Wild Dragon of Rome 21 (Patreon)

“D-did you finish fixing my dress?” Lillian asked as she shuffled cutely, pulling her shirt down.

“Almost,” I said as I did my best to turn her dress into something wearable with a needle out of stone and coarse sewing thread I had managed to fashion out of plant fiber that I picked when I went out for scouting.

I didn’t tease her about her consciousness about nudity being a bit late after what we had just done, but it was difficult.

“How do you know how to make threads out of plants?” she asked.

“You learn a lot of things during hunting trips. Compared to some of the esoteric tricks, making ropes and threads is pretty basic. So is sewing,” I said. “And, how come you don’t know how to sew. I thought it was a favorite among the nobles.”

“Not our family. We are too busy —” she started, then paused as a conflicted expression passed over her face, “learning how to farm.”

I acted like I didn’t notice her close call. She had stumbled on her druidic heritage, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to push her, especially when there was no immediate benefit to it.

Still, unaware that her secret was not as hidden as she might think, she was anxious to change the topic. “So, what was that blast that was with …” she said, only to freeze. She had just stumbled over another topic that she was uncomfortable with.

“Well, you know as much as I do. It’s another effect of my failed breakthrough. It’s not harmful, right?” I didn’t think so, as it was, she wouldn’t have asked for multiple doses.

“No … not particularly at least,” she whispered. “I just realized it turned into vitae easier than I expected.”

“Really?” I asked. “That’s good, because it reduced the pressure I had been quite a bit as well.”

She nodded. “That’s good news.”

I smirked. “Of course, you know what it means.” She looked at me questioningly. “It means that we need to do it often to prevent a disaster.”

My response was a small ball of water hitting my face and a furious blush as she turned away. I chuckled as I continued repairing her dress, not teasing her anymore.

“Your dress is ready,” I said, then looked at the piece in my hands, which was essentially rags. I was able to sew, but it was merely something functional. I was not a tailor, and the remains of the dress were hopeful.

“Turn your back,” she said, still blushing. I followed her request, ignoring my desire to tease her about it, no matter how tempting it felt. “You can look back,” she added soon after.

“Impressive,” I said.

“What’s impressive.”

“That you can still look good despite my terrible tailoring,” I replied.

“S-shut up,” she stammered, her blush beautiful. Then, she looked at the cave entrance, the sunlight absent. “It’s time to move, right?” she said.

“Almost,” I said. “The battle against the beasts had ended a while ago, and there’s a chance that they are still at the shore. I want to give them another half an hour before we go out.”

“Maybe we should just stay in the cave. They might just believe that we have been consumed by the beasts,” she said.

I shook my head. “No, if they believed that, they would have sailed away in the middle of the day rather than trying to hunt down every third-order beast on the island. Without finding a body, at least bones, they wouldn’t stop.”

“I see —” she started, then froze. “Then, does it mean you would have been safe if you had just sacrificed me—” she started.

I sighed as I closed the distance and silenced her with a flick to her nose. “Maybe, but it’s not something I would do, so there’s no point talking about it. I might not be a hero, but I’m not a monster either.”

She said nothing but just hugged me. “You’re my hero,” she whispered.

I let her hug me while we waited, her presence even more comforting after our shared closeness. “So, you were saying that my mana turned into vitae easier? How easier?”

She sighed. “It’s hard to quantify, but usually, expanding my vitae requires me to meditate and work on my technique for weeks, and even then, it starts —”

“Watered down?” I interrupted, which earned a jab to my side.

“That was a terrible pun. Never do it again,” she said before continuing. “It starts weak, and requires quite a bit time to match the initial vitae that had been generated during the breakthrough.”

“And the mana you have been … gifted —” I said, earning another painful poke.

“You’re pushing your luck,” she said, but considering she continued to hug me, she wasn’t as serious as she tried to convince me. “I just needed to meditate and focus on my conception of water for merely an hour before it transformed completely, rather than the days it required.”

“Was it the case for mana from the dragon heart as well?” I asked as I suddenly tensed, realizing the implications of what she was saying.”

“No, that was no different from ordinary mana. Purer, but otherwise no different.”

“You know that you can never reveal that to anyone, right?” I asked. Her tone and her position were already a silent declaration of such, but it was not a bad idea to be clear on such topics.

She chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry. I don’t want to spend my life as an experimental subject any more than you do. I know exactly what it would do if the Patrician families even suspected such a possibility.”

“Well, maybe they won’t target you—” I started. She poked again. “Come on, woman. Careful of that finger, or I start poking back in revenge.”

Her blush was beautiful. “Shut up! You know what I mean.”

“Alright. No more teasing. I know what you’re trying to say. There’s no way they would let the only witness go free.” I paused, thinking for a moment, before I decided to reveal my knowledge of her abilities. It was a good time to inform her that. “And, since you used some kind of blood magic that kept me alive, you’re hardly only a witness.”

This time, it was her that tensed. She tried to pull back, but I hugged her waist gently. She didn’t try to pull back. “You know about it?” she asked.

“Yes. Whatever pattern you had drawn was long gone, but the cut in your palm was rather obvious. Together with the impossibility of your situation, and your family occupation, connecting the dots wasn't too difficult. Your family doesn’t have a swamp with water-affinity, right?”

“We do … but we use some ancestral magic to increase the yield. We keep it hidden. Since the Boudican Revolts, especially after the third one, it’s not exactly something accepted. Our family decided it’s much safer to keep it hidden.”

“Believe me, I understand. While I’m sure my own family had no secrets—” I quipped, which made her start giggling. Understandable, as the thought of a Patrician family that could trace its existence back to the founding of the Republic having no secrets was a joke. The fact that my grandfather had a dragon heart despite being from a family of exile was one of them.

I wondered how many secrets that had been destroyed in that letter that had been burned … and how many secrets that had been lost during centuries of exile, never to be discovered again.

What a waste.

Lillian continued giggling, which soon started to gain a hysterical quality. It had been a long day. I wished I had the luxury of letting her rest, but with what was about to come, her assistance was vital.

I decided to distract her in a fun way. With a kiss.

As my lips touched hers, she froze for a moment, her blush beautiful, but it didn’t take long for her to respond. A fun way to solve her stress. Too bad that we didn’t have the time to explore the more advanced methods … again.

“It’s already past midnight. It’s the best time to start moving,” I said.

“So, no waiting and hoping we’ll be safe?” she asked.

“No, we need to take some risk. However, when I scouted earlier, I had already seen that they had a team on the shore, and their boat was ready. Once we steal it, we can use it to go to the mainland. Gaul shores are not too far away from the island.”

She sighed. “I hope you’re right and we can get away unnoticed. Because otherwise…”

“Don’t worry. I’m a Scipio. We’re famous for our tactical brilliance,” I said, conveniently ignoring the fact that, as a bastard, I had never been trained about military tactics like it was traditional, and only as a warrior.

Still, it helped to calm Lillian down, which was all that was important right now.

We had a boat to steal.