Chapter Text
The clang of polearms carried across Cider Lake, a knight and a noblewoman vying for victory by the shore. The knight had the advantage in strength; she in speed. As she retreated to draw breath, he repositioned his polearm and swung down with punishing force.
Gritting her teeth, the youngest daughter of the Svanhildr family blocked the attack, digging her feet in so hard her ankles burned. Close. She twisted her weapon and went for a thrust.
It was the wrong move.
He turned his body to the side and rushed in. The next thing she knew was the bite of a blade at her throat.
“What’s that now?” Lohen mused. “Thirty-nine to three?”
“Ugh!” Her polearm struck the grass beside her with a thud, much to her sparring partner’s amusement. “You don’t have to gloat.”
“Is it gloating if it’s the truth?”
Hands clenched into fists, she stomped her foot. “I hate you, I hate you, I ha—"
A kiss to her cheek did its job to cut off the outburst and render her stunned.
“Do you really?” Lohen breathed, pinching her chin between fingers. “Hate me?”
Her eyes darted about, spots of pink blooming on her cheeks. “I h-hate that you keep winning,” she bit out.
“By the looks of things, I'll keep doing so yet. Your left arm is too weak for the way you are trying to use it. If you'd practiced like I told y—“
“I have been!”
“Oh? How much?”
She swallowed. “A little . . .”
Lohen snorted.
“It's uncomfortable,” she complained.
“Well, since you've given up on winnin—"
“I haven't!” She huffed. “Next time you'll be at my feet.”
“What interesting images come to your mind.”
“Wh—That's not how I—"
The other cheek was equally blessed, deactivating further sputtering of this noble-born system.
“We'll see.” Lohen went to her polearm, kicked it up from the ground into his hand, and returned it to her. “Until then.” He made to leave and was delayed by a tug at his sleeve.
“Wait, Lohen! You’re joining that expedition, right?” She bit her lip. “What if you don’t come back?”
Lohen blinked and stared at her for a while. She never could read him. First, a smirk came to his lips; then he began to chuckle and shake his head.
“What a funny practice dummy you are.”
Gripping her polearm tightly, she shot back, “I’m not a practice dummy!”
“It’s thirty-nine to three,” he said gravely.
“You are so—!”
A gentle hand patted her head. “Of course I’m coming back,” he said. “You better practice while I’m gone. Otherwise, I’ll have to find a new dummy to get bored of.”
Blushing, she said, “I wonder what my uncle saw in you.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out by the time I’m home again,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes and pushed his hand away. “Whatever, just . . . don’t get hurt. Too much.”
He made her a mock bow. “If the lady of Svanhildr wishes it, I’ll make sure to only get hurt a little.” Crossing his arms, “Don’t you have a dinner party to worry about?”
“Oh, shoot!”
Had it not been for the smile with which he watched her scurry off, she may have been embarrassed by her flight.
The window she had snuck out of was still open. After stashing her polearm, she climbed the tree by that window and got inside to find her maid pacing.
“Well, don’t give up my exit route,” she chided, straightening.
“Goodness, young mistress, I thought you’d never come!” Verena said and grabbed her arm. “Hurry, before anyone sees us.”
Having bustled her lady into her room, the maid began pulling off the plainclothes reserved for her adventures that no one in the house was supposed to know about and venting.
“And with the banquet tonight too! Was it a necessity to sneak out to spar today?”
“Yes,” the noblewoman insisted, being herded to a vanity where she took a seat. “Lohen is leaving soon. An accomplice who won’t let it slip that I’m practicing is not easy to find, you know.”
“Don’t I,” Verena said in a long-suffering tone. “If my lord and lady knew I was covering for you—I shudder to think about it! Your uncle was disowned for it.” She did shudder. “Oh, we would both be thrown out!”
“You forget, my dear, not only that I am the fourth child, but a girl too,” her mistress said, taking out her makeup kit. “There is no thought spent wondering what I am doing in Papa's or Mama's head, I promise you. Now make something of this hair please, I won't have my dinner with a side of scolding.”
While Verena brushed her hair, the young lady plucked a key from behind the mirror and unlocked a drawer. The stack of notes she had taken, back when Uncle was alive, on the polearm techniques he developed and the forging methods he preferred for his weapons, along with the one photo of him that remained in her possession, were as she’d left them.
She took the photo into both hands and sighed. “Sometimes I think Uncle was the one person who loved me in this world.”
“Now that is too cruel, my lady, with me standing right here,” Verena said, getting choked up at the thought.
