Chương 72: Chapter 70 – Stuffy

When they got back to the manor, Chelsea transferred all of the scales into her pouch and Ivy's bag. The dining room became their temporary sorting room, with armor, weapons, jewelry, crafting materials, and several things Chelsea still needed to identify laid out across the counter and table. It was exciting! A few hours ago, she had been standing in a dragon's treasure pile, collecting legendary scales by the stack. But something had been weighing on her.

Chelsea finished emptying the borrowed bag and held it out to Adriane with both hands.

"Thank you for letting me use it." Adriane accepted the bag, though her eyes moved over Chelsea's face with quiet suspicion.

"Uh, yeah." Chelsea looked down at the table for a moment. She could have pretended nothing happened. That would have been easier. Maybe Adriane would never notice. Maybe the moment would pass and nobody would need to talk about it. She hated that idea immediately.

"Adriane, I want to be completely honest with you." Adriane's expression changed slightly, knowing what Chelsea was about to say. Chelsea forced herself to continue.

"I think I saw something you didn't want me to see. I didn't touch it, and I didn't go looking for it. My eyes moved over the bag when I was checking the slots, and it caught my attention because it was unexpected." She swallowed.

"Please don't be mad. I promise it was an accident. I just thought you should… know..." For several seconds, Adriane said nothing. Then she took a deep breath and nodded a couple of times, more to herself than to Chelsea.

"Ivy," Adriane said quietly, "can you please go visit the shade tree outside? I need to talk to Chels alone." Ivy looked between them, worry crossing her face.

"O-Okay. Sure." She didn't argue. She gave Chelsea a small and an uncertain wave before leaving the dining room. Chelsea watched her go, feeling worse with every step Ivy took.

"Come on," Adriane said.

"Let's head upstairs." Chelsea followed in silence. They went to one of the bedrooms, and Adriane closed the door behind them. Chelsea walked directly to the window. From there, she could see the field behind the manor and the large shade tree swaying gently in the afternoon breeze. Ivy was a small figure moving toward it, her blonde hair catching the light as she crossed the grass. Chelsea decided not to apologize again. She had already done that.

Saying it over and over would only make it feel like she was trying to protect herself from consequences rather than respect what she had seen. Behind her, Adriane sat down on the bed.

"Where to start," she said. Chelsea turned from the window. Adriane reached into her bag and pulled out the ragged little stuffed animal. It was even uglier in the open than it had been in the bag. Its stitching was uneven, one ear sat higher than the other, and one of its button eyes looked like it had been replaced at some point with an unmatching button. It was clearly old and worn with age.

"So you saw this," Adriane said. Chelsea nodded.

"Yes."

"And my title?"

"No." Chelsea answered immediately.

"I told you I wouldn't look at that. Seeing the stuffy was an accident. Looking at your title would have been deliberate." Adriane looked down at the little animal.

"Stuffy," she repeated softly. A small smile spread across her lips, almost too fragile to belong there.

"I like that." Chelsea stayed quiet. Adriane took another breath. This one was not as steady as the first.

"Did you know the title and the stuffy were related?" Chelsea shook her head and waited. Adriane stared into the stitched face for a long moment before speaking again.

"This is going to sound like I'm jumping all over the place. Like I'm rambling." Her thumb moved over one of the crooked seams.

"Please try to follow. It will make sense. I hope."

"Okay," Chelsea replied gently. Adriane nodded, though she still did not look up.

"When you were summoned, and I saw you for the first time, all I saw was a little demon girl. You were speaking Bontune, confused, terrified, and somehow connected to a summoning that should never have happened. The people in that room were calling you a summoned champion, or at least treating you like one. To me? You were a threat."

"I wasn't threatening anything," Chelsea said quietly, trying to keep her voice light but not quite managing it.

"Maybe not," Adriane replied.

"But that's what you were." She finally looked up at Chelsea.

"I made my decision before you ever reached the room I was assigned to guard." Adriane's voice remained calm, but there was nothing easy in it.

