Chapter 85 – Promises
As soon as Zoe said those words, the world lurched.
"When are you going to give me a baby?"
Silence.
The courtyard, which had been buzzing like a hive, froze mid-flight.
Erynd's brain tried to put thoughts in order.
It failed.
Tamara's fingers tightened on his sleeve. Lyra's smile stretched too sharp. Noelle's mouth opened and closed like she'd forgotten how language worked.
Move, he told himself. Say something. Anything that isn't "what," because that's clearly not enough.
He dragged in a breath.
"Zoe—"
"–Erynd."
Another voice cut through, as light and amused as a knife catching the sun.
A hand landed on Zoe's shoulder.
Another, just as casually, took hold of the human ear under her black hair and gave it a sharp little tug.
Zoe's body jerked.
Her sleek black tail went stiff, then flicked in irritation.
Erynd didn't need to look up to know who it was.
He did anyway.
"Julia," he said.
***
She'd grown too.
Half-elf.
Blonde hair coiled up and pinned with a single dark stick, exactly like the hairstyle from that stupid story he'd once written and never finished. It should have looked like something from a play. On her, it looked practical. Secure. Efficient.
Brown eyes, steady and warm, but with edges that had never really dulled after the Awakening.
No Academy uniform. Just a clean, dark skirt, a cream blouse, a short jacket. Inconspicuous. The kind of outfit you'd forget in a crowd.
If you didn't know what she'd lived through, you'd file her under "nice half-elf girl."
He knew better.
He remembered her half-conscious on a filthy floor, skin grey with fever, veins blackened by whatever the cult had pumped through her. Remembered breaking the circle, dragging her out of a cellar that stank of old blood and bad incense and disease. Remembered her convulsing as the Awakening hit her like a hammer, mana and sickness tangled into one.
He remembered thinking: If she lives through this, she's going to be dangerous.
He'd been right.
"Don't mind her," Julia said brightly, giving Zoe's ear another corrective twist. "She's always like this when she's excited."
Zoe made an offended noise through her mask.
"Excited," Julia repeated, tugging harder.
"Ngh— I said I'm sorry," Zoe muttered, ears flattening tighter.
"You didn't," Julia said cheerfully. "You said you were 'just being honest.' That's not the same."
She turned her head a little, taking in Tamara's bristling, Lyra's knife-smile, Noelle's shell-shocked stare.
Then she dipped her head.
"Sorry about her," she said, in the tone of someone apologising for a badly behaved pet and a beloved sister at the same time. "She's a little… blunt."
Tamara blinked.
"A little?" she echoed.
Lyra's eyes narrowed.
Noelle made a very small, strangled sound and clutched her scroll harder.
Julia's fingers tightened on Zoe's shoulder.
"Naughty girl, isn't she?" she went on, half to them, half to Erynd, pitching her voice just right so it carried but didn't seem like she was performing. "Falling out of nowhere, talking about babies in public. Honestly. Have you no shame?"
Zoe's tail lashed.
"I have some shame," she said, muffled by the mask. "I just don't use it unless I have to."
Julia rolled her eyes.
She shifted closer to Erynd, fingers still curled around Zoe's shoulder, the other hand resting lightly on his forearm as if to steady herself.
Up close, he could see faint lines at the corner of her eyes that hadn't been there before. The kind that came from laughing too hard, worrying too long, not sleeping enough.
"You look awful," she murmured under her breath. Then, before he could respond: "I'm glad you're alive."
He swallowed.
"Likewise," he said.
She gave him a quick, sharp once-over—height, weight, posture, scars in his eyes—and seemed satisfied enough for now.
"Apologies again," she said louder, back to the girls. "We'll get out of your way. He only just got back; it's rude of us to crash the reunion."
She tugged Zoe back a step.
The catgirl dragged her heels.
"Wait," Zoe complained. "I wanted to—"
"You wanted to cause a scene," Julia interrupted. "Mission accomplished. Now we leave before someone starts taking notes."
She glanced back at Erynd, amusement flickering.
"I'll see you later," she said. "Try not to collect another woman before sunset. You're already making the rest of us look bad."
Before his brain could quite process that, she leaned in and kissed his cheek.
Quick.
Soft.