The lady squeezed her hand in apology. “I wasn’t thinking, my dear. It was nostalgia speaking. Will you forgive me?”
“My lady, you know I will.” Returning the squeeze, she continued working on the hairdo. “All this because your crush is leaving town.”
“He’s not my crush! We spar from time to time because I have no one else to practice with who won’t tell my parents about it.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“He’s not!” She clicked her tongue. “Uncle liked him . . . and he said I could go to him if I needed anything.” Pouting, she began to tap her fingers on the vanity. “If I can at least match, if not beat, him consistently . . . maybe I can be free of the family too.”
“Until then, my lady, you’d best do as your parents bid you.”
She put the photo back in its place and locked the drawer. “Yeah.”
On the day of the Knights’ departure from Mondstadt, Lohen was up at the brink of dawn. He double-checked the gear and all he’d packed before heading out to meet the others outside Mond, in the clearing across the bridge. There was a chill in the air, cobblestone streets cast in a blue hue. It would take an hour to group up, chart a path to Dornman Port, and set out. Lohen was ready for it.
When the hurried footsteps coming from behind fell on his ears, he assumed it was someone from his company, but the tread was too light for a knight encumbered by luggage. He turned sharply. Around the corner came a practice dummy, sprinting.
“I knew it!” She grinned and pumped a fist up in a most unladylike way. “Caught you.”
“Caught?” Lohen echoed, finding it a struggle not to smile at that eager sparkle in her eyes.
“Before you left.” Skidding to a stop, she bent at the waist, breathless. “I had to—oh, Barbatos, my stamina does need work—to sneak out before the butler was up.” Straightening, she held out a thin silver chain with a swan pendant. “I wanted to give you this.”
Lohen frowned. “Your uncle had it custom-made for you.”
“Yes, it’s my lucky charm.” As he would not take it, she rolled her eyes and unclasped it, then set about fastening it around his neck since he couldn’t struggle to any effect with the stuffed rucksack on his back. “There. Now you’ll be lucky and won’t get injured.”
There was that thing again—in the pit of his stomach, like a bursting dandelion—that he’d felt when he’d first laid eyes on her. An awful thing, like a ball of snakes coiled together, each driven by a different feeling, most of them dark and very few perfectly pure. Lohen resolutely smothered them all. “You are regifting—”
“I’m letting you borrow it!” She crossed her arms and puffed up her cheeks in the manner of a spoiled child. “That means you have to get back here and return it to me.” Reddening faintly, “So you’re not allowed to lose it, or to get hurt more than a little.” Quietly, she went on, “Or forget me.”
Lohen sighed. He didn’t want to bring it up, but he also did not want her hopes and dreams placed on him, if there was the slightest chance of their disappointment by his untimely death. A small part of him—a part he preferred not to acknowledge when she was around—was also indignant at any attempt to check its desires to meet and slay every monster, cutthroat, and treasure hunter that came in his way. Even if that check was the remembrance of a rosy girl awaiting his return, contained in a necklace.
“You’ll put me in a pinch, dummy. By the time I’m back, you may be married to some boring guy who won’t like it that a returning knight has your precious necklace.”
“Mar—” She choked, blanched, and worst of all, tears began to gather in her eyes. “I don’t want to be married! I’ll join the adventurer’s guild like Uncle, and I’ll be free from the family like Eula is from hers.” When the flare of insulted anger passed, it left a wounded, breaking note in her voice. “Why are you cruel to me?”
Against his better judgment, Lohen took her cheeks in his hands and kissed her forehead gently. Dark things basked in her tears, pure ones wanted them gone, and the darkest called for more. “Dummy,” he mumbled. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep. It’s no use trying to force me to make one to you.”
“I hate you,” she cried, salty droplets streaming down her cheeks.
“No. You cling to me because you’re scared of facing the world,” Lohen said. “But you have to do it alone. I may be dead tomorrow or in five years. You can’t rely on others to build you the life you want to live.”
It was the truth a spoiled child would find hard to swallow. For that reason, Lohen had avoided stating it. He was guilty of indulging her too—when those hopeful eyes rested on him, he smirked and showed off and liked the attention, though he knew she was transferring her hopes from her uncle’s shoulders to his. Dreaming of a savior, as silly girls do. She had to be wrenched back to the ground before that family shaped her into a clone of her older sisters and married her off to some big-name imbecile—a species of man often found among nobility.
“I hate you!” She slapped away the hands holding her cheeks, turned on her heel, and ran.