"Once I was in charge of you for the night, I was going to kill you." Chelsea stood near the window. She turned to look out again, watching the wind move through the grass and wildflowers below as Adriane spoke behind her. Ivy had reached the shade tree by now and sat beneath it, small from this distance, waiting where Adriane had sent her. Chelsea kept her eyes there because looking directly at Adriane felt too much. Obviously, Adriane had not killed her that first night.

Chelsea was standing here because something had changed.

"Then," Adriane said, and her breath shuddered in the middle of the word, "you were you. You were Chelsea. You touched my face and talked to me the best you could." Chelsea turned slightly. Adriane let out a small, broken laugh that did not sound amused at all.

"You've heard Celeste. You weren't acting like any demon I'd ever met."

"I remember that," Chelsea said softly. Adriane nodded, though her gaze remained on the ragged little stuffed animal in her hands.

"This is the part where I'm going to sound like I'm jumping all over the place, so just listen."

"Okay."

"When I was sixteen, I got pregnant." Adriane rubbed her thumb over one of the crooked seams.

"My father practically disowned me for it. Not enough to kick me out of the family, of course. That would have meant giving up another person to work off his debt. But enough that I knew what he thought of me." Chelsea stayed quiet.

"But she was worth it," Adriane continued. Her voice softened in a way Chelsea had never heard from her before.

"When I was so far along I could barely move, I couldn't train. I couldn't take jobs. I couldn't earn much at all. So I learned to sew." She lifted the stuffy slightly.

"This was my fifth attempt." Chelsea looked at it again. The uneven ears. The crooked stitching. The mismatched button eyes. It was ugly, but it was ugly in the way something became precious because hands had worked so hard to make it.

"I know it looks like shit," Adriane said, her mouth twitching faintly, "but it was more than I ever had as a child." Her voice dropped into a rough imitation of a man's, cruel and familiar even though Chelsea had never met him.

"No luxuries." Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Chelsea remembered those words from her own first days with the Wixx. Pain is a luxury. Comfort is a luxury. Anything gentle could be taken away and called discipline. She had laughed at some of it later because laughing was easier than thinking about how insane it all was, but it was not funny now.

"No luxuries," Chelsea repeated quietly.

"When she was born, I was happy." Adriane stared down at the stuffed animal, and her thumb kept moving over the same seam.

"Happy for the first time in my life, I think. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen." Her voice caught. Chelsea looked over fully then and saw the tears finally slipping down Adriane's face. There was something terrible about seeing it. Adriane was so strong that Chelsea had started to forget strong people could break too. Chelsea crossed the room and wrapped her arms around her. Chelsea held onto her and waited.

"Jared Wixx," Adriane said, and the name came out like poison.

"My father. He killed her." Chelsea went cold. Adriane's face crumpled as the words forced themselves out.

"She was three days old, Chels." The sob that followed sounded torn from somewhere deep inside her. Chelsea held her tighter as Adriane bent around the grief, one arm coming around Chelsea with enough force to hurt someone else, though not nearly as hard as it could have.

"No," Adriane whispered through the sobs.

"Luxuries." Chelsea did not know what to say to that. There were no words for it. There was no comfort that could make the death of a three-day-old child make sense. So she only held her while Adriane cried, one hand smoothing slowly over her hair as the woman who had seemed untouchable shook in her arms. They stayed like that for a while. When Adriane finally spoke again, her voice was small.

"My father was also a champion." Chelsea continued stroking her hair, trying to steady her without rushing her.

"He was reincarnated. Not summoned like you." Adriane swallowed and took a moment to gather enough breath to continue.

"He was powerful. Damned powerful. The kind of powerful where everyone knows your name." Chelsea had always pictured Adriane's life as something brutal but simple. A powerful woman dragged behind a dead father's debt, doing impossible jobs because no one else could. She had never pictured this. She had never pictured a younger Adriane holding a newborn baby and believing, even for three days, that the world might let her keep one beautiful thing.

