The trees in the Prevost forest were tall and overarching, shaped differently than the trees that surrounded the temple of the Moon tribe. The trunks for the most part were bare, the long branches creating a canopy despite the distance between them.

  The bonasus were able to navigate the trees and roots better than Yumi would have expected from their size. When she woke in the tent that first day, she had asked to see one of them up close -- but they were so big she lost her nerve when Shin invited her to pet one.

  From her seat in the carriage she eyed the ropes her hands were tied with and the man sitting in front of her, legs crossed, head propped on his hand and looking out the carriage window as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

  The ropes, he had said, were more for show for the other demons who traveled with them. They hadn't known she'd broken the chain on the other manacles, and given her poor physical condition he doubted that they'd believe she could even unite a knot, let alone cut a rope.

  "I'm not that weak..." She had muttered, but it was true that she felt more and more weary as the journey continued. It had started to get worse after that first night, but she could feel the beginning of sickness starting to weigh her body down.

  By the third morning what had begun as a dull headache had turned into a full blown fever. She was determined not to make a big deal of it, but it was hard to hide the small waves of dizziness every time she stood up. Shin's periodic glances in her direction and the worried mutters of the men had become frequent enough that when they stopped earlier than usual for the night, just past sundown, she knew the jig was up.

  As she stepped out of the carriage she nearly collapsed -- thankfully Valdeer was close enough that he was able to catch her by the elbow and help her sit down. She noticed a few of the demon mercenaries giving them a wide berth, surely worried that whatever ailment had struck her was contagious.

  "We don't have a healer in the convoy, captain," Valdeer muttered and Shin placed another wet cloth on Yumi's forehead, "Should we detour? There is a compound not too far --"

  "We're not wandering into some uninvolved demon compound on the off chance they have a healer and are willing to part with them for however long this takes to pass," Shin said, "end of discussion."

  "I'll be fine," Yumi cut in, her clammy hands pressing against her eyes. "It's just a fever."

  Shin gave her a hard look, almost like one would a child. "Valdeer, watch the camp," he said, picking Yumi up before she had time to argue. His grip on her was tighter than she felt was strictly necessary, but she was almost thankful for it as the world had begun spinning. "I'm going to take the lady to the lake we passed a bit back."

  "The lake? At this hour?" Valdeer asked, a scandalized look crossing his features once again.

  Shin's reply came with exaggerated patience, making Yumi believe Shin felt as though he were dealing with two children. "To cool her fever," as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  As understanding dawned on Valdeer's face he gave Shin a quick bow. "Yes captain, I'll hold down the fort."

  Shin turned on his heel and walked briskly into the forest carrying the saintess in his arms. She had at some point wrapped her hands around his neck, terrified that she'd wobble and fall, but his grip stayed firm even though the rest of her felt far from it.

  He had been muttering to himself as they approached the lake, what sounded almost like curse words though Yumi didn't quite understand him due to her disorientation.

  "I don't want to go in the water," she groggily said as he set her down on a boulder with as flat a surface as he could find.

  "You're not going in the water," he gripped her chin in his gloved hand, pulling her face side to side to examine her. "I don't know what kind of stunt you think you're pulling here but it's not going to help you to treat yourself this way."

  She looked up at the man with a confused look on her clearly-out-of-it face. "What are you talking about?"

  He gave her a pointed look then, giving her a few moments to come clean. When she gave him another look, one that read 'what the hell is wrong with you?' he realized that she wasn't bluffing.

  "You've been pulling in mana for days," he said as a means to prod her, "ever since that first night."

  She looked offended at that, "No I haven't!" How would she even do that?

  The moonlight filtering through the trees cast strange shadows across Shin's face as his expression shifted from accusation to disbelief. He released her chin and took a half-step back, studying her with new eyes.

  "You genuinely don't know, do you?" His voice had lowered, the edge of frustration replaced by something more complex. "Your body is literally overflowing with mana. It's why you're feverish—your body can't contain it all."

  Yumi swayed slightly on her feet, the trees around them blurring at the edges of her vision. She pressed her palms against her temples, trying to make sense of his words through the fog of fever.

