Chapter 723: Could Valerius Be Gay...?

Chapter 723: Could Valerius Be Gay...? [Bonus Chapter]

Silas let out a dry fond sigh and ruffled her wild blond mane, smoothing the untamed curls back over her pointed ears the way he used to in the Secret Realm.

"You’re being quite cheeky... As old as you are..."

She’d hold still for it about as often as a cat held still for a bath, and this time she did, for half a second then her small hand flattened against the center of his white shirt... right over his sternum.

Warmth sank through the cotton and skin and muscle, straight into the spiritual meridians of his chest.

’Huh?’

Her big eyes blinked once, wide and clear, as her pulse brushed the heavy revolving sphere of his Gold Core.

A slow delighted grin curled across her face as she drew her hand back and slapped his chest twice.

Pat-pat!

"So it’s true, huh?" Mia chirped, loud enough to carry over the shouting fruit vendors. "You’ve reached the Second Stage of Core Advancement..."

The air around them froze solid.

Valerius, who’d been marching up behind her with theatrical swagger, caught his boot on his own coat and nearly face-planted.

Half a pace from Silas, Morwenna’s gray eyes went wide with a sharp guarded jolt.

Aeliana, who’d just risen from the dusty granite with her dignity held together by stubbornness, stopped breathing with her fingers pinched in the pleats of her skirt.

Reading a Lord’s exact tier normally took a meditative examination and diagnostic crystals, or at least a long clash of wills... Mia had done it in the middle of a noisy bazaar with a single tap of her palm but again, It was Mia... Was it surprising?

"Your brazenness hasn’t changed," Silas grumbled, rubbing his sternum. "You almost knocked the wind out of me."

"Nonsense! A solid vessel doesn’t break under a teacher’s tap!" Mia dusted her ragged cloak with an exaggerated flick of her wrists and skipped back toward Valerius. "Keep up, Master! You walk like a man carrying a wardrobe!"

"I’m strutting," Valerius protested.

"You’re losing."

Valerius straightened his coat with great dignity, and his golden eyes swept over the party until they landed on the tall regal silver-haired woman beside Silas.

He pressed a hand over the silver aegis crest on his chest and swept into a bow so elaborate that his brass-blond hair caught the sun.

"Lady Aeliana... It’s an honor to see you looking radiant, even under the blinding dust of Central City."

Aeliana dipped her head, and her shortened ears twitched once with perfect discipline.

Her face had already smoothed back to pristine porcelain, with the sudden urge she’d felt toward her grand-aunt buried under four layers of etiquette.

"The pleasure is mine, Lord Valerius," she replied with a small sigh. "I trust your journey across the borders was free of turbulence and administrative delay..."

"Nothing my wallet couldn’t solve," Valerius chuckled.

Silas cleared his throat and stepped into the circle. "You know Aeli. This is Morwenna, an associate from our maritime ventures."

Morwenna didn’t bow.

She gave Valerius a curt unimpressed nod, chestnut hair lifting in the dry draft.

"Aye. Keep your hands off my man and we won’t have a problem."

Valerius blinked. Under the plain linen he could smell an expensive perfume, but he smiled anyway.

"This is Rika," Silas went on, nodding at the silver-haired woman leaning against his left arm.

Rika offered a slow sleepy blink.

In the crook of her neck the snowy hatchling poked out its downy head, let out one tiny puff of pale smoke and went right back to sleep.

"Greetings," Rika murmured with her cheek resting on Silas’s sleeve. "I’m Rika and I protect Master..."

Even if this man was Silas’s friend, Rika still didn’t want to be that comfortable with him... well for now.

"From what?" Valerius asked politely, Silas was too strong to just be protected by anyone... Was there perhaps something too powerful chasing him?

"Erm... I don’t know."

Valerius almost fell over.

’What do you mean you don’t know...?!’

"And this is Solenne, our Chief Artificer." Silas’s hand found the base of the fluffy caramel tail, and his knuckles sank wrist-deep into the fur, kneading with shameless ease.

"H-Hello, Lord Valerius!" Solenne squeaked with her ears pinning flat.

Her face went scarlet and her fingers strangled the brass buckles of her satchel.

"I build things! Please forgive my Lord, he has an uncontrollable habit...!"

Valerius stared at Silas’s hand then at the quivering dog-girl as his eyebrows crept toward his hairline.