Lohen drew a long breath and closed his eyes.
No matter the approach, at least her uncle, if he was watching from beyond the grave, could not say that Lohen hadn’t set her on the right path. That it had broken her heart was not ideal, but that man had been mistaken if he’d expected Lohen to handle a thing as fragile as her heart with tenderness.
He’s seen him cut into too many living things for any such notion.
Lohen stood at the edge of Favonius Keep, watching over Amsvartnir, deep in thought. As was his custom when alone, he took the swan pendant between his fingers and twisted it round one way and then the other.
She never sent a letter. Not one.
It was probably what he deserved, but there had been a part of him that had hoped her childish affection for him would overset the hurt he’d caused and result in at least one message, if only to assure him she still hated him.
Either she had buckled under the weight of her name and now had a loveless engagement, if not marriage, of her own, or she’d given them all up—Lohen included—in the sort of bitter break that had seen her uncle disowned. He could hope for the latter for her sake, but down either path, Lohen knew she was lost to him.
In the best-case scenario, released from the chains of relatives, why would she consider chaining herself to him?
A young adventuress sat on the pier in Dornman Port. Having delivered the package for her commission and obtained a signature for it, she should’ve headed back to Mondstadt, but being near the ocean calmed her.
“I wonder if you’d be proud of me, Uncle,” she murmured to the waves lapping at the shore.
By the time she set out for Mondstadt, the green hills and dirt roads were growing dark. The prospect of returning home, despite its meager conditions, was a reviving one; instead of setting up camp for the night, she plunged on.
Living off her adventuring meant the best she could afford was a loft in an older lady’s house where she was tenant and cleaner. Yearning for a pillow, she trekked in the direction of home, head swimming in a sea of jostling thoughts.
They’d said, at Dornman Port, that there had been trouble in Nod-Krai. Of the full story only fragments had made it across Teyvat to the land of wind; there was much in those fragments to disconcert one. She fortified herself with the fact that Lohen was not easy to kill, and then berated herself for thinking about him at all.
Not one letter did he write. Not a word or a sign since their last meeting.
If any of the knights had been killed—if that was possible with the Grand Master around—she would’ve heard about it, but there was still a large spectrum his well-being could land on. Injured or scot-free or bored out of his mind or elated beyond belief at armies of monsters and enemies that had to be mowed down during the expedition.
For all she knew, it was doubtful that he remembered her. A training dummy. Had she always been so replaceable in his eyes? Who sparred with him now? Was he getting bored of them?
Had he been bored of her? Had that been the reason they broke apart? Wouldn’t they ever come together again?
A sharp pain in her thigh jolted her out of her musings. The metallic thud that fell upon her ears as she looked for the cause of this pain was of a dart tumbling to the ground. A muscle in her thigh burned as she stood frozen with indecision.
She had to run, but running would force the poison through her body quicker. She had to scream, but her throat was dry and the road abandoned. She had to do something, but a great heaviness settled over her body, weighing down each limb like a block of stone.
She had to—
The thunder of strong hoofbeats roused her. Her surroundings swayed—the inside of a horse-drawn wagon? It was dim. A dull, radiating pain at the back of her head made it hard to focus. When she tried to push herself up, she found that her wrists were tied and her body beset by a fever.
Stupid. Kidnapped like a child.
She had no enemies that would go that far to settle a score, but her parents had a lot of money. The butlers had been trained to guard the children with their lives, the maids to keep a close eye and report on suspicious persons that could be trying to get an idea of their schedule, but she was alone now.
No longer a Svanhildr, but perhaps her captors did not know this. Or they did, and also knew that the Svanhildr children did not go out unattended, and hoped parental affection would force her parents to make a payment for the banished one too.
Stupid. Ridiculous.
Biting the inside of her cheek, she heaved herself up to sit and leaned sideways against a crate, trying to discern her location or the direction they were taking her in. It was evening or early morning, not much light to pierce through the canvas cover and illuminate her surroundings. Crates and sacks and barrels were positioned to hide her from anyone who might look in, but there was no guard.
She braced her shoulder against a barrel and pushed with her feet. Her balance was off and her vision swam, but she could drag herself along despite the bump and rattle of the wagon. The back opening was blocked by a tarp. With a few pokes of a foot, she learned it was hung like a curtain, not fastened to anything at the bottom.
Dummy.
If she had spent the night at the Port or sent word of her arrival plans, someone would be looking for her now. Instead, her landlady would assume she went off on a second commission without a break, as was her practice when money grew scarce, and it would be a week before that old woman began to worry.
