Chapter 74: The wooden chest
Third person’s POV
Kara walked to Belladonna’s door with her spine straight and her steps unhurried. She was wearing the confidence of someone who had never once had to ask permission for anything in her life, that settling naturally over her shoulders now.
She stopped just outside the door, drew a slow breath, and rapped her knuckles twice against the frame before calling out.
"Sun-blessed, General," she said, the old greeting reserved for warriors returning from war, formal in a way that carried weight even through a closed door. "A voice waits at your threshold."
There was a pause, brief, considering, before Belladonna’s answer came through, sharp and distracted.
"Step in."
Kara stepped inside, and Belladonna’s brow lifted slightly at the sight of her, genuine surprise flickering across features that rarely allowed for it.
Two women of considerable standing facing each other now, each carrying weight in her own right, neither one owing the other the kind of deference either could afford to withhold carelessly, not without consequence rippling somewhere up the chain that mattered.
Belladonna set down whatever she had been holding and rose slightly straighter on her bench, waiting.
"General," Kara began, deliberately slowly, letting the silence stretch a moment before continuing, as though the words themselves deserved proper weight before she spent them.
"I’ve come with a purpose. I wish to volunteer myself for the mending bath of you. Not the common court ladies. I intend to see to your comfort myself, in recognition of what you achieved beyond our borders."
Belladonna’s eyes narrowed slightly, more curious now than suspicious, though the two states sat close enough together on her face that Kara couldn’t be entirely certain which one had won out.
Most noblewomen Belladonna had encountered over the years wouldn’t lower themselves to lift so much as a cloth for anyone beneath their own rank, let alone a warrior dragging six moons of war back through the palace gates.
Soft, most of them. Spoiled in ways that had nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with never once being asked to earn anything.
"What do you seek to gain from this?" Belladonna asked bluntly. The question came sharp, direct, no wasted words in it at all, exactly the kind of question a woman asked when she’d learned, the hard way, that nothing arrived freely without a price attached somewhere underneath it.
Kara let the silence hold a beat longer this time, unbothered by it, before answering.
"Nothing from you, General."
Belladonna studied her, weighing that answer slowly against everything she knew about how noblewomen operated, turning it over the way she might turn over an unfamiliar blade before deciding whether to trust its balance. She found no immediate trap hidden inside it. Not yet, at least.
"Few heartbeats is what I can spend on this bath," Belladonna said finally, straightening fully now, already reaching for the scroll still resting nearby. "I have far more pressing matters awaiting my attention."
"That will be more than enough, General." Kara said, and something in her tone suggested she already knew better.
~~~~~~~~~
Belladonna sat inside the gold-carved jacuzzi a short while later, a length of transparent drape clinging to her skin where the water hit it, Kara kneeling on the tiled edge behind her with a court lady’s mending supplies laid out within easy reach.
Kara worked slow, patient, her hands moving over Belladonna’s shoulders with a gentleness that seemed almost foreign coming from a woman who’d broken a man’s jaw for a lesser insult than the one Stefan had offered this very morning.
As she worked, Kara couldn’t stop the private, disbelieving thought circling in her own head, over and over, refusing to settle. Who would have imagined an Alien capable of orchestrating something like this, maneuvering two women of such different standing into the exact position he needed. She’d take her payment for it eventually. He’d better be ready for whatever she decided