  "That's not possible," she insisted, though with less conviction than before. "I would know if I was... absorbing mana. Wouldn't I?" The question came out smaller than she intended, betraying a lifetime of uncertainty about her own abilities. It shrunk her back to her youth, to lines of red welts on her hands for questions she had never been told the answer to.

  Shin ran a hand through his hair, a gesture she was beginning to recognize as one of his tells for genuine concern rather than theatrical exasperation. "Every saint knows how to regulate their mana flow. It's literally the first thing..." He trailed off, letting out a breath of air as if he were trying hard to control his temper. Despite this, his voice couldn't hide his sarcasm, "Did you think full moons were just for dancing and lounging around?"

  The accusation struck a nerve that Yumi hadn't even known was still exposed. Something about his phrasing had her feeling almost ashamed -- She knew, of course, that Devorian moon festivals had the overarching purpose of balancing mana. She knew as well that it was the duty of those with saintly powers to assist in that endeavor. However, "I've never taken part," her cheeks were red with humiliation alongside the fever. "I wasn't allowed outside the temple grounds during the full moons," or ever.

  Her admission hung in the air like something physical between them, and through her daze she felt like she had said something she wasn't supposed to -- like a child having been caught telling the secrets trusted to them by adults.

  Shin had gone utterly still, his frustration wiped from his face entirely. Instead, he wore a mask of first confusion, and then incredulity, as if someone had told him that bonasus could fly. "You can't be serious."

  She had no lies that she could offer, only a vague feeling of humiliation that she felt angry at herself to feel. She knew it wasn't her fault. The silence between them was filled with the sounds of insects, the lapping of water against the lakeshore, and the very distant sounds of camp reminding them that they had places to be.

  "Well," he said, an attempt at brevity, "I realize you're probably stuck in your fantasies of being a poor mistreated saintess at the whims of her terrible and ruthless enemy, but -- " he glanced up at the moons above, cataloging the potential of their effectiveness. "I certainly wouldn't want to have the guilt of you dying a painful and completely avoidable death on my shoulders."

  The words startled her -- She knew that being overrun with mana was painful and potentially dangerous, but he had to be exaggerating. Before she could question him any further on his statement he bit the cloth of his glove and pulled it off with his teeth, his other hand holding her steady so that she wouldn't teeter off of the rock and into the lake.

  "I can't say I've ever done this before," there was something in the way that he said it, as if he were telling a joke that only he would understand, "But I understand it in theory. Devora absorb mana, saints balance that mana, yadda yadda." As he spoke he held his hand up, his fingers straight and waiting. "It should be easy for me to pull whatever excess you have out of you."

  "There's a reason saints are supposed to absorb mana," she reminded him, "normal Devora can't hold the same amount of mana that a saint can."

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "True," he acquiesced, "But I don't need to hold all of it. Just whatever extra you have."

  He wiggled his splayed hand impatiently then, and she sighed and met his fingers with hers. She had thought perhaps that they would be warm, but they were not -- his fingers were cold, rough and calloused. He intertwined their fingers then, and she could feel the warmth of her own hand warming his up, until the temperature equalized. In her already long life, she realized, this was the first time she had ever held someone's hand.

  At first nothing happened. Yumi was sure she'd be able to tell him he was mistaken, that mana had nothing to do with it and it was just a normal fever. But then there was a subtle pull beneath her skin. Not painful, but unmistakable -- it began where their fingertips touched and traveled down her arm, pulling at her from her core. Almost as if a thread she hadn't known was tied around her heart was being pulled out of her.

  Her breath caught. It felt like it should be painful, but it wasn't. It was a pressure that was being alleviated, a splinter being removed after days of irritation. Although her body didn't feel immediately better, she still felt a great relief as Shin took a deep breath in concentration -- his breaths measured, and deliberate.

  The mana was concentrated enough that bits of it were visible, the glow pounding with each of her heartbeats. Or was it his heartbeat? Perhaps both of theirs. It was mesmerizing. She had no idea something like this could happen outside of a dual full moon. And even then, she had never really understood the feeling.