There was no one to help with her escape, but escape she must. If she didn’t, she’d never see Lohen again.
Steeling her nerves, she came to the boards at the back of the wagon, clenched her teeth, and jumped out. Her elbow hit the ground at an awkward angle, bursting with a pain that made her want to scream. Distantly, a horse neighed. She blinked to clear her vision and belatedly realized that her head had been too fuzzy to consider looking out of the wagon first.
There were two riders following the wagon. It was one of their horses that had reared when she had dropped in its way. In a different scenario, she might’ve been thankful not to have been trampled to death, but in this one her kidnappers were jumping from their saddles to grab her.
Twisting her body, she scraped her back against the gravel to shift her feet towards them and kicked as soon as the first man was within range. A hand closed around her ankle. She was yanked forward, dust and pebbles stinging the fresh scratches between her shoulder blades like wisps of fire. Pain forced tears to her eyes. Through the blur of them, she made out the shape of the second man approaching.
An arc of red splattered high above him.
With a groan, that man fell to his knees. The one who had her ankle in a hold turned and was slashed across the shoulder before he could react.
“What a shady bunch. Quite bold to—”
It was a voice she knew and had dreamed of many a night, cut off in surprise.
Her consciousness came and went, making it difficult to think, let alone speak. Tears spilled over, taking the blur with them and revealing a knight with a familiar cape and a polearm she’d often felt at her throat. Blood was splattered on his boots. He didn’t seem to breathe as he watched her.
A single word broke from his lips, equal parts incredulous, gentle, and murderous.
“Dummy?”
The reply she wanted to make died behind her teeth, her cheek sinking into earth, her battle for strength lost.
She came to in some enclosed space echoing with the crackling of a fire. The air was humid. Through the soft material she was laid on, the cold of stone seeped towards her skin.
A cave.
Her elbow hurt, back stung, and her stomach twisted into such knots that she felt she was one wrong move from throwing up. Moaning weakly, she turned her head and found him sitting by the fire, making sure it didn’t go out. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Be still, you’ll mess up the bandages,” Lohen said. He rose and came to kneel by her side. Expressionless, he helped her sit up and brought a flask to her lips.
Cold water was a blessing to her dry throat and made her feel alive again. The fog in her mind dissipated and on the heels of it came awareness—she lay on his cape; the hand on her shoulder was warm; Lohen was furious.
“Here I was, thinking delivering Varka’s letters would bore the life out of me, and what do I come home to?” Lohen’s lips twisted into a scary smile. “You, dummy. Being kidnapped.”
Sprays of blood had dried into dark brown splotches on his clothes.
“What happened to t—?” she croaked.
“Nothing you should worry about,” he cut in. Derisively, “What kind of chaperone did they give you that can’t protect you from a group of common thugs?”
This comment brought a number of unpleasant memories to her mind—being disowned, parting from Verena, training alone for hours, running errands until she collapsed from exhaustion to scrounge up the money for a room, the words he’d said to her when they parted.
A fire of indignation blazed in her gut.
“What’s it to you?” she bit out and tried to scoot away from him.
In a blink she lay pinned by his iron grip.
“I told you to be still.”
When she drew breath, the bandages around her upper body tightened, itching her scratched back. “You undressed me?”
Lohen snorted. “I pulled the back of your shirt up to your neck to get at the cuts. You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t ask for your help!”
“Without my help you would’ve been dead,” he said, his voice shaking with anger.
“I would rather be dead than—what was it?—cling to you.”
“So it’s my fault you gave your retainers the slip?”
“I don’t have a retainer! I don’t need one, and I don’t need you either.”
The second part of this retort didn’t seem to faze the knight. His eyes widened at the first, and he considered it for a while before letting go of her.
“No wonder you’re not married with a temper like that,” he said in that half-joking way that used to be the norm before the expedition, seating himself next to her.
“Who says I’m not?” she demanded.
That darkling look came into his eye again. “Are you?”
“Well, I’m not, but that’s beside the point.”
His shoulders relaxed. “Oh? There’s a point to this rambling?” He smirked. “You astonish me.”
“Whatever!” She crossed her arms. “If you had written me a single letter, you wouldn’t be shocked by the way things are.”
Silence reigned for a considerable time.
When Lohen broke it, he did so in a voice gentler than any she’d heard from him before. “You said you hated me.”
“Of course I did! You said I was clinging to you to—to build me a life I want to lead.”
“Was I wrong?”
