In the end, Hyr had been forced to haul Emilia off her friend. It wasn’t that they’d devolved into more of a physical altercation or a screaming match or anything, rather the two of them had become stuck at an impasse. Emilia was too angry to say anything else, and while Leerin was no longer sobbing, she was instead just laying there, shoulders shaking as tears continued leaking down her cheeks.
Conrad seemed inclined to leave them like that until he felt it necessary to protect Emilia. Darrian—whose name Hyr only knew because he had quietly been moved onto their team by Conrad, his name popping up in their group chat—seemed at a loss for what to do, his eyes falling closed often enough that Hyr assumed he was messaging someone…
The same people Emilia had been chatting with? It didn’t matter—the man was of little use here, while his other cousins were just awkwardly hovering, unsure what to do.
“Will the others return?”
Hyr asked in the group chat as they picked Emilia off her friend, pulling her into their arms and relishing the way she automatically leaned into their warmth.
“Possibly,”
Korrin replied, wrinkling her nose, and promising her and her brothers would fight their cousins as many times as it took.
They had been standing around, watching Emilia hold a crying Leerin long enough that every member of the other group should have been able to return to the raid already, yet none had appeared. As far as Hyr could tell, they hadn’t even rejoined the raid. Emilia had explained that after being killed, as well as between each of the levels, heroes could enter the Virtuosi System to reassess their skills and train, so perhaps they were taking the chance to do so?
It would make no difference. Even combined, the group had no hope of beating even a single member of their original trio, let alone the three of them together or the larger group they had assembled.
The three veterans who had joined Hyr, disgusted with the words and actions of the Zentari family, had left shortly after Emilia arrived, disinclined to linger while some sort of family-friend drama occurred. Korrin and her brothers seemed intent to stay, especially after Darrian had been added to the group. They were just as worried about Leerin as Darrian was, one of the twins kneeling beside his cousin to softly speak with her while Hyr carried Emilia away.
They wouldn’t go far, just enough to be out of sight of the others. Around a corner, nothing more.
Emilia sniffled into their neck, her body limb against their own. So sad, her upset vibrating through Hyr’s energy and seeping into their soul.
“Do you want to leave?” they asked, turning to press Emilia’s back to the wall, helping her to hide from the pain of the world.
“Yes. No. If I didn’t think we’d regret leaving, I would.” Leaning back, Emilia smiled up at Hyr, her lips trembling with the effort. “Don’t imagine your syn powers are screaming that leaving would be the best option?”
No, their sight was definitely saying they needed to stay. Still, Hyr would leave for Emilia.
“Dangerous,”
the late syna Bur’s voice whispered to them.
“You know better than this, Hyr. If you cannot handle being with her—choosing the good over her good—you should leave.”
The late syna Bur had been a cranky person, their life drained away by, well, Hyr, unfortunately. They’d been a problematic child their entire life, only finding peace in the years since the syna Bur’s death several years earlier. Perhaps if the late syna Bur had been capable of looking at the world through anything but the most despondent of eyes, they wouldn’t have died so young.
Then again, they had always been destined to die young. Hyr wasn’t in the habit of wishing the past could have been different, but on this, they wished their teacher had been capable of seeing the world in a more positive light, of seeing the good that could come from even decisions that went against the aether’s flow.
Perhaps that was simply selfish, on their part. It would have been nice to hear the late syna Bur’s voice saying something positive for once—something about how the flow of the aether that one synat sees may not always be the true flow, as Hyr knew the syna Fivre often told their students. Of course, the late syna Bur had hated the syna Fivre, calling them so many creative things that despite Hyr’s own reticence and general refusal to call people names, they had quite a few tucked away inside their head should the need for them arise.
Still, in this case, regardless of how nice it would be to have their teacher’s phantom voice urging them towards making the decision that felt right in their sight, while ignoring their heart, it wouldn’t have done any good; Hyr knew that staying was for the best even within their heart, just as they knew asking Emilia if she wanted to leave despite knowing they needed to stay was for the best.
Emilia’s legs hooked around their waist when Hyr readjusted their grip on her, freeing one of their hands to brush hair from her face. Her beautiful purple eyes, flecked with the silver that differentiated silverstrains from lavender codes, flickered closed as she turned into the touch, her entire body relaxing to let their energy flow more easily within her.
Did she realize she did that? That she let her energy part to let them deeper as though it were second nature to let them in? Hyr didn’t think so, just as she didn’t realize how it was entirely against their nature—against the natural flow of their body and energy—to keep her energy out of their body in turn. They knew they needed to keep her out, the list of reasons long enough that they couldn’t even try to argue with themself on this point.
Yet, at times like there, where Emilia so easily accepted their energy into every bit of her body, quietly pulling it deeper, Hyr wanted to pull her into themself in turn. They couldn’t—wouldn’t—but they wanted to.
“Hyr?” Emilia said, so softly they would have missed it, even so close, were they not so entirely focused on her. She shifted, her meridians shuddering—did she realize they could feel that?
