After the plague ghouls struck, the convoy’s camp at the valley mouth lay in ruin, like a torn hide flapping in the wind. Fewer than a third survived.

Yet on ground shattered by Adelaide and the Bone Eater’s clash—earth like broken pottery—rough but deft tents rose in neat rows. Their number and order were far beyond what shell-shocked refugees could manage.

Mira lay inside one of those tents.

Varie, the orcish lioness, had carried her back. They settled her on a simple bed lined with cotton batting, thin as frost on grass. The feel bit harder than that palace board she once slept on, but it was warmer than bare stone. That little warmth curled around her, and the pain in her right arm thinned like smoke.

One... two...

She lay there and counted in her mind. Fog crept into her thoughts like dusk. Fights without end, a body mapped in wounds, runes cinched around her heart like tightening vines—everything braided into a weariness she couldn’t resist. Her lids were about to fall.

Then the wind at the flap quickened for a breath. Footsteps entered, and a cool softness touched her brow like a damp petal.

“Don’t sleep yet, Mira.”

A gentle voice brushed her ear.

Mira opened hazy eyes. Adelaide pressed the back of her hand to Mira’s forehead, knuckles grazing the bell hairpin at Mira’s temple. A faint ding-ling drifted like a dream chime through mist.

Adelaide stopped Mira’s feeble attempt to rise. “Don’t move. You’ve got a fever.”

“I...”

“Sis knows you don’t feel like eating, but you have to put something in. You need strength.”

Her gaze slid to the bandage on Mira’s right arm, soaked through like a red river. Ripples of doubt stirred in her ruby eyes.

“Before that, let me treat the wound... Come on, Mira. Look at me.”

“Eh?”

Adelaide cupped Mira’s chin and tilted her face up. She lifted her own right wrist. A milk-white light flashed across Mira’s view, soft as moonwash.

A tightening pricked Mira’s mind, a noose of unease.

“What is...?”

“Don’t worry. It’s just a shallow hypnotic from a Dreamfeast Spider core.” The light from the gem on her bracelet faded like embers. “Well? Do you still feel pain?”

Mira blinked. The sharp ache in her arm had dulled, flattening into a blunt numbness like packed snow.

Realizing Adelaide was numbing it for her, Mira felt a quick guilt for doubting. Relief followed, warm as tea, seeping through her chest.

Of course. Sis wouldn’t hurt her.

The thought settled her. She relaxed and obeyed. It didn’t make the process pleasant. Pain was pressed down, but watching Adelaide use a Sacrifice sigil to clean away dead flesh—iron scent rising like rust—prodded a body’s instinctive revulsion.

She didn’t shut her eyes. She watched Adelaide’s careful, tender hands untie the filthy bandage, then clean her wound bit by patient bit, like rinsing ink from rice paper.

Her lightheadedness, her sister’s face, that long-missed brush of the bell hairpin—move a little and it chimed like rain on eaves—turned everything dreamlike. As if nothing before had happened. As if she was back at those Douglas Family birthdays—candles soft as stars, cakes sweet as cloud.

Until Adelaide drew a fresh roll of bandage from her bodice, and Mira saw the dark red smear on it like a snapped thread.

“Sis... that is...?”

A hairline crack opened in the illusion. That red suggested one possibility. Her voice picked up a tremor.

“Mm.”

Adelaide’s level voice confirmed it. Mira’s eyes went wide, pupils like startled birds.

“I rubbed some of my blood on it. It’ll speed healing, and you won’t scar.”

Adelaide unfurled the bandage like a pale river. As she moved to wrap it, Mira shrank back.

“No, that’s wrong,” Mira said, shaking her head like a rattled leaf. “You can’t use it on me. A-and—”

She knew what a Sacrifice Domain holder’s blood could do. Used over time, it nourished a wound, hurried it closed like spring soil.

But did she deserve it?

Her sister had bled herself thin to save her. She wasn’t fit to take more—panic fluttered in her like a caged sparrow. She scooted back. Halfway, her body slackened, strings cut.

“Mira.”

Adelaide’s voice stayed gentle but held less warmth, like coals under ash. The binding in Mira’s head drew tighter. Her body wouldn’t answer her.

It’s... the hypnosis she added...?!

“We agreed, didn’t we? From now on, you’ll listen to your sister.”