Precisely placed so Tamara, Lyra, and Noelle all saw it.
"Naughty girl," she repeated lightly, this time about herself. "I'll drag her away before she makes it worse."
Then she did exactly that: one last twist to Zoe's ear, a firm push between the shoulder blades, and the two of them melted back into the flow of bodies.
No uniforms. No insignia. Just two more people from the outside, folding into the crowd and vanishing like smoke.
***
The silence they left behind wasn't really silent.
It was the heavy, humming quiet of people thinking very hard.
Erynd could feel eyes on him from every direction. Feel the rumours starting to crawl into being.
Milton is back.
Taller.
He has a masked demonkin calling him "my lord."
A half-elf kissed him.
He walked in with three girls and walked out with five.
He didn't need to hear the words to know their shapes.
"Erynd."
Tamara said his name like a warning.
He turned.
Her expression hurt to look at.
She was trying to be angry.
Anger was easier.
But confusion kept leaking through the cracks.
"You have… people now," she said slowly. "From… outside."
He could see her searching for a shape to put around that concept.
Zoe, falling out of nowhere with a baby joke.
Julia, composed and amused, tugging ears and kissing cheeks like it was nothing.
People he'd met in the parts of the world they only heard about in reports.
"Friends," he said finally. "Kind of. Allies. It's… complicated."
Lyra folded her arms.
"I thought I was bad at understating things," she said. "Turns out you can compress several years and multiple disasters into one word and call it 'complicated.' Amazing."
Noelle didn't say anything.
She just stared at him, fingers white-knuckled around the little symbol of Vastriel at her throat.
He could almost see the questions crowding behind her teeth.
Where were you?
Who were you with?
Why didn't you say?
Why do they know you well enough to talk like that?
"Look," he began. "I—"
"Later," Lyra cut in.
Her smile was too calm.
"That's… a lot," she said. "More than we can pull apart in front of half the Academy. We are going to talk about this. Just… not here. Not now. Or I'm going to start screaming, and then I'll be the story instead of you."
Noelle swallowed.
"Yes," she murmured. "Later. Please."
He nodded.
Tamara exhaled hard through her nose, like a bull deciding not to charge. Yet.
"Fine," she said. "We have a ceremony to get through anyway. We'll… think. Then we'll corner you."
A ripple of noise went through the crowd as the bell tolled overhead.
The call to the hall.
Dean Keith's voice rolled out over them, amplified by some unobtrusive spell:
"All graduating students to the assembly hall. If you're late, I will cry. And then you will fail. In that order."
A few people laughed weakly.
Movement resumed, the courtyard shifting into a river of robes and boots heading toward the main doors.
Melody floated just over his shoulder, invisible to everyone else, toes skimming the air.
"You look like you're considering running," she murmured.
"I'm considering going back to the cave," he muttered. "It was quieter there."
"It was also full of fatal organ failure," she pointed out. "This is better. Probably. Go. Before they decide 'later' means 'right now' and knock you out in front of the statue."
The mental image was clear enough that he obediently let himself be swept along.
Tamara took his right arm.
Lyra slid in on his left, her shoulder bumping his.
Noelle walked just behind, fingers brushing his sleeve now and then as if she was checking he was still there.
As they walked, he heard whispers flare and fade around them like sparks.
"—is that him—"
"—back from the dead—"
"—half-elf just kissed him—"
"—did you see the tail—"
He could have done something about it.
He could have reached for mana, just a little, tuned his senses the way he'd learned to do outside these walls—sharp enough to catch every word, every breath, the exact shape of their reputations being written in real time.
He didn't.
Let them talk.
He already knew what he'd done.
***
The hall was the same as the first time he'd walked into it.
High stone arches.
Banners.
The white-marble statue of Vastriel at the far end, hands open in measured welcome, eyes cast down as if she was reading something only she could see.
He took his place with the Sword graduates.
Tamara beside him.
Across the aisle, Lyra slotted in with Divination. Noelle with Theology. They were close enough that he could see their faces, not close enough that he could pretend they were still just four students in the same year, waiting for a lecture.
Dean Keith stepped up to the podium.
His robe looked a little more worn at the edges. His hair a little thinner. His eyes exactly as sharp as ever.
"Congratulations," he said.
