The Demon General Is My Ex's Little Sister novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cart

Rin crosses the ford to face Sora, who is sorry, sunny and clueless. She buys ten days, and Kaede catches her at the supply cart with a kiss that nearly takes the wheels off.

Kaede caught her at the supply cart.

Rin had washed her face in a bucket and rebraided her hair and fixed her robe.

She was walking to the ford with the white flag on her shoulder.

A hand closed on her wrist and swung her around.

The cart stood behind the cook tent, a high wooden wagon stacked with barley sacks.

It hid them from the whole camp.

Kaede's back was to the sacks, and she pulled Rin in with both hands.

"You'll tell him I want ten days," Kaede said, low.

"I'll tell him the general requests ten days to consider terms."

"And you don't tell him my name."

"I won't."

"And you come back."

"I will."

Kaede kissed her.

It was not like the night before.

That kiss had been slow and astonished.

This one was a hard, hungry press of mouths.

Kaede's armored arm locked across Rin's back, and her other hand fisted in the braid.

Rin went up on her toes to meet it.

She bit Kaede's lower lip, and Kaede's breath hitched, and she kissed Rin deeper.

Rin's back hit a wheel.

Kaede's thigh pushed between her legs, solid and warm through the layers of cloth.

Rin ground down on it without shame.

"Kaede."

"I know."

"I'm going to be late."

"I know." Kaede did not stop. "One more."

She gave her one more, and then one more after that.

Then Kaede's forehead dropped to Rin's, and the two of them stood there breathing.

"Go," Kaede said hoarsely. "Before I tie you to this wheel."

"Is that a promise?"

Kaede's whole face went dark red.

Rin grinned all the way to the river.

The Shirakawa was knee-deep and cold enough to hurt.

She waded it with the sheet-flag over her head and her ledger held high.

On the far bank a line of white-and-gold soldiers watched her come.

The hero's camp was everything the demon camp was not.

Banners.

Polished mail.

Fifty tents in a perfect row, and a sentry at every corner, and a smell of saddle soap and boiled coffee.

She had been in this camp three weeks as the Hero's Scribe.

She had never felt as out of place in it as she did now.

"Rin!"

He came out of the largest tent at a run.

Sora Sorano was tall, in a white coat with gold buttons.

The sword at his hip had a gold hilt shaped like a crane.

His dark hair was longer than she remembered.

His smile was exactly the same.

"You're back!"

"You're alive!"

"I was so worried, nobody would tell me anything."

He stopped a step short of her.

"Are you okay?"

"Did they hurt you?"

"Did you see it?"

"I'm fine."

"The Demon General," Sora said. "Did you see the face?"

Rin looked at the face she was speaking to.

It was Kaede's face, six years older and without the scar on the chin.

The same eyes.

The same mouth that had made that sound against her neck an hour ago.

Her stomach turned over.

"I saw a person in armor," she said carefully. "She asked for ten days to consider terms."

"Ten days." Sora rubbed the back of his neck. "That's a lot of days."

"It's the usual custom."

"It is?"

"Yes."

It was not, but he believed it, because Sora believed everything.

That had been the problem with him for two years.

He believed it when he said he loved her, and he believed it when he stopped.

"Okay," he said. "Ten days. I'll tell the captain." He hesitated. "Rin, can I say something?"

"No."

"I'm sorry about the text."

She had planned a dozen replies to that sentence over fourteen months.

All of them left her head at once.

"It was a coward thing to do,"

Sora said, miserable.

"I had a feeling something was going to happen to me."

"I didn't know how to say it, so I wrote 'different things.'"

"I should have called."

"I'm sorry."

"Okay."

"Okay you forgive me?"

"Okay I heard you."

He took it, because he took everything.

"I'm doing this for a reason, you know,"

he said, quieter.

"I'm not just here to win."

"My sister disappeared two years ago, and when I was summoned I thought, maybe she was too."

"The Chancellor says once the war is over he'll search the whole kingdom."

Rin's mouth went dry.

"Sora."

"I know it's a long shot."

"But if I do this, if I beat the Demon General, I get to ask for anything."

"And all I want is Kaede."

She looked at his hopeful, handsome, trusting face.

She looked at the gold crane on his sword.

Behind him, on the steps of the biggest pavilion, a thin man in grey silk watched her over folded hands.

Chancellor Haibara Tomonori had a silver topknot and a jade pin.

"Scribe," the Chancellor called. "A word."

He did not raise his voice, and Sora flinched anyway.

Rin walked across the grass.

"The general spoke to you?" Haibara asked.

"Yes, my lord."

"And the sealed case I gave you in the capital? You have it still?"

Her hand went to the satchel.

The case sat inside, wrapped in oilcloth, sealed with his wax, the way she had carried it for three weeks.

"Unopened," she said.

"Good." His smile was thin and courteous. "Keep it so. Ten days, then. The hero will be patient."

"I will be,"

Sora said from behind her, bright, and put a hand on his sword.

"But I promise you, Rin."

"When the time comes, I'll cut that monster down myself."

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