“Ugh!” She turned to him, saying, “This is exactly why I hate you! You’re the most horribl—”
No sooner had his fingers grasped her chin than his lips met hers in a kiss of reckless abandon. As was the case in their sparring, Lohen overwhelmed her with ceaseless attacks. A wild mess of tongue and teeth and a whisper of her name falling from his mouth—he didn’t give her an opportunity to speak until they were both breathless.
When they broke apart for air, he stared at her, unabashed and unflinching.
“Do you really?” he asked in a low voice. “Hate me?”
She swallowed hard.
“If you try that, I’ll hate you back,” he warned. “For being too stubborn to write to me. For giving me that necklace that made me think of you every day. For getting kidnapped. And for looking at me like you mean it this time when you say you hate me.”
“W-What reason do you have to—”
“Are you disowned?”
She clicked her tongue at this abrupt change of subject. “So what if I am? I’m doing fine on my own.”
“Good.”
Another—a deeper, longer—kiss was stolen from her lips.
“I did what your uncle asked me. I’m not gonna be that selfless again,” Lohen declared.
She put up a hand. “Are you . . . are you okay? You’re not making any sense.”
Lohen rolled his eyes and flicked her forehead. “Not to a training dummy, I’m sure.”
“Not to anyone!” she protested. “First, you k-kiss me out of nowhere and then say you hate me back and then you’re asking me if I’m disowned. Now my uncle gets dragged into the picture someho—”
“Did you not want me to kiss you?”
“See! You’re doing it now,” she complained, heat inching up her neck.
He squinted at her. “You don’t let just anyone kiss you, right?”
“You’re getting scary again.”
“Answer the question.”
She turned away from him. “Will not. Serves you right.”
On the list of things she expected him to do, poking her bandaged back was not.
“Ow!” Whipping around, she slapped his hand.
“Try me too much and you’ll wish I hadn’t rescued you.”
“I wish it already,” she hissed.
“I’m getting tired of you dodging questions.”
“Fine!” She blew out a frustrated huff. “No, I don’t really hate you, and no I don’t let random people kiss me. Happy?”
Lohen sized her up. “You skipped one.”
She frowned. “Which one?”
He moved in so close that their noses were almost touching. “Did you not want me to kiss you?”
Her gaze darted to the ground between them. “W-Well, I wasn’t expecting it.”
Though this, also, was not an answer, the heightened color of her cheeks and the way she gulped and bit her lip sufficed for Lohen not to press further.
“Good dummy.”
“Stop calling me that!”
Lohen pretended to think about it. “Since you owe me your life . . . no.”
“Ugh!”
He burst into giggles. “That face! I missed that face, dummy.” Then, shaking his head, “Now be still while I take a lap. You can’t start bleeding if we’re to make it to Mond tomorrow.”
“Whatever.”
It was about two minutes after Lohen stepped out of the cave that the latter part of his speech struck her.
“Tomorrow?” she mumbled to no one.
Pacing was all Lohen could do to get himself under control. The murderous rage the sight of her injured and teary-eyed had thrown him into had long since dissolved. Now he suffered the assault of deeper emotions—ones he’d stuffed away the day they’d parted—and though a part of him demanded vent, he wasn’t that lost to all reason.
Sure, she’d let him kiss her—and she was so damn pretty when they parted, all blushy and confused and nervous—but it didn’t mean she was ready to throw herself into his arms. There was an air of a shivering rabbit about her—vulnerable, trusting prey—that had him wanting to dig his nails into her injured back and kiss her at the same time.
So, he had taken himself off. Patrol—a job to keep him busy and not contemplating how she’d bloomed in the time he was gone, yet retained the mannerisms of a spoiled brat that he used to laugh at her for and now found dangerously charming. His very own princess.
Lohen put a hand to his chest and grasped the familiar shape of the swan pendant that rested over his heart. She didn’t hate him. She was free to choose him, and he didn’t need to get rid of anyone—which he strongly considered before knowing no one else had kissed her—to make it that way.
He was a vice-captain. Who could say that, in a few more years, he wouldn’t be in a position to give her the style of life she’d grown up with? Maybe not one-to-one, since her parents were of the top three longest-standing and wealthiest families, but close to it. It wasn’t like she ever cared for all her diamonds and dresses. Not nearly as her sisters had, at least.
That pretty fool. Unless she was smart enough to run, he would make her his.
When he walked back into the cave, the fire was a pile of glowing embers, and the dummy lay curled up on her side, a hand under her cheek, snuggled into his cape. He crept to her and knelt to wrap the edges of his cape around her body and tuck her in. Silly girl, asleep and defenseless in the company of a man.
