“If this is you trying to get me to trust you, then you’re off to an abysmal start,” Reya quipped while walking over to me. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on a fence or something. Even then I still had to look up at her.

“Right. Listen. I…” My explanation broke off before it had even started. I had wanted to prepare for this, choose my words carefully. Instead that Winter-workout idiot had happened and now I was completely caught off guard.

“Yes?” Reya latched on to my insecurity. The teasing tone in her voice told me that she was absolutely giddy with excitement, that she was watching, observing, ready to catch me in a lie.

She was too far away still to clearly see her face, so instead I glanced towards where I came from, in the direction of the town center. Her scrutinizing gaze burned a hole in the back of my skull. I was not ready for this conversation and needed a way to stall.

“Could we not do this now,” I offered, not bothering to look her way as I spoke. “I just came from Uncle Tare. There is something I am worried about and I would like you there when I take a closer look at it.”

“You came from Uncle Tare?” She laughed. “What happened to leaving?”

“I am—” I bit back the word leaving before it could slip out. Blasted woman almost got me to lie. After taking a couple of moments to get the venom out of my voice I continued. “I promised to check up on him?” The tone I managed was worse than the angry one I had almost used. It was meek, guilty, as if I was admitting to a horrible sin.

I snuck a glance at her, expecting a biting retort, a scathing remark. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked instead. “I already checked up on him this morning.”

“We performed an amputation, Reya.” I sighed, looking up at the sky. “Things go wrong. Maybe I am just being overly cautious but…”

I do not want to lose the man after what I went through to get him to this point.

“You going to do that magic thing again?” she queried me.

“Yes,” I spoke with a resoluteness that I did not feel.

“I don’t think you should.” I could feel her glare intensify even with my back turned to her. Even though her statement angered me I kept my face neutral. I wanted to magic my brains out every bit as little as she wanted to witness it.

Turning back towards her I shook my head. “I will be fine. This will not be anywhere near as involved as last time.”

She stared at me. I waited, expecting more venom. Instead, she gave me a widely exaggerated nod. “Tell me what you need. We’ll talk on the way.”

Reya gathered what I asked of her, then led the way back to Uncle Tare’s place. Falling in behind her, I eyed her suspiciously. I had expected her to be angry, to push for another confrontation, but not this. Now it even looked like she was waiting for me to speak up. I did not.

“You made up your mind then.” Reya eventually filled the silence.

“I do not know,” I admitted after a little hesitation.

“You told Cadge you’d be around,” she offered. “That means you intend to stay, right?”

“No,” I said. “Maybe.” I corrected myself immediately.

“Sounds more like you’re not willing to admit it, if anything.”

She trying to catch me in another lie?

Too bad for her, it wasn’t going to work.

I had not planned on this. I was supposed to check up on Uncle Tare and leave again immediately after, but I could not. I had allowed myself a tiny opening by not committing myself to leave right after, and now I knew why. “I do not want him to die, Reya,” I admitted. I really did not want this man to die. “But if you want me gone, I am gone,” I amended.

“You’re trying to be a better person, I guess,” Reya conceded. “I suppose that counts for something. Or… maybe you’re not, and this is just another act?”

Right. Here it was then, the real Reya, the bitchy one trying to manipulate and bait me. Inwardly I fumed, but I plastered my best hurt-and-wronged impression on my face for her to look at. It turned out not to be needed. She did not look my way.

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Reya knocked on Suri’s door, then held her hand out in front of me, all still without looking at me. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

I gawked at her, sputtering in protest. “I… what? How is that relevant?”

“How many fingers, Vale?” she insisted, waving her hand for emphasis.

“I… um…” I muttered, stalling for time. I leaned forward, peering at her hand. It was a blob, a blur, a vague stain backdropped by the door. I hoped it was the door. She could have knocked on the wall instead of the door and I would not be able to tell. She could even have magically grown a sixth finger.

Suri saved me by answering the door. In front of her, Reya dropped the subject as if it had never been broached. We were let in and got to work in professional silence, me directing Reya with only the minimum of instructions.

It was my first time seeing the stump with the bandages off. My first time consciously seeing it, at least. I had done this. Somehow I had done this and not retained any of it. It was a shoddy job, the kind that could only have worked with a judicious application of magic. Naturally, without a continuous influx of magic to sustain it, it had gotten inflamed.

