In Kuroinu

"There it is," Filia said, and I looked up from the road and the city was just there, spread across the valley below us like someone had kicked over a box of stone buildings. Walls. Real walls, tall and pale, with towers at the corners and gates wide enough for three carts to pass through side by side. Behind the walls: rooftops. Hundreds of them, clay and thatch and some with slate, packed tight together with smoke rising from chimneys and the flash of sunlight on glass windows. Temples with their spires. A barracks compound at the eastern edge, big enough that the training yard was visible from where we stood. Markets, squares, roads that had actual cobblestones instead of dirt.

Mila made a small sound beside me. Her ears were straight up and her tail was wagging at a speed I'd never seen from her and her mouth was open and her eyes were trying to take in everything at once and failing.

"That's the capital?"

"That's the capital."

"It's so BIG."

Llusse snorted. "It's mid-sized at best. You should see the fortress-cities in the north."

"Have YOU seen them?"

Llusse's ears went flat. "I've seen maps."

We came through the gates in the afternoon and the city swallowed us. The main road was cobbled and crowded and the noise was a wall of its own, vendors shouting prices and cart wheels on stone and dogs barking and somewhere a blacksmith's hammer hitting iron in a rhythm that carried over everything else. The buildings were taller than anything in the village, two and three stories, and the alleys between them were narrow and dark and I could smell cooking meat and baking bread and the particular sharpness of a tannery that was downwind of everything.

Filia navigated like she'd been here before and led us to an inn three blocks off the main road. The sign was a painted cup on a wooden board and the door was propped open with a chair and the common room inside was warm and smelled like stew and woodsmoke.

"Four rooms," Filia told the woman at the bar.

"Three." The woman looked at our party, looked at me in the middle of it, and her eyebrows did a small calculation. "We've got three open. Someone's doubling."

"We'll manage. Tianne and I will share."

The woman's daughter came around the bar carrying a stack of folded linens. Brown hair, round face, a smile that arrived before the rest of her did. She looked at me while she set the linens on the counter and her eyes moved down and back up in a way that was efficient and unhurried.

"You're the hero party, aren't you? From the south?"

"Word travels," I said.

"My father drinks with the gate guards." She handed me a set of towels. Her fingers were warm and she held the handoff for a beat. "I'm Natalia. If you need anything, ask me. My mother handles the money." A grin. "I handle everything else."

"Haruto."

"I know." She walked back toward the kitchen. Over her shoulder: "Dinner's in an hour. The stew is better than it smells."

The afternoon was ours. Filia announced she needed supplies and disappeared toward the market district. Tianne asked directions to the nearest temple and went alone, staff in hand, and when she came back an hour later her eyes were clearer and her shoulders were lower and she looked like she'd set down a weight she'd been carrying since the farmstead. Llusse vanished without announcing where she was going and returned with a bundle of new bowstrings and a packet of arrowheads and a sour expression that might have been her version of satisfaction.

Mila and I went to the market.

The crowd was the problem. The main market square was packed, vendors on both sides, people moving in every direction, and Mila's ears kept swiveling and her eyes were wide and she was trying to track every sound and every face at once. Her steps got shorter. Her tail tucked close to her leg. She bumped into a man carrying a crate and apologized three times and then a woman with a handcart nearly ran over her foot and she jumped sideways into me.

Her hand found my sleeve.

She held on. Her fingers curled into the fabric at my elbow and her grip was tight and she didn't let go as we walked through the crowd together, her shoulder close to mine, her ears angled back. I didn't mention it. We walked two blocks like that, her hand on my sleeve, the crowd parting around us.

Her grip loosened as the crowd thinned near a supply stall. She let go of my sleeve and her ears perked up and she realized what she'd been doing. Her cheeks went pink. She looked at a display of dried herbs like they were the most fascinating things she'd ever seen.

We needed trail rations and a few other things. Mila knew provisions better than I did and she moved through the stalls with purpose, checking the dried meat by smell and the hardtack by weight and rejecting a sack of rice that she declared "damp at the bottom" like she'd been running a kitchen her whole life. She was good at this. She was good at a lot of things that didn't involve swords.

The moment happened over a crate of dried fruit. We both reached in at the same time. Her fingers landed on top of mine, her skin warm against the back of my hand, and she froze. Her whole body locked. Her tail went rigid-still. Her ears went straight up. She was looking down at our hands in the crate and she wasn't breathing.

Her tail wagged once. A single slow sweep.

She yanked her hand back.

"Mila."

"Yes?!" Her voice came out about an octave higher than normal.

"You dropped the dried meat."

She looked down. The packet of dried meat she'd been holding in her other hand was on the ground between her feet. "OH." She scrambled for it, her ears flat, her face red from her cheeks to her collar.

I picked it up before she got there. Tucked it into her bag for her. My hand brushed her waist on the way past, the fabric of her shirt and the warmth underneath.

Mila stopped. Her tail, her breathing, her hands mid-reach for the bag. She stood there with my hand grazing her side and her eyes wide and she'd forgotten where she was.

I pulled my hand back. Smiled at her. "Got it."

"Thank you," she said. Her voice was very small and very careful and she turned and walked to the next stall and she didn't look back and her tail was wagging so hard the breeze reached me.

Dinner was the stew and it was better than it smelled. The five of us sat at a table in the common room and Filia showed everyone the new whetstone and Llusse pretended the bowstrings were adequate and Tianne poured tea for the table without being asked and Mila sat beside me and her knee touched mine under the table once and she went rigid and then she didn't move the knee and I didn't move mine. A woman at the next table was having a loud argument with her husband about the price of goats and it went on for the entire meal and nobody at our table could figure out who was winning.

