The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!

The carriages weren’t the academy issue ones they’d ridden into Drevash on.

These were Drevash working vehicles, lower to the ground and built for ridge terrain rather than road travel, their wide-set wheels and reinforced undercarriage making them ride harder over uneven ground.

Each was driven by a man from the village, a solidly built man in his thirties whose communication was mostly in economical gestures and a general air of knowing the terrain very well.

There were two carriages, and Elizabeth distributed the passengers with the same efficiency she brought to everything.

Mireya, Iris, Apollo, Alexander, and Elizabeth occupied the first carriage. Rex, Nerith, Talyra, and Aisella took the second one.

’What the fuck is this coincidence...?’ Rex thought. ’Did she really set this all up?’

Rex glanced at Elizabeth, who was studying the map. "I really need to appreciate her," he thought, "but not in the way that simps do."

’Well, anyway... might as well have what’s worth for mine.’

Rex claimed the bench seat next to the window, where he could watch the ridge country slip by as the carriage pulled out of Drevash’s square and started the climb to the upper path. Talyra sat across from him,

Aisella was beside her, and to Rex’s left, Nerith sat close enough that the occasional pitch of the carriage over a large stone sent her shoulder into his, which she seemed to have no immediate plans to do anything about.

The morning light was coming in at a low angle, making the ridge terraces above look like something out of a painting, the cultivated plots at their greenest, and the stone walls between catching the early light.

Rex looked at it and considered the lower third-level chambers and the best way to approach the Key once they got to them.

"She paired us deliberately," said Aisella. "This is like fate for us all!"

Rex didn’t turn from the window. "Miss Elizabeth pairs everything deliberately."

"No, I mean she paired us specifically! You, me, Talyra, and Nerith." Aisella had the look of someone who had worked something out and wasn’t sure if she was pleased about it. "She’s read the group dynamics."

"She reads most things," Rex said.

Talyra tilted her head, stretching her legs across to Rex’s side of the carriage because she had decided to use the available space. "Is that a concern?"

"No," Rex said. He was still looking at the terraces. "Miss Elizabeth is discreet about what she figures out. It’s one of her better qualities."

Aisella absorbed this. After a moment she said, "That’s either reassuring or alarming depending on which way I look at it."

"Pick the way that helps you get through the morning," Rex said.

The carriage hit a rise and jolted, and Nerith’s shoulder came into his again, and she didn’t move away from it this time. The leaves at the edge of her braid had gone a quieter color than they’d been at breakfast, the amber settling toward something less agitated.

Aisella noticed right away. She looked at Rex, then at Nerith, and then very carefully looked out her own window at the terraces, which was the kind of discretion Rex could respect.

"Uhm... The third-level acoustics," Nerith said, addressing no one in particular. "She said the communication structure changes."

"It becomes less conversation and more residual impression."

"You’ve worked with residual impressions before," said Aisella.

"Once, yes, it was on a site in the Thornweald, a forest that had been burned three hundred years ago."

"The root network remembers fire the way living trees don’t." She was quiet for a moment. "It’s not comfortable reading. But it’s honest."

"Is that a meaningful distinction to you?" Rex asked.

Nerith turned to look at him, briefly, and then back at the window. "Yes," she said.

He was still pondering this when Talyra stated, with the nonchalance of one stating an obvious fact, "Nerith, you let Rex sleep in your room last night."

Nerith made a shocking loud noise. "HWAHH?!"

"Calm down, hehehe, we’re not really judging," Aisella said at once, with such earnestness that it rather undermined itself. "You probably wanted to ask how we know that, right?"

"Since both of us already feel how it felt... we can smell something different in you, and it belongs to Rex!" Aisella said with a diagnostic look.

"How do you even know about that...?" Rex said with a frowned look.

"T-There is nothing to see," said Nerith.

She stared hard at the other wall of the carriage. "You can smell Rex in me because I’m sitting near him right now..."

"Well, the leaves," said Talyra with delight, "are doing the kind of Nerith thing when she was being weird—I mean, unique."

