Chương 54: Found Family

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles Come to think of it, that was the first shopping trip I had been on since arriving in this world. Lunessa moved through Arkhay like she'd been born there. We stopped first at a covered stall where a woman was folding spiced meat and pickled vegetables into flatbread and wrapping each one in waxed paper; tidy, dense, and mercifully not the kind of thing that would leak all over us on the flight home. Lunessa bought a stack of them without breaking stride.

After that came a proper market row: sacks of dried beans and hard grain, a wheel of pale cheese, a string of onions, apples that would keep, and a slab of cured meat she inspected for an uncomfortably long time before accepting. It was while she was working through the meat stalls that she asked whether we had a freezer box back at the kingdom.

"You mean like a refrigerator?" Lunessa blinked at me.

"What's a refrigerator?" Crap.

"No—no, sorry, nothing. I just figured 'refrigerator' sounds cooler than 'freezer box.' Random thought. Ignore me." She gave a small, obliging laugh, which I'm fairly certain was pure politeness, because it hadn't been remotely funny.

"So? Do you have one? I don't recall seeing anything of the sort at your place."

"No, I don't think we do." I considered it.

"Should we buy one? Do they even sell those here?"

"In a town this size, certainly." She glanced at the bags already hanging off my arms.

"Can you carry it?"

"Sure. I'm pretty strong." Which, at the moment, might genuinely be the only thing I brought to this operation. So, laden with food, we made our way to what I could only describe as Lycora's version of a home appliance store. It was a long, low-ceilinged shop lined with shelving, and every single thing on those shelves had a crystal set into it somewhere. Stovetops with a red stone recessed in the base. Squat metal boxes with pale blue crystals in the lid.

Lamps with something faintly gold flickering inside the housing. A tall cabinet along one wall that seemed to be for drying laundry, humming quietly to itself with a white crystal glowing above the door; that seemed to be genuinely useful. We should get that sometime to avoid manually drying stuff. This world was considerably more developed than I'd given it credit for. We settled on a small freezer box in the end.

It came up to about my waist, a squarish thing in dull grey metal with rounded corners and a heavy latched door, a blue crystal about the size of a walnut mounted in the top panel. The shopkeeper opened it to show us the inside; bare metal shelving, and a cold that rolled out and hit me in the face when the door swung wide. Lunessa paid, wrote something in a small notebook, and gestured at it.

"All yours." So I hauled the thing back with a basket of groceries balanced on top, while Lunessa carried the rest in a cloth bag gripped in both hands. We walked the whole way out like that, past the gates and on until we were well into the grassland, a good distance from Arkhay. A few people stared at us on the way out. Fair enough, really. What were we supposed to do about it? At least nobody decided to follow.

"So do I just hold on to you again?"

"Yeah. Anywhere's fine, I think." She shuffled both bags into one hand, and her arm dipped and shook under the weight, but she held it. Then she reached out and clamped her free hand around my wrist. I cast Teleport, and snap, we were standing in front of the kingdom. Lunessa immediately went over sideways, and the bag went with her, spilling half its contents into the grass. Fortunately, it was mostly the fruit and the onions. A quick rinse and they'd be fine.

Luke let out a low growl from where she was sprawled by the house, which I'd learned to interpret as a greeting rather than a threat. I dug out the assortment of odds and ends we'd picked up and set a few of them down off to one side.

"Feel free to help yourself." She perked all three heads up at once, then shrank down into her little-girl form and came skipping over, making a small delighted noise as she crouched to inspect her options and decide what to start with. How much did she actually need to eat, I wondered? She was tiny like this, but the Cerberus form was enormous. You'd think she'd need an absurd amount. And yet her portions the past few days had been pretty ordinary. Did the mass just go somewhere when she changed?

Was I overthinking a dog?

"Hey. A little help here?" I turned. Lunessa was on her knees in the grass, gathering scattered apples back into the bag. Damn it. Me and my complete absence of social awareness. I hurried over, stacked a few of the bags on top of the freezer box, and got the rest hauled inside. There was a free spot in the corner, so I set the freezer box down there. Apparently, no power socket was required, which was good, since I hadn't seen a single one in this world.

Though it did make me wonder whether the crystal would eventually run dry. So I asked Lunessa, who was busy sorting groceries at the dining table. It would be out eventually, she said. This particular model would run about a month before the crystal needed swapping, and replacements were easy enough to come by in Arkhay once the mayor granted us free access. Right. The free access.

Lunessa had handed over some rare materials as a good-faith guarantee, which meant we needed more soon, before Arkhay could be used as a proper safe zone. She'd mentioned during our walk that there was somewhere she wanted to visit tomorrow for rare minerals. So: gather those, ask Luke about parting with some fur, and then a return trip to Arkhay the same day. Quest complete. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I helped load a few things into the freezer box, and Lunessa unpacked the flatbread wraps and laid them out on the table alongside a handful of fruit. Dinner, presumably. The ground floor was oddly empty. I'd half expected Evelisse or Mel or Nyx to be right there the second I opened the door, but no. So it was just me, standing around like an idiot, watching Lunessa arrange food and waterskins on a table. And it felt... calm. Warm. Domestic, maybe, was the word. Which was a thing I couldn't remember feeling.

When was the last time anywhere had felt like home? Not the cramped room I'd been renting, that was for certain; that place had all the human warmth of a filing cabinet. And back at the house, Dad might be around, drunk or unconscious, and I'd never once have called that warmth either. What about before? When Mom was still alive. Was I happy then? Did I use to come in and find her in the kitchen with the sun going down, putting something together for dinner? What did that feel like? I couldn't remember.