The word dropped into the hall like a stone into deep water.
"You survived," he added. "That's more than some of us hoped for when you first stumbled through these doors."
A few hollow laughs.
He didn't soften it.
"When you arrived," he went on, "I told you this place would prepare you for the world. That was a lie of omission. The world did not wait politely outside the gates while you studied. It barged in. It screamed. It broke things. Some of you lost homes. Some of you lost people. Some of you lost… illusions."
His gaze drifted, briefly, over Erynd.
Erynd stared back.
"You trained with one eye on your books and one on the horizon," Keith said. "You learned to channel mana while rumours of Awakening and sickness and war filtered through the walls. You sparred with each other knowing there might come a day when you'd stand back to back against something that didn't stop when the bell rang."
He paused.
"You did it anyway," he said simply. "You showed up to class after funerals. You took exams between letters. You got up and came here, to this hall, again and again, when you had every excuse to fall apart. You have achieved. You have survived. Those are not the same…but both matter."
Literally, Erynd thought.
He swallowed a humourless smile.
Keith kept it mercifully brief.
He didn't talk about destiny.
He didn't talk about "the future is in your hands."
He talked about work.
About the fact that graduation wasn't an ending, just the Academy's promise that they'd shoved as much knowledge into these students as they could before the world claimed the rest.
Names were called.
Students walked.
Tamara's name rang out.
"Tamara von Hailbrecht. Sword Department. Graduating with distinction. Top of year in practical combat."
She straightened, walked up to the dais with her usual mix of swagger and barely-contained nerves, took her scroll, nodded, came back.
Her eyes flicked to him as she passed, a flash of see? and you didn't break me.
Lyra's turn.
"Lyra Feld. Sword Campus, Divination Department. Highest marks in applied theorem and practical projection."
She moved with deliberate calm, like she'd practised walking between omens and chosen not to flinch when they brushed her.
When she accepted her scroll, she didn't look at Vastriel's statue.
Her eyes found Erynd's instead.
Noelle.
"Noelle. Staff Campus. Commendation for excellence in exams and discourse."
That last word carried a faint ripple of amusement. Everyone knew she'd argued with priests until they reconsidered their life choices.
She walked up the aisle like she belonged there.
At the statue, she touched the base with her fingers and murmured something.
The hairs on Erynd's arms prickled.
A familiar warmth brushed his mind—hesitant, watching.
He ignored it.
His own name came too soon.
"Erynd Milton."
No "Lord" tacked on.
Just that.
He stepped up.
"Graduating," Keith said, "with distinction in Sword and Theory."
A tiny pause.
"And with… field experience I will not list here, because I'd like to finish this ceremony before we all die of old age."
A scattered laugh.
Keith handed him the scroll.
Up close, the man looked tired in the soul.
"Try to stay enrolled in this life a little longer," he said quietly. "It's hell to mark your file."
"I'll do my best," Erynd murmured. "No guarantees."
Keith snorted.
"Of course not," he said.
Erynd turned to the hall, bowed once, and returned to his place.
He'd expected to feel something huge.
He didn't.
Just a quiet click, like a door closing behind him.
***
By the time the last name was called, the hall was buzzing with restless energy.
Outside, the courtyard exploded into motion again.
Plans were shouted.
Tavern names.
Study promises no one would keep.
Half-serious vows to meet up at midwinter, to write, to not forget.
Erynd stepped out into the light and let the noise wash over him.
"Erynd."
Tamara's voice, again.
He turned.
She stood a little way off with Lyra and Noelle. Not as close as before. Not far either. A triangle, heads bowed together.
They were talking.
Low.
Fast.
Every now and then, one of them would glance up at him.
He couldn't hear the words.
He could have.
A little mana, a small twist of will, and he'd catch every syllable, taste every emotion in the way their throats moved.
He didn't.
That wasn't his to steal.
Instead, he watched them.
Tamara's hands slicing the air in sharp, frustrated lines. Lyra's fingers tapping her scroll, her eyes far away in that "overthinking at triple speed" way she had. Noelle's lips moving in half-formed prayers and curses, her shoulders squared like she was bracing for impact.
They said something that made all three of them grimace.
Then they looked at him together.
For a heartbeat, he felt like prey.