"T-The leaves," said Nerith with great precision, "are a biological response to ambient temperature fluctuation and have no bearing on the current conversation."

’So that’s how it is, huh...?’ Rex thought.

"The ambient temperature," said Talyra, "is the same as it was two minutes ago."

Aisella, in the spirit of helpfulness that was her consistent contribution to situations, said, "The amber ones specifically shift when—" and then caught Nerith’s expression and altered course, "—are beautiful in this light."

Nerith looked at her.

"Okay, I stop now," said Aisella.

Rex remained silent during the exchange. He focused on the road ahead, where the tributary path began to emerge on the upper ridge—a narrow line of compressed earth cutting northwest through the stone.

His mind was occupied with several thoughts at once, none of which pertained to the leaves, except for the part of him that was keeping count. Counting was something he did, and the number had risen since breakfast, which was useful to know.

"N-Nothing happened," Nerith said.

She used the same tone as she had when discussing the residual impression in the Thornweald, which indicated that the information was accurate and the delivery was closed. "We only talked... That was all."

"Okay," said Talyra with a sarcastic tone. "Talk, huh, okay, okay, I got you..."

"That’s a perfectly sufficient number of things to do," said Aisella, earnestly.

Nerith closed her eyes, feeling the amber glow deepen slightly. The carriage continued its ascent up the ridge.

"You girls always loved to tease me like that..."

Rex did not look at the leaves of Nerith. He stared out the window.

"What thing?" said Nerith, in the tone of one who already knew the answer and hoped that denial would be more effective than it usually was.

"The warm wave thing," said Aisella. "We’ve seen it before, haven’t we, Talyra?"

"Several times." Talyra nodded. "Usually when Rex says something, she’s pretending not to find it important."

"Or the way he looks at her."

"Well... He’s not looking at me right now," said Nerith.

"Right," Talyra said. "But he’s sitting right next to you, and you can feel that, which is pretty much the same thing for what it does to the leaves."

Rex was staring at the window. The ridge was giving way to a wider upland plateau, the cultivated plots thinning out and the wild scrub thickening.

While the rest of him dealt with whatever was going on in the carriage at the time, the part of his brain that did independent calculations was working out how to approach Elizabeth, considering both the potential risks and the best strategies to engage her in conversation.

"I-I am not... going to continue this discussion," said Nerith.

"You don’t have to." Aisella smiled warmly. "All we can say is that it’s all right."

"We’ve both been where you are now, and it’s—well, it’s complicated, but it’s not as alarming as it probably seems at the moment."

"This is the best choice you’ve chosen."

A silence that had a texture to it, the texture of someone rethinking a position they had already decided on. Rex heard Nerith breathe once, slowly.

"He’s impossible," said Nerith, which was addressed to nobody in particular and also clearly addressed to him, specifically.

"Right?!" Talyra said. "He’s always like that."

And he knows it.

"Well, that’s the truth anyway," Aisella said, with the fondness of someone who had already fully digested this information.

"And I..." Nerith broke off.

The carriage hit some bad patch of road and shuddered, and when it stopped shaking, she said, more quietly, "I think... I do love him... a lot."

"This is truly the most inconvenient thing that has happened to me in recent memory, which includes falling off a gorge."

There was a beat of silence, and then Talyra made a noise that was some mixture of delight and vindication, and Aisella immediately reached across the carriage and took Nerith’s hands in hers, and then somehow both of them were holding Nerith’s hands and talking over each other with the warm, enthusiastic chaos of people who have found an unexpected ally in a shared experience.

"IT’S OFFICIAL~!" Talyra screamed, and it caught Nerith off guard.

"We have been hoping," said Aisella. "Since the island we’ve been—"

"We’re three now," said Talyra. "Three of us that know exactly what this feels like, which means you’re not alone in this, and I want you to know that."

"Things we can tell you," Aisella said. "Good stuff. About the way he really thinks about it, not just the way it looks on the outside."

Rex turned away from the window.

"Glad to hear they’re not being possessive about it... I hate yandere bitches anyway."