Chapter 110 – Ladies Night (4)
(Tamara)
For a little while, it almost felt like we'd gotten away with it.
No cults. No nobles. No Olivia having her worldview torn apart.
Just three girls, new dresses in bags, a bit of war paint on our faces and sugar in our blood.
We walked with Noelle in the middle, hands brushing sometimes, Lyra on the other side scanning rooftops out of habit. The city felt… softer today. Less like a battlefield, more like a place people actually lived.
Noelle was humming under her breath.
That should've been my first warning.
"Hey," she said suddenly.
Her tone had that wobbly edge that meant "this is going to be a feelings question."
"Yeah?" I said.
She chewed her lower lip, eyes down for a second.
"If you and Lyra ever have twins," she said, "and it's a boy… can I have one?"
I stopped.
Lyra did too.
"The what," I said.
Noelle colored, but she pushed on.
"Not 'have' like steal," she said quickly. "I mean… raise. With you. With all of us. My father… Ezra… he always wanted a boy. A son to carry the line. To pass the name. You know how stupid noble things are. He was awful about it, before."
"Is that why he treated you like you were unwanted?" I asked. "All that pressure, all that crap you told us about when you were still calling yourself Noel?"
She flinched a little at the old name.
Then shook her head.
"Yes and no," she said. "He… it's complicated."
Her voice smoothed out, defensive in that way it got when anyone said "your father" with too much venom.
"He did want a son," she said. "A 'proper' heir. And for a long time he thought that's what he had. Noel. Little boy with a sword. He poured all his expectations into me before I even knew who I was."
She glanced up at us, searching our faces.
"When I told him I wasn't his son," she said quietly, "that I was his daughter, that I was Noelle… he did not take it well."
That was an understatement.
We'd all saw the story.
Ezra Verdan. Duel in the academy colosseum. Erynd standing between a girl and her father's temper with that flat, patient look that said try it.
"He said some horrible things," Noelle continued. "About 'disgrace' and 'wasted blood' and 'no heir.' And then he lost the duel."
Her mouth twitched, a sad little almost-smile.
"And then he cried," she added. "I'd never seen him cry before. It was like losing and watching Erynd stand there forced him to actually… look at what he was doing. At me."
I remembered her telling us about that night after. Ezra sitting in a chair like the fight had taken the bones out of him, staring at his hands, then at his child.
"He apologized," Noelle said, a little fiercely now, like she could hear the insults I wasn't saying yet. "Properly. Not the 'I'm sorry you're upset' nonsense. He said he'd been cruel. That he'd tried to shove his idea of 'son' on me until there was nothing left for me to be. He… accepted me. As his daughter."
Her fingers twisted in the hem of her dress.
"He accepted that he would never have a son," she said softly. "Not from his own blood. Not the way he used to dream it."
She took a breath.
"And then Erynd happened," she said. "He saw him fight. Saw him plan. Saw him drag our stupid house back from the brink because of me. And suddenly, 'son' looked… different."
Her expression softened.
"He told me," she said, "that maybe not having a son wasn't the end of everything. That if his daughter married that disaster, then maybe that was enough. That Erynd could be his son not by blood but by stubbornness. And that if, someday, I gave him a grandson…" She hesitated. "…by adoption, by any way that made sense for me, he would be grateful. Not resentful. Not disappointed. Grateful."
I let that sit.
"So this twin thing," I said slowly. "This is about that. About giving him something to love that fits his new idea of 'heir.'"
"It's not just about him," she blurted. "I'm not— I know what he was. I know what he said. I know he hurt me. But he changed. He really did. And I love him. I forgave him. Not because he's perfect now, but because he took the hit, lost the duel, and listened."
Her eyes shone.
"And now," she went on, "when he says 'my daughter,' it's… real. He defends me. He backed me when the other nobles whispered. He calls Erynd 'that idiot' and then sends him the good wine. He's trying. And I want to give him something back. Something that says 'your change mattered.'"
She swallowed.