Mira’s eyes flew open. She met those crimson pupils, red like pomegranate seeds. Adelaide’s pleased smile curved, and Mira’s heart skipped like a stone on water.

In that instant, she understood.

Tonight wasn’t a dream. She and Adelaide—

She and her sister would never be what they had been.

**

“Ah~ open up... mm, good girl~”

Adelaide watched Mira obediently take the spoon. Her smile blossomed, bright as a lantern in rain.

Since she strengthened the suggestion, Mira had barely spoken. That was fine.

No—better.

Once the truth was laid bare, Adelaide stopped caging the desire that had paced her heart like a tiger. She loved Mira like this—Mira listening, doing as told. The feeling was like posing a porcelain doll, light and heady.

What’s mine can be guided with a firmer hand. That’s all right, isn’t it?

Adelaide blew on the steaming rice porridge. She held the spoon to Mira’s lips again and watched her throat sway as she swallowed, a small reed moving in wind.

“How is it? Tasty?”

Mira hesitated, then nodded, honest as a bell.

“It’s very good.” Her voice was small; her gaze drifted like leaves on a stream.

Seeing her so weak, Adelaide’s heart... stirred with appetite, a heat blooming low as wildfire.

Not for porridge. The hunger rising from her belly reached for Mira’s right arm like a shadow’s hand.

A sweet, coppery scent spread from there, curling into Adelaide’s nose like incense.

She stared at the thin blood lines seeping at the bandage’s edge. She swallowed, throat tight.

It was back—the urge she had pushed down with hypnosis, a tide returning.

While she cleaned the wound, Adelaide had felt it: hunger coiling from the core, wanting one bite, to make Mira’s blood and flesh part of her, like a drop joining the sea...

Ah. She wanted her...

After all—what’s mine can take a light nip. That’s all right, isn’t it?

A faint blur drifted across Adelaide’s pupils, like mist over a lake. She didn’t notice Mira speaking. Her hand rose, reaching toward those crimson threads—until Mira breathed, “Sis,” and Adelaide’s fingers froze in the air like a halted blade.

“Hm? Sorry. What did you say?”

Mira looked at her with worried eyes, soft as dusk. “I wanted to ask. Is this from them?”

Adelaide blinked herself back. Warmth returned to her smile like sun on frost. Her lifted hand changed course and stroked Mira’s hair.

“Smart girl. You guessed it.”

The hot porridge held mixed grains, even a few green flecks like chopped leaves. That wasn’t from their convoy’s larder. Even if the food wagon hadn’t been smashed, they wouldn’t have packed leafy greens.

“That lioness talks rough,” Adelaide said with a small shrug, shoulders like wings, “but her beastkin cooks and kitchen are solid. This convoy even has a freezer for fresh goods. Way more professional than ours.”

The lioness was, of course, Varie.

On the way back, Adelaide and Mira learned the distress flare hadn’t been for nothing. Varie’s beastkin patrol had been nearby. They saw the signal, rushed in, cleared the remaining plague ghouls, and helped the two caught within the range of Crying Matis.

When it ended, Varie brought them to the camp. Tents had sprouted everywhere like mushrooms after rain, and beast-eared folk moved through them, tending survivors and cleaning wreckage.

All told, Varie’s arrival helped Adelaide and Mira a great deal. Yet doubt pooled in Mira’s eyes like shadowed water.

“What do you think they’re after?”

Adelaide closed her eyes and thought for a breath, thoughts circling like birds.

“They offered help. They even opened their stores to feed our convoy. Doesn’t look like bad people...”

“But they don’t plan to let us just turn back.”

Adelaide sighed within, a hollow wind through reeds. Mira’s question was fair. Earlier, crossing the camp, they’d heard the convoy leader arguing with several beastkin guards about what came next.

The leader wanted to pack up and return, to report the village’s situation to General Slandor as soon as possible. The beastkin guards said they weren’t going anywhere. They had to follow the beastkin convoy’s arrangements.

At first blush, that’s unsettling—a small scene that writes Varie’s purpose across the sky like a flare.

Still, Adelaide didn’t share it. She only rubbed Mira’s hair a little harder. Mira let out a soft, pliant sound, and the body that had sat up eased flat again, like silk unrolling.

“Mira, don’t worry about that. Sis will handle it. Rest easy.”