Nikolai places 5 ema pieces on the counter. Small thuds knock on the wooden counter-top.

  “Just a few nights,” he says to the inn-keeper.

  A small wave by the inn-keeper, not looking up from his parchment that he was reading.

  Nikolai gives a small shrug as he leads Maya up the stairs. Their boots sounding hollow on the dark non-varnished wood.

  A few minutes went by before Amia and her companion walk in, hoods up.

  “Just a few nights,” she said in a low voice. Also placing 5 ema pieces on the counter-top.

  The inn-keeper did not bother to look up from his parchment the same way he did to Nikolai.

  Maya was leaning over the basin as the remaining two of the group walked in.

  Her outer-layer was already folded across the chair. The bottom of the dress unrecognisable from what it once was since its first tear a few days ago, now combined with many more multiple scratches and dirt stains.

  Crimson hair hung loose and fell unevenly down her back — just past her shoulders. Thin elastic bands of her dark-red panties contoured her hips, her bare back lightly trickling with sweat from the humidity of the room.

  Her Kaiken dagger remain strapped to her leg. Unmoving and solid against her thigh.

  She did not turn when Amia shut the door behind her.

  Nikolai was standing by the window. Eyes barely averting from the small gap looking outside by the curtain.

  Relaxed, but wary.

  Gauntlets removed, and his fingers working the clasps to his darkened cuirass.The steel gave muted scraps as it lifted from his broad shoulders and he sat it down beside him against the wall — not discarded, not careless.

  He removed his tunic next. Broad and ripped muscles lining the entire upper half of his torso where scratches and scars sat, collected over the years.

  Functional.

  Deliberate.

  Maya dipped a cloth into the basin and pressed it to the faint red mark that covered down the right side of her waist. Although faint, the Raze pattern was undeniable as the electricity-like strokes struck out against her pale skin.

  Her breath tightens as she lets out a small wince.

  Not painful, but an annoyance at this point.

  Amia’s gaze lowered.

  Following down the line of her back from her shoulder blades to where silk came to a stop just below her glutes.

  The gaze held there slightly longer than necessary. Before her attention is drawn to the red mark down Maya’s side.

  Amber eyes peered through flows of red hair, looking up from the wound that was being tended to.

  Amia removed her own cape slowly. Folding it, and setting it aside.

  “It still got y—” Amia questioned, before Maya cut her off.

  “After-effects of some Destructive Magick,” Maya looked back down her side as she pressed down on the mark again, “I wasn’t ready for this one.”

  “I saw a mart down the street. We can look for medicine for it there.”

  Maya shook her head.

  “No.”

  Firm — direct.

  “It’ll go away. It just needs time.”

  Amia pulls her katana from her belt before fingers fiddled around at her strap, undoing the tie and placing it along with its pouches on the table next to her.

  The taller woman by her side had also undone her cape before removing the thick fur-hide armour that covers her chest.

  Taut stretched fabric held a pair of ample breasts that rose and fell smoothly with each breath.

  She steps over to the table and laid her katana on it before taking a seat on the chair.

  Amia watched her as she sat down — for the first time seeing her slightly more relaxed than usual, but the tense outline in her jaw and throat remain unchanged.

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  Amia steps towards Maya and takes a closer look at the mark. Placing her hand over it.

  Close, but not touching.

  Her hand hovered over it, feeling an area that is slightly warmer than the rest of her skin.

  “Okay.” Amia says in a low voice.

  A pause as the pair stood next to each other. Breathing almost in synchronisation, but Amia’s heavier — careful not to touch.

  Control.

  Maya finally broke the silence.

  “We need to do better,” she utters, also in a low voice, “we can’t let something like that happen again.”

  Amia nods as the pair’s eyes met.

  She turns around as she takes her tunic off. Her short frame baring itself to the room.

  A small thump of fabric as she throws her tunic where her cloak sat, folded.

  She turns around as she is met with Maya handing a fold of cloth to her. Not the same one she was using.

  “I’m done, the basin’s yours.”

  She walks off to the opposite end of the room to grab a spare towel.

  Deliberate.

  Amia watches as the almost naked woman grabs it and wraps it around her figure, then sitting down and burying her face in her hands.