  Then something changed. For just one moment, his rhythm faltered. A pianist hitting the wrong key in an otherwise flawless performance. In that instant of unexpected disruption, she felt his energy burning against hers, her excess filling spaces within him designed precisely to hold it before just as instantly the feeling was gone.

  "You're --" she breathed, eyes widening.

  "Concentrating," he cut her off sharply, but the damage had been done. She had the lay of him now, clearly having experienced something intimate within his mana that for some reason he did not want her to know. His eyes met hers for just a moment, a silent plea for discretion mingled with an undercurrent of fear.

  The final moments of the transfer of mana between them passed in charged silence, both of them hyper aware for different reasons. When he released her from his grip, he did so with a dramatic exhale of breath.

  "Better?" His voice was carefully controlled as he flexed his fingers, avoiding eye contact.

  "Yes," Yumi said simply. She wasn't sure where to go from here, as her mind was racing with the implications of what she had just felt. She may be sheltered, but even she realized the seriousness of what she had just uncovered.

  She opened her mouth, as if to ask, and he picked up on her intentions almost immediately. "No," was his only response as he stood up. "It will probably be a day or two before you're really feeling alright again. But I've done what I could."

  What you could do was more than a normal person would be able to, she wanted to say, but held her tongue. Although the urge to call him out on what she had just sensed, though muted and subdued, ate at her with impatience she thought better of it. She was, after all, still their prisoner.

  "It's not my business..." She told him tactfully as they walked back to camp. "I'll keep it to myself."

  He gave a grunt that said 'I don't want to talk about it, but thanks' and that was that.

  Until it wasn't.

  As if sensing something she could not, Shin stood up with a jolt, his polearm in his hands quicker than she could see. There was something tense in the air, the smell of ozone permeating and overpowering that of the plant life around them.

  He had turned to look out into the wood, and without looking back swept his arm backward, his fingers splayed in a silent command to stay put. She heard the growling then, low and deep.

  There was something like a disappointed click of Shin's tongue as he registered the threat that Yumi hadn't yet understood -- until two demons that she had recognized from the camp became visible through the bush.

  "And this," he said with a sigh, "is why it's so hard to get good help these days."

  As if taking his sarcasm as a cue, the two demons both lunged forward and Yumi fell to the ground, covering her face and squeezing her eyes shut in panic. The sounds that proceeded were wet and visceral, punctuated by choked gasps and the dull thud of something heavy falling to the floor.

  "You can get up, saintess," Shin said simply. Shaking, she let herself take a look around and immediately regretted it. The meaty sinew and cut in half bodies were enough to have her dry heaving, the first she had ever seen of such an act in her life. Yumi gasped for air a few times, unable to feel any of it hitting her lungs.

  "Shit," Shin muttered, unclipping his cloak and quickly covering her with it. "I'm sorry," he said with some sincerity, "that was thoughtless of me." When she didn't move, he instead picked her up, trudging through the scene with her in his arms.

  "I will make an effort to ensure you don't have to see such things for the remainder of our journey," he reassured her as she began to hear the noises of camp -- instead of the boisterous enjoyment she had heard previously, she instead heard the faint roar of battle cries. "However, it seems as though that'll be impossible for tonight."

  Hearing the sounds of fighting from the camp, Yumi felt her insides twist and tighten. She had never been around such violence -- she thought back to the sickening feeling she'd have seeing the priest at the temple strike one of the priestesses, the way that even though she weren't close to them she still preferred to be the one taking the strike.

  Shin set her down just outside the camp, on the other side of bushes that allowed her to still see the camp but provided her with an amount of cover. She pulled the cloak down farther over her face as Shin rushed into the fight, not wanting to see the carnage that she heard all too well.

  Rationally, she knew that this was the way the demon world worked. She had been told time and time again that survival of the fittest was the truest form of endurance, but it was different seeing it up close. It seemed that any form of violence was too much for her.

