Ch.16
Hestia opened the door before I knocked.
She was wearing the white dress and the blue ribbon and her twin-tails were slightly crooked from having been adjusted too many times in the past hour. She'd been waiting. She could tell from the stairs that I wasn't alone.
Her eyes went from me to Lili, standing behind me with her backpack pressed against her chest and her gold eyes fixed on the ground. Her Chienthrope disguise was still up but it was flickering at the edges, the Cinder Ella magic fraying from exhaustion and stress. Chestnut hair bleeding through at the temples.
"Bell." Hestia's voice was careful. "Who is this?"
"This is Lili. She's the supporter I told you about."
Hestia's gaze dropped to our hands. We were still holding on. Lili's fingers were wrapped around mine and she showed no sign of letting go, and I wasn't going to make her.
Hestia's mouth tightened. Her blue eyes went from our linked hands to Lili's face to my face and back to Lili. The jaw set. The arms crossed. The goddess who'd been a virgin deity for millennia watching her first and only follower bring home a girl.
"Come in," she said. Her voice was the bright, controlled version she used when she was trying very hard to be reasonable.
We went down the stairs. The church basement looked the same as always. The couch, the small kitchen area, the Falna supplies on the shelf. Hestia's slippers by the door. My spare shirt hanging over the back of a chair.
Lili sat on the couch. She was small enough that her feet didn't reach the floor. Her backpack was still in her lap, clutched tight against her chest. I sat in the chair across from her. Hestia stood by the kitchen counter with her arms crossed.
Nobody spoke for a while. The candle on the table flickered. A draft came from somewhere in the walls.
"Lili." I said her name and waited until she looked up. "Tell her."
Her gold eyes met mine. Then they dropped to the floor again.
"Lili's parents died when Lili was small." Her voice was flat. Even. The third person was still there but it had lost the cheerful energy, stripped down to bare syntax. "They were Soma Familia. They died trying to get more of the wine. The real wine, the divine kind. They loved the wine more than they loved Lili."
She adjusted the backpack in her lap. Pulled a strap through her fingers.
"After they died, the Familia kept Lili. Zanis, the captain. He used supporters as income. Lili was rented out to adventurer parties as a porter. All the money went to the Familia. All of it. Lili didn't get to keep any."
Her dog ears twitched. The Cinder Ella was still flickering, her real face showing through in patches, but she wasn't trying to fix it anymore.
"The adventurers weren't kind. They hit Lili when the haul was small. They used Lili as bait when the monsters came, because a small supporter running gets the monsters to chase and the adventurers can attack from behind. Some of them did other things."
She said it the same way she said the rest. Flat. Like reading inventory.
"Cinder Ella lets Lili change her face. Lili learned it young. If they can't find Lili, they can't hurt Lili. If Lili looks like someone else, the adventurer who hit Lili yesterday doesn't know it's Lili today. Lili became a lot of people. Lili was never Lili."
She pulled the backpack strap through her fingers again. The same motion, back and forth.
"Lili stole from adventurers to save money. To buy freedom from the Familia. The con was the same every time. Be the helpful supporter. Build trust. Take the valuable thing. Run. Use Cinder Ella so they can't find you. Start again with someone new." She looked at me. "Bell-sama was supposed to be the next one."
"I know."
"Lili was going to take the Knife. It's worth enough to buy two years of freedom." Her fingers stopped moving on the strap. "Lili was going to leave Bell-sama on Floor 10 with the monsters and run."
Hestia's arms uncrossed. She looked at me.
"I know," I said again.
Lili's chin dropped to her chest. The Cinder Ella gave up. The disguise rippled and dissolved, the brown hair turning chestnut, the gold eyes going dark brown, the dog ears vanishing. She shrank. The Pallum's real body was smaller than the Chienthrope disguise, her legs pulling up on the couch, her feet bare where the boots had resized, and she was sitting there in clothes that didn't quite fit, a tiny girl with brown hair and brown eyes holding a backpack.
"Lili is sorry," she said. Her voice was smaller in her real body. Higher. "Lili is sorry. Lili doesn't know how to be anything except sorry."
The room was quiet. Hestia was looking at me. I was looking at Lili.
"Stay," I said.
Lili's head came up. Her brown eyes were wide and wet and her chin was trembling and she was searching my face for the catch, the part where the kindness came with a contract.
"Stay here. With us."
Hestia made a sound. Small, through her nose. I looked at her.
She was watching my face and her blue eyes were bright and her mouth was doing the press-and-release. She'd seen this look on me before. When she'd given me the Knife and I'd looked at her and meant it. She was seeing the same thing now, aimed at someone else.
She looked at Lili. At me.
"You tried to rob him," Hestia said.
"Yes."