  The torn dress on the chair caught Amia’s attention.

  “I don’t have much ema pieces with me, but I think it will be a good idea if we got new clothes too.”

  Nikolai finally shifts from where he was standing and shows Amia a pouch, shaking it before handing it to her — the recognisable sound of coin pieces rattling against each other.

  “We will have enough for a change of clothes and basic goods for the next few days,” he proudly says, “but after that, I’m not sure.”

  Amia weighs it in her hand.

  Heavy.

  Royally heavy.

  “You could have chosen lodgings that had a bath-house in it as well,” Maya says through her hands.

  Nikolai did not shift from her sentence and tone.

  “There is a bath-house, just not here,” Nikolai replies.

  Amia hands the pouch back to Nikolai.

  Silent and observing at the interaction between the two.

  Nikolai walks back to his area where his equipment sat.

  “I think it will do everyone some good—” Maya says. Face no longer buried in her hands. “—and it might make someone not look twice if they happen to have seen us before, too.”

  She was right.

  The explosion from earlier may have been quite a distance away, but it had stirred something in the town.

  Amia had been dipping the cloth in the water as she used it to rub sections of her body. Her attention suddenly shifting to the amount of the water left in the basin.

  Before she could have finished her thought,

  “Nikolai—” Maya speaks, before being cut off.

  “Ahead of you,” Nikolai answers. Already moving towards the bucket by Amia’s feet while his broad shoulders wrestled with his tunic.

  “We’ll be fine,” Maya paused before she continued, “something is wrong in the village, but we should have time.”

  He walks to Maya to hand her the pouch of ema before leaving with a soft thud on the door as he closed it behind him.

  Silence filled the room.

  Amia took off her boots and her leggings as she stood bare in front of the basin. Her voluptuous thighs holding on to the material as it slid off. The weighted strain on her dark-blue bra more obvious now without her leggings. Black cloth panties completing her set.

  She continues dipping the cloth into the basin as she starts wiping her legs this time. Tracing her curves on the outside before working her way inwards.

  Maya’s eyes scanned the short figure across her near the basin — thoughts wondering to how something so compact could be so precise and lethal.

  She averted her gaze towards the wall while she spoke,

  “This isn’t the first time they’ve used a village as a watch-tower, you know.”

  Amia stopped wiping herself for a short moment before she continued.

  “You knew about this?” she asks.

  “No, but I’ve read about it.”

  Maya’s thoughts fell back to a time that she would spend hours on end reading in the private library of the castle.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “Nothing did.”

  Amia finished what she was doing as she slid back into her tunic.

  Her eyebrows raised in question to Maya’s answer.

  “This was a long time ago,” Maya continued, “that was how the ‘10 Day Madura War’ ended in Princess Village. And that was how Princess Village came to be.”

  Amia’s chest tightened at the mention of Princess Village.

  “My great-grandfather ended the war without any fatalities,” Maya thought hard about the book as she said that. “Which doesn’t make sense, because having a caster embedded in a centre-point like a village means destruction.”

  “Or, your history books were altered.”

  Maya turned her head back to Amia.

  Eyebrows furrowed into a glare. Determined and awaiting for an explanation from the girl in front of her.

  But none came.

  Amia lifts her arms up to her hair as she ties it up into a ponytail. Mismatched, without the red ribbon that Maya recognises her with.

  Maya’s eyes turned to her dress that lay on the chair. Knowing that buried somewhere in there sat the red ribbon. A piece of Amia.

  She gets up and undoes the towel around her — now fully exposing herself once more, dark pink nipples in view of Amia and her companion. Adjusting the bands of her panties before walking towards the dress.

  Deliberate, and no shame.

  There was no need to be.

  “The pulses have stopped for a while now, so let’s hurry up and get stuff we need while we can,” Maya said.

  “Oh—” she stammered as the thought came into her head, “and if I were you, I would figure out where you stand with her soon.”

  Maya fought hard with her last sentence. Her jaw clenching as she bit back at her annoyance.

  Frustration at the fact that just the other night she had said to the white-haired woman that she is ready when she is.

  And now inputting her opinion on someone else’s.