That last one came from two people simultaneously, from different parts of the camp, and both of them stopped talking when they realized what they had said.
In the largest tent, Vess sat across from him.
The tent was not large. It was a standard field command tent — a table, two folding stools, a map frame that had nothing in it. She sat on one stool with her sword across her knees, old habit, and she watched him sit on the other stool with the relaxed, owning posture of someone who felt at home in every space they entered.
"Who are you," she said. Third time.
"Someone passing through," he said.
"Passing through a C-rank dungeon."
"Passing through the guild town. The dungeon was on the way."
She looked at his face.
She looked at her sword.
She looked at his face again.
Her body was doing things she had not given it permission to do. Her skin was warm. Her pulse was in her throat. Her thighs were pressed together under the table and she was acutely aware of the pressing in a way that she found unacceptable and could not stop.
She was thirty-five years old. She had been a dungeon commander for six years. She had fought things that would make most people leave the profession and she had not flinched. She had no context for sitting in a tent across a table from a man and feeling her professional competence drain away through the bottom of her boots.
It was his charm. She knew, on some level she could not reach, that it was not natural. That something was emanating from him that was not his face and not his voice but something underneath both of those things. She could feel the edges of it, the way you can feel the edges of a fire without touching it.
She could not act on that knowledge.
The knowing did not help.
"My sister—" she started.
"Your sister asked a good question," he said. "You deflected it."
Vess’s jaw tightened.
"She is eighteen years old—"
"She asked a question that you could not answer," he said pleasantly. "That is not an age problem."
The tent flap opened.
Lena came in.
She was not supposed to come in. She had that awareness on her face — the slight defiance of someone doing something they expect to be told to stop. She was holding a tin cup of something hot. She set it on the table. She looked at Raven. She did not look at her sister.
"I thought you might want—"
"Lena." Vess’s voice was flat.
"I am just—"
"You do not speak to him as if you—"
"I am right here," Lena said. The defiance clarified. It lost the slight apology it had been carrying. "I am in the same tent. I can speak to whoever I—"
"You are a junior healer on your third dungeon assignment—"
"I am eighteen years old today—"
"Which means you are a child—"
"WHICH MEANS I AM AN ADULT—"
The sound in the tent was not loud. But it was sudden. Vess’s palm against Lena’s cheek. Not a fist. An open hand. The sound of it was a crack, sharp and complete.
Lena’s head turned.
The silence after it was worse than the sound.
Vess looked at her hand. She looked at her sister’s face. The cheek was red. Lena’s eyes were wide and wet and she was not moving and the expression on her face was not surprise — it was the expression of someone who had been expecting this for a long time and had hoped to be wrong.
"You are not old enough," Vess said. Her voice was quiet now. The command-flat gone. Something underneath it that was not quite regret and not quite justification but lived in the space between. "To handle things. Any of this. Go back to the camp."
She turned. She walked out of the tent.
Lena stood.
Her hand went to her cheek. She pressed her palm against the red skin. Her eyes were streaming. She was trying not to make sounds and she was failing at the edges — small, involuntary sounds that leaked between pressed lips.
She turned toward the tent flap.
His hand closed around her wrist.
She stopped.
"Wait," he said.
She turned back. Her eyes were wet. Her cheek was red. She looked at him and her face had the open, raw, completely undefended expression of someone who has been crying and has not had time to build the wall back up.
"What happened?" he said.
The question broke the last structural element.
She cried.
Not prettily. Not the composed, contained crying of a woman managing her emotions. She cried the way young people cry when they have been holding something for a long time and someone has asked the right question — ugly and immediate and total.
He stood. He pulled her in.
His arms went around her. Her face pressed against his chest. Her hands gripped the front of his shirt. He put one hand on the back of her head and held her there.
She cried.
He let her.
When the worst of it passed — the deep, shaking sobs replacing themselves with the smaller, intermittent kind — she lifted her face from his chest. She looked up at him. Her eyes were red. Her nose was running. Her cheek was still flushed from the slap.
He looked down at her.
His thumb moved to her cheek. He pressed it gently against the red skin. Not healing magic this time. Just the warmth of contact.
"Why," she said. Her voice was wrecked and young and furious. "Why does she always— I am not— I have trained for three years— I passed the healer’s examination ranked fourth in my cohort— I have been on eleven dungeon assignments without incident— why does she treat me like I am still— like I cannot—"
She stopped.
She looked at his face.
The moonlight was coming through the tent gap. It caught his jaw. His eyes. The particular quality of his face when it was focused on her — not the look he had given Vess, which had been assessment, but something else. Something attentive. Something that was making her very aware of how her chest was pressed against his and how his hand was on the back of her head and how close his face was to hers.
"Why does she think I am a child?" she whispered.
He looked at her.
His eyes moved. Her face. Her eyes still wet. Her mouth. The strained fabric at her chest. Her face again.
"Do you want to become a woman?" he said.
She blinked.
"What—" She pulled back slightly. "I am— what do you mean I can—"
He leaned.
His mouth was very close to her ear. She felt his breath against the side of her face. "I heard today is your birthday," he said. His voice was warm. "Do you want a gift?"
She looked at him.
The moonlight on his face.
The particular, impossible quality of it — the jaw, the eyes, the complete and unhurried attention directed entirely at her. The warmth of his arms still around her. The way her body felt inside those arms, which was a sensation she had not had before and was not sure she had words for.
"Yes," she said.
He smiled.
It was a smile that a more experienced woman would have recognized immediately as the smile of a devil who had just been given permission. She did not recognize it. She saw a beautiful man’s face become more beautiful and she felt something in her lower belly respond to that and she did not examine either of those things.
He kissed her.
"Mmmnhhpppphhh~~~!!!?!"