SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 746: What Loriel Wanted

Loriel was watering the bellshade when Leon came into the courtyard the next morning.

She was kneeling at the garden bed under the eaves with her sleeves pushed up and a small clay can in one hand, the wellheart trays in a row beside her. As always, she had started with the bellshade. It had put out two new blue flowers since they came home, and she was tilting the can very carefully so the water wouldn’t knock them.

She heard his step on the stones and didn’t look up.

"Good morning, Young— Leon." She caught herself, since there was nobody else in the courtyard, and went pink at the ears. "Good morning."

"Good morning." Leon sat on the low stone border a pace from her. The open gate was at her back; he could see the empty passage beyond it. "Those look happy."

"They like the east wall. The morning sun’s softer here." She moved the can along to the first wellheart tray. "That’s what I came to ask you about last night, actually. Whether I could move the trays round to this side for good. The west bed gets the afternoon heat, and I wasn’t sure if you’d mind them taking up this one."

"I don’t mind," Leon said.

"Good." She kept watering. "That’s all it was."

Leon watched the water run off the edge of a leaf.

"You came to the door," he said, "and the screen hadn’t closed yet."

The can stopped tilting.

"I left," said Loriel.

"You did." He kept his voice easy. "And then you stood at the edge of the wards for a fair while afterward."

She put the can down on the stones very precisely, as though it might break.

"The perimeter tells you that," she said.

"It tells me someone’s there. It told me it was you." He paused. "It doesn’t tell me why."

Loriel looked at the bellshade for a while. Leon let her. He’d decided on the walk over that he wasn’t going to make this into a joke at her expense, and he wasn’t going to fill her silences for her.

"I was deciding whether to come back in the morning instead," she said at last.

"For a quarter of an hour," Leon said.

"It was a difficult decision." She said it so seriously that he nearly laughed. She caught his expression, and the corner of her mouth twitched in spite of herself. "Fine. I know how it sounds."

"I’m not angry, Loriel."

"I know you’re not. You’d have said something in the passage last night." She pressed her lips together. "Though the look you gave me when I mentioned the trays was bad enough. The one that says, ."

"I didn’t think I was that obvious."

"You’re not, usually. You were last night." She made herself look up at him. "I was curious. That’s the first part. You were all three— it was very clear what I’d walked in on, and I should have just gone, and instead I stood there like an idiot and tried to see through a screen that doesn’t let anyone see through it." She took a breath. "Which I knew. I made it."

"You did make it," Leon agreed.

"I’m aware." She didn’t smile this time. "And that’s not all of it."

He waited.

"I wasn’t angry with them," Loriel said. "I want you to know that. I’ve known about you and Ira and Seraphine for a long time. That wasn’t what surprised me." She turned one of the bellshade’s leaves over with a fingertip, looking at it rather than him. "I just stood there and realized I wanted you to look at me like that. Not instead of them. As well." Her voice had gone quieter, but it hadn’t wavered. "I’ve wanted it for a while, I think. I just never had to stand in front of a closed door and admit it."

Leon had expected a practical excuse and a flustered retreat. He hadn’t expected her to say it straight out, kneeling in the dirt with water on her sleeves.

His first impulse was to pull her closer. He kept still, wanting to be sure she had finished before he did something that might make her stop talking.

"I’m glad you told me," he said finally.

"Are you?"

"Very." He meant it. "I wasn’t sure you wanted me to do anything about it."

Loriel searched his face. He stayed still and let her look, resisting the urge to say something that might spoil it.

"Good," she said. "Then I’ll stop being careful about it."

She got up off her knees, stepped over the bed’s border, took the front of his collar in one hand, and kissed him.

Whatever had made her hesitate outside his door, she seemed determined to make herself understood now. Her hand was cool and still damp from the watering. Her mouth was warm. She smelled of wet earth and the green, faintly bitter scent of the wellheart leaves.

Leon got over his surprise about a heartbeat later and kissed her back. He brought one hand up to the side of her face. She made a small sound against his mouth, half pleased and half startled, and didn’t pull away.

Instead, her fingers tightened in his collar and she leaned into him. When her lips parted under his, Leon forgot the unfinished conversation. He let the kiss deepen, his thumb resting against her warm cheek until she drew back for breath.

When she finally did, she stayed close for a moment, her forehead nearly touching his, her hand still holding his collar.

Then she seemed to notice that she was holding his collar.

She let go of it all at once.

The boldness went out of her face, and pure, helpless embarrassment came in after it. She looked at her own hand, then at the open courtyard behind her. Her ears had gone scarlet.

"I," said Loriel.

"Loriel—" Leon began.

"The trays," she said. "The— I said I’d move them. To this side. Before the sun gets high." She took a step backward and nearly trod on the watering can. "They don’t like being moved in the heat, and I’ve only watered half—"

"Loriel," he tried again.

"I’ll be back." She bent, picked up the can, and stood there holding it as though she had forgotten why. "Later. I’ll come back later."

She went out through the courtyard gate at a pace that wasn’t quite a run. She took the half-empty can with her and left all the trays exactly where they had been.

Leon sat on the stone border and didn’t follow her.

He touched his mouth with two fingers, briefly, and then laughed at himself under his breath for doing it.

By the time he returned from the archive at midday, the wellheart trays had been moved round to the east bed, every one of them, and the bellshade had been set in the place of honour at the end of the row. At lunch Loriel sat across from him instead of beside him. She managed not to look at him for nearly the whole meal. Then she did look, once, while Ira was arguing with Vyra about the salt, and held it a moment, and then went pink and looked down at her bowl again with a small smile she couldn’t quite flatten.

Nobody said anything. Seraphine glanced from one of them to the other and went on eating.

That evening, Leon finally sat down with Ji’s crucible plates.

He laid the box open on his table and took out the first plate. It was a disc of grey stone the width of his hand, worn smooth, with faint scorch rings left over from Ji’s own experiments. He set the conversion crystal beside it and was reaching for the first thread of qi when his inner sense stirred.

A message was waiting in the place where nothing physical existed.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: You told me some time ago that you were building a method to carry many affinities without reducing them. I have not forgotten.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: A few of us are meeting privately to discuss compressed structures that hold differently behaving currents. It is not an open session. I would like you there.]

Leon was still reading when the next line arrived.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: To be clear, I am not asking you to sit quietly in the corner and listen. I want to hear you speak.]

He put down the plate.

He wanted it. A room full of beings who had already solved problems he had barely begun to see.

And every one of them would be listening closely to the Elemental Paragon, who had been bluffing about cosmic matters since the day he joined the chat.

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