’He’s holding her tail... In the middle of the trade district... In broad daylight too,’ Valerius thought, with equal parts envy and disbelief. ’And he doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty.’

He opened his mouth for a witty remark about public indecency, but Morwenna took three slow deliberate steps forward.

Her boots clacked on the granite.

Her stormy eyes tracked the width of his shoulders, the cut of his jaw and the expensive silk of his coat with one measurement at a time.

Ever since Silas had mentioned a close contact named "Valerius" the corsair had nursed a dark private suspicion that the name belonged to some perfumed high-born noblewoman who meant to lure her captain away with wealth and silk and politics.

The mental picture of a heiress batting her lashes at Silas had cost her half a night’s sleep, with her hand on her hilt the whole time and standing two paces from him now, the truth was obvious.

"Good..."

He was a man.

A loud overdressed golden-haired one who preened like a rooster and strutted like a lieutenant on shore leave, but a man all the same.

’Very good,’ Morwenna thought, and a deep silent wave of relief rolled through her chest while her face stayed flat as an iron plate. ’No perfumed letters either... It’s just another noble with soft hands and too many rings.’

None of that meant she planned to be friendly.

"You’re Silas’s friend, then?" she rasped, in a voice like anchor chains dragging over coral.

"His finest and most illustrious companion, my good lady!" Valerius declared, puffing out his chest.

Morwenna snorted. "Right... Don’t drag him into any tavern brawl you can’t pay your way out of, He’s got real work to do."

"I can handle my own brawls, thank you!" Valerius scoffed, though he drifted half a step back from the predatory pressure rolling off her shoulders.

Silas cut in before she could challenge Valerius to an arm-wrestling match on a fruit cart.

"Come on, the sun’s high and the plaza’s getting packed... I promised Rika something cold."

"Cold?" Mia’s ears shot up.

She spun on her heel with her eyes locking onto Silas. "Did someone say sweet ice? Student, if you don’t buy your venerable teacher a massive bowl of mountain cream right now, I’ll curse your bathwater into vinegar...!"

"I’m already buying," Silas sighed, and pointed at a row of striped awnings on the western side of the square. "Let’s move."

The confectioner’s pavilion took two minutes to find, guided by the smell of churned cream and crushed vanilla pods drifting through the heat.

A round beastkin vendor froze cream on the spot in ice-enchanted brass basins and scraped it into porcelain bowls with wooden paddles.

Silas dropped a pouch of Spirit credits on the counter, ordered for everyone, and watched the girls descend with amusement and a growing dread.

What followed was chaos.

Rika sat on the edge of a stone bench and held her bowl in both hands like a sacred chalice.

She dipped her spoon in the frosted berry cream and took a huge serious bite.

FWUMP!

The hatchling in her collar jolted awake.

Its head snapped up, and its beady eyes went wide with primal horror at the freezing draft rolling off her mouth.

PEEP!

Its feathers puffed until it looked like an oversized dandelion, and it dove under her chin, shivering against her warm throat and firing three panicked puffs of smoke but Rika didn’t flinch.

She chewed with stoic gravity, swallowed, and dug in for another scoop while a traumatized bird burrowed into her collarbone.

"It really doesn’t like the cold," Rika observed. "Haah... I can understand you, sometimes the cold is a bit too much even for a Goddess."

’Goddess? What Goddess?’ Valerius was very confused however the Phoenix on the other hand agreed.

"Chiirp~"

"Yes yes... like that, you know like how Master hates the snow too, right?"

"I don’t hate the snow, I just hate how it always falls..." Silas said.

"Hm." She took another bite and the bird screamed. "Hey, Pheeny... Come on... take a bite too?"

On the next bench Solenne was having a spiritual experience.

She held her honey-caramel bowl in trembling fingers with her knees pressed together as she took one small tentative lick.

Gasp!

Her floppy ears shot straight up. Her golden eyes widened to polished coins then her tail began to move.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

By her fourth spoonful it had become a blur, a furious figure-eight that slapped the bench like a hammer.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

"S-So sweet...!" Solenne whimpered between gulps as her cheeks were smeared with cream and her tail kicked up enough breeze to flutter Silas’s sleeves. "My Lord, it’s so cold it tickles my whiskers...!"

"You must be hallucinating... You don’t have whiskers."

"I can feel them anyway and that’s what counts!"