A shiver walked up his spine.
Foreshadowing, some dry, exhausted part of him thought. Great.
They broke apart when they saw him watching and pasted on almost-normal faces.
"Hey," Tamara said, too brightly. "Come with us after. We… need to talk."
"That sounds ominous," he said.
"It is," Lyra said frankly. "But we're going to pretend it isn't until later, or we'll all go insane."
Noelle just nodded once.
"Please," she said. "Just… don't disappear before we can."
"I won't," he said.
The words felt heavier than they should have.
He let them drag him along into the rest of the day.
***
He wasn't knocked out right away.
The sun had started to tilt toward evening by the time it happened.
They'd done the rounds: obligatory stop by the dorms to dump scrolls, a raid on the dining hall for food nobody really tasted, a brief, awkward detour past the training yard where it all started.
People kept stopping him.
"Milton! You're alive!"
"Where were you?"
"Is it true about the demonkin?"
"Do you have to go straight away?"
He lied as little as possible.
"Travelling."
"Far."
"Dangerous."
"Yes, soon."
Through it all, the girls hovered near but not too near, their own emotions ping-ponging between relief, anger, curiosity, and a bone-deep confusion they clearly didn't know how to name yet.
He felt… tired.
Not physically.
In the way that came from too many eyes, too many questions, too much catching up without any real catching.
By late afternoon, they peeled away from the crowds.
Tamara led the way down one of the quieter corridors, boots thudding against old wood.
"Come on," she said. "We're borrowing something."
"Borrowing what?" he asked.
"You'll see," she said.
He sighed.
This is how most of my problems start.
They turned a corner.
The corridor was empty, light falling in long rectangles through high windows.
It was… quiet.
He felt the prickle a second before it hit.
A shift in the air.
Mana, thin and precise, brushing the edge of his senses like a fingertip to the back of his neck.
His body reacted on instinct.
He dropped his weight, started to twist, half-turning, hand already reaching for a sword that wasn't on his hip.
Enemy—
The spell landed.
Not a blow.
A soft, heavy blanket slammed over his awareness, pressing him down into his own body.
His knees hit the floor.
Vision blurred.
The world tilted.
He forced his head up.
Tamara stood in front of him.
Lyra at her shoulder, fingers still raised, mana fading around them.
Noelle a step behind, lips pressed together, eyes huge.
"Sorry," Tamara said, face tight.
Lyra winced.
"It was this or watch you dodge us all night," she said. "You're very good at 'urgent business' when you don't want to have a hard conversation."
"Wha—" he tried.
The spell dug deeper.
Not a knockout punch. More like a thick, humming weight pinned to every limb.
He could have fought it.
He could have grabbed the threads of mana and snapped them, pushed qi through his meridians and burned it out of his system. The spell wasn't designed for someone with his reserves.
He didn't.
He let it take him.
The last thing he saw was Noelle stepping forward, hands out as if to catch him even though she couldn't possibly hold his full weight.
Then the world went sideways and dim.
***
He woke up sitting.
Leather bit into his wrists and ankles, across his chest.
For a brief, ugly second, he expected damp stone, iron, the stink of rot.
Instead, he got chalk.
Old wood.
Dust motes turning in a slant of evening light.
He blinked.
His head throbbed dully. The spell had been clean, at least. Knockdown, not brain damage.
He flexed his fingers.
Straps creaked.
The restraints were good quality—broad bands around his wrists and ankles, one crossing his chest, buckled at the back. Reinforced with little stitched-in runes meant to damp sudden flare-ups of mana, the kind you used on someone who might panic and blast a hole in the wall mid-breakthrough.
They weren't full mana blockers.
He could feel power humming under his skin, ready to answer if he called.
Qi too, coiled deeper.
He could have slipped a trickle of mana through, shorted the runes, or just pushed brute force into the leather until it snapped. He'd broken worse in training. A focused burst of qi, and the chair would be splinters.
He didn't.
If he couldn't handle being tied to a chair by three half-confused, half-angry girls he cared about, he had no business pretending he was responsible enough to handle an estate.
"Don't," Tamara said.
He lifted his head.
She sat on a crate opposite him, arms folded, legs swinging. But there was something different in the way she looked at him now. Not the casual camaraderie of training partners.