"You were going to leave him on Floor 10 with monster lures and take his weapon."
"Yes."
"And he broke a man's nose for you and carried you out of the Dungeon anyway."
Lili's hands gripped the backpack. She nodded.
Hestia walked over to the couch. She stood in front of Lili, hands on her hips, looking down at her. The height difference was minimal. Hestia was small. Lili was smaller.
"If you betray him," Hestia said, "I will send you to Heaven myself. And I don't mean the nice part."
Lili looked up at her. Hestia's face was set and stern and underneath, kind. The kind of face that meant every word and would also make you breakfast in the morning.
"Lili won't betray Bell-sama again."
"You won't betray any of us." Hestia held out her hand. "Welcome to Hestia Familia."
Lili took her hand. Her fingers were shaking.
The Falna transfer took longer than I expected.
Lili lay face-down on the couch, shirt pulled up to her bare back. The scars were there. Old ones, healed over but visible. Lines and welts in patterns that came from hands, not monsters. I stopped looking.
Hestia knelt beside her and pricked her finger and began the work.
"This is irregular," Hestia said, her voice quiet enough that it was mostly for me. "Soma hasn't released her. Officially she's still his."
"Can you do it?"
"I'm a goddess." She pressed her fingertip to Lili's back. Blue-white light bloomed from the contact point. "I can do what I want. There'll be consequences."
"There would've been consequences either way."
She looked at me. Then she went back to work.
Lili's back arched slightly when the new Falna wrote itself in. Her fingers gripped the couch cushion. Hestia worked in silence, her face concentrated, tracing hieroglyphs that appeared under her fingertip and glowed and settled into the skin.
When she finished, she sat back and read what the Falna showed.
"Level 2. Your stats are low."
"Lili hasn't fought in a long time. Lili is a supporter."
"You have a magic slot. Cinder Ella." Hestia traced the entry. "And a development ability. Artel Assist."
"It's the only useful thing about Lili."
"Don't say that." Hestia pulled Lili's shirt down and patted her back. The pat was firm and a little awkward and entirely Hestia. "You're Hestia Familia now. We don't talk about ourselves like that here."
Lili sat up. She pulled her shirt down and her brown eyes were wide and damp and she was looking at Hestia with the stunned focus of someone who'd just been threatened with divine execution and told to be nicer to herself in the span of five minutes.
"Thank you, Goddess."
"Hestia. Call me Hestia." She turned to me. "Bell, she needs clothes that fit. And a bed. And food."
"I'll handle it."
"Tonight she sleeps on the cot." Hestia pointed to the folding cot in the corner that I'd been meaning to throw away. "I'll find blankets."
I pulled the cot out and unfolded it. One of the legs stuck and I had to kick it into position. Hestia dug through the storage chest under the kitchen counter and came out with a blanket that was thin and had a frayed edge but was clean. Lili watched us set it up from the couch, her brown eyes tracking us around the room. She looked like she was waiting for someone to tell her this was a joke.
"Bathroom's through there," I said, pointing to the narrow door beside the stairs. "Kitchen's there. Hestia makes breakfast. It's usually rice."
"Lili can cook," she said. Quiet. Almost too quiet to hear.
"Then we'll eat well." I handed her my spare shirt. "Sleep in this tonight. We'll get you real clothes tomorrow."
She took the shirt and held it against her chest and looked at me with her brown eyes and said nothing.
The church basement at night was different with three people in it.
Hestia and I were in the bed, which was really the couch with cushions rearranged. She was pressed against my side, her head on my chest, her leg hooked over mine. The same position as every night. Possessive even in sleep.
Lili was on the cot across the room. I'd given her my spare shirt to sleep in and it hung to her knees. She'd wrapped herself in the blanket Hestia had found, a thin one with a frayed edge, and she was curled on her side facing the wall.
The candle was out. The room was dark except for the faint glow of Babel's lights through the narrow basement window.
Hestia's mouth moved against my chest.
"She's looking at you," she whispered.
I shifted my head on the pillow. Across the room, in the dark, two brown eyes were open. Lili had turned her head and she was watching me through the gap between the blanket and the pillow. Steady. Unblinking.
I caught her gaze. Her eyes widened. Caught.
I winked.
She pulled the blanket over her head. The motion was fast and the blanket rustled and from underneath it came a sound so small I almost missed it. A laugh, or close to one.
Hestia's arm tightened around my waist. She pressed her face into my chest.
"Hmph."
I put my hand on her head. Rubbed between her twin-tails. She made a small sound and relaxed against me and in a minute she was asleep.
Across the room, the blanket stayed over Lili's head. But through the thin fabric, the faint blue window-light caught her eyes. Still open. Still watching.
I closed mine and let the dark fill in.