Bryce

Thea poured herself more of the sugary cereal with a huge grin on her face. She was already on her fourth bowl, but I really wasn’t in much of a position to judge, since I was finishing up my third. It had been about half an hour since our fight with the demons, and Thea had fetched me a sling for my arm after she sent Wrynn to his room. Which left the two of us eating cereal at the kitchen counter in mostly silence.

When I asked Thea for some nutritionally dense food to help my nanites heal my shoulder, this was her solution. While the cereal wasn’t exactly what I would call ‘nutritionally dense’ or ‘nutritional’ or even necessarily ‘food’, it was a lot of calories which would suffice. Plus, it tasted surprisingly good.

“Should we just leave?” I asked, nearly out of nowhere. It had been on my mind for a while, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to broach the subject. I wanted to talk to Lilith in order to fully understand what was going on, but talking to her would likely include talking to Rose, and it wouldn’t be worth it if it meant risking our lives.

Not only had the dryad tricked me into losing all of my mana in order to get us to stay behind, I had been wounded fighting a group of people who were sent to subdue her. As much as I hated to admit it, the wound on my shoulder was pretty bad. It wasn’t life threatening, but had the elemental lived for even a few more moments, then I probably would’ve died. Or at the very least, lost the arm.

“I honestly don’t know.” Thea let out a sigh as she pushed her bowl away, having apparently lost her appetite. “If I attack Rose, then it’s over. Everything is over. Hells, if Lilith is in the room then my life is probably over, too. But when I think about what she did…”

“Say the word and we’re gone.” I reached out to grasp Thea’s hand. “It’s not ideal, but we can get by without Lilith’s information, and I have more than enough mana to bypass the wards from the inside. I can even do it in a way that will leave them up after we’re gone.”

Thea hesitated for a moment before nodding to firm her resolve. “Let’s leave. We can come back after I settle down in a few days, or maybe a few years.”

“Sounds good.” I leaned over to kiss her before taking both of our bowls to the sink. “I’m not sure how long it’ll take for them to get back, so we should probably hurry.”

“Do I have time to grab something from my room?” Thea asked as she started towards the door. “Oh, and I should probably leave something in somebody else’s.”

I hesitated, not because I thought Thea grabbing something from her room would make too much of a difference, but because of the glint of gold in her eye as she added that second part. “That depends on what you’re planning on leaving, and in whose room?”

Thea let out a heavy sigh before explaining. “Honestly? I’m not ready to talk to Rose, but I don’t want to burn that bridge, not entirely. So, I was going to take some flowers from the garden and leave them in her room.”

“Oh, that’s surprisingly mature of you.”

“What do you mean ‘surprisingly’?” Thea asked with a raised eyebrow. “You do remember that I’m older than you, right? I’m way more mature.”

“Right. How could I forget?” I smiled at her. “Well, I’m going to get started on the wards. Do you want to grab your things and then just meet me down there?”

“Sure.” Thea shrugged. “Just be careful. Those other demons are still probably hiding out there unless they’ve figured out a way to bypass the wards.”

“That’s a fair point.” My mana had already been tight, and the modified shield spell that I had used to capture the succubus had traded efficiency for speed. Which meant my mana was much lower than I was comfortable with, low enough that I wouldn’t be able to defend myself if it came to a fight. Especially if I was having to modify a warding spell that was probably put in place by Lilith.

“Let’s transfer most of the mana back to me, then I’ll cast an extra strong shield spell on both of us,” I explained. “That should give either of us plenty of time to get to the other if something happens. Plus, the latest contract lets us change mana without approval in emergencies, so if we’re forced into a fight, then feel free to pull whatever mana you need from me.”

“Yeah, alright,” she agreed before sending a request to transfer nearly all the mana back to me. “Wait, what counts as an emergency? Because I don’t think ‘Bryce is losing an argument’ should count.”

“We can discuss the details later.” I accepted the request and turned to leave before adding. “Besides, I seem to remember you really enjoying how those arguments ended.”

“Mind blowing sex isn’t a substitute for communication in a relationship,” Thea lectured as she followed me out of the kitchen.

“But it can be with the right gag,” I countered, and my joke earned me a genuine laugh from Thea. “But seriously, we should talk about it later. This is the second time you had to end the pact because of a mistake I made.”

“Fine,” Thea conceded before heading up the stairs. “I’ll just have to avoid arguments and elevators until we can have that discussion.”

I smiled to myself as I started casting the shield spell. It didn’t take too long to finish, and I was still smiling as I exited out the front set of doors, but my smile faded as I saw a group of people approaching.

Rose and Esme were immediately apparent, and it seemed like a safe assumption that the bound woman was Raith, which meant the woman in the black armor was probably Lilith.

“I’ll take it things went well?” I asked as the group of women came to a stop a few meters away.

“Decidedly not,” Lilith answered. “I don’t recognize you, but since you aren’t trembling in fear or trying to run away like the other three we killed inside the wards, I’ll allow you an opportunity to explain yourself.”

The ice in her tone made it impossible not to recognize the danger I was in, but Rose vouched for me. “This is Bryce, Thea’s new girlfriend. She was kind enough to lend me her mana so that I could safely find you.”

