Ch.17
The bento was from Akeno's kitchen. I'd asked for it at the ORC that afternoon, told her it was for later, and she'd packed it with the efficient grace of someone who could cook a five-course meal and electrocute you with the same hands. She didn't ask who it was for. She might have guessed. Akeno guessed most things.
The warehouse was cold. The barrier hummed at the threshold, violet light pulsing in Akeno's signature pattern, and I stepped through with the bento in one hand and nothing in the other.
Kalawarner was asleep against the right wall, her maroon coat pulled over her like a blanket, the paperback face-down on the concrete beside her. Mittelt was curled in a corner, blonde twintails pooling on the floor, her mouth open. Asleep or doing a convincing impression.
Raynare was awake.
She was sitting where she'd been last time. Against the far wall. Wings folded, knees up, chin on her arms. Her violet eyes tracked me across the room with the flat hostility of a cornered animal that hasn't decided whether to bite or wait.
I set the bento down three feet from her. Sat against the opposite wall. The concrete was cold through my pants.
She looked at the bento. Looked at me. Looked at the bento again.
"I'm not hungry."
Her stomach disagreed. Audibly.
She closed her eyes. Her jaw tightened. Then she reached for the bento, opened the lid, picked up the chopsticks, and ate with the rigid dignity of a woman who was going to pretend this wasn't happening.
I waited.
She ate the rice first. Then the tamagoyaki. Then the vegetables. She ate methodically, each bite small and precise, and she didn't look at me while she did it. The bento was empty in a few minutes. She set the chopsticks down, closed the lid, and pushed the box back toward the center of the floor.
"Thank you." Forced through clenched teeth.
I didn't answer. I sat against the wall and waited. The warehouse was quiet. The barrier hummed. Kalawarner was breathing evenly in her sleep.
The silence went on long enough that I thought she wasn't going to say anything else. Then she did.
"I had two wings." Her voice was flat. Uninflected. Reciting. "Two. The lowest number a Fallen Angel can have. Dohnaseek had four. Kalawarner had four. Even Mittelt had two, but she's younger and she has potential for more. I had two and I was never going to have more. That's what it means to be a two-wing Fallen. You peak at birth."
She was looking at the wall behind me. Above my head. Anywhere but my eyes.
"Azazel runs the Grigori. The Governor-General. He researches Sacred Gears, develops weapons, manages the cease-fire with Heaven and the Devils. He has twelve wings. He barely knew my name. I was a scout. Below a scout, really. A runner. I delivered messages and gathered intelligence on humans with latent Sacred Gear signatures and reported back to people who reported to people who might eventually pass my reports to someone who mattered."
Her voice didn't waver. If anything it got flatter as she went.
"Stealing a Sacred Gear. Bringing it back to the Grigori. A Twilight Healing, a rare one, useful enough to earn attention from the Cadre. That was going to be my name. My introduction. 'Raynare, the Fallen Angel who delivered Twilight Healing to the Grigori.' That was going to make me matter."
She paused. Her fingers were pressing into her knees hard enough that the leather creaked.
"The host was supposed to be a perverted nobody. That's what the intelligence said. A teenage boy with no awareness of the supernatural, no combat ability, no connections. Issei Hyoudou. Peeping at girls through the swimming pool fence. That's who I was supposed to seduce and kill and forget."
She looked at me then. Direct. Her violet eyes were hard.
"You weren't what the intelligence said."
"No."
"I didn't care about the host. I didn't care about the nun. I cared about the Sacred Gear and what it would do for me. That's the truth." Her chin came up. "Fallen Angels don't apologize."
I sat there. The concrete was cold and the barrier hummed and Mittelt shifted in her sleep and made a small sound and settled.
"You enjoyed the date," I said. "Before the fountain. That part was real."
Her jaw locked. She looked away. Fast. Her chin dropped to her knees and her wings pulled tighter against her back and for a second her jaw unclenched and her eyes lost their edge and then both came back.
"So what."
"So you're not as far gone as you think."
