“Rufus?” said Sabina.

For a while the warrior was silent, brooding into the fire stony-faced. Then he said,

“After what you have said, I have been searching for something just as beautiful in me. There does not seem to be anything there.” He smiled bashfully, scratching his head. “This is all I can give you. I never back down. But I can be rather stupid. I did not back down from a Hellboar.” He tapped his left pec, which was still a little caved in; the skin was black there. Then shrugged.

“Gratitude. Aelia?” said Sabina.

It was the girl who’d woken Ruyi this morning. She sat there shuffling her feet, squinting into the fire. For a while she said nothing too.

“Aelia?”

She jerked up. “Oh! I get distracted easily.” She beamed. “Is that powerful?”

“No, Aelia.”

“Oh…” She seemed put out. She frowned at Sabina. “I disagree. Anyways. Sabina always tells me I never take things seriously enough. So I suppose that is my vulnerability.”

Then there was Darius, who Ruyi had been sneaking glances at the whole time. He was tall and strikingly pretty, broad-shouldered but lean, and he had a flower in his long tresses. Ruyi didn’t know you could have so many lines on your belly but she found she couldn’t stop glancing at it. He kind of looked like Sen if Sen were a boy. He caught Ruyi staring once and smirked at her, and Ruyi hadn’t dared look again.

When Sabina came to him, he didn’t need to think. “I am valiant, kind, honest, dependable, intelligent. Hm. What else? Ah—I am deeply devoted to my craft, yes. Certainly I am creative. As for vulnerabilities…I cannot think of one.” He shrugged. “Arrogance, perhaps?”

Ruyi instantly despised him.

Why did she have to open her heart in front of them, and even cry, and he could just—sit there and babble some nonsense? But Sabina moved on, and he caught her angry gaze and kept smirking. She wasn’t sure how she ever thought he was pretty. Maybe his face would’ve been, but expression messed it all up.

They went around to a few more. There was Fausta, the silent shadow, who said she was quite loyal, and which Sabina corroborated. After some prodding, Fausta also said she was bad at communicating herself, which Sabina also corroborated, and which was kind of evident already. There was a few more—Remus and Invicta and Erias—before they looped back to her. The pipe was coming around again, and when Sabina took it, she took a huff and said, “Now let us speak of prides and regrets! Praetorianus—all warriors—we are as sparks in the night. We fade fast, and it is rare indeed to have a creature like I, who has been here some twenty years. You make my heart, each one of you. And regrets… I cannot really name just one. Every time I lose one of you, I feel two pains. I lose you as my friend, and I have failed you as your leader. The first of you I lost none of you know by person; some of you have heard me tell of him before. He was scarcely twenty. His name was Tiberius.”

She paused, eyes fluttering. “There is much to say of him… I can see him so clearly even now, as I close my eyes…he was not very tall, and his hair was so unruly it covered his eyes almost always. He was always fiddling with it. He was a diligent boy, a kind boy, but this is what matters here—he was very scared, but he fought very hard regardless, and because of him, this trait I respect more than any other. In a battle with the Ignis—that is,” She said to Ruyi, “Octavius’ tribe—I scouted poorly, and we found ourselves defending a single strait in Mount Eternal as the bulk of his force came for us. It was Tiberius who insisted he stay to hold them as the rest of us fled. He was so very afraid. Then, it is our choices, not our hearts, that make us. He taught me that.“

Murmurs rose from around the bonfire. Heads nodded.

Sabina passed the pipe to Ruyi, and she felt bad again.

After that last debacle with Darius she told herself she was never opening up again. But how could she, after Sabina just offered her that?

“I’m proud,” she said. She sounded so soft—she tried starting over. “I’m proud I got to become the youngest grandmaster in human Alchemy history. They all cheered for me. You should have seen my Father.”

It sounded hollow and stupid next to what Sabina said, now that she heard it aloud. She kept going. “Um. I regret… being a demon, I guess. I screwed it all up.” She sniffled a little. “They all loved me. And now… now…um…see?” She pointed at her face and tried to smile. “I wasn’t, um, lying earlier, about the emotional stuff.” It was a last-minute gambit, since she knew by then she couldn’t stop the tears—she just hoped pre-empting them a little would make them less embarrassing. She didn’t think it worked. At least it wasn’t a long cry this time. Sabina patted her, and they kept going.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

***

They finished off by holding a vote. All of them had to vote yes for her to join. Sabina raised her hand, as did Rufus and Aelia, who grinned at her. Quiet Fausta followed soon after. Soon they all had their hands raised, except for the boy with the flower in his hair.

He was still considering her, frowning. He was looking at her, nose daintily wrinkled, like he smelled something foul. She got the feeling he liked holding her there, making her feel how beholden she was to him, and she hated him even more. Then he shrugged and raised his hand too, and despite herself she let out a sigh of relief.

