Absolute Mana Dominion: All My Talents Are SSS

Chapter 39: 39 - Expected or Unexpected?

Lucien left him under the tree, and Adrien stayed there another minute before deciding that standing alone in the dark was probably not going to improve his apology. By the time he returned, the feast had properly started.

Elyndor had apparently decided that getting its princess back alive deserved everything the city could fit beneath the trees. Lamps hung between the branches at different heights, music carried across the square, and every table Adrien passed had enough food on it to feed Greymoor for a week.

People kept stopping him.

"Lord Clairmont, thank you again. My daughter was with one of the search groups. We didn’t know whether we’d ever see the princess come home."

Another elf caught his hand before the first had fully moved on. "What you did in that camp... you have our gratitude. All of us."

Adrien answered as politely as he could and accepted thanks he still wasn’t entirely sure belonged to him. By the fifth person, he had finally identified why the whole thing made him uncomfortable.

’This is exactly like having people sing Happy Birthday while you’re sitting there wondering where the hell you’re supposed to look.’

He had always hated that.

Vael eventually rescued him without knowing he needed rescuing. The old elf stepped toward the centre of the square with a glass in one enormous hand, and the conversations around him slowly died on their own.

"I’ll try to keep this short, because apparently there’s a rumour going around that I’m incapable of it."

Several elves laughed, and Vael waited until they were done.

"Tonight we have more than one reason to drink. Princess Elowen is home safely, although judging by the expression she’s been wearing all evening, she’d probably prefer if everyone stopped reminding her."

A small voice protested from somewhere near the front, earning another round of laughter.

"My granddaughter came home as well, and somehow Lucien managed to make it back with her."

"You’re welcome," Lucien called from somewhere behind Adrien.

Vael ignored him. "More importantly, everyone taken with them is alive because one man found forty armed slavers in a forest and apparently decided that wasn’t a convincing enough reason to turn around."

His eyes found Adrien, and several dozen glasses shifted with them.

"To Adrien Clairmont, and to House Clairmont. They’ve had enough people speaking about them lately who knew very little about what they were talking about."

Evelyne went still near the end of one table.

Vael lifted his glass a little higher. "And to Alaric. He would’ve been furious that he missed free food, so we may as well drink enough for him."

The laughter was quieter this time. Evelyne lowered her head for a moment before raising her own glass.

"To Alaric."

His name moved through the square.

Adrien drank and found that one considerably harder to dismiss. His father had received a funeral under rain, surrounded by people who had come to watch what happened to House Clairmont after the coffin went into the ground.

This felt closer to what a funeral should have been.

’Yeah. He would’ve liked this.’

Once the toast ended, the feast found its rhythm again. Evelyne remained with Vael, talking quietly over their drinks, while Ariane had apparently discovered that elven desserts were different from human ones and decided she needed to investigate all of them personally.

Adrien found her with two plates in her hands and something covered in honey halfway into her mouth.

’Honestly, good.’

After Greymoor, the cage, and nearly getting cut open by a Three Star, seeing his sister worried about which pastry she wanted next was probably the healthiest thing she’d done in weeks. She deserved a night where the worst decision in front of her involved dessert.

Adrien had a less pleasant problem.

He couldn’t find Amelia.

Lucien’s words kept coming back while he searched. Adrien had eventually understood what Amelia had been trying to tell him in the forest. Unfortunately, understanding it several hours later was considerably less impressive than doing it while she was standing directly in front of him.

This life was different from the last one. He already trusted Evelyne and Ariane. Garrick had earned his trust in a different way, and even Vikir was slowly finding his way onto that list.

But family was easy to explain. He had inherited eighteen years of reasons to care about them.

Amelia had simply arrived and started making space for herself.

He still wasn’t sure what to do with that.

"Mister?"

Adrien looked down and found three elven children standing in front of him. The tallest looked like he’d been nominated to speak for the group and regretted accepting the position.

"Can we ask you something? We heard you were the human who found the camp."

Adrien looked between them. "You can ask. Whether I answer depends on how embarrassing the question is."

That seemed to relax them.

The smallest stepped forward. "Did you really fight all the bad men by yourself?"

"Mostly, although there was a very angry elf with a bow helping me."

One of the children immediately brightened. "Lucien?"

Adrien glanced toward the crowd. "Apparently Lucien has fans. That’s worrying."

The children laughed, and after that the questions came quickly. Adrien gave them the cleaner version of what happened: finding the cages, freezing the camp, breaking the locks and getting everyone out. He skipped the burning tents, the bodies and the part where forty men had stopped being forty men.

By the end, all three were staring at him like he’d personally invented magic.

"Can you show us some?" the smallest asked. "I’ve never seen a human Mage use ice before."

"My brother says Gaia magic is better," another added.

"How old is your brother?"

"Nine."

Adrien nodded seriously. "Then obviously we’re dealing with an expert."

He looked around until he spotted a leaf turning slowly through the air above the edge of the square.

"Alright, watch that leaf. And stay where you are, because I’d rather not explain to Vael why I accidentally put a hole through one of you during his feast."

Three heads immediately turned upward.

Adrien lifted one hand.

[Frost Lance]

The spell snapped from his palm, passed straight through the falling leaf and buried itself harmlessly in the dirt beyond the square. Frost spread across the leaf around the hole before it landed.

The children reacted like he’d split the moon in half.

"Do it again! Can you make a bigger one? Can you make one shaped like a sword?"