That she could rely on him like she used to touched him more than he would admit. Lohen tucked a strand of hair resting over her nose behind her ear and allowed himself to feel her heated cheek with a knuckle. To think that they could’ve exchanged dozens of letters in the time he was gone and that he could’ve known everything about her current life struck him with a pang of regret. And yet, she stood on her own feet now and without complaint.
Perhaps that was what her uncle had wanted when he’d told Lohen to take care of her once he was gone.
Shaking off melancholy reflections, Lohen went to the campfire and stoked it back to life before picking a spot—between her and the entrance to the cave—to settle in for the night. It was no use trying to determine whether the desire to bite into her bleeding back was an intrusive thought or part of his true nature, so he gave it up and dropped off to sleep.
What woke her in the early morning hours was the smell of grilled meat. She stirred, wincing at the pull of fresh scars on her upper back, and propped herself up on the elbow that wasn’t throbbing. Lohen crouched by the fire, a bowl of glistening skewers next to him.
Her mouth watered, but the pains of her body made the stomach queasy.
A disinterested gaze flicked to her face. “Can you walk?”
“I didn’t hurt my legs.”
“No,” he agreed. “Everything but your legs.”
It was the fact that he said things like that—things that propelled her into childish bickering—that she wanted to hate him.
“I can get to Mondstadt.”
Lohen exhaled through his nose, plucked a skewer from the fire, and picked up the bowl. “Do you know how far we are from it?”
Her cheeks burned. “How should I?” she demanded poutingly.
Shaking his head, he moved to sit across from her, laying the bowl of steaming food between them. “If we set out after breakfast, we’ll make it there before nightfall.”
Itching to defy him in some way, she turned her head with a huff. “I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care,” he said easily. “You’re injured, so you will eat.”
“Will not.”
A quick hand seized her jaw. “Brat,” Lohen said without real heat, and used his other hand to stab through a pile of bite-sized veggies with a clean skewer.
“You didn’t use to be so rude,” she mumbled, not attempting to free herself.
“Of course I did. You think I let you win against me thrice?” A mouthful of breakfast was unceremoniously shoved between her lips when she attempted a retort. “Is it past hoping that you’ll do better once you’re healed?”
Chewing, she lifted her chin indignantly.
“Glare harder. I’m not scared yet.”
She swallowed the food. “You are meaner.”
“No. I’m just not holding back anymore,” he said and bit into a skewer.
“Holding back? Have you ever done that?” she asked, skeptical brows climbing towards her hairline.
Those sharp eyes snapped to her face and darkened in a way that made her think he was about to kiss her. For a tense moment she braced—not to push him away, but to keep her heart from exploding when their lips met.
However, Lohen scoffed and said, “You are a dummy.”
“And you are a jerk!” As his meaning dawned on her, her pulse began to race, and she decided not to understand him. “Why would I think you were holding back when you gloated each time you won?”
Lohen tilted his head to the side and stared down at her. He’d grown a bit taller and gave off a rather dangerous vibe when he got quiet like that. She glowered with all her might, setting her jaw in determination not to be the one to look away. Seldom did he issue a challenge she would shrink from.
Slowly, Lohen put his skewer aside and leaned in close, a hand sliding up her waist towards her bandages; courage left her the second their noses touched.
“You’re not that much of a dummy,” he said, the air in his voice maddeningly hot against her lips.
He didn’t kiss her, though. Lohen got up and went to extinguish the fire, leaving her to sit in the mortifying realization that she had hoped he would—had wanted him to.
On their way to Mond, she petulantly demanded to be entertained and insisted it could be done no other way but by having Lohen tell her everything about the expedition. While he withheld certain gruesome details, Lohen did take the chance to regale her with the list of his new skills and describe the places he had seen, mostly through the battles he’d had with the local monster kin or Abyss agentry. It made him laugh how hard she tried to downplay how impressed she was by this new information, but he found it cute and so refrained from teasing her too severely.
Fair was fair, so Lohen didn’t have to bully her much to extract the tales of her days. It was as he’d expected—a falling out with the parents who had started looking around for a husband for her, a midnight flight with a bag of clothes and her maid for company, a hand-to-mouth stretch of months, though she was too proud to paint them that way, and a chance encounter with an old lady who had a room to rent out were the events that led to her joining the Adventurers’ Guild.