"So I thought," she finished in a rush, "if you and Lyra ever have twins and one's a boy… maybe I could… be his mama too. On paper. In his heart. So Ezra can have a grandson to spoil and I can… be a mother. And he can look at that boy and know that losing the son he thought he had didn't mean losing everything."
Silence stretched.
Lyra was very, very still.
I looked at Noelle.
At the mix of embarrassment and stubborn love and old hurt on her face.
"Okay," I said. "First of all, your father was a monumental ass and he's a dickhead like mine."
Noelle opened her mouth, ready to argue.
I held up a hand.
"Past tense," I said. "Was. Before the duel. Before he listened. Before he changed. Second: he is currently… tolerable."
Her shoulders loosened a little.
"And third," I added, "it's obvious you love him. That's allowed. You're not wrong for forgiving him. He did the bare minimum of human decency and then kept going. That matters."
She took a shaky breath.
"So," I said, "if I ever… gods help us… end up pregnant. And if it's twins. And if one of them's a boy…"
I let the absurdity hang for a second.
"You don't have to ask to be his mother too," I finished. "That's already baked in. You, me, Lyra, Zoe… any kid we produce is doomed to have too many mothers and one very tired father-thing."
Lyra made a tiny strangled sound.
"Strictly speaking," she said faintly, "that's not how parentage—"
"Shush," I said. "Biology can cope. Family is who does the night shifts."
Noelle stared at me.
"You mean it?" she whispered.
"Yes," I said. "Ezra gets to be a ridiculous old man with a grandson on his knee. You get to be the boy's mama. Just… don't you dare pretend he's more 'real' than any daughters we have, adopted or otherwise."
She shook her head violently.
"Never," she said. "Never. I just… want to share. Not replace."
"Good," I said.
Then I leaned in and kissed her.
Not long.
Just enough to say understood without more words.
Lyra moved closer like gravity.
Our mouths bumped, then adjusted, three people trying to share a point in space, the kind of awkward, soft tangle that would've made me die of embarrassment a year ago.
From the outside, it probably looked like three girls being indecent in a side street.
From the inside, it felt like a pact.
When we pulled back, Noelle's face was on fire.
"I didn't mean to start crying," she muttered, wiping at her cheeks.
"Too late," I said. "No refunds."
Lyra brushed a thumb under Noelle's eye.
"Your father is still a fool," she said gently. "But he is your fool. We'll treat him accordingly."
Noelle laughed, half-sob, half-snort.
"Deal," she said.
We started walking again.
For a moment, it really did feel like maybe the world would let us have this.
We missed our turn.
Blame Noelle. Or the almost-crying. Or the way my head was busy trying to imagine Erynd with a house full of screaming children and failing.
"Uh," Noelle said eventually. "This street is… new."
The buildings had slumped.
Less glass, more boarded windows. Cracks in the stones. The neat drainage channels clogged.
My spine tightened.
"Where are we?" I asked.
Noelle grimaced.
"Possibly," she said, "the wrong direction."
"Slums," Lyra said quietly.
The word carried memories: half-starved faces, too many eyes, the stink of places cities tried not to admit existed.
Except—
This wasn't quite that.
Yes, the houses leaned. Yes, there were too many bodies in too little space. Yes, I could smell sweat and old smoke.
But the kids running past weren't all skin and bones.
They had meat on them. Badly patched clothes, but clean. A woman with a baby on her hip yelled at a group of teenagers in a way that sounded more annoyed than desperate.
A man with a bandaged leg sat on a crate, talking to someone in a plain grey robe. The bandage pulsed faintly with the glow of a healing charm that wasn't academy work, but close.
"There's… order," Lyra murmured. "Here."
My eye caught on a mark.
Painted small on a wall near a doorway where people were lining up with bowls and cloth bundles. Carved discreetly into a crate stacked nearby. Scratched onto a little wooden sign.
A tree.
Roots and branches overarching a circle.
To random eyes, just a stylized emblem.
To us, quiet as a whisper and loud as a shout.
Yggdrasil.
Not the big, proud crest we stamped on war maps.
The subtle one. The version we used when we didn't want it traced easily. Someone had blended it with a merchant mark: a tiny angular flick through one root, echoing the hidden scratch Erynd liked to tuck into the corner of his personal notes.