Her eyes traced the line of his throat, the way his chest rose and fell against the strap.
Lyra perched on the edge of a desk near the window, back to the stone, ankles crossed. She was watching him with that analytical stare she usually reserved for particularly complex divination theorems. Except this time, the focus felt... personal. Intimate in a way that made his skin prickle.
Noelle occupied a chair off to the side, hands knitted together in her lap. Her cheeks were flushed, and she kept glancing at him then away, like she couldn't quite decide if she should be here or flee.
All three of them were watching him.
The silence stretched.
"You really like putting me in chairs," he said. His voice came out rough, but functional.
"You really like running," Lyra said. She uncrossed her ankles, letting one leg dangle. "We're countering a habit."
Tamara stood and walked closer. Not right up to him, but close enough that he could smell the faint scent of steel and leather oil that always clung to her after training.
"We only did the chains because you kept answering things with jokes," she said. Her voice was quieter now. "If we tried to do this in the courtyard, you'd have found an excuse to get dragged off by a professor or a crisis or some other mysterious thing that isn't us."
He tested the strap across his chest again, feeling the way it held him firmly in place.
The movement made Tamara's eyes flick down to his shoulders, to the way the binding emphasized the breadth of him.
She swallowed.
"Not bad," he said. "A little loose on the left."
"Shut up," Tamara snapped, then winced. Her hand moved, almost unconsciously, toward that left strap. She stopped herself halfway. "Sorry. Just… don't make jokes right now."
"I'm not joking," he said quietly. "I'm noticing that you've gotten very good at this. The straps. The ambush. The coordination."
Lyra made a soft sound that might have been amusement.
"We've had a lot of time to think about what we'd do if you came back," she said. She slid off the desk and moved closer, circling to his side. "How we'd keep you in one place long enough to actually see you."
Her fingers brushed the back of the chair, close enough to his bound wrist that he felt the warmth of her hand.
"And what did you think about?" he asked.
"This," Tamara said simply. She stepped directly in front of him now, close enough that her knees almost touched his. "Having you somewhere you couldn't slip away from. Where you'd have to be honest."
She crouched down, bringing her face level with his.
This close, he could see the tiny scar on her chin from that training accident in second year. The way her pupils had dilated slightly. The rapid pulse at her throat.
"Do you know how infuriating you are?" she asked softly.
"I have some idea," he said.
"No," she said. "You don't. Because you're not the one who spent three years wondering if the boy who saved you was dead in a ditch somewhere. You're not the one who had dreams about—"
She stopped.
Her jaw worked.
Lyra's hand settled on Erynd's shoulder from behind, fingers curling just slightly into the fabric of his shirt.
"We were terrified," Lyra said. Her voice was close to his ear, low and careful. "And angry. And confused about why being terrified and angry felt so much like..." She paused. "Like we'd lost something we never really had in the first place."
Noelle made a tiny sound.
She'd risen from her chair and moved closer, though she still hung back slightly, one hand pressed to her chest.
"I prayed every day," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "And at night I... I thought about what I'd do if you came back. What I'd say. How I'd—"
She cut herself off, face flushing deeper.
Tamara's hand moved. Not to the strap. To his knee.
Just resting there. Warm through the fabric.
"You changed," she said. "Taller. Broader. You move different now. Like you're ready to kill something at any moment." Her fingers tightened slightly. "But you're still you under all that. Aren't you?"
"I think so," he said.
"Prove it," she said.
"How?"
She leaned in closer. Close enough that he could feel her breath.
"Stop running from this," she said. "From us. From whatever the hell this is that's been building since the day you dragged me out of that stupid predicament and told me I was worth saving."
His throat felt tight.
Lyra's fingers traced along his shoulder, not quite a caress but not quite casual either.
"We know you're dangerous now," she said. "We know you're probably going to get yourself killed doing something heroic and stupid. We know that tying ourselves to you is a terrible tactical decision."
"And yet here we are," Tamara finished. "With you in chains. Because apparently we're all just as stupid as you are."
Noelle finally moved closer, drawn in despite her nervousness. She knelt beside the chair, eye level with him from a different angle than Tamara.