In the time it took her to complete the first dozen—gruelling, insultingly compensated—missions, her dear Verena was head over heels in love with a travelling merchant. There was nothing for it but to shove her into his arms and wish them well on their journey.
“We cried a lake of tears between us. She writes to me whenever they make a stop,” she explained, gingerly adjusting her injured arm in the makeshift sling Lohen had fashioned for it. “They might get married once they pivot to Fontaine.” There was a note of melancholy in her voice.
“So you’re alone,” Lohen said. Unfortunately, this pleased him.
She opened her mouth to argue, but no sound came out. Shutting it with a snap, she turned a cold shoulder to him. “What if I am? I can handle myself. And it gives me time to practice Uncle’s techniques.”
He would credit her for putting a brave face on it, but Lohen could tell she didn’t thrive in that loneliness. To go from being a pampered little socialite with an army of servants to depending on no one but herself could not have come easily to a spoiled brat like her.
“Do you like being alone?”
Her step faltered, but she recovered within a second, saying, “As much as I like being disowned, but it’s what I chose, so there’s no use thinking about it.”
“Why not join the Knights?”
She shot him a glare. “I’d rather fend for myself than cling to you.”
“Gonna throw that in my face for the rest of time?”
“Yes.”
Lohen sighed. “Fine. It’s not like I suggested it to encroach on your independence. It was because, unlike the Guild, which is international and pretty scattered member-wise, the Knights are organized into companies, so you wouldn’t be alone. There would always be someone to look out for you.” That someone being him, even if she didn’t know it.
“Unlike you, I’m not crazy about crossing blades with every maniac and monstrosity under Teyvat’s skies,” she said. “The Guild is fine. I can pick my jobs and what’s available changes all the time, so I don’t get bored. The deadlines are not harsh, and once I get the hang of what works with my skillset, I’ll get paid decent sums.”
“Oh? So it’s to the Abyss with everyone, now that you don’t depend on anyone?”
“No.” Her expression was a blend of sorrow and gravity. “It’s that I get to decide . . . I’m not going to live for other people anymore.”
“Dummy, I’m shocked to find you might’ve grown up a little.”
She scoffed. “Are the Knights all that you’ve dreamed of?”
“An improvement from the Guild, at any rate,” he said, watching her from the corner of his eye. “I’ve been in fights I used to dream about thanks to the expedition.” Smirking, “And there’s always Varka to ambush when things get dull.”
“Guess it worked out for both of us then.”
Lohen hated the resigned way her shoulders sagged. “I wonder,” he said, staring ahead as the oranges and reds of evening burned behind the clouds littering the horizon.
Her destination was home, but Lohen would have none of that. Despite protests, he grabbed her good arm and dragged her in the direction of the Cathedral.
“I’m better with poisons than first aid. That elbow might need setting,” he said.
“You’re trying to scare me!” She gulped. “Right?”
“Don’t start crying now. You should’ve thought of that before launching your whole body out of a moving wagon onto an elbow.”
“My hands were tied!”
“And whose fault was that?”
She dug her feet in. “I’m not going. Let go.”
“Don’t make me take the other elbow, dummy.” He looked back at her with a sternness that mellowed when confronted with the fear in her eyes. “C’mon, I’ll hold your hand, and you’ll be fine. The types of injuries I’ve seen on the expedition would’ve had you passing out if this shakes you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Be good and you’ll get a reward. Come on.”
With a yank that informed her he had been withholding from using his full strength, Lohen forced her to walk. His fingers swiftly slipped down her arm and twined with hers, which was sufficient distraction to get her to come along quietly.
Lohen didn’t let go of her hand throughout the examination and treatment of her various scrapes and bruises, and then her elbow. By the end of it, she was so thankful for him that she’d forgotten all their arguing and leaned wearily on his shoulder, light-headed, while a sister tended to her back.
“You look feverish,” he observed with less than his usual nonchalance.
“You try getting your elbow set,” she grumbled in an undervoice so the retreating sister wouldn’t catch that.
“Listen to her and stay here overnight. It’s better than to go home and get so bad you can’t make a second trip,” Lohen said.
“No. My landlady will worry and—”
“I’ll take a message to her. Stay here and rest.”
She made the effort of lifting her head out of spite and not wanting him to think she was submitting without a struggle. “If I wasn’t so dizzy, I wouldn’t be leaning on you, so don’t think you can order me around.”
“If I didn’t want you leaning on me, I wouldn’t have let you do it,” he said, unperturbed. Then, rising to his feet, “Here—your reward.” He patted her head.
“What, my reward is being treated like a dog?”
