As I stared into the flames, I thought about the upcoming mission and the events that had brought me to this point. I pondered everything that had happened to get us to this point.
“Hey,” I said, after a minute or two of cogitation, “whatever happened with that woman?”
“What woman?” Elenari asked in a quiet voice as she stared unblinkingly into the fire.
”The woman who we saw fleeing that night. The woman who dropped the crystal. The one the Bloodletters were hunting in Drakereach.”
“No one has been able to find out anything about her,” Saya said, in her no-nonsense way. “Sergeant Milena and Lieutenant Kaleen sent out trackers, from what I hear, but none of them were able to turn up anything.”
This vexed me. Sergeant Milena and her twin, Lieutenant Kaleen, were two of the most capable women employed by the Drako Academy. They would have sent out their most skilled trackers, I was sure of that. If they had not been able to find anything—nothing at all—then there was definitely more to that mysterious woman than had met the eye.
“And the Bloodletters haven’t reared their heads at all?” I asked—a little pointlessly, as Elenari and Saya would have told me if there had been even a whiff of them.
“Nothing,” Elenari affirmed.
Saya stretched her legs and groaned. The feel of her bare, silky thighs rubbing against my own was almost enough to have my flag flying at half-mast within a second.
“Let’s not talk shop right now,” she said. “This could be the last day we get to spend together for gods know how long. Let’s enjoy it.”
“Sound advice,” I said.
I swallowed and glanced over to my bed. The time had come to do something that I had been delaying for the past few weeks. Except, now that it was here, I was visited by a slight and unfamiliar wave of apprehension.
Still, it was better to face those things that made you feel like that, rather than live with them breathing on your neck for a second longer than was necessary.
I got up, lifted a grumbling Saya’s legs from off me, and padded over to my bed. I reached under the mattress and retrieved the two objects that I had purchased and stowed there after purchasing them from the gnoll merchant, Big Greasy.
“What are you doing, Mike?” Elenari called sleepily. “Get back here, will you?”
“I’m coming,” I said. Clutching one object in each hand, I strode back over and dropped without ceremony onto my knees in front of the sofa.
Hell, I figured that if you had to get down on one knee for one woman, it made sense that you had to drop onto both knees for two.
“Ladies,” I said, holding out the golden rings, one in each hand, “you’ve come to mean a lot to me over the past few months. The shit we’ve been through together… Well, let’s just say that we’ve passed through more adversity and more danger, had to solve more problems, and fight our way out of more corners than most people do in ten lifetimes. You’re a pair of the most badass, determined, phenomenal women that I have ever met.”
“Mike, are you asking the two of us to marry you?” Elenari asked softly, her eyes wide and shining.
I held up a hand, trying to communicate that she shouldn’t slow my roll just then. I had the feeling that if I stopped, my words would get bottle-necked in my head and all tangled up and I’d blow this moment.
“I know that this might not exactly be the classic proposal that girls dream of—I’m sure the guy normally has more clothes on for one thing—but nothing about the bond that exists between the three of us strikes me as conventional, so I thought why start now. All I know is that the two of you accepted me without question when I arrived.”
Saya snorted. Smiled at me kindly from where she lay on the sofa like some sort of goddess of war or lust.
“Well, yeah, okay, maybe Saya voiced an objection or two,” I laughed, “but only for a second, if my memory serves me right.”
The girls laughed too.
“I just wanted to show you that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” I continued. “I appreciate everything we’ve shared—as damned crazy as some of it has been. And I can’t think of two better people to help raise my offspring with. We’re a goddamn force of nature, ladies, and these rings are to show you that I’m all in. If you’ll have me, of course?”
I’d done my research, and unlike America, polygamy was legal in the Mystocean Empire.
“Yes,” Elenari said simply.
“Yes,” Saya echoed. “You won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon, Mike Noctis.”
Elenari and Saya held out their hands without uttering another word. Whether it was because there was no need to say anything, or because they were a little choked up, I could not say.
A feeling of warm relief washed through my insides at the women’s answers. I realized, then, that I had been more nervous than I might have cared to admit. I didn’t have to be a hundred-dollar an hour psychiatrist to see that, in a life in which my closest relationships had been instigated through Tinder, I had come to care deeply for Saya and Elenari. Their words had filled me with gratification and delight, certainly, but it was what I saw shining in their eyes that really cut to the core of me; it was the reciprocation of my feelings for them.
I got to my feet and slipped the rings on to the outstretched hands of the two women, wrapped only in the blankets that the elf had taken from her bed. The golden bands gleamed in the light of the fluttering torch flames burning on the walls.
“Phew,” I said, pretending
