Vassal by Sterling D'Este (reading books for 7 year olds .txt) 📗

“You’re a very good fighter. Humane…” Not like Alphonse.

She fell silent again for a long time, staring vacantly at the little stream before shuddering and crossing her arms over her chest in some attempt to shield herself from the cold.

Etienne was right. She had lost sight of the goal. She had lost hope.

She was turning into Enyo.

Delyth’s words floated back to her in memory, and Alphonse looked at the warrior. “I’m glad you don’t have to bear Enyo. I wouldn’t want you to be broken apart into tiny pieces that will never fit together again. You’re too precious…”

She was tired. So very tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of being afraid. Tired of feeling guilty. Tired of becoming a monster.

It would be easier to just… let Enyo have her.

“Where do you think we go when we die?”

༄

Delyth was crying, thick rain-drop beads making hot tracks down her face. Gods, was that what it felt like? To have everything you were broken into smaller and smaller pieces? She couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t let it continue. She was losing Alphonse just as the healer had come to mean so much. Losing her to something old and vindictive.

And maybe she wasn’t carrying around that pain.

But this was going to break her just as certainly.

Delyth shook Alphonse, her expression fierce. “Don’t you dare leave me. Hold on to those pieces. Take them in both your hands and fucking hold on. You’ve been so strong. My brave little bird. Hold on.”

❀

The shaking actually startled Alphonse enough that she blinked, expression changing. She looked up at Delyth, her doe eyes beseeching. What was there left to hold onto?

Small hands offered to Delyth, empty.

She had no magic. She couldn’t heal anymore. She had broken her oath as a healer, she had betrayed her best friend, she had lied to her paramour. She was tainted and dirty and rotten and broken.

Enyo had won. She didn’t need to make it to the temple. Alphonse was ready to admit defeat.

“What do I have left?”

Delyth took Alphonse’s proffered hands and pressed one to the skin above her beating heart and one to her cheek, still damp with tears. “You have me, Alphonse.”

Those glassy amber eyes shuttered and opened again. She inhaled unevenly.

“You still want me?” she asked, actually surprised. Who would want to be with a murdering heart-eating blood-drinking monster?

Delyth made a choking sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Gods, Alphonse, what about this says anything else?” She let go of Alphonse’s hands to rub her face, scrubbing away at tears with an almost angry frustration.

“I—But I don’t understand… I— Because I was going to eat that heart and… I know you’ve been letting us drink your blood. I mean— You shouldn’t be with someone who— who does that to you, Delyth.” She had assumed Delyth would have enough of this.

Enough of flip-flopping between brutal Goddess and whimpering, frail mortal. Enough guarding and enough managing. Protecting Alphonse, protecting the world from Alphonse…

Something wailed in Alphonse to shut up. If Delyth was still willing, she shouldn’t shove her away. The girl knocked that voice aside.

“I want you to be treated better. To be treated kindly and reverently. You don’t deserve this punishment, Delyth. Not because you’re a warrior and not because you were born different. If this is some sort of— If you’re trying to pay some debt… You’ve done enough.”

༄

Maybe Alphonse was right.

Maybe Delyth had done enough.

Maybe she had fulfilled every obligation she had ever owed to the temple that had raised her.

But it had been a while since she was here just for the temple.

Delyth put her hands on either side of the healer’s face and looked down into her amber eyes. How could she possibly make her understand? The priestess wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t going to let Alphonse give up. Wasn’t going to let her fade into smaller and smaller pieces.

And it had absolutely nothing to do with what either of them deserved.

“Alphonse,” she said finally, “I love you.”

❀

Incredibly, Alphonse laughed. A sudden, bright musical sound that made absolutely no sense in the fading afternoon light by the stream. The sound was jarring coming from her stiff lips and tear streaked face.

“You can’t love me! You love me? No…  You shouldn’t love me. How could you?” She babbled, fluctuating between beaming up at Delyth and then scowling.  No one could love her. She was nothing. She was dust.

She was glittering pieces of diamond lost on the wind because Delyth loved her.

“How? How can you love me? That’s impossible.” Color, warm, dusky rose pink, was slowly blooming in her face. Her eyes were brightening.

Another laugh escaped her, and Alphonse clamped her clean hands over her mouth, trying to hold it in. What was happening? Her stomach was knots of guilt and butterflies of joy. Her mind was whirling and dancing and weeping.

But her heart.

Alphonse dropped her hands to feel beneath her breast. It was beating. It wasn’t completely hollow. Completely empty…

It had that little piece of love.

“Love? Love.” She tested the word. It felt fuzzy on her lips. On her tongue. Like it popped and bounced of its own accord. No one had every said that word to her before.

“Yes, love, you silly woman.” Delyth found one of Alphonse’s hands and kissed the palm. Kissed her shoulder. Her cheek. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Each kiss felt like a tiny shock of energy, of life. Each kiss brought warmth back to Alphonse’s cold and numb body.

And those words.

They filled her heart and her mind and her body until there was nothing left but Delyth’s voice, chanting.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Alphonse tilted her chin up to Delyth’s face, wanting a kiss on the mouth.

The priestess’s gaze traced a path from Alphonse’s amber eyes to her lips and back again. She reached out to wrap both arms around Alphonse’s waist, pulling her close and leaning in until she could feel Alphonse’s breath against her skin. Then, Delyth kissed her,