Chapter 46

It wasn’t until she and Rosalie met up with Delta that Zoey realized the two of them were holding hands. The fox-eared girl’s lips curled in amusement, giving a pointed flick of her eyes at their entwined hands.

“I’m taking it you two worked something out, then.”

Rosalie blinked down at her and Zoey’s hands, which apparently had gone forgotten for her, too. She withdrew, flushing, but otherwise pretending nothing had happened, in classic Rosalie fashion.

“Zoey will explain,” Rosalie said, sniffing. “But yes, we have. Let’s get breakfast. I’m starving.”

Down in the lobby, served three steaming plates of ham, eggs, and hashbrowns by the innkeeper, Zoey, Rosalie, and Delta convened at a table tucked in the corner of the tiny inn’s lobby. The innkeeper had barely left before Delta leaned forward and said, “Okay, spill it. Wasn’t expecting you two to be all bright and happy. What changed?”

“Zoey’s rune advanced,” Rosalie said. “It provided ... a neat solution.”

“That’s fortunate,” Delta said, eying Zoey. “But I can’t imagine how.”

“It’s odd,” Rosalie said. Then, apparently not wanting to hold this conversation herself, or maybe honest in how hungry she was, she picked up her fork and pointedly tuned them out.

“Odd,” Delta repeated, turning to Zoey. She snorted. “Yeah, what isn’t odd with you?”

Should Zoey take offense at that? Probably not. It was a fair enough accusation. “It’s, uh, a skill that gives bonus experience the longer we go between shards.”

“What?”

“That’s ... more or less it. Isn’t very specific.” To Zoey’s knowledge, runes rarely were. The details had to be discovered through experimentation. “So it might not even be a perfect solution. But,” she shrugged. She didn’t need to finish the statement. Even a potential solution was better than the dilemma they’d been in before.

“Huh,” Delta said. “Okay. So?”

“So?”

“We’re sticking together?”

“That’s the plan?”

“Are we getting more?”

“More, uh, team members?” Zoey glanced at Rosalie. “That’s a group decision, I guess. Do we need more?”

Rosalie shrugged. She was shoveling down food with an abandon that was, honestly, a break in her normal composure—enough to give Zoey pause. Zoey wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe the solution, the relief, had been even greater for Rosalie than Zoey had thought. She did seem to have an ease in her shoulders, a slouched, relaxed posture, that Zoey hadn’t seen ... maybe ever.

Zoey fought away a grin. Rosalie might have recognized the dilemma, and been genuinely considering leaving, but it had been something causing her deep conflict. She didn’t want to leave—enough that even if it had been common sense to do so, she still might not have.

“Only if we can find someone worth our time,” Rosalie grunted. She made a noise of appreciation. “This is good.” She skewered another slice of ham and shoveled it into her mouth.

“Easy there, Princess,” Delta said, eyebrows raised. She’d noticed Rosalie’s odd mood too, the break in her typical composure. “Don’t you need to breathe?”

“Or less,” Rosalie said. “I could go with less teammates, too.”

Unlike her usual scathing comments, this one almost seemed playful. Delta’s eyebrows continued to creep up, and she grinned, turning to Zoey.

“So. She got lucky this morning, did she?”

Rosalie choked on her food.

Though God knows why, Zoey thought. How could Rosalie have reactions like that, still? Rosalie had literally had fourteen inches of her cock inside Zoey yesterday, and Delta had watched the whole thing. The implication they’d slept together shouldn’t be something that had Rosalie sputtering.

And they hadn’t even slept together this morning, even. It was an incorrect assumption. The past twelve hours had been perfectly chaste. Maybe the first twelve hours of theirs that had been so.

“Let me correct myself. Less teammates would definitely be better,” Rosalie shot at Delta, when she’d controlled her choking. “Very much so.”

Delta rolled her eyes and turned back to Zoey. “I know a few people, if we do want more. And you need a tutor. Could kill two birds with one stone—we need a primary spellcaster. DPS focused.”

Zoey blinked at the casual use of ‘DPS’.

Why were gaming terms so baked into this world? She didn’t think ‘damage per second’ was an acronym that should arise naturally, even accounting for the game-like mechanisms this world operated on. Even LFG had stretched Zoey’s disbelief, but it made some sort of natural sense. DPS, not as much.

“Aren’t I the spellcaster?” Zoey asked, obviously not bringing it up. “It’s normal to have two?”

“I’m assuming you’re gonna end up support focused,” Delta said. “Can’t say for sure, with you still on first advancement, but it seems safe. Princess makes an adequate tank, too, though we might want a dedicated one. Two damage, off-tank, tank, support.”

She glanced at Rosalie, who shrugged in agreement. “Uninspired. But adequate.”

“And since we’ll be hanging around town for a while...” Delta trailed off. “How long, anyway? It gives bonus experience, up to how big of a break?”

Well. Rosalie needed to be heading back to her family eventually. “A few weeks? Two, to be safe?”

Again, Rosalie shrugged. “Two weeks is fine.”

Which brought up another point. More important, even, than how they’d be occupying and training Zoey in the short term. “You don’t have any attachments to Treyhull, do you?” she asked Delta.

Delta blinked. “I mean. Few friends, contacts, know the area. Nothing anchoring me. Why? Trying to set up somewhere else?”

“Eventually, yes,” Rosalie replied in Zoey’s stead. “After the next shard, I’ll be heading to family.”

“And taking us with?”

The seventh shrug of the conversation. “Zoey would want you to come. And you’re ... acceptable, in the strictest sense of the word.”

“Aw. Stop it, princess. You’ll make me blush.”

It seemed in face of the biggest problem being solved, Rosalie had taken an unusually hands-off approach to their planning. That the ‘real problems’ had been solved and the rest was, more or less, simply details. And while details were something Rosalie normally loved to manage, Zoey suspected Rosalie would only become opinionated on them down the line. Right now, she was basking in the convenience—and relief—of the seemingly unsolvable suddenly solved.

“Though,” Delta said, leaning back in her chair. “Meeting the family. That’ll be fun.” A short pause, then, “I’m great with parents.”

“Uh huh,” Zoey said.

Delta flashed a grin at her. “What?” she said. “Does something about me imply ‘bad with polite company’?”

“Everything?” she suggested.

“Well ... yeah,” Delta said. “Guilty as charged, I guess.”

“It’s going to be a disaster,” Rosalie said. “I don’t even want to think about it. Next topic.”

“You haven’t told us who you are, yet,” Delta said.