right now wasn't muted.
It was mild and reluctant and could possibly be described, by someone looking closely, as embarrassed.
Good, she thought. Better than the alternative.
She wasn't going to needle him about it.
Then her eyes moved, briefly, to Joel.
Joel looked at the two of them, nonplussed. He had a stepbrother. A loud one. This was more or less the same as that. He had become very good at letting words go through one ear and out the other.
He returned Rena's glance without opinion.
She looked back at Rian.
"Hands off your colleague, Commander."
Rian dropped his hand.
Arlen took an exaggerated breath, the way someone surfacing from underwater might. "Thank you," he said. "I was almost–"
"Quiet," Rena said. "Come here."
They complied.
She picked up her stylus.
"We have eighteen minutes before formation. Walk me through the recovery state."
Joel moved first.
"Casualties holding. No deaths in the flower fight." A beat. "Two espers caught early – Renden and Sable. Both stabilized, moved to defense. Renden's mana is in rough shape, Therain's monitoring. Sable lost a hand."
"From the golems?"
"Haley's leg is healed but she still can't run – moved her to defense as well. Aaronson is mobile – sore but functional, bringing him back to offense. The rest cycled through guiding and are sufficient."
Rena nodded once. Made a note.
"And the commanders."
Joel's eyes flicked to Rian. Well, all of their eyes flicked to Rian. Rian kept his stare on the table.
"Rian's burns are stabilized. Functional. Not fully healed."
Rian didn't react.
"Pollution loads?"
"Manageable. Healers are fatigued. Guides are at eighty-percent capacity, Hibiscus is doing well, but she's overtaxed. Ophelia and Therain at their limits – placing them in the backline. Emerson and Anna will be taking the lead during the fight. Support getting rest this evening is crucial."
Rena nodded once. Made a note.
"The temple."
Joel pulled two sketches toward the center of the table.
The first was the entrance hall in rough strokes – columns, the marble floor, the door at the back. A few notations along the edges where the scouts had marked structural details: cracks, debris piles, lines of sight from the temple steps. Most of the page was blank space.
The second was the door itself.
That one had been drawn with care. Arten had taken the time on it – the figures in robes rendered panel by panel, the procession picked out in careful pencil, what might have been a feast filled in along the lower edge. Smaller motifs along the borders. Knives. Bowls. Mouths. Hands in prayer.
The four of them leaned in.
"This is what we have," Joel said. "Arten worked the door."
"Did he try to read past it?"
"He tried. The word he used was loud. Not noisy. Dense. Pushed back at him the moment he reached. Said it felt like something full was waiting on the other side of the seam."
Rian looked at the door sketch.
He had seen his own variety of doors in temples. Some repeated across lives – the same configurations of marble and bronze, the same dungeon language reused with small variation. The System had a vocabulary it returned to. He had learned, over forty-four lives, to recognize the recurring grammar and to file the variants against it.
This one was new.
He looked at the figures in robes. A procession. A figure at the center holding a long unfurled scroll that reached the bottom of the panel – covered in tiny figures, each one distinct, none repeated. Knives, vessels, mouths, and hands in prayer along the borders.
He placed it in his memory carefully. In case he died again.
Most likely would.
"Working assumption," Rena said.
"Humanoid," Rian said. "Sentient. Clerical – priest implies hierarchy, ritual, possibly summoning. Maybe psychic in offense."
"Companions?"
"Unknown. The scan didn't give us numbers," Joel responded.
"So we go in blind."
"We go in blind."
Arlen straightened from the table. Stretched, hands lacing behind his head.
"Wonderful," he said. "I love that for us."