Natalia cleared our plates. She leaned past me to reach a dish and her hip pressed against my shoulder and the contact was brief and warm and casual and when she straightened up she looked down at me and the corner of her mouth turned up.

The others went to their rooms. I stayed to finish my drink. Natalia wiped tables around me. The common room emptied out.

She brought a stack of blankets to my room an hour later.

"Extra blankets," she said. "The upstairs rooms get cold."

She was wearing a loose linen shirt and her hair was down and she was standing in my doorway with the blankets against her chest, waiting.

"You could just bring them in," I said.

She came in. Set the blankets on the bed. Sat down next to them. Looked at me.

"Heroes deserve a proper welcome."

She said it easy. She wasn't nervous. Her eyes were clear and warm and she was watching me and waiting for me to catch up.

I sat beside her on the bed.

She kissed me. Casual, confident, her hand on my jaw tilting my head where she wanted it. She tasted like the wine she'd been drinking while she wiped tables and her mouth was warm and she kissed unhurried. She pulled back an inch.

"Okay?"

"Yeah."

She climbed onto my lap. Her knees settled on either side of my hips and her skirt bunched up around her thighs and she was already untucking my shirt, her hands finding skin, fingers spread flat on my stomach. She pulled the shirt over my head and her eyes dropped to my chest and she ran her hands across it with the unhurried appreciation of someone browsing a market stall she planned to buy from.

Her shirt came off next. She pulled it over her own head and dropped it on the floor and she was bare underneath, full breasts with dark nipples already hard in the cool room, and she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me back onto the bed and settled her weight onto my hips.

I was hard. She felt it through my pants and she rocked her hips once, testing, and her lips parted. She reached between us and pulled the laces of my pants loose and freed my cock and wrapped her fingers around it and stroked once, firm, appraising.

"The hero's well-equipped," she said. A grin.

"Part of the blessing."

"Is it?"

"No."

She laughed. Lifted her hips, pulled her smallclothes aside, and the head of my cock pressed against her. She was wet. Ready. The heat of her against the tip and then she sank down.

One smooth drop. She took me all the way in and her hips settled flush against mine and her head tipped back and her mouth opened. "Mm." The sound was low and satisfied. She was hot and wet and the fit was snug and she squeezed around me once, deliberate, testing, and her eyes came down to mine and she smiled.

She rode me. Her hands on my chest, her hips rolling in confident circles, and she knew what she was doing. Her body found the angle she liked and she worked it, each roll grinding her clit against the base of my cock. She wasn't shy about it. The wet sounds started almost immediately, loud enough in the quiet room that she could hear them, and she didn't care.

"Ah- there-" She shifted her angle and her breath caught and she went faster. Her breasts bounced with the motion and her fingers dug into my chest and her breathing went shallow and quick.

I gripped her hips. Pulled her down harder on the next stroke and she gasped and her rhythm stuttered. The depth hit different and her eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

"Nn- that's- do that again-"

I did it again. Pulled her hips down and thrust up to meet her and she made a sound in her throat and her back arched. Again. Her thighs clenched against my hips and her head dropped forward and her hair fell around her face and she was grinding down onto me with her whole weight, chasing it.

My cock was aching from the pace and the grip of her and my hands were digging into the flesh of her hips hard enough to leave marks and she didn't slow down. Her pussy was clamping around me in rhythmic pulses. Her thighs were trembling against my hips and her jaw was clenched and her eyes were squeezed shut and her hips were rolling fast.

She came. Her body locked, hips grinding in tight circles, and she gasped, sharp and startled, her eyes flying open. Her hands pressed flat on my chest and her pussy squeezed around me in hard waves and she was staring down at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide because the Blessing pulsed. The warmth flooded from where we were connected and she shuddered and her fingers spread wide on my skin.

I came inside her. The transfer was small, a civilian's boost, but it was there and her whole body registered it. Her arms shook and she looked at her hands on my chest and then at me.

"What-" She flexed her fingers. Turned them over. Looked at me. "What did you DO to me?"

I grinned up at her. "Hero's welcome."

She stared at me. Then she laughed, loud and genuine, and she collapsed onto my chest and her hair was in my face and she was still laughing. "Oh you absolute- you're ridiculous, you know that?"

"I've been told."

She lay on me for a while. She was warm and soft and her heartbeat was fast against my chest and she smelled like kitchen herbs and wine and the clean sweat of sex. After a while she sat up and looked down at me and her eyes were bright and amused.

"I can feel it. I'm-" She squeezed her own arm. "Stronger? That doesn't make sense."

"It does if you don't think about it too hard."

She shook her head. Climbed off me. Fixed her clothes with the same efficient ease she'd used to take them off. She looked at me one more time from the doorway, her hair messy and her cheeks flushed.

"Breakfast is included," she said. "I'll bring yours up."

"Thanks, Natalia."

"Don't get used to the room service." She winked. Closed the door.

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and the room smelled like her and the blankets she'd brought were actually warm and the city noise came through the window, distant, carriages on cobblestones and a dog barking and someone laughing two streets over.

Tomorrow we'd report to the queen. The marked blade was still in my pack. The farmstead was still behind us. And the girl downstairs was going to wake up tomorrow and wonder why she could lift the firewood stack in one trip instead of three, and there wasn't a good way to explain that either.

I pulled the blanket up. The extra one, the one Natalia brought.

It was warm.

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