Hyr pressed their forehead to hers, hoping to stave off the question she wanted to ask a bit longer. The answer was complicated, time-consuming, and she already had too much resting on her mind, her shoulders. Emilia didn't need this—not now.
Tentatively, Hyr let her energy slide inside them, their focus sharpening to a point, lest they drag her further inside and be forced to expel her—something that wouldn’t help Emilia’s mood. Just the smallest bit, Hyr let her in, even less than the last time, but enough to feel their answer to her unasked question.
Complicated. Long. Later.
The sigh that escaped Emilia was amused, so long and drawn out that it was surprising she’d even managed to find that much air.
“Fine~” she whined—Hyr wasn’t sure they’d ever heard someone as old as her whine. It was something that was frowned upon in Nur’tha, for adults to not grow up in a timely manner. The sound—the energy of being a child—suited the woman in their arms. After being through so much—accomplishing so much at the expense of her own childhood—she deserved to continue being a child as long as she wanted. “Hyr?”
This time, Hyr hummed in soft acknowledgement of the question they couldn’t anticipate. Something less important—less life changing—than the other one she wanted to ask, the one that Conrad was insistent they needed to talk about far sooner than they were meant to.
“Are you, uhm… your energy…”
Hyr hummed again, pulling back to gaze down at Emilia. It was uncommon for her to stumble over her words, regardless of the subject. It was also rare for her to not look at whoever she was talking about, save when she was distracted.
Currently, she was not distracted, just… embarrassed?
A soft horror spiked inside Hyr a moment too late to stop her question, not because it would be something life changing, but because it was just embarrassing.
“Are you purposefully using your energy to, uhm… make me horny?”
Emilia still wasn’t looking at them, sign enough that she wasn’t completely confident what answer she would receive. No blush pressed over her cheeks, the only outward sign she was embarrassed the lack of eye contact, the soft flicker of her downcast lashes.
“Currently? No.” It wasn’t a lie—they really hadn’t been trying to rile her up the way they had previously, when they’d teased their energy over specific pressure points and churned up the woman’s energy for no reason other than that they could, and Emilia seemed to have no complaints over what they were doing, their self-restraint snapping within her openness.
“Currently? So… before?”
Perhaps… perhaps they should have talked about this properly before. Hyr was almost positive Emilia didn’t care—that she’d enjoyed their energy teasing her—but if they’d misread…
“Before… was on purpose,” they agreed. They wanted to lie—claim it had all been an accident—but couldn’t, wouldn’t. Lying would do no good, except to complicate things further, even if it would soothe the heat spreading through their body.
Instead, they just had to bear with their mortification and trust that their sight wasn’t leaving them to be eaten alive by the woman—not that their sight informing them what Emilia had been intending to ask would have saved them from any repercussions for their assumption that she had no objections. “Currently… I didn’t mean to do so, but my energy is still, ah… doing… that.”
Emilia snorted, muttering a version of what Conrad had told them earlier that day: that people who can’t talk about sex shouldn’t be trying to have it.
Filing away the
trying to have it
for later—Hyr hadn’t actually put much thought into what they were hoping to get out of harassing Emilia’s energy, it just felt right and natural for them to do so—they rephrased their words. “Earlier, I was purposefully riling up your sex drive because it is enjoyable, and you seemed to enjoy it as well. Just before, it wasn’t purposeful. More… I suppose I was absentmindedly attempting to distract you—make you less sad. I apologize if it has been unwanted at any point.”
Emilia was quiet for a long moment, her energy gently poking at Hyr’s own, which had gone still the moment she asked about their intentions. It was extremely distracting, having her energy lap at their own, ticklish in a way they hadn’t realized it would be—teasing, tempting. Hyr tried to keep their energy still, not just to let Emilia examine and play with it, but because she hadn’t yet told them if they could continue as they had been before.
If Emilia was upset—if she intended to push them out of her—Hyr would accept that. They would accept any repercussions for their actions.
“I told you you should have asked,”
the late syna Bur grumbled, and yes, yes their phantom presence had indeed told them that earlier that evening—there had also been some rude comments about the peek Hyr had taken when Emilia had abruptly landed on their lap, while they had been attempting to come down from accidentally experiencing Emilia’s pleasure while she was out. All of his teacher’s ghostly comments were completely deserved—Hyr was aware they were overstepping, not giving Emilia nearly enough information about what being connected through their energy so constantly was doing to them. Unfortunately, when it came to Emilia, Hyr constantly felt on edge, their instincts warring with the common sense and patience they were known throughout Nur’tha for.
There was a small chance this exact situation was why the late syna Bur had refused to allow them to—
“It doesn’t bother you, that I’m so much older?” Emilia asked, her body all tension in their arms.
That… had not been a question Hyr had been expecting.
.
!
Arc 7 | Chapter 268: Perhaps I Should Have Asked…
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