Adrien was seriously considering how irresponsible he could afford to be when a familiar voice came from behind them.

"He’s our guest tonight, not entertainment. If you keep this up, you’ll have him throwing ice around until breakfast."

All three children stopped.

Amelia stood a few paces away, dressed in dark green, with her pale blue hair loose over her shoulders instead of tied back.

Adrien noticed immediately.

Amelia eventually got the children moving with a promise that Adrien would probably still know magic tomorrow. One of them looked back as they left.

"When my core wakes up, I want to be a Mage too!"

Adrien raised a hand. "Then make sure somebody teaches you before you start firing things at leaves."

Once they were gone, he looked at Amelia.

"I was looking for you. I owe you an apology, and I’d rather not spend the rest of the evening pretending I don’t."

She held his gaze for a moment before nodding toward one of the paths leading away from the square. "Then come with me. I’d rather have this conversation somewhere we don’t have fifty people listening while pretending they aren’t."

"Fair."

Adrien followed her between the trees. The path narrowed quickly, winding away from the main walkways until the music behind them softened into something carried through the leaves.

It ended at a small terrace built around the side of an enormous trunk, high enough that the entire feast spread beneath them in pools of warm light.

Adrien rested his arms against the railing. "Alright, this is a good place."

"I come here when everyone in Elyndor starts irritating me at the same time," Amelia said as she joined him. "So I come here fairly often."

"I can see why you’d keep it secret."

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. Adrien remembered Lucien telling him to apologise and then stay quiet long enough to let her answer. Annoyingly sensible advice from someone who had also threatened to put an arrow through his skull.

"I’m sorry about the other day," Adrien said. "I knew what you were trying to do. That’s probably the part I handled badly. You were trying to get closer to me, and instead of deciding whether I wanted that, I started looking for reasons I shouldn’t."

Amelia turned toward him, but before Adrien could continue, she shook her head. "No. I should apologise too. I handled it badly. I got angry because you didn’t trust me, then pushed you until you told me something you clearly weren’t ready to share."

Adrien stayed quiet, and Amelia looked down toward the lights below them.

"That’s not how you earn someone’s trust. Especially after everything that’s happened to you. Your father, your family, Greymoor..." She breathed out. "We’d barely known each other a week, Adrien. I was asking for too much, too quickly. I’m sorry."

"I still didn’t need to react the way I did."

"No, taking your shirt off and announcing that you had a dragon heart was probably unnecessary."

Adrien looked at her, and Amelia lasted about two seconds before laughing.

"Thank you. Very supportive."

"I’m sorry." She was still smiling. "That part was a little dramatic."

"Lucien already spent half the evening explaining my mistakes to me anyway."

Her expression changed immediately. "Lucien talked to you? What did he say?"

"Among other things, he threatened to put arrows into my corpse if I hurt you."

Amelia closed her eyes. "Please tell me you’re exaggerating."

"Barely. He was very calm about it too, which somehow made it worse."

A laugh escaped her, taking some of the tension with it. Adrien looked back over Elyndor before speaking again.

"For what it’s worth, I knew you were interested in me."

Amelia blinked. "You knew?"

"You weren’t exactly subtle."

Colour crept into her cheeks. "And you didn’t say anything?"

"I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about it." Adrien rested his arms against the railing. "I like being around you. I want to know you better. That part isn’t complicated."

Amelia waited, sensing there was more.

"The trust part is." Adrien looked toward her. "Where I came from, trusting the wrong person could destroy your life very quickly. After enough of that, you start thinking about what happens if you’re wrong."

"I understand." Amelia moved a little closer. "And after the way I acted, I don’t expect you to suddenly trust me because I apologised."

Adrien gave a small nod. "It’ll take time. I don’t think that’s a bad thing."

"It isn’t." Amelia’s expression softened. "I just want the chance to earn it. That’s what I should’ve asked for from the beginning."

"That sounds a lot more reasonable."

"So you’ll give me the chance?"

Adrien glanced at her. "I’m still standing here, aren’t I?"

Amelia smiled at that.

They stayed beside the railing for a moment, the noise of the feast reaching them faintly through the trees. Adrien expected her to say something else.

Instead, Amelia caught the front of his coat and kissed him.

That genuinely caught him off guard.

For half a second Adrien did absolutely nothing. Then his hand settled against her waist and he kissed her back, deciding that analysing this particular situation could wait until later.

Amelia pulled away first. Her cheeks were red now, and she looked considerably less confident than she had a few seconds earlier.

"I’ve wanted to do that for two days," she admitted.

Adrien stared at her for a moment. "You could’ve given me slightly more warning."

"Would you have spent ten minutes thinking about it?"

"Possibly."

"Then I made the right decision."

Adrien laughed under his breath. "Fair."

Before either of them could say more, a child’s voice came rushing up the path.

"Amelia! Grandfather says the princess climbed onto the table again and she won’t come down!"

Amelia closed her eyes and sighed. "She’s going to be the death of me."

She started down the path with the child, then stopped and looked back. "We’re alright?"

Adrien considered the question before nodding. "Yeah. We’re alright."

That seemed enough for her. Amelia disappeared down the path, leaving Adrien alone above the lights of Elyndor.

He stayed against the railing for another moment, thinking about what had happened.

Adrien wanted to spend more time with her and find out where this went. The kiss hadn’t suddenly made him trust her with everything, and he doubted Amelia expected it to.

Trust would come slowly, if it came at all.

But for once, Adrien was willing to give someone the opportunity.

’I can work with that.’

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