Chapter 127
Fay decided she needed to find Virelda. But simply tracking her down turned out to be its own ordeal. No one in the castle had any idea where she had gone.
There was no sign of her in her room at the castle, nor in the house she had lived in before moving into the keep. Fay scoured the entire city looking for her, and it wasn’t until she made her way to a mountain lodge where Virelda had briefly lived a decade ago that she finally found her.
“You came.”
Virelda was lying in a hammock, greeting her friend with ease. She was sunbathing with Scarlis draped lazily across her body, and the sight left Fay momentarily speechless.
“Are you really going to let Zynie be Guardian?”
Fay pushed back, insisting this couldn’t happen, she had come all this way to stop it.
“She said she wanted to do it. She says she can do it better than me, so there’s no reason for me to argue.”
Virelda shrugged, stroking Scarlis, who was sleeping with his head resting on her chest.
“She might look like an adult on the outside, but the inside is still a child.”
All that excited posturing, the forced mature voice slipping back into her normal one at random intervals. Fay pictured Zynie’s inner self struggling to catch up with her body’s new age, and shook her head firmly.
“She’s smart. She’ll be fine.”
“Do you actually believe she’ll do well?”
Fay was skeptical of how casually her friend was framing it as trust. In truth, there had always been only one person Virelda genuinely believed in and that was Merga.
Sure enough, Virelda’s lips curved into a strange little smile.
“I am a little curious whether Aldehallow will fall apart in a matter of months.”
“You don’t believe in her at all!”
Fay cried out, thoroughly unsurprised.
“Well, it’ll probably last at least a month. Still, a city you nearly gave your body and soul to ‘Lord Al’ to protect, falling apart within a month. That must sting.”
“The fact that you’re mocking me means you’ve had a good rest and your head is clear again.”
And I never gave my body and soul to him, for the record. Fay sighed and muttered under her breath. She muttered loudly enough to be heard, and Virelda snickered.
“Ah, right. You gave yourselves to each other.”
Virelda had clearly recovered her usual composure entirely. She kept needling Fay with an exaggerated, mocking tilt of her head. No matter how hard Fay glared, Virelda only leaned further in.
“Zynie suddenly looking like that, that was your familiar’s doing, wasn’t it?”
Still stinging from the teasing, Fay said nothing. But pressing her lips together while giving that mortified expression was somehow more telling than any answer she could have given.
I knew it, Virelda said with a laugh, giving a small nod.
“I’m not really blaming him, to be honest. I have no particular complaints about your familiar, apart from the fact that my friend is involved with something that isn’t human.”
“……”
“Then again, he did save Aldehallow. That makes him a hero.”
“A hero…”
Fay turned the word over in her mind as Alnazir’s face surfaced in her thoughts.
The man who had finished inside her while giving a devious smile and insisting he had no such intentions. Being hailed as a hero seemed rather ill-fitting.
“Thank you, Fay. Your peculiar taste in partners saved this city and spared me from being worked to the bone until I’m old and grey.”
“Stop teasing me. I didn’t come here to talk about myself.”
“…You’re upset over a little teasing?”
Virelda let out a deliberately exaggerated sigh.
“You want me to be worked to death until my last days, don’t you? I thought a friend would wish for my happiness and peace.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Of course Fay didn’t want her friend losing sleep and running herself ragged. She needed the rest.
“Merga entrusted you with carrying on her work, and you’ve been doing everything you could to live up to that. So it just seems strange to suddenly let it all go…”
“Are you worried Zynie will cause a disaster?”
“That too, a little.”
Virelda glanced at Fay. She found it a bit pathetic, watching her friend sulk after failing to change her mind. What answer had she possibly been hoping to find all the way out here?
But she didn’t feel entirely bad about it. Since handing things over to Zynie, there has been no shortage of controversy. Yet Fay was the first person who had come out here hoping for her return.
So the city runs fine on its own, and she was the only one killing herself over it. She didn’t have to.
The hollowness of it had left her wanting to do nothing at all, just lying here feeling as though she had become unnecessary overnight. In a moment like that, having someone come to her and say they need her, it quietly moved her more than she would ever admit.
Not that she would ever say any of this to Fay. Not now, not ever.
“If things get bad enough, I’ll come back.”
Virelda sent her friend home with a promise that had no fixed date attached to it.
Fay returned to the castle empty-handed, her heart heavy.
She’ll just think of it as Virelda taking a short holiday. When that open-ended holiday finally ended, what would the city look like?
Fay felt a little scared. In her heart, she still believed Zynie was too young for this.
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