  A part of her couldn't help it though, and she peeked just under the hood of the cloak to see the scene in front of her. In the middle of it all was Shin, slashing at demons with his weapon with aching fluidity. It was violent and gruesome, but there was a sense of freedom in his movements that she had never had before in her life. The ability to protect himself, and his men. It wasn't until that moment that she knew it was something she had been missing. An ugly feeling curled inside of her that she had felt many times before but never like this -- She was horribly and painfully jealous.

  A blur of movement caught her eye as one demon who spotted her in her hiding spot lunged towards her. Before she could even process the danger there was a flash of red as the demon's body fell in two pieces. Shin immediately re-engaged with the rest of the fighting, as if there were no thought to his actions, just instinct.

  What felt like hours was done in minutes, the bloodied men moving bodies to the other side of the camp while Yumi found herself still unable to move. Shin barked orders at the men, pointing and directing them with what seemed to be familiarity. So, Yumi thought to herself, this isn't the first time something like this had happened.

  A few of the men gave her worried glances as they cleaned up the camp the best they could at Shin's orders, but none of them approached her. It wasn't until Shin knelt down in front of her that the ringing in her ears started to calm down.

  "We should get you into the tent while the men clean up," his voice more gentle than she had been expecting. It was then she realized that she was still shaking, a tremor that hadn't stopped since the lake.

  She couldn't speak, though she wanted to, her heartbeat seemed too loud for any words to be able to be heard. Shin reached a hand out to her and she took it, trusting him despite her better judgement when he tugged the hood of his cloak farther over her eyes.

  Inside the tent, she felt as though she could breathe easier almost immediately. Shin studied her carefully for a moment, as though looking for any injuries she may have somehow sustained, and then took a step back.

  "...Do you need to throw up?" He asked.

  She shook her head, and then immediately ran to the entrance of the tent and let the contents of her stomach out into the dirt. One of the men appeared near immediately with a wet rag for her to wipe her face with, her nausea beginning to pass.

  "Well on the bright side," Shin said as he stood over her, a hint of tetchiness to his voice, "We don't have to pretend you're not a saintess anymore."

  "We also get a refund," one of the men joked, gaining a few chuckles among them.

  "If you lot get camp cleaned up and food made I'll include the difference in your payment when we return," the camp immediately bustled with movement only seconds after Shin had said as much. Yumi was grateful for this, in that it took the attention off of her.

  When she made her way back inside the tent, she felt completely wiped out. And yet, she noted, her fever felt considerably better. One set of illness traded for another. Shin had retrieved a cloth and had begun cleaning off the blade of his weapon, despite being covered in blood himself.

  "If I had to guess," he said in way of starting conversation, "They probably sensed our little... event by the lake. Lower level demons are great for simple tasks such as 'kill that guy,' or 'burn that thing,' but their intelligence doesn't go much farther than that. It's likely that sensing such concentrated mana equated to a tasty meal in their little lizard brains."

  "Tasty meal?" Yumi's voice was alarmed.

  Shin paused, considering her much like he had been every time she said something that surprised him. "Most lower level demons will eat anything with a pulse," he said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world, which filled Yumi with an increasing sense of trepidation.

  "And you let them near you?" Her voice shook in disbelief.

  "To assume that any demon that's not a Devora out there will immediately treat me as a snack seems a bit unfair. And you try to get the better of your enemy in battle without a little bit of unpredictability on your side."

  She realized that he was talking about the Moon Tribe and she was washed with the cold water of actuality. In the disorder of the last day she had nearly forgotten the series of events that had lead her here. The man in front of her, the men outside the tent, had all been instrumental in killing everyone she had ever known.

  How stupid she had been to momentarily forget that.

  As if he could see her walls coming back up immediately, Shin shrugged, "Nature of the beast, saintess."

  "It's horrible."

  "Truth often is," something flashed behind his bright blue eyes, "but I'd still rather an ugly truth than a beautiful lie."

  As he walked out of the tent her eyes followed him cautiously, her mind flashing back to the lake as he drained her mana from her. That moment of unfiltered flow between them that he quickly and carefully pretended never happened.

  The undeniable and unmistakable energy signature of a saint.

  For all that he spoke of truth, she pondered, he had an interesting way of avoiding it.