"That day," Adriane said, still holding the stuffy against herself, "was the first time I heard The Silver Sword call to me." Chelsea closed her eyes for a moment. Now she understood. Or at least, she understood enough.

"Chels," Adriane said at last, pulling back just enough to look at her. Her face was wet, and she did not try to hide it.

"I want you to read my title." Chelsea's hand stilled.

"Adriane..."

"Please." Adriane's voice was rough, but steady enough now to get her point across.

"Read it out loud. I want to hear it. I need to hear it right now." Chelsea nodded. Adriane was asking. Chelsea leaned back, wiped at her own eyes with the heel of her hand, and used The Eyes.

"Adriane, the Champion Slayer," Chelsea read. The words left her mouth quietly, but they seemed to fill the whole room anyway. Chelsea lowered her head back against Adriane's, still holding onto her. For a moment, that was all she could do. There were too many feelings in her chest at once. Horror. Grief. Relief. Love. Pride. All of them tangled together so tightly that she could not pull out the right words. Finally, she managed the one word that made the most sense, "Good."

Adriane took in a deep, uneven breath and let it out slowly.

"Bea knows the story," she said.

"She helped me do it." Chelsea stayed quiet again, one hand resting against Adriane's back.

"She found the new title before I did. The Silver Sword's Call. It had a lot of words and numbers, so she assigned it." That made sense in a weird way. Chelsea could picture Bea doing it helping. A younger, angrier, Bea who just had her niece killed and looking for a way to avenge her.

"Dewey doesn't know any of this," Adriane continued.

"He still worships the man." Chelsea's hand stilled for a second.

"He has no idea what happened?" she asked gently. Adriane shook her head.

"No. And I don't want to crush him with it. Dewey is a brute, but he is the softest of the three of us. He built so much of himself around the idea that our father was this great warrior. This great man. I don't know what it would do to him if I took that away." Chelsea thought about Dewey. Big, blunt, honorable Dewey, who treated the stories of the Valkyr like sacred truth and loved his family with the simple devotion of someone who did not know how to hide it.

"That makes sense," Chelsea said.

"I can't fault you for that." Adriane nodded faintly, though the motion looked tired.

"That brings me back to where I started." She pulled away just enough to look at Chelsea. Her face was still wet, and her eyes were red, but she did not try to wipe anything away.

"I have been lying to you, Chels." Chelsea frowned a little.

"I'll explain," Adriane said quickly.

"But let me keep rambling." Chelsea nodded.

"Every year, I celebrate my daughter's birthday," Adriane said.

"Not with other people. Not openly. Sometimes I don't do anything at all except remember her in my own mind. But I remember. I always remember." She looked down at the stuffy in her lap again.

"This year, her birthday was the same week you were summoned." Chelsea felt something sink in her chest.

"You appeared to be around the same age she would have been," Adriane said.

"And then there was the demon thing."

"What about the demon thing?" Chelsea asked. Adriane's expression twisted, not in anger at Chelsea, but at a memory that had never stopped hurting.

"He hated demons. My father hated them so much, Chelsea." Her voice hardened around the words.

"Celeste isn't wrong about that. Jared Wixx would have done everything in his power to wipe them from the world if he could have." Chelsea looked down at her hands. Her clawed nails were gone now, replaced by softer finger nails after her class change, but she still remembered what she had looked like on that first day. Black wings. Red and black horns. Orange eyes. Terrified, confused, and speaking a language nobody understood.

"And when you saw me," Chelsea said slowly, "you saw what he hated most as a girl, roughly the same age as what he stole from you." Adriane looked directly into her eyes.

"Exactly." She nodded.

"After I got you alone in that room and you were you… Chelsea… I…" The answer came out with so much force that Chelsea knew Adriane had been carrying it since the day they met. Chelsea leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her again.

"Adriane, you said you lied to me," she said.

"This isn't technically a lie. This is personal information you weren't ready to share." Adriane gave a small, bitter laugh against her shoulder. Chelsea held on tighter.

