The rest of Reeve stiffened as much as his cock had, and his grip on Celeste went from that of a desperately lustful man to that of a terrified one. She sat back from him swiftly, and despite the foreign voice in the chamber, he did notice how her breasts took a slight moment longer to catch up with her movement before coming to stillness. Maybe if he held them, that would help…
But the voice called out again, and so Celeste was moving again, which was doubly distracting, but unfortunately she was pulling back up her top and not wiggling her hips against his groin.
She reached over his head, bringing her covered chest right to his face as she stood. She’d lifted her hips from his grip, but he couldn’t seem to let her go, and then she was standing, straddling him. His hands had slipped down the length of her thighs to her calves, and if she didn’t have that dress on, he could do all those things he’d been taught on the potdemiel fruit by Kori, the fear of getting it wrong completely wrung out of his mind and replaced with the desire to run his tongue up the inside of her thigh and—
“Charlie? Goodness, what’s happened to you?”
The terror that clung onto Celeste’s voice tighter than his own hands on her calves made Reeve snap out of the lusty spiral he’d been circling. His cock was slower to react properly, but as he turned and pulled himself up to his feet, he knocked it into the altar, and that took care of things.
“Many thanks, Valcord,” he grumbled, stomach knotting, but then he saw the soaking wet girl in the temple’s entry, blood running from her forehead and her clothes torn, and protective anger swelled in his chest. “Who did this?” he barked, reaching for his sword, but it wasn’t there. “Are you still being pursued?”
Charlie shook her head, black hair dripping as she staggered deeper into the temple. Celeste caught her just before she collapsed, all out of breath. The three met at the couch, and the girl dropped onto it, trying over and over to speak through jagged wheezing, Celeste on one side of her, and Reeve perching ready on the other. His eyes darted to the entry, to the windows pouring in rain, then to the stairs, planning how he would retrieve the Obsidian Widow Maker as soon as he knew who he was supposed to stab.
“Wh-what…” Charlie inhaled deeply, squinting at the altar then at each of them. “What were you doing?”
“Praying,” they answered simultaneously.
Celeste gasped, catching Reeve’s eye over the girl’s head.
He made the symbol of Valcord over his chest and mumbled, “Close enough,” then placed a hand on Charlie’s shivering, soaked shoulder. “What happened?”
“Eliot,” she finally said, the boy’s name breaking out of her mouth with a sob. “He’s missing.”
“Oh, no.” Celeste wrung her hands, biting her lip. “For how long?”
“Right before the storm.” Charlie drew in a ragged breath. “It’s all my fault! I wasn’t expecting him when I was doing dishes, but then I turned around and he was justthere, and it scared me. He’s always doing that because he’s so quiet, and I yelled at him.” She sniffled and squeezed her eyes shut. “I yelled so much, and I was so mean! I told him he needed to finally start talking so we know when he’s around, but I was just angry with him, I don’treallythink that,”—she grabbed Celeste’s arm and looked at her desperately—“really I don’t! But he ran off, and now he’s gone!”
“It’s okay, we’ll find him,” she told her with certainty she couldn’t have had. “Where have you looked?”
“Everywhere! In all the empty buildings and inside the bramble bush fort and even the attic space he’s usually too afraid to go in. I didn’t tell anybody—Halfrida thinks we’re in the schoolhouse with Gaspard, and Gaspard thinks we’re at the inn, and everyone’s inside because of the storm, and I thought I could just find him and fix it on my own, but the lake is rising so fast, and the roads are starting to wash out, and I didn’t know what to do, so I came here because…” The tears were coming again, her face going sallow as she looked into her lap.
“Does he hide here sometimes?” Celeste asked hopefully.
Charlie shook her head, then peeked up at Reeve. “He can’t swim very well, and if something really bad happened to him, you’re a…a holy knight, right? The gods let you save people?”
Reeve swallowed so hard his throat went immediately raw, but he was not going to tell her that he had failed the priest exams because he could never figure out how to heal someone. “I will find him,” he said instead, and rushed to collect his sword.
Celeste called after about helping, but he asked her to stay with Charlie and tend to the girl’s wounds, assuring them both that Valcord’s light would lead him to Eliot, storm clouds and rainwater be damned. He didn’t know if it was entirely true, but seeing as he believed it, it would have to be true enough.
Earlylyte had no qualms about the rain or still cracking thunder, sensing Reeve’s urgency. Ears forward, he splashed out onto the road, mud caking his chest with each hoof beat. Reeve gripped the Obsidian Widow Maker’s hilt and called to his god, casting out into the pouring rain for the young boy. He had a lot of sodden ground to cover, and he was soaked through immediately, visions of a child face down in the mud hammering at his thoughts.
Earlylyte galloped along the slick road as Reeve’s arcana pulsed away from him in every direction, but then his spell drew him backward, not to the temple, but to the forest. Sharply changing course, the horse broke through the treeline and into the wood. Earlylyte slowed as he pushed forward through heavy brush, and Reeve struggled to maintain his magic as he dodged low-hanging branches.
Darkness set in, deeper with the falling rain that evaded the leaves overhead, but Reeve urged Earlylyte to follow the source until they came upon a clearing and the small facade of the abandoned cottage he had been to before. This time, the pull to the damaged house was different, and yet it was the same, warmth muddied with stark caution.
Reeve followed Valcord’s urging, dismounted Earlylyte, and rushed in. He held Sid at the ready because that was what he knew to do, even if swords did the exact opposite of healing. He called for the boy, and Sid echoed him through the lightless cottage. Sid’s glow illuminated the mostly empty space and fell right over a huddled mass, shivering, soaked, and, by all the goodness of the gods, alive.
Eliot peeked out from between his arms, and then he ran at Reeve with the kind of speed only a child has after being balled up and half frozen. Reeve sheathed the sword, knelt, and held out his arms, and Eliot crashed into him with a squelch. He was surprisingly strong, arms wrapped tight around his neck, but that strength meant he was unharmed.
There was, however, a brief moment that Reeve wanted to berate Eliot for running off in the first place, for disappearing into the woods during a storm when there was already so much danger in Briarwyke, for not just coming to the temple when he was already so close, but then he remembered when he had been lost as a child.
It was a moment of exceptional stupidity, unable to find his way out of the forest so close to the Bendcrest temple. When Mother Mariesa found him back then, Reeve’s relief had been too quickly doused by shame, and while being dragged back and shouted at, the loneliness he’d felt even as someone held his hand and brought him safely home was deeper than when he had thought he’d never find his way out of the wood.
So Reeve put aside his misplaced anger and just hugged Eliot’s shivering form tighter. “You’re all right now,” he said quietly, throat thick. “Are you hurt? Anything broken or bloody?”
Eliot pulled back and shook his head.
Reeve quickly inspected his face, a healing cut there from some past rough play and mud caked in his hair, but otherwise he was undamaged. “A few hurt feelings, though, huh?”