Before Ruyi knew what was happening she was hit with a shock of cold water. It drenched her head-to-toe; she gasped. It wasn’t water, it was stickier than water and it clung to her, matting her hair to her neck, soaking her through.

“Rise, Ruyi, and go forth!” Sabina threw an arm out at the bonfire. “Walk through fire, and you shall be one of us. Make your choice.”

Ruyi took a deep breath and barreled on through it. It didn’t hurt like she’d imagined; she felt nothing at all. She didn’t know why she thought it’d be more solid than it was—she ran way too hard at it. She managed to land stumbling.

A great cheer went up around the circle, and there was much clapping; even Darius tapped two fingers against a palm.

“Welcome!” said Sabina, and wrapped her in a hug. “Lululla!” went the chant. “Lululla!” “That’s right!” she cried, and they cheered for her again. She couldn’t stop smiling. They were all smiling at her. They wanted her, they voted so, there was no denying it.

A drumbeat started in the background, followed by the low growls of some horn instrument—when had musicians gotten here? Suddenly the clearing was alive with dancing. They were all dancing, and there were servants with glowing chains around their neck and wrists going around, passing out sticks of raw bloody meat. Others went around with flagons of wine. Ruyi was passed around the circle; there were so many she hadn’t met before and they were all so nice. Erias, white-haired and pale-eyed and soft-spoken, was insatiably curious about humankind; she asked so many questions that tickled Ruyi. She seemed especially astounded about chopsticks—she couldn’t get her head around it, and Ruyi showed her with two meat skewers, and they spent a while losing raw meat to the fire and giggling about it before Erias gave up. Aelia presented her with a gift: a wood sculpture of a forest sprite, painted so well Ruyi thought it was a real sprite trapped in amber at first.

“I copied it from the Bestiaria Mithica,” she said.

“You mean you’ve never seen a forest sprite before? And you did this?” gasped Ruyi. “It’s wonderful!”

“Eh,” said Aelia, puffing out her cheeks. She was so short she kind of looked like a forest sprite herself; she shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice. It’s easy for me—it’s hard for me to focus on other things, but fighting and carving? It’s like breathing. I’m glad you like it!”

Ruyi had already named the sprite—Reina—and given her a history—she was the neglected second daughter of the forest king. Nobody liked her, but Reina would show all of them. And even though nobody liked her, she was very beautiful and the best at everything she did.

Remus, loud and friendly, taught her how to roast her meat-sticks so all the good blood got in the meat—it was all in timing the turns, he said.

Then she ended up bumping into Darius. Literally; she stumbled back into him, making him spill his drink.

“Sorr—“ she said, then she saw him. She frowned. “You!”

“Me,” he said blandly. He looked over himself. The wine had spilled over his midsection and it only made him look better, to Ruyi’s chagrin. “My. It seems you owe me a cup, ‘lula.”

“You—!” Ruyi stifled a growl. “What’s your problem?”

He looked at his empty cup, then up at her, exaggerated. He raised a brow. “You bumped into me.”

Ruyi’s face was already burning. “I meant earlier. At the vote. I saw how you look at me, you don’t like me.” She didn’t know why she cared, but it really bothered her. Maybe he didn’t like everyone; maybe he was just an ass like that.

“Well, that’s strong, isn’t it? I have my doubts about you as a fighter, that’s true. But I don’t not like you, as a person. I hardly know you,” He smirked. “You, on the other hand, seem to despise me, and we’ve not even met. That hardly seems fair. Perhaps we should start over.”

He pursed his lips. Then, smiling far too smugly for Ruyi’s taste, the pretty boy held out a hand. “My name is Darius. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Ruyi thought about batting it away, but she ended up shaking it. It was quite low, right around his perfectly muscled belly, but she made a point not to look at it. “Ruyi. Not ‘lula.”

“Ruyi,” he said again, and she shivered a little at the way he said it. Then, nonchalantly—“So. Why were you staring at me, Ruyi?”

“I was not staring!”

“Mhm.” He glanced sidelong at her, and she was so red she thought she might burst into flames. She wanted to punch the smirk right off his face.

“You just looked like someone I knew.” When he cocked her head he really did look like a boy Sen.

“A past lover, perhaps?” he said.

She flinched. How did he know?!

“No.”

“Mhm,” he said again. He drained the last of his glass. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

He smiled at her, head tilting just a little so a few locks of hair fell across his face, and she felt something weird in her chest. Then he opened his mouth and ruined it. “You’re attracted to me—it’s a perfectly natural thing. It would be stranger if it were not the case.” He sighed dramatically. “Perhaps one ought to add vanity to my flaws.”

By now she was so angry she could hardly breathe. “I despise you,” she said, and she’d never meant something more in her life.