"I love you, Adriane. You don't have to hide this stuff from me. If you ever need to talk, I am always just a shoulder tap away." For a little while, Adriane did not answer. She simply rested her head against Chelsea's, avoiding the horns and breathed. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet.

"I'm so selfish, Chels." Chelsea pulled back slightly.

"No."

"I am." Adriane closed her eyes.

"That all wasn't the lie." Chelsea let out a soft breath, almost a laugh but not quite.

"Then what is it?" Adriane drew back from her, still holding the stuffy in one hand. Chelsea thought they had reached the deepest part of it, but Adriane's face told her there was still more.

"Use the title that gives you more skill levels in The Eyes." Chelsea didn't argue. She pulled up her titles and assigned The Inspector.

"Done," she said. Adriane nodded once, as if preparing herself for something she had delayed for far too long.

"Go into your stats and focus on the symbol next to your name," Adriane said. Chelsea furrowed her eyebrows at the request, but she did as she was told. She pulled up her status, found her name, and focused on the word weird sideways triangle. Wixx - 5 members in the Wixx family currently alive. Matriarch - Adriane Wixx Patriarch - N/A Current Generation - Adriane, Beatrix, Dewey, Edgar Second Generation - Chelsea Chelsea stared at the words for several seconds, trying to understand what she was supposed to notice.

"What am I looking at?" she asked quietly.

"It lists all of you as the current generation and me as second. Is that because I was adopted in?" Adriane did not answer right away. Chelsea closed the screen and found Adriane watching her closely. Not with her usual unreadable strength. There was fear there, held so tightly it almost looked like stillness. Adriane shook her head.

"I didn't add you as my sister. I have… never once called you my sister. In my mind you never were." Chelsea tilted her head. Adriane's voice grew quieter.

"I adopted you as my daughter." For a moment, Chelsea forgot how to move. The words played again in her mind, rearranging memories as they landed. Adriane wiping blood from her face at the safe house in the other kingdom. Being lead around by the hand. Adriane watching her eat and constantly checking her clothes and her wings. Always making sure she had food. There was also Adriane's quiet pride during the assessment. Her constant and strange patience with Chelsea.

Chelsea had thought it was because Adriane saw her as a vulnerable little sister. Now she understood it had been something else from the beginning. Something Adriane had been too afraid to name.

"So…" Chelsea's voice came out smaller than she intended.

"You're like my mom?" Adriane's expression tightened at the word. She looked like she wanted to answer, but she also looked terrified of choosing the wrong words. After everything she had confessed, after all the blood and grief and silence, she only gave the slightest lift of one shoulder. She wasn't indifferent. She was terrified. Chelsea understood that too. She stood and carefully removed her pauldrons, setting them aside so they would not dig into either of them.

Then she pulled off her boots and crossed the room without another word. Adriane did not move as Chelsea climbed into her lap. It was awkward at first. Chelsea was bigger than she had been that first night, with wings and a tail and armor still half-attached, but she curled against Adriane anyway. She tucked herself close, the way she had when the whole world had been new and terrifying and Adriane had been the only safe thing in it. Adriane's arms came around her slowly and carefully.

As if Chelsea might change her mind. Chelsea pressed her face against Adriane's shoulder and closed her eyes.

"I like daughter way better than little sister," she whispered. Adriane made a sound that was almost a breath and almost a sob. Her arms tightened around Chelsea with a desperation Chelsea could feel in every trembling inch of her. Chelsea held on too. For a while, neither of them spoke. There was nothing left to explain. The stuffed animal rested between them, crushed gently against Chelsea's side, and somewhere outside the window, Ivy waited beneath the shade tree while the wind moved through the flowers.

Chelsea had lost her whole world. Adriane had lost her daughter. Neither loss could be fixed. But in that quiet room, held tightly in the arms of the woman who had chosen her, Chelsea let herself have something real. A home and a real family of her very own.