I couldn't remember any of it, and that was somehow the worst part.

"What?" Lunessa had caught me staring. She raised an eyebrow, one hand on her hip.

"You've gone all misty over a table of bread. Should I be flattered? Or concerned?"

"What—no! I wasn't— " I gestured vaguely at the table, which helped nothing.

"I was just thinking that it looks nice. The food. On the table. Like an actual house where actual people live."

"It's just some wraps and apples, Milo."

"Yeah, well…" I shrugged.

"It's more than I usually had going on." It came out before I'd decided to say it, and I heard how it sounded a half second too late. I busied myself with a bag that didn't need any more attention. Lunessa didn't say anything for a moment. When I glanced up, she'd stopped arranging things. She wasn't looking at me with pity, exactly, which I appreciated more than I could have explained.

She just looked at me the way she'd looked at that cured meat back in the market: carefully, and for a beat longer than was comfortable, taking the measure of something. Then she went back to setting out the fruit.

"Well, get used to it," she said lightly.

"There are six of us in this house now, and I intend to eat properly. Which means somebody is going to be putting food on this table most evenings." She set down the last apple and straightened.

"Might as well be a table you're sitting at."

"... Right."

"And you will do the dishes, obviously, if it comes down to it, when we have proper meals with plates and stuff."

"What? Why me?"

"Because you're the only guy around and I assume you can't help with cooking? And I've decided that's how we're allocating chores." She waved a hand as she headed for the stairs.

"Go on, call the others down." I stood there a second longer, looking at the wraps and the apples on the table. Then I went to get everyone. Evelisse came out of the upstairs bathroom just as I reached the landing. She'd changed into a plain white shirt and shorts, her hair hanging loose past her shoulders instead of pulled up the way I was used to; the last time I saw her with her hair down was at Eremiah's night market.

"Oh." I stopped walking, which meant I was now just standing on the stairs staring at her.

"Uh…hi." Fuck, that's awkward.

"Y-yeah, I-I mean…hi." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Umm, I-I can help with dinner."

"It's—no, it's fine, it's done, Lunessa did it. Everything's downstairs. On the table. The food is." I was aware I had started producing words in the wrong order.

"You should come down."

"I'll wake Mel." A small smile.

"She's still asleep." She slipped past me toward their room, and I went down the stairs at a speed that had nothing to do with hunger. Nyx's door was shut, as always. I knocked. It swung open after a few seconds, and behind her I caught the same view I'd been trying not to think about: the shield guy and the red-haired mage, still laid out along the far wall, still completely unconscious. Surely they couldn't have stayed unconscious for an entire day from a sword bonk?

Unless they had woken up, and Nyx had simply put them under again.

"Dinner's ready," I said. She looked at me. Then past me, at the table.

"... Fine." So we all sat down together, six chairs around a table, with flatbread wraps and a bowl of apples in the middle. I sat there working out whether I was supposed to say something. Nyx hadn't been properly introduced to anyone, and this was the first meal any of us had shared. Someone should probably mark that. I think I should be the one? Though, Lunessa beat me to it, thank God.

"Before we start." She set down her wrap.

"Nyx, isn't it? We haven't been introduced properly. I'm Lunessa Ardentia, Eve's sister." She inclined her head.

"And I'd like to apologize. We arrived at your home without warning, without asking, and with a great deal of baggage attached. That was rude of us, and I'm aware of it." Nyx said nothing. Her face wasn't hostile, exactly, but it wasn't welcoming either.

"So I'll say plainly," Lunessa went on, "that if you'd rather we weren't here, we can find another—""It's fine." Lunessa paused.

"Your sister said much the same thing to me earlier." Nyx picked up her food.

"I told her the same answer." Then she turned her head and looked directly at me. I looked back.

"... What?"

"It's fine," she repeated, to Lunessa, still watching me.

"Just be aware there's an idiot living here who's likely to cause all of you a great deal of trouble."

"Hey."

"Am I wrong?" I decided to eat my food. The strange thing was, Nyx stayed. I'd fully expected Nyx to take a wrap, retreat to her room, and shut the door behind her. She didn't. She stayed in her chair, one leg folded under her, eating at the table with the rest of us like it was nothing. Lunessa, of course, started working on her quick.

"So, I heard from Milo you're his assistant?" She did not answer for a while, and I was worried that things might get–"Yes," she said.

"Mm. And is he your first?" A nod at me. Nyx turned towards me, I raised my eyebrows while munching on the bread.

"No." She then tore off a piece of flatbread.

"He's the worst, though."

"Oh, I like her," Lunessa said delightedly, to nobody. I want to note that Nyx answered. Twice. She was sitting there being mildly conversational with a woman she'd met two hours ago. I don't know what Lunessa does to people. I suspect it's a professional skill. Across from me, Mel had gone quiet in that specific way people do when they're about to fuss over someone. She reached over with her sleeve and wiped at the corner of Evelisse's mouth.

"You've got—hold still—you've got sauce."

"I do not —""Eve." Evelisse held still, looking mortally embarrassed, while Mel dealt with it with the brisk efficiency of someone who had clearly done this many times before. Then Mel sat back, satisfied, and caught me watching. Her eyes narrowed immediately. Right. Still suspicious of me. Fair enough. I looked at my apple, but I was smiling, apparently, because Evelisse noticed and gave me a questioning look, and I shook my head and didn't explain.

I was sitting at a full table, in a house with a fireplace, eating flatbread with four other people. The problems and mysteries were all still there, every single one; Ywain, Lulu, whatever thing Nyx might be hiding, and the other issues of the Afterport which I couldn't understand even now. But I think… we will be just fine.