“Well, I suppose that makes you significantly better than Thea’s usual choice of partner,” Lilith said as she started towards the door. “I assume she’s inside? We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

I stepped in front of the armored woman to prevent her from going inside, which probably wasn’t the best choice to win her over. Thankfully, she had the restraint to not outright kill me, even though the glare she held me with made it seem like she would like nothing more than that.

“Before we go inside, it might be best if Rose were to avoid Thea,” I explained. “At least for now. She’s a bit upset, and I think we’d all prefer if things didn’t get violent.”

“Rose, what happened while I was gone?” Lilith turned back to glare at the dryad.

“As I described previously, we grew concerned with how long it was taking for you to return,” Rose explained. “So, Thea thought to ask Felix if she knew what sort of trouble Wrynn had gotten into. We found the boy lying on the floor in her room and decided that Esme and I should go after you while Thea stayed behind to watch the household.”

“That seems heavily abridged,” Lilith turned back towards me. “Bryce, would you mind filling in the missing pieces?”

“Thea, Esme, and I arrived around two and a half hours ago.” I explained. “Rose was understandably concerned since Thea had been missing and Esme was supposedly dead, so she distracted Thea with chores while interrogating Esme and I with enchanted tea.”

“Which upset Thea?” Lilith was frowning with her brows furrowed. “I know she doesn’t usually agree with Rose’s tactics, but that’s hardly new.”

“No, that amused Thea.” I smiled before switching to a frown in order to continue. “What upset her came after Rose locked Esme and I in the garden to work out our differences, and after we discovered that Wrynn was still here. We were discussing the best way to retrieve you. I brought up that Raith likely knew your true name, and that it was a possibility that you were being controlled by her.”

“Right, I think I know where this is going.” Lilith shook her head and directed her next question at the dryad. “Rose, what did you do when Bryce suggested that you may need to kill me?”

“I merely asked if she would lend me her mana.”

“While she was still under the effects of your tea?” Lilith asked.

“And her cookies,” Esme answered. “She phrased the request as if she wanted help to raise the wards, then drained all of Bryce’s mana once she agreed.”

“Which was made worse when four demons attacked while you were gone and I was hurt in the battle.” I indicated towards my wounded shoulder. “Thea is worried that if she tries talking to Rose right now, then she won’t be able to control herself, and you’ll either kick her out of your household or kill her outright.”

“This is exactly the sort of complication we don’t need,” Lilith cursed. “Rose, heal Bryce’s shoulder and then give her back all the mana you took. After that, check on the children. They’ve no doubt heard the fighting, and if we don’t tell them what’s going on soon, then they’ll start trying to sneak a look.”

“Very well.” Rose approached me and placed a hand on my shoulder. The pain disappeared seconds later and I could move my arm again. “I can return a significant portion of her mana, but I’m afraid returning everything I took simply won’t be possible.”

“And why is that, exactly?” Lilith asked.

“It’s too much. I was forced to bleed off nearly a quarter of it using an extremely inefficient translocation spell just to prevent myself from dying of mana poisoning,” Rose explained. “Combine that with having to heal the wounds caused by your daggers, and I have just over half of the mana left. The deficit is well beyond my capability to regenerate in a reasonable amount of time.”

“Why was the healing so inefficient?” I asked. Rose only ever had access to around eighty percent of my mana, since what I agreed to lend her didn’t include the portion Thea was using. Some quick mental math told me that she had used nearly twenty percent of my maximum to heal, which was an absurd amount.

“I startled Lilith, and she stabbed me through the throat.” Rose lifted her chin, and sure enough, there was a nasty scar still there. “The life-threatening nature, combined with having to overpower the magic in Lilith’s attacks, meant I was forced to use significantly more mana than usual to heal the wound.”

“She also healed my ears in a similar manner.” Lilith added absently. “How did you manage to obtain so much mana, Bryce?”

“That’s a long story, and a bit personal,” I apologized. “I don’t mind sharing it another time, but this doesn’t seem like the appropriate place for it.”

“I understand.” Lilith nodded to me before addressing Rose. “Return what you can of her personal mana, along with any reserves you can spare from your grove without endangering the household. Then consider yourself indebted to her in proportion to the remainder.”

Rose paused for a moment to consider the offer before nodding. “That is acceptable. However, I retain the right to refuse any favors I deem as exceeding that amount.”

“Anything you believe to be excessive you can bring to me, and I’ll be the one to determine whether or not it is,” Lilith countered.

“I’ll agree to those terms, assuming they are acceptable to Bryce.”

That was honestly far more than I had been expecting to receive, so I nodded my own agreement. The moment I did, I felt my mana returning to me.

It was a rush, to say the least, and instantly refreshing. I allowed a few seconds for the mana to settle and work its way through my meridians before examining it. True to her estimation, the mana Rose returned to me was just about forty percent of my maximum, plus another ten percent that felt… strange. Almost nature-y? Likely mana directly from the dryad’s grove.

“I appear to still be missing around thirty percent of my maximum,” I eventually said. “I’m not sure how you’d like to quantify that, but it’s a sizable amount.”

“I can see what you have and extrapolate the rest. Does that number seem acceptable, Rose?” Lilith asked, and once she received a nod, she continued. “In that case, please attend to the children, and avoid contact with Thea until I tell you otherwise.”