Chapter 172: Bloom
Lucian was quiet for a moment, then spoke, his voice half-sincere and half-calculated.
"This is my fault."
The soldiers went still.
"If I hadn't taken in so many beastman prisoners..." A note of genuine regret had found its way into his voice. "The beastmen wouldn't have had the opening to hit us like this."
"My lord!" The adjutant nearly said it before he could stop himself. "This is not on you —"
"It's my fault." Lucian said it again, without any wavering in his tone.
The way he said it, the way he carried it, made it look to everyone watching as though he was shouldering all of it. Every bit of it.
Touch Me came over from nearby, moving in stumbling, unsteady steps.
His left leg wasn't cooperating. He was using the sword pressed into the ground to keep himself upright. His face was smeared with blood, his own and the beastmen's. The deep blue of his eyes was threaded through with red.
Touch Me walked until he was one step in front of Lucian, and stopped.
"Fath—"
His voice came out rough, as though something was lodged in his throat.
His lips were shaking badly. The moisture in his eyes finally gave way, and tears ran down his face.
"This is all my fault..."
His whole body was trembling. The tendons in the hand holding the sword stood out against his skin.
"If I had protected the girl — if I hadn't let them take her — you wouldn't have had to..."
"Touch Me."
Lucian's voice cut across him.
"This isn't your fault. You did well."
Touch Me's head snapped up. Tears spilled from his reddened eyes.
"Leave the rest to me."
Lucian quietly checked the temperature of the disc against his chest, confirmed he had bought enough time, and turned back to face Gazok and the guard captain.
"I'll agree to your terms."
Gazok's boar ears twitched. A satisfied grin spread across that ugly face.
"With one condition." Lucian held up a single finger.
The guard captain's eyes narrowed.
"Let that child go." Lucian's gaze settled on the small figure in the guard captain's hand. "And every Aindra soldier in this camp. I go with you alone."
He let that sit.
"Otherwise — I die here first."
More of the Aindra soldiers lowered their heads and pressed the backs of their hands to their eyes.
Gazok and the guard captain exchanged a look.
The wild boar chief blew two puffs through his nostrils. The guard captain considered for a moment, then gave a single nod.
"Fine. One small girl, she's worthless. These cavalry..." He paused, affecting indifference. "Makes no difference whether they go or not."
He shook the girl in his hand, weighing her like an item he'd already decided to discard.
Lucian slid his sword into its scabbard. The blade against the sheath made a sound like a long-held breath finally released.
He raised both hands, palms out, showing he was unarmed.
Then he turned and began walking, slow and steady, toward Gazok and the guard captain.
The Aindra soldiers stood in place and watched that back moving away from them, one step at a time.
They lowered their heads. Their shoulders were shaking hard. Not one of them made a sound, lips pressed shut, held closed by will.
The adjutant's hand had gone to his sword hilt. He was a fraction from drawing. He didn't move.
Because those were the lord's orders.
The guard captain's eyes were locked on the man walking toward him. His claws pressed flat against the girl's throat.
He had seen opponents fake surrender and then break for it at the last second. He had seen it plenty of times.
This human lord was strong. He had to be ready for a rescue attempt; the man's illegitimate daughter was right there in his hand.
Almost all of the guard captain's attention was on Lucian. He spared none of it for the small figure in his grip.
In his estimation, the girl was terrified senseless. She was no threat whatsoever.
And then —
"Ha... ki... mi."
The voice came from below, from the girl in his hand. Rough and halting, like a rusted hinge being forced to turn.
The guard captain's ears moved slightly, but he didn't look down.
Lucian's step faltered for just an instant. He looked across at the guard captain with something like startled confusion.
Hakimi? That's a stretch for a lion's name. But —
Then it came to him.
What the girl had said was "Tachi-mi." Touch Me's name.
She had gone so long without speaking that her vocal cords were like strings left forgotten in a corner, and the sound that came out was warped and uneven, the simplest syllables barely holding their shape.
But she had said it anyway.
Behind Lucian, Touch Me heard it too.
His head came up sharply. The shock in his eyes cut through the self-reproach and the pain that had been filling them.
She can talk?
From beginning to end, he had assumed she couldn't speak. She had never made a sound.
The girl's eyes found Touch Me through the curtain of tangled golden hair. For a moment they held each other's gaze.
Then she opened her mouth again.
This time she used everything she had. But the syllables were even harder to form than "Touch Me" had been.
Clearly, she had whispered her own name to herself far fewer times than she had whispered his.
She said it again, fully, in case he hadn't caught it the first time.
Touch Me stood completely still.
He hadn't yet worked out what the syllables meant.
And then, once she was sure he had heard her, the girl's face broke into a smile.
A smile Touch Me had never seen on her before.
Her eyes curved into crescents. The tangled golden hair lifted in the breeze, revealing the thin face beneath, gaunt but still clear-featured.
Then.
With everything she had left in her body, she drove the side of her neck straight into the guard captain's claw.
The movement was so sudden that no one had time to react.
The guard captain's attention had been entirely on Lucian. It had never crossed his mind that this motionless girl would do something like this.
The artery in the girl's neck ruptured under the claw's pressure and the force of her own impact.
Blood surged from the wound and traced a bright arc through the air — like a flower blooming and gone in the same instant.
The guard captain finally looked down.
He stared at the small body still faintly twitching in his hand, and something moved through those beastman eyes that looked almost like disbelief.
This harmless human child — had thrown herself into it?
Blood was still flowing from the side of her neck, running down along the thin line of her throat.
She was still smiling.
Eyes curved, corners of her mouth lifted — the expression of someone who had finally completed something they had been waiting a long time to do.
She turned her head, and her gaze moved across the noise and chaos of the battlefield, past all the shapes and motion, and came to rest on Touch Me.
Her lips moved slightly.
No sound came out anymore.
The frozen Touch Me suddenly understood everything.
He thought of the very first question he had asked her, the first time he met her.
She was answering it.
She was telling him her name.
The light in the girl's eyes dimmed, slowly, and went out. Her head fell. Her arms and legs went soft and hung at her sides.