Chapter 19: The Burned Deeds

The Queen gave every deed back to the people who had been robbed.

She had signed the order herself.

Her chamberlain had counted out four thousand two hundred and twelve papers into the arms of the valley's elders.

Now the elders stood in a stubble field under a black sky, and Ume held the first one over a bonfire.

"Household of Goro, miller," she read slowly, the way she had learned to read names from Rin. "Buyer, Haibara Tomonori."

She let go.

The paper curled and caught.

A cheer went up, ragged and wet.

Rin stood in the firelight with her braid over her shoulder and watched them go in, one by one.

Goro's deed.

Hanae's deed.

Tobei's, with a goat's name scribbled in the margin by someone with a sense of humor.

Four thousand times she had written the word Demon.

Four thousand times the flames ate it.

Kaede stood beside her, tall and bare-headed, with the glow on her scar.

She had taken off her armor for good three days ago, and she wore a plain brown farmer's coat.

She was crying and didn't seem to know.

Rin took her hand.

"Come with me," she said.

"Now? It's not finished."

"They've got eleven hundred left. They won't miss us."

She pulled her away from the light, past the carts, into the dark of the stubble where the cut barley stood in rows.

The ground was still soft.

The air was cold anyway, and the stars were out, thick as spilled salt.

Kaede stopped between two rows and caught her around the waist.

"Rin."

"Yes."

"I can't stop shaking."

"I know."

"I keep thinking about what I would have said to them, if I'd been the thing they called me."

Rin put both hands on her face.

"You weren't."

"I know."

"You were the person who fed them."

Kaede's eyes closed.

A broken sound caught in her throat, and she pulled Rin into her.

She kissed her desperately in the cold field, with the bonfire a red smear behind her head.

Rin kissed back.

She tasted salt, and smoke, and the sweet barley tea Ume had pressed on both of them.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Demon General Is My Ex's Little Sister from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.