Reya asked Suri to leave the room, for which I was immensely grateful. I was only treating a minor infection, only a single wound. It was something I should be able to manage without… leaking. Yet my previous attempt at proving myself had made it clear that I did not know my limits anywhere near as well as I thought I did.

My limited magical reserves, nowhere near recovered from my previous feat, at least meant that I was forced to focus much more on finesse than I usually did. I wove, layered the weave not once, but twice. I briefly wavered on a third layer, but held off on it. Thrice would be showing off, and I really did not think I would be able to manage that right now.

When I looked up Reya gave me a worried frown. I tried to smile at her, but it came out as more of a grimace. Refusing to let the fear hold me back I pulled the weave out of my core. Blinking against the pain I applied the magic to the infection, slowly working it in to ease the worst of it.

When the energy from the first layer of the weave waned, I unraveled that layer, revealing the still sturdy layer underneath. It was a trick I managed to repeat a second time because of my double layering. Even then it wasn’t enough to ease the entire inflamed area. But it would probably be sufficient for the body’s natural healing to take over from here. And if it wasn’t, I could always take another look this evening.

“See, no mess,” I panted when I was done. I tried to say it with a jeer, a grin, but I was too exhausted to manage it.

“You look like shit.” Reya scrutinized my ashen face.

“Feel like shit,” I admitted, after taking a couple of seconds to scrutinize her face right back. “But at least all of the shittiness isn’t leaking out now.”

We waited, staring at each other, examining the other’s face while I recovered my breath. Reya managed to somehow bandage things up again without breaking eye contact.

“Hm,” Reya scoffed eventually. “And now you do look me in the eyes. It’s the sun, isn’t it?”

“I am not—” I protested out of habit.

“Don’t answer,” Reya interrupted me. “It’s okay to keep some things to yourself. Just be ready to field questions. This is a small town. People are nosy, so you won’t be able to keep hiding everything.”

“I am—”

“Shush!” she silenced me again. “Don’t ruin your honesty streak. You fake it well, but you do too much staring people in the eyes indoors, and too much staring off into the distance outside.”

I eyed her warily. Then, to not stare at her so intensely I looked off to the side. Realizing that looked suspicious I tried to look somewhere else, but every single place in this room I stared at only seemed worse.

Aaaah… why did she make me conscious of where I’m looking?

At my wandering gaze, Reya broke into a mad grin. She barely managed to stifle a laugh, then called Suri into the room.

Reya elaborated on some kind of herbal medicine-related stuff to Suri while I loitered at the door, debating on whether I should just leave and let them handle this on their own or wait for Reya.

After pondering on that for far too long I had no other option but to wait. Leaving after hesitating for several minutes would only make things weirder. Eventually Reya was done, and she guided me outside with a hand on my shoulder. I resisted the urge to shake it off. It was the first time she wasn’t being standoffish to me since our argument and I did not want to ruin it.

That did not mean I trusted her rapid change in demeanor. “Why are you suddenly nice to me?” I hissed at her as soon as Suri had closed the door behind us. Reya took her hand from my shoulder and gave me a look. I so wanted to know what kind of look, but out here I once again only had her posture to work with.

“You should try honest vulnerability more often,” she proposed, leaning down slightly. “It’s way better at winning people over than waving your claws in their face.”

“Right.” I nodded, entirely unconvinced.

“You coming?” She gestured for me to follow and walked on ahead.

“Um… where?” I questioned, staying where I was.

“The bunkhouse. You’re staying, right?” She stopped and turned to look my way.

“I’m…” I hesitated. If I said yes now then that would mean giving in. I did not think I could run away from this place a second time without consequences. If I followed her then it meant staying here, at least for a day or two, and accepting everything that came with it, no matter what those things were.

I still wasn’t sure I was ready for that. And I wasn’t convinced I could let Reya lead me on that path like this. Not after everything she had said to me last night. Her blunt admittance that she did not trust me still lingered in my mind, even now. She might just be doing this to be nice, simply because everyone else was nice to me. She might be asking me to stay, even when she really just wanted me gone.

“I am sorry,” I whimpered, looking up at her with a great effort of will. “I am sorry for using Meg to get you to trust me.”

“Hmm,” Reya hummed, combing her hair behind her shoulder. “That means you’re staying then?”

“I—”

“Don’t. You should apologize to Meg instead of me,” Reya chided me. It wasn’t an acknowledgment that she had accepted my desire to stay. It wasn’t an outright refusal either.