"I need to know," she said. "If this is just... habit for you. If we're just the people who happened to be here before you found your real life out there."
"You're not," he said.
"Then what are we?" Noelle asked.
The question hung in the air.
Tamara's hand was still on his knee. Lyra's fingers still rested on his shoulder. Noelle's eyes were huge and dark and far too close.
He was bound to a chair, unable to move, unable to run, completely at their mercy.
And he realized, with a clarity that almost hurt, that he didn't want to be anywhere else.
"You're the ones I came back for," he said quietly. "Not duty. Not obligation. You. I could have sent letters. Could have just... moved on with whatever life I'm building out there. But I came back. Because the thought of you not knowing, not seeing me, not having the chance to decide what you wanted—"
His voice roughened.
"It was worse than any anomaly," he finished.
Tamara's breath hitched.
Lyra's fingers tightened on his shoulder.
Noelle's hand moved, hesitant, until it rested on his other knee, mirroring Tamara.
"You're an idiot," Tamara said. But her voice was thick.
"Yes," he agreed.
She leaned in further. Close enough that he could count her eyelashes. Close enough that if she moved just a few inches more, she could—
She stopped.
"I should kiss you," she said. "Just to make a point."
"What point?" he asked.
"That you're ours to worry about," she said. "Not some far-off ghost. Not some tragic hero in a story. Ours. And we're not letting go just because it's scary."
"All three of you?" he asked. His eyes flicked to Lyra, then to Noelle.
"That's what we need to figure out," Lyra said. She sounded almost amused now, though her hand trembled slightly. "The logistics of this are... complicated."
"I can handle complicated," he said.
"Can you handle three women who are all extremely angry with you and also possibly in love with you?" Tamara asked bluntly. "Because I'm not interested in sharing if it means you're going to pick one of us and break the others."
"I'm not interested in breaking any of you," he said.
"Then what are you interested in?" Noelle asked softly.
He met each of their gazes in turn.
Tamara, fierce and demanding, her hand warm on his knee.
Lyra, analytical and careful, her fingers a gentle pressure on his shoulder.
Noelle, faithful and terrified, her hand trembling against his leg.
"Not losing you," he said simply. "Any of you. I don't know what shape that takes. I don't know how to navigate this without hurting someone. But I know that when I think about my future, you're all in it. Not as decorations. Not as proof of anything. Just... there. Being exactly who you are."
Tamara exhaled slowly.
"That's not an answer," she said.
"It's the only honest one I have," he said.
She studied his face for a long moment.
Then she leaned in and pressed her forehead to his.
Not a kiss.
Something more deliberate than that.
A claiming. A promise. A threat.
"Fine," she whispered. "But you're not disappearing again. We're going to figure this out. Together. Even if it's messy."
"Especially if it's messy," Lyra added. Her hand slid from his shoulder down his arm, stopping at the leather strap around his wrist. "Everything about you is messy. We've accepted that."
Noelle's hand tightened on his knee.
"I'm scared," she admitted. "But I'm more scared of not trying."
The three of them stayed there, close enough to touch, close enough that he could feel the heat of them, the weight of their presence.
Bound to the chair, unable to move, completely vulnerable.
And safer than he'd felt in years.
"Are you going to untie me now?" he asked after a moment.
"Eventually," Tamara said. She pulled back slightly, a crooked smile on her face. "But first you're going to sit there and listen while we explain exactly what we expect from you. All of it. No running. No deflecting."
"And if I try?" he asked.
Her smile sharpened.
"Then we leave you here overnight," she said. "Tied up. Alone. With lots of time to think about what an idiot you've been."
Lyra laughed softly.
"She's not joking," she said.
"I believe you," he said.
Noelle bit her lip, then smiled.
"This is probably terrible," she said. "All of it. But I... I don't want to be the only one who was too afraid to try."
"Then don't be," he said.
She took a shaky breath and nodded.
Tamara stepped back slightly, giving him space but not releasing him from her gaze.
"Alright," she said. "Let's start with the obvious question. What exactly have you been doing out there that made a demonkin ask you about babies?"
He groaned.
"That's going to take a while to explain," he said.
"Good," Lyra said. She settled back against the desk, looking far too pleased with herself. "We have all night. And you're not going anywhere."
