clingy fiancee

Aether woke to softness and the steady beat of a heart against his cheek.

His face was buried between Rosaria’s bare breasts, her arms locked tightly around him even in sleep. The familiar scent of her skin and the faint residual chill of cryo surrounded him. His neck was wrapped in thick, careful bandages that ran from just under his ear down across the collarbone — the kind of thorough work that suggested the healers had treated the injury as if the spine itself might have been compromised. The tent around them was unfamiliar: clean canvas, soft bedrolls layered thickly, the bright light of afternoon sun filtering through the half-open flap.

He had not been unconscious long this time.

Rosaria slept deeply against him, eyes swollen and red-rimmed even closed. The sharp, unbreakable composure she usually wore was gone; what remained was pure exhausted cling. One of her hands was fisted in the back of his shirt as though she still expected someone to try to take him away.

A soft scuff of boots at the entrance made him look up.

Chasca stepped inside carrying a canteen of clear, cold spring water. She leaned one shoulder against the tent pole, relaxed and watchful, and simply observed the quiet scene of Aether carefully stroking Rosaria’s hair while the nun remained dead to the world.

(https://im.ge/i/QMZqWkW)
(artist: amethis)

“That’s the first time she cried, y’know,” Chasca said after a moment, voice low and even. “Not when the Knave took you. Not while we were tracking. Not even when the cave started coming down. She just kept moving. Blade at my throat the second she found me, told me I was going to help them locate you or I’d lose the hand I used for my bow. Never panicked. Never broke. Just… didn’t stop. Didn’t sleep. Didn’t sit down once until they pulled you out.”

She crouched and set the water within easy reach.

“My geo draklings did the actual finding. They picked up the residual energy trail in the rock and led us to the right volcanic pocket. Your girl here would have torn the entire mountainside apart by hand if that’s what it took.”

Chasca’s gaze drifted back to Rosaria’s sleeping face, swollen eyes and all, then to the way she still refused to loosen her hold even in deep exhaustion.

“She’s going to be unbearable when she wakes up and realizes you saw her like this,” the Name Bearer added with a faint, dry smile. “Fair warning.”

It took several more hours of quiet dozing before Rosaria finally stirred.

Aether had not moved. Even though his body had already taken more forced sleep than it needed in the cave, he stayed exactly where he was — face against her chest, her arms locked around him, the steady rise and fall of her breathing the only thing that mattered. Every muscle and frayed nerve had settled into a deep, rare ease he only ever found with her. He would have stayed there until nightfall without complaint.

When her eyes opened and found him awake, the composure she had clawed back while unconscious shattered all over again.

Tears welled instantly. Her face twisted through a rapid, failing attempt at anger, relief, and something rawer. She lifted one hand as if to slap him — the same reflex that had answered his proposal — then stopped mid-motion, fingers trembling. Instead she grabbed both sides of his face and pulled him into a deep, desperate kiss that tasted of salt and leftover fear. She kept kissing him between short, broken attempts at speech, unable to string more than a few words together before she had to press her forehead to his or bury her face against his uninjured shoulder.

“You— idiot— don’t you ever—”

“Three days— I couldn’t—”

“Don’t leave me like that again—”

Her cryo leaked in soft, uncontrolled pulses, mildly cooling his skin against the heavy Natlan heat. She seemed incapable of loosening her hold for even a second.

The rest of the available pride filtered into the tent one by one as word spread that he was conscious. Lisa, Dehya, Ganyu, Varesa, Xilonen — each of them looked at him with the careful, overly gentle expressions usually reserved for the seriously wounded. Someone adjusted his bandages. Someone else pressed water on him. Varesa tried to offer food and looked personally offended when he only managed a few bites. He felt uncomfortably like a dying patient surrounded by anxious relatives who had already started mourning.

When he finally asked where the missing three were, it was Dehya who answered, arms crossed and expression grim.

“Shenhe lost it when you fainted right after we pulled you out. .... She didn’t say a word — just turned around and went after the Knave at full speed. Yelan decided she was going to need backup whether she wanted it or not. Cloud Retainer went with them mainly to stop Shenhe from leveling half the mountain range if she actually catches that woman.”

Rosaria’s arms tightened further at the mention of the Knave, a fresh tear slipping down her cheek even as she kept her face pressed against him.The tent stayed quiet after that, filled only with the soft sounds of the pride keeping watch over their recovered center.