“Were you hoping for something else?”
Leave it to Lohen to make her heart lurch when she was already so weak. “Shut up! How am I supposed to write a note when my elbow is useless?”
Lohen, reasonably, offered to write it on her behalf and contented himself with minor adjustments to what she dictated. As he’d assumed, she didn’t have the strength to fight him about it, so the message was approved.
“All right. I’ll bring it to her now. Tomorrow, I’ve got to track down ‘Venti’ and deliver Varka’s letters, so I’ll come see you a day or two after.” He smiled down at her. “Keep out of trouble until then.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t nag or I won’t say thank you.”
He laughed. “Were you planning to thank me?”
Lips pressed together hard, she stared him down for a second before raising herself in bed and yanking him closer by a lapel to peck his cheek.
“There! Now get out, I’m tired,” she said, avoiding his gaze at all costs.
For once, there was no retort. She didn’t get a glimpse of his expression before he retreated, but the idea that, had he hated it, he would’ve expressed it in no uncertain terms comforted her.
“Stupid Lohen,” she said under her breath, throwing her good arm over her eyes.
Three days later, she was at home alone, sorting through the clothes that could be worn comfortably while her arm was out of commission. Her landlady, shocked to tears by the story of her kidnapping, had sped off to obtain fruit and the freshest leafy greens for a soup—a family recipe she swore healed everything.
When a knock sounded through the house, her first emotion was dread. Then she recalled it was morning and a rather bustling one, judging by the sounds drifting up to her window from the street. Thinking it might be the mailman, she went to the front door, opened it, and found herself facing Lohen.
“No longer pale as death,” he said, studying her face. “Good. Walk with me.”
“Where?” she asked, squinting at him.
“To the lake. Where we used to spar.”
The short walk was accompanied by the story of the adventure he’d had in Wolvendom, but she paid less than half a mind to it, racking her brains wondering what he meant to say to her and fearing the worst.
Her fears proved justified. The moment they stood within reach of the shore he spoke.
“I didn’t forget I have something of yours to return.”
This threw her into a panic. She hadn’t forgotten either, but if he gave back the pendant then they were done. He would not be bound to her in any way, their promises would join the ranks of memories, and she could no longer count on or look forward to Lohen coming home to her.
Having acted as if she was satisfied to live a life in which he was no more than a passing thought, she felt she could not backtrack to the extent of confessing how much she’d missed him or asking him to keep the pendant.
A pinch to her cheek brought her back to the present and she stared, wide-eyed, straight at Lohen.
“Don’t make that hopeless face,” he mumbled. “I did what you wanted—was careful not to get hurt, even when it cost me some real excitement. In light of that, I’m not giving you back the pendant unless you make me a promise this time.”
“What kind of promise?”
Lohen faced her fully, intent eyes finding hers and holding them captive. “Promise that you won’t show that face to any other man,” he said, swiping a thumb across her cheekbone, “and that you won’t say you hate me and mean it.”
“I promise,” she whispered, surrendering her hand without a fight when he took it into one of his and slipped a ring with a swan engraving onto a finger with the other.
“As long as you’re wearing this, you have to keep your promise. You can’t cry off unless you give this back to me, face to face.”
She huffed, burning up all over. “I’m not giving it back, so you may as well forget about it.”
Lohen chuckled. “What a cute little dummy you are.”
“I’m starting to think you like that about me,” she said petulantly.
“I do,” Lohen agreed, tilting her chin up. “Always have.”
He kissed her. So gently it made her want to melt into his arms. Pulling away with a sigh, he knocked his forehead against hers. “Think the old lady would let you have a roommate?”
“Moving a bit f-fast, aren’t you?” she stuttered. “I never said I wanted to live with you.”
“I wasn’t asking for your approval.” Lohen wrapped his arms around her. “No one gets to abduct my princess ever again.”
“Princess?” she breathed.
“Did I say that? I meant dummy.”
“Oh, you annoyi—”
It was dangerous to let him shut her up with a kiss—he might get into a habit—but there was little else she could do, overflowing with a sense of belonging, of home, for the first time in her life.
My Varka fic is wrapping up and to celebrate the new patch, have some Lohen! Might post another chapter once I've played through all the story stuff for this version.
In the meantime, I offer you super yearner Varka, obliviously smitten Flins, tragically smitten Kaeya, Childe whose attachment style is not very healthy, Neuvi whose attachment is pure as water, and short&sweet Tighnari~
♡ +💬 to make my day, and ty for reading ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