CHAPTER 544: HIDING HEAT IN PLAIN SIGHT (2)

The sky had deepened to a velvet indigo, stars prickling through like scattered diamonds as the group reached the hill’s crest. The air was cool, carrying the sharp bite of pine and the damp musk of earth cooling after the day’s heat. Arielle’s body still thrummed with the aftershocks of their wild ride, her thighs tingling, her lips swollen from Lyan’s kisses. She clung to his cloak, her face burning as Lara, Tara, and Sigrid’s teasing shouts—"That’s unfair!!!"—echoed in her ears. They saw everything, she thought, her heart racing with a mix of mortification and defiance. But I don’t care. The memory of Lyan’s heat, his hardness filling her, sent a fresh shiver through her, and she pressed closer to him, the slrp of their final kiss still lingering on her lips.

Lyan dismounted with a fluid grace, his scar glinting in the fading light as he offered her a hand. She took it, her legs wobbly, the quelch of his seed spilling slightly as she moved, a warm reminder that made her cheeks flush. Not now, she thought, her mind scrambling for composure. With a wave of his hand, Lyan summoned a shimmer of magic, and the air hummed with energy. A dozen acid ant workers materialized, their carapaces gleaming with faint green luminescence, mandibles clicking as they scuttled to set up camp. Tents rose like mushrooms, stakes driven into the earth with a thunk thunk, and a firepit sparked to life, flames crackling with a snap snap

that warmed the chill air. Arielle’s breath caught, her scholar’s mind sparking with awe. He’s a summoner, she thought, her heart swelling with pride and a touch of envy. A beast tamer, rare and precious, bending magic and nature to his will. The ants moved with uncanny precision, their glowing mandibles weaving through the grass, piling wood, and unfurling canvas with a rustle rustle that filled the night.

She stepped away from Lyan, her skirt swaying, the lead beads clinking softly. The movement sent another trickle of his seed down her thigh, a warm, intimate secret that made her pulse quicken. I can’t let it go, she thought, her cheeks burning with a mix of embarrassment and determination. She glanced around, ensuring the mountain women were distracted—Lara was tossing a dagger between her hands, Tara braiding another sprig of thyme into her horse’s mane, Sigrid sharpening her axe with a scrape scrape. Arielle reached into her saddlebag, her fingers closing around a small, velvet pouch she’d tucked away days ago. Her face flushed hotter as she pulled out the item—a smooth, polished plug, crafted with discreet elegance by a merchant in Grafen. I prepared for this, she thought, mortified but resolute. For him. She slipped into the shadow of a tent, her hands trembling as she adjusted her skirt, sliding the plug into place with a soft click. The sensation was grounding, a quiet promise that she’d hold onto Lyan’s essence, keeping him close. He’s mine, even like this, she thought, her heart aching with a possessive warmth.

A sudden "Whoa!" broke the quiet, and Arielle’s head snapped up. Lara, Tara, and Sigrid had rounded the tent-flap with the boldness of women who never asked a door’s permission. All three halted, eyes wide—less scandal than surprise, more delight than judgment.

Lara’s red braid swung as she leaned in, freckles crinkling at the bridge of her nose. "What is that, stewardess?" she asked, the words warm with mischief, not malice.

Tara’s fingers stopped mid-braid, the sprig of thyme she’d been weaving into a loop stilled against her palm. Her fair cheeks colored, but her eyes were bright. "You’ll have to introduce us to your Grafen... supplier," she said, the last word shy, the grin anything but.

Sigrid’s ponytail bobbed when she laughed, a low, appreciative sound that shook like a drawn bowstring. "Bold," she said, approving as only a mountain woman could be, and tipped her head toward the darkening horizon as if confidence itself were a good omen.

Arielle’s face burned so hot her spectacles fogged; she swiped them with the heel of her hand, buying herself a heartbeat. "It’s... from a merchant I frequent in Grafen," she managed, voice small but steadying. The reflexive fear—They’ll laugh—rose and broke harmlessly. These weren’t court ladies sharpening tongues for sport. These were women who carried tents as if they were shawls and sang to their knives while oiling them.

Tara’s grin turned conspiratorial. "You gotta introduce us," she insisted, rocking on her heels like a girl promised a fair. "I want one."