Aeliana treated her dessert like a banquet.

’I’m trying being elegant to see what Lord Sy’s reaction is to it as well as Grand-Aunt...’

She sat spine-straight as a lance with her emerald skirt smoothed over her lap, and produced from her belt pouch an antique silver spoon with an engraved floral stem.

"Hmm..." She lifted a portion of lavender cream no larger than a hazelnut, set it on her tongue and closed her eyes in grave contemplation.

She swallowed without a sound then she opened her eyes, looked down at the empty bowl and held it out to Silas with a perfectly straight face as she had finished everything.

"Lord Sy... This is very good, please get me another to eat."

"You finished that in three bites... How big were your other scoops?"

"I was careful not to let it melt." The bowl moved half an inch closer to his chest. "Another, if you please... I love you."

Meanwhile Morwenna stood by a stone pillar with her shoulder against the masonry, glaring down at her rum-and-chocolate ice as if it were an enemy boarding vessel.

"I don’t care for sweets," she muttered. "It’s child’s food... Frozen sugar only softens your sea legs."

’You don’t have to act cool because Valerius is here.’ Silas thought while rolling his eyes,

"Then give it to Mia!" Valerius said. "She’ll eat anything with sugar in it!"

"Did I say I wasn’t going to eat it?!"

She jammed the paddle in her bowl, raised it to her mouth and inhaled the entire contents in two terrifying gulps.

GULP! GULP!

The empty bowl hit the counter with a clack that startled the vendor.

’S-sweet! Too sweet but I have to keep my composure...’

She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, crossed her arms, and ignored the brain freeze that made her left eye twitch for three straight seconds.

’Perhaps this man is interested in my Lord despite being a man... I have to be sure.’

"Finished," she declared through her clenched jaw. "It’s average and lacks nutmeg too."

She didn’t know what that meant but she was sure that Kaelia had mentioned it once or twice while making stuff.

Silas covered his face with one hand with his shoulders shaking, while Valerius stared at the woman in horrified awe.

When the bowls were cleared and Solenne’s tail had finally decelerated to a manageable wag, they left the glare of the open plaza for the northern arcade.

A quiet low-lit tavern of dark river stone and aged cedar waited in its shade, cool and smelling of roasted barley and cedar smoke behind heavy velvet drapes.

Off-duty caravan guards nursed pale ale in the booths and muttered low.

Silas took a large round booth in the back corner and let the girls slide in along the leather bench.

Valerius dropped into the seat across from him, flung his mantle over the chair, and waved at the tavern-keep for a cold drink.

"So," Silas began. "Is the tour still good? I haven’t seen much of this city... Between the trade talks and the corporate garbage, I’ve barely seen the city itself.."

He’d meant for Number Five to show him around before Valerius arrived.

A World Council Head for an escort would’ve kept him from looking like a country bumpkin, and her space power would have saved hours of walking.

The corner of his mouth twitched as he remembered the Brassbound office.

’That woman literally ran away from me,’ he thought, his Gold Core humming with quiet amusement. ’Stuck out her tongue, called me a bitch through her mask, and vanished like a delinquent dodging detention.’

He propped his chin on his hand with his blue-and-gold eyes gleaming.

’If she likes running, she can run to the edges of the Sovereign Realm... It doesn’t matter. As long as she’s on Earth I’ll find her, and then I’m regenerating my second hand so I can pinch those pale little cheeks until she shrieks in three different tones.’

Beside him Mia had climbed onto the bench with her knees tucked under her cloak.

She’d commandeered a bowl of roasted honey-nuts and was glaring at it, waiting for the nuts to peel themselves as Silas absently picked up a glazed pecan and held it toward her mouth.

Mia didn’t hesitate.

She leaned in like a baby bird, snapped it from his fingers, and chewed with ferocious chipmunk enthusiasm.

"Of course the tour’s still on!" Valerius said, leaning over the table with an easy grin. "Sterling Enterprises keeps a lodge in the Third Ring... I know every decent place, every underground smithy and every dueling platform between here and the mountain gates. We hit the artisan terraces first, then the display halls—"

"Captain."

The low whisper cut straight through Valerius’s itinerary as Morwenna was leaning across the leather seat with her eyes fixed on Silas’s hand.

Her arms were folded beneath her flattened chest, her chin was lifted and her lips were parted in an unmistakable demanding pout.

"Feed me too," she said.