The interrogation began.
But underneath the questions, underneath the anger and confusion and fear, there was something else now.
Something that hummed in the air between them like mana before a spell.
Want. Need. Possibility.
Tamara asked about Zoe first, then Julia, then the organization he'd built in shadows.
He answered as honestly as he could without revealing everything—the System, the loops, the exact number of times he'd died and come back.
Those were his alone to carry.
But he told them about the Awakening. About the cult in the cellar where he'd found Julia half-dead. About Zoe, hollow-eyed and dangerous, asking him very calmly if he planned to kill her too after she'd murdered her captors.
About the network of people who needed a place to send information that wouldn't vanish into some bureaucrat's drawer.
About the land he'd claimed—broken, cursed, his responsibility now.
Lyra asked about his training under Safon's master.
He kept it vague. Pain. Rebuilding. Learning to survive things that should have killed him.
He didn't mention the three cores.
Didn't mention the black mana coiled in his chest like sleeping serpents.
Noelle watched him with those huge, worried eyes, and he knew—somehow he knew—that she'd already seen.
But she didn't say anything.
Not yet.
The questions eventually slowed. Circled back. Repeated.
Not because they didn't believe him, but because they were testing the shape of the truth, turning it over in their minds, trying to find the edges where it didn't quite fit.
The room had gone dark.
Someone had lit a single mana-light, soft and blue, casting long shadows across the practice room floor.
Tamara stood in front of him still, arms folded, but her posture had shifted. Less interrogator, more... something else.
"So," she said slowly. "You're a lord now. With cursed land. And a secret organization. And people who jump on you in public asking about babies."
"Yes," he said.
"And you came back here," Lyra added, "to close a chapter. To see us. To be seen."
"Yes."
"And then you're leaving again," Noelle whispered. "Soon."
His chest tightened.
"Yes," he said. "But not forever. I'll send word. Real word. And you can come. Visit. See what I'm building. Decide what you want to be to me."
Tamara's jaw worked.
"What if we've already decided?" she asked quietly.
The air went still.
Erynd looked at her. At Lyra. At Noelle.
Three girls who'd ambushed him, chained him to a chair, and demanded honesty.
Three women who'd spent three years carrying his absence like a wound.
"Then tell me," he said.
Tamara moved first.
She closed the distance between them in two strides, dropping to her knees in front of the chair so their faces were level.
"I want you," she said bluntly. "I've wanted you since you dragged me out of that stupid situation in first year and told me I was worth saving. I've wanted you through every letter, every rumor, every gods-damned nightmare where you didn't come back."
Her hand found his face, thumb tracing the scar along his jaw.
"I don't care if it's complicated," she said. "I don't care if you have a dozen people waiting for you out there. I don't care if your land is cursed and your life is dangerous. I want to be part of it. I want to stand next to you and fight whatever comes."
She leaned in until their foreheads touched.
"I want you," she repeated, softer. "And I'm not letting go."
Lyra moved to his side, fingers finding his shoulder again.
"I want you too," she said. Her voice was calm, but he could hear the tremor underneath. "I've been writing scenes in my head for three years. Different versions of how you'd come back. What I'd say. What you'd say. None of them were this."
She smiled, sharp and fond.
"But this is better," she said. "Because it's real. You're real. Messy and damaged and carrying too much, but real. And I want to be part of that reality. However it shapes itself."
Noelle knelt on his other side, hand finding his knee.
"I prayed for you," she whispered. "Every day. Every night. I asked Vastriel to keep you safe. To bring you back. To let me see you one more time."
Her voice cracked.
"And you came back," she said. "You came back and you're still you and I—"
She stopped. Swallowed hard.
"I want you," she finished. "I don't know how this works. I don't know if I'm allowed to want someone the way I want you. But I do. And I'm tired of pretending I don't."
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was full of breath and heartbeat and the weight of three confessions hanging in the air like incense.
Erynd looked at them—really looked—and felt something in his chest crack open.
Not break.
Open.
Like a door he'd kept locked for too long finally giving way.
"I want you too," he said quietly. "All of you. I don't know how to make it work. I don't know if I deserve it. But I'm tired of running from it."
Tamara's eyes flared.
"Then stop running," she said.
And she kissed him.