She didn't answer. She was staring at the wall, jaw set, breathing through her nose, and her fingers on her knees were trembling. I watched her not look at me for a few seconds. Then I stood up, picked up the empty bento, and walked to the barrier threshold.
At the edge I stopped.
"The food will keep coming," I said. "The conversation's optional."
I stepped through. The barrier hummed closed behind me. I didn't look back but she was watching the door. Her gaze on my back, the same pressure as the fountain, right before she'd tried to kill me.
Outside, the night air was cool and a dog was barking somewhere in the residential blocks behind the warehouse, rhythmic, the kind of barking that meant the owner had left it in the yard too long. I walked.
"That was unexpected," Ddraig said. Quiet.
"Which part?"
"She spoke. I did not think she would."
"Hungry people talk."
"She was not talking because she was hungry, partner."
I didn't argue. She was right.
The ORC clubroom was warm and smelled like Akeno's tea and the vanilla candles Rias kept on the windowsill. I came through the door expecting the room to be empty. It wasn't.
Akeno was sitting on the windowsill. One leg tucked under her, the other hanging, her ponytail loose over one shoulder. She was holding a teacup but she wasn't drinking from it. She was watching the door. Waiting.
"Ise-kun." Her voice was soft. No "ara ara." No teasing lilt. Just my name.
"Akeno."
She set the teacup on the sill. She stood. She crossed the room to me with the easy, deliberate movement of a woman who had decided what she was going to do before I'd walked in.
"Koneko told me I smell like Rias." I said it before she could. Might as well.
"Koneko told everyone." Akeno stopped in front of me. Close. Her violet eyes were level with mine and they were serious and her mouth wasn't smiling. "I've known Rias since we were children. I can read her face the way I read weather. She's been different for a week. Lighter. Less afraid."
Her hand came up to my chest. Flat against my shirt. Her fingers curled slightly, nails pressing through the fabric.
"I know what you did."
"She came to me."
"I know." Her eyes didn't waver. "I'm not angry, Ise-kun. I thought I would be. Rias is my King and my best friend and I've watched men circle her for years and I've chased every one of them off." Her hand pressed firmer against my chest. "I don't want to chase you off."
Her fingers dragged down my chest. Slowly. Over my sternum, across my stomach, stopping at the waistband of my pants.
"I'm jealous," she said. Her voice was low, her breath warm on my jaw. "And the jealousy is making me want you more. Which is a problem, because I was already thinking about you before this."
She leaned in. Her mouth was next to my ear and her hair smelled like incense and her chest pressed against my arm and her heartbeat was there through the fabric.
"Sadists don't do well with waiting, Ise-kun."
She kissed my cheek.
Her lips were warm and soft and she held the kiss for a full breath, right at the corner of my mouth, close enough that I felt the tip of her tongue against my skin for a fraction of a second before she pulled back. My cock twitched in my pants. Her mouth that close to mine, her body that warm against me.
She noticed. Her violet eyes dropped and then came back up and the smile that spread across her face was the most dangerous expression I'd seen on a woman since Rias had told me she was engaged.
"Ara ara." Low. Satisfied. "Good night, Ise-kun."
She picked up her teacup and walked to the door. Her hips moved differently when she knew I was watching, and she knew I was watching, and she let me know she knew by pausing at the threshold and glancing back.
Then she was gone.
I stood in the empty clubroom. The candles flickered on the windowsill. My cheek was still warm where her mouth had been. My body was still responding to her and the responding wasn't going away fast.
"Partner."
"Yeah."
"You are going to need that schedule."
I locked up the clubroom and walked home. The dog was still barking. The stars were out. Asia had left the porch light on again and I could smell her cooking from the walkway and for a second, standing in the dark outside my own front door, I thought about the sheer absurdity of my life. A Fallen Angel eating bento in silence because she didn't want to admit she was hungry. A Queen pressing her mouth to my jaw and telling me she was jealous. A Devil heiress whose power still hummed in my chest. A nun who left the light on.
I went inside.