A merger sigil.
Not obvious.
A slap in the face to anyone from inside.
People went in and out of that door carrying bowls of stew, blankets, packets of herbs. The robed figure at the crate was laying hands on people, murmuring. Low-level healing charms, stabilization spells, curses broken before they rooted.
"This is…" Noelle began.
"Us," I said. "This is us."
"I'm sorry," she said reflexively. "I didn't mean to drag us here. I wasn't paying attention and—"
"Stop apologizing," I said. "We got lost. We saw something worth seeing. That's not a crime."
We walked slower now.
I watched a kid tug his younger sister toward the line. No one shoved him away. An older woman clucked her tongue and straightened the girl's shirt, sending them on.
"We should've had this years ago," I muttered. "Before Erynd. Before Yggdrasil. Before all of it."
"We didn't have the tools," Lyra said. No self-forgiveness. Just fact. "And we didn't think it was our job. That was the problem."
My gaze kept catching on that hybrid sigil.
Yggdrasil's roots.
Erynd's mark.
The city was being re-written around us in ways most people would never know.
"Trap," I said quietly.
"Comfortable trap," Noelle replied, a ghost of her earlier grin returning. "And I did say I like it here."
We turned a corner.
The smell hit us.
Rot.
The real kind.
The kind that comes from flesh that should have stopped moving some time ago.
Not just nose-deep.
Deep in the mana.
A slick, greasy wrongness that clung to the back of my tongue, made my fire twitch uneasily under my skin.
"Do you smell that?" I asked.
"Unfortunately," Noelle said, covering her nose. "It's like a corpse bathed in perfume."
Lyra's eyes narrowed.
"It's not just physical," she said. "There's… magic tangled in it."
We weren't the only ones who noticed.
On the other end of the street, a girl ran.
Bare feet slapping stone. Dress torn. Hair matted.
From a distance, she looked… normal.
Alive.
Skin the right color. Limbs moving properly.
But every instinct I had screamed wrong.
The rot smell rolled with her like a cloak.
As she got closer, it got worse.
Under the physical stink was something else: a hollowed-out aura, like someone had carved chunks out of her and stuffed them with spoiled mana.
Her eyes were too wide.
Too bright.
She saw us and flinched, changing direction, skirting wide like we were fire.
Behind her: footsteps.
Measured. Clean. Familiar.
I knew that stride.
Erynd came around the bend at a run.
He wasn't in armor. No dramatic coat. Just a dark shirt rolled to the elbows, stains on it that could've been soot or blood or ward backlash. Melody rode on his hip, the sheath humming faintly in a way that made the fine hair on my arms rise.
His face was wrong too.
Not his teacher face.
Not his "I'm about to say something awful but helpful" face.
Flat.
Focused.
The expression he wore when he'd already decided something, and what happened next was just execution.
He wasn't sprinting to tackle her.
He was pacing her.
Keeping her in a line, hands already lifting into a familiar start of a pattern.
Containment.
Not attack.
Not yet.
"The hell…" I breathed.
"Tamara," Lyra hissed. "Don't move."
Noelle's grip on my wrist tightened.
"Why does she smell like that?" she whispered. "What is she?"
As if she'd heard, the girl's head snapped toward us.
Her eyes locked on mine.
For a heartbeat, the street fell away.
I saw a person.
And something behind the person.
Something gnawing.
Hungry.
Rotting from the soul outward.
The stink of it made my stomach lurch.
Erynd's gaze flicked to us.
Just for a sliver of a second.
Enough time for a dozen messages.
Stay back.
Don't interfere.
I see you.
Then his attention snapped back to the girl.
His fingers finished the pattern
The air thickened.
We stood frozen on the edge of the scene, our bags of dresses and makeup suddenly feeling stupidly fragile.
"Even on ladies' night," I muttered, mostly to myself, "we can't get away from him."
No one contradicted me.
The girl ran.
The rot rolled.
Erynd's shadow stretched over the cobblestones as the spell took shape.
And whatever fragile, normal thing we'd been pretending to have today cracked down the middle.