Episode Seven

“…!”

“Wait, what was I just—”

Kiaran’s ragged breathing stopped dead.

She lifted her hands from my body, raised them both in surrender, and turned her eyes toward the doorway.

“Ah… I got a little too carried away, it seems. Sorry — I’ll back off right now.”

Her voice was trembling as she said it. She stood and moved away from me. The chains binding my wrists dissolved too, but my body wouldn’t obey me the way it should.

Selene held her ground for a moment, checked the impulse to surge forward, and kept her staff raised as she spoke.

“Further back. If you don’t comply I’ll blow your legs off.”

“O-okay, okay. White Witch, you’re kind of different right now, aren’t you?”

Whether it was Selene’s killing intent that snapped her back to herself, Kiaran complied with her words, and something human came back into her manner.

The Kiaran she was right now — she could be talked to. I was sure of it.

I thought that, and yet my vision was blurring, and the sounds around me were growing slowly distant. Leaving Selene and Kiaran alone together would be a problem.

Alva Prison.

With Selene’s murmur, particles of light gathered around Kiaran’s body. The light grew, shifting form into a large sphere that enclosed her completely, becoming a cage around her.

“Don’t move from there. Move even a little and I’ll kill you.”

“Ahaha… you say kill too much… I’m not going to do anything.”

Selene said it in a voice drained of warmth, then let go of her staff and ran to me.

“Sion!!”

“Are you awake?! Say something!”

A voice like a scream, echoing from somewhere far away. I could feel my body being shaken, and yet it felt somehow like something happening to someone else, with no sense of reality to it.

I don’t think she drained enough mana to kill me. Probably I’m just a little tired. When I wake up, I’ll eat with Selene again, take a commission, have an argument—

Oh.

Am I awake right now? Am I alive? My head won’t work. I don’t really understand, but the voice I can hear somewhere in the distance — I want to keep listening to it.

Just as the last thread of consciousness was about to let go, a pulse deep in my chest shook through my whole body.

Something stirred at my core, and feeling spread through my fingertips. There was a nausea to it too, like something pressing in. But beyond that — more than that — it was comfortable, and strangely settling.

Heat was gathering at one point in my body. Mana should have been moving through all of me, and yet that one place alone was loud, beating like a pulse of its own.

My closed lips were gently forced open, and warmth was poured into me, again and again.

With a soft wet sound the gentle sensation drew away, and I wanted more. Not wanting that warmth to disappear, I lifted my face toward it without thinking.

“…Selene.”

Following the lips that were leaving mine, I reached for the warmth again, without meaning to. She seemed to hesitate for just a moment, but she received me.

How much time passed, I don’t know. But my blurred vision and the sounds that had been so far away grew sharp and clear, and—

“Cough, ha—”

I pulled my face from Selene’s and coughed hard. Blinking through vision blurred with tears, I tried to get my thoughts working.

I breathed again and again, and as oxygen finally reached the depths of my lungs, awareness came back properly.

What was I just doing?

Mana was flowing in, and I braced for the usual unpleasantness. But instead something else filled my head entirely, and then before I knew it—

I pushed Selene’s shoulders gently and put distance between us, and looked away in a hurry.

The warmth lingering on my lips was filling my head, and I couldn’t get my breath steady even though nothing hurt. My gaze kept moving, unsettled, and my fingers wouldn’t stop opening and closing.

“S, Sion…?”

At the small voice I might have missed entirely, I turned, and met Selene’s eyes. White skin flushed a deep red. The eyes that always looked steadily into whatever they faced were trembling and darting, unable to settle.

“I’m, sorry. I think I’m, okay now.”

Afraid something would break open inside me, I dropped my gaze and murmured it.

The exhaustion and the headache were still there, strong, but I could probably move on my own.

In the room lit by Selene’s magic, all I could distinctly hear was our own breathing. Something needed to be said, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Um. Mana, thank you. I feel much better.”

I said it quietly, tracing the floor with one finger for no reason, to fill the silence.

There was so much else I had to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

“…Yes. I’m glad you’re safe.”

I couldn’t tell where her gaze was directed. Only that she wasn’t looking at me, I thought. The awkwardness made it hard to breathe.

Unable to bear the air between us where the conversation had stopped, a single deliberate cough sounded from inside the sphere.

“Um… can I speak?”

Raising one small hand, Kiaran put out her voice, sounding uncomfortable. I turned my eyes toward her.

Kiaran was there. Of course she was. She was the one who had brought me to this room.

She attacked me, and after a while Selene came to rescue me. Selene’s magic enclosed her, and then — for a while after that—

The fact I had wanted to stay unaware of pressed itself in front of me, and my fingertips went rigid.

“Um… were you watching…?”

“Oh, absolutely. Every bit of it.”

She dropped her eyebrows in a look of mild discomfort, then went on, as if trying to shift the mood.

“I mean, I understand it was an emotional reunion and everything, but… it was maybe a little intense?”

“I was kind of here the whole time, just so you know.”

Kiaran’s dry laugh lingered strangely in my ears. She was the cause of all of this, and yet she was the one being considerate about the atmosphere.

I tried to say something and opened my mouth several times, but only a hoarse sound came out each time.

I looked to Selene for help, and the moment our eyes met she went red again and looked down. Even the dependable White Witch was apparently no use at all right now.

I breathed in and out deeply, several times, to pull myself back together.

The awkwardness was still there at the edge of my thoughts, but later. If I was going to talk to Kiaran, it had to be now.

I pushed myself to my feet on unsteady legs and moved slowly toward the sphere around Kiaran.

“Sion, don’t!”

I gently received Selene’s hand as she reached out, and took it, drawing her up to stand beside me.

“It’s all right. I’m going to explain what happened, so stay close and listen.”

I smiled at Selene’s puzzled face and reached out to touch the sphere softly.

“You be good too, Kiaran. I did let you absorb mana, didn’t I?”

“…You did. I nearly broke my promise not to kill. Sorry.”

She said it, sank down to sit, and went quiet with her gaze turned to the corner of the room.

I stroked Selene’s back gently as she stood watchful, eyes sharp on Kiaran, and began to tell her what had happened since we arrived in this room.