She didn’t react in disgust or try to pull away, which relieved him. Both for the obvious reason and because if she pulled away, she might forget her strength and pull his arm completely off.
“I plan to give Heaven’s Glory a chance,” he warned her.
Yerin didn’t look at him, but she struggled with her response for a moment. “Some people, when they’re drowning, you don’t toss them a rope,” she said at last. “They’ll just pull you in with them.”
“We don’t need to take them with us,” Lindon suggested. “We can give them a warning and then leave them to find their own way. It’s no less than they deserve.”
Lindon didn’t actually expect resistance from Heaven’s Glory, or much from anyone. With their current powers, Lindon would be surprised if they weren’t worshiped in Sacred Valley.
But Yerin had her own reasons. If Heaven’s Glory had cost him someone who had raised him like a father, he wouldn’t feel particularly generous toward them either.
After hearing from Charity about the suppression field around the valley, he and Dross had done some research overnight.
He had to admit, he was a little bitter that the reason Sacred Valley had remained so weak was because of an external force. He had assumed it was a matter of isolation and poor education. Now that he knew there was a ceiling keeping his people from growing beyond Jade, he had to fight back some anger.
Partly at whoever had built the field in the first place, and partly at the Akura clan.
Was it their responsibility to relocate this one group of people in a distant corner of their empire? Not necessarily, but he still blamed them for not trying.
Then again, at least they were helping now.
The reports he and Dross had found disagreed about how intense the effects of the suppression were, but from Lindon’s own experience, he suspected it would lower them down to Jade. Whether that process took hours, days, or even weeks was a matter he supposed they’d learn later.
But even if they were pushed down to Jade the second they stepped across the boundary, they would still fight like monsters compared to the natives.
Yerin watched his thoughts cross his face, radiating obvious concern. “I don’t want to…” She trailed off and started again. “I’m not one to…”
She threw up her free hand in frustration. “Bleed me dry, I’m just going to say it. Don’t kill a bunch of Jades.”
Little Blue, curled up sleeping on the console, lifted her head and gave Yerin a wide-eyed stare.
Lindon felt much the same.
He leaned back so he could study her face more clearly. “Apologies, but I thought that was a talk I’d have to have with you.”
She avoided his gaze. “Can’t imagine what you mean,” she muttered.
Little Blue let out the ringing of a bell, and through their newfound bond, Lindon felt her astonishment.
“You don’t use a Monarch sword to swat flies,” Yerin continued. “Not even when they bite you.”
She stared off into the distance, and her hand gripped his so tight that he could feel the weight of her strength warping reality ever so subtly.
He matched it, mentally thanking Crusher for the donation.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
“I hate them,” Yerin whispered, and there were tears in her eyes. “He never touched them. Never cut them with so much as a word, but they hated him so much. They threw their own bodies at him. Didn’t care if they lived, so long as he died. And there wasn’t…I couldn’t…”
She breathed deeply and wiped her eyes with a thumb. “But they’re not worth half a glance from me, and I’ll be dead and buried before I give them more than they deserve.”
He had thought much the same about killing Jades, but it warmed him to hear that coming from Yerin. She had been thinking ahead, and had decided to treat the weak with compassion. Even considering what they’d done to her.
Lindon wasn’t sure he’d be able to do the same.
It wasn’t as though he had any attachment to the Heaven’s Glory School himself, but he still put his free hand around her, pulling her close. “Thank you,” he whispered into the top of her head.
She tilted her head up to him, cheeks tinged pink.
“He’s watching,” Lindon said.
“We’ll be old and gray before he stops.”
Lindon kissed her.
From the corner of the room, where they had both sensed him, Eithan sighed. “It was more fun when I could sneak up on you. I’ll have to step up my veils.”
Lindon separated from Yerin, focusing on his breathing technique to slow his heartbeat. “Have you heard from Ziel?”
Ziel owned the cloud fortress next to theirs, a blocky castle sitting on a plain blue cloud. He was supposedly traveling with them, but Lindon had heard nothing from him in the day since he’d joined them.
“He’s fine.” Eithan buffed his fingernails on the hem of his pink-and-purple outer robe. “You may have noticed, but I significantly helped his spiritual recovery. It cost me quite a bit, you know. Time. Materials. Expertise. When did I perform this costly task, you ask?”
“Stone-certain we didn’t,” Yerin said.
“To begin this story, we have to go all the way back to Tiberian Arelius’ creation of—” Eithan’s head snapped to the front, where a ship on a deep purple cloud was slowly looping around to join the procession behind them.
Eithan pointed. “That ship! Watch that ship.”
Alerted by his tone, Lindon and Yerin both focused on the cloudship. Yerin extended her perception, which crashed over her target like a storm-tossed wave. He doubted there was any spiritual power that could escape her notice.
By contrast, Lindon’s own perception was a trickling creek. His perception was better-trained than the average Underlord, but it wasn’t necessarily any more powerful.
However, he could sense things she couldn’t.
He did not feel the strong will from the ship that suggested a Sage or Herald was involved. Instead, he felt the faint, flickering willpower of the ordinary Golds crewing the cloudship. Their will was diffuse, unfocused, barely there.
Between Yerin’s overwhelming scan and his own, which could see into a different spectrum, he doubted they missed anything. They still couldn’t sense the physical, only the spiritual, but something that had no power of madra or will wouldn’t be a threat.
“Harder,” Eithan insisted. “Look harder.”
Lindon did, trying to pierce a veil he had missed the first time. Yerin pushed down with her scan so much that the Golds stopped in place, cycling their madra in resistance, spirits filling with fear.
A scan could be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t threatening. But Yerin’s power was an entire dimension higher than a normal Lord’s, much less these Golds.
Only when he was sure there was nothing on the ship did Lindon become certain that Eithan was just distracting them.
“What happened to no secrets?” Lindon asked in a dry tone.
Eithan gave him a white, beaming smile. “A surprise, Lindon. A surprise. I assure you, you’ll be glad I distracted you very soon.”
Yerin started to extend her perception to the rest of their own cloudship, to find whatever Eithan had tried to hide from them, but Eithan leaped in front of her. “Don’t you want your surprise?”
Yerin slowly let her scan fade. “…I do,” she admitted, in a tone of heavy reluctance. “Got a creeping fear you’re about to teach us a lesson.”
“In a sense, can’t you learn a lesson from anything?”
Lindon reached out with his own perception.
“It’s not a lesson!” Eithan hurriedly added. “This is a fun surprise. Just relax, all right? Be casual.”
In Lindon’s mind, Dross began to whistle.
Lindon returned his attention to Charity, who had expanded the Sky’s Edge gate into a broad screen of darkness. He didn’t fully understand the impressions he was getting from his new senses, but the portal felt like it was almost complete.