"Two," Lara said immediately, spinning her dagger through her fingers and catching it by the hilt with showoff neatness. "Different colors."

"Make it quick," Sigrid added, lips quirking. "Or we’ll raid your merchant ourselves and pay in mead until he begs mercy."

The three of them burst into laughter so sudden and clean that Arielle’s embarrassment softened into something else—relief that tasted like a sip of cool water after a long walk. "I’ll... introduce you later," she promised, and a shy pride threaded into her voice at being asked, at being included, at having a secret that wasn’t shameful when held up to the light. They weren’t judging her. They were—gods help her—like her.

Outside, the hill caught the last of the day and held it. The sky had already deepened toward indigo; first stars pricked through like pins on velvet. Pine and damp earth rose crisp from the slope, the air chilled enough that breath made little ghosts. Lyan’s gesture drew a shimmer across the clearing, and the air answered him—humming, then resolving into a dozen acid ants the size of hunting dogs. Their carapaces held a faint green sheen, as if someone had brushed them with moss and moonlight both. Mandibles clicked; orders ran along invisible currents. They spread across the ground in tidy lines, piling wood, digging a firepit, unfurling canvas like sober, busy aunties who had no time for dithering. Stakes went in with brisk thunk, thunk, thunk. A spark caught, and the newborn flames took to their task, crackling in the happy language of fires everywhere.

Arielle stood a moment and simply watched. She’d read about summoners; she’d balanced line items for iron filings, oils, inks, and rare salts in ledgers that had more magic than money to their names. But watching Lyan call power to heel like a well-trained horse never felt ordinary. He lifted a hand and the world listened. He bent, and the difficult parts of the day seemed to unbend with him. The scar mapping his cheek caught the firelight and turned briefly silver; his eyes held the blaze the way well water holds the sky.

He knelt at the pit and drew a whetstone down the length of his blade, the scrape-slide-scrape a steady rhythm that undercut the talk and laughter. Arielle found herself matching her breathing to it without meaning to: inhale on the draw, exhale on the return. There was a kind of mercy in the ordinary. She sank onto a blanket beside the fire and felt the warmth soak through cloak and skirt into tired muscle and bone. Her whole body hummed with the day—wind singing the hem beads of her riding skirt, the giddy recklessness of the sprint up the hill, the way Lyan’s hand on the reins and on her waist had felt like a promise that didn’t need words. The memory flushed her again. She hid her smile in the cup of her hand and pretended to study the ants building a neat little windbreak out of brush.

Lara and Tara crashed back into the circle with the kind of triumph only hunters know, dragging between them a boar so massive the earth seemed briefly to reconsider how gravity worked. Its tusks were inlaid with pale runes that glimmered faintly when the firelight leaned their way. Sigrid whooped—no polite cheer, a hearth-shaking, two-hands-clapped roar of enjoyment. "That’s a feast!" she declared, shouldering her axe with the affectionate expectation of someone greeting an old friend. The boar thudded down; dust puffed; an ant scuttled up to inspect, clicked once as if approving the marbling, and set to work fussing with brush to make a proper spit.

Lyan moved through the next motions with the competence that always snuck under Arielle’s ribs and knocked there. He didn’t swagger; he consulted the boar as if it might disagree about how best to be cooked and only proceeded once it remained silent. Knife flashed. The work was cleaner than it had any right to be. He salted with the pinch-pinch of a man who cooks by memory; he scattered thyme and a crumbled twist of rosemary from his pack, and suddenly the night had a roof—herb-scented, sensibly spiced. Fat hissed when it met fire. Flames answered in delighted crackle. Drips fell—soft hiss—until they began to perfuse the coals, and then the whole pit smelled like a story Arielle wanted to live in.

Around the ring, the mountain trio relaxed in ways Arielle recognized from the keep: shoulders loosening toward the light, weapons set to hand but not to worry, laughter hitting the ear without edges. Lara carved a slice with the neat, precise economy of a woman who’d cut meat on her knees many, many times. The blade’s passage made a little music against seared flesh. Tara accepted the first piece and bit in; a sound halfway between a groan and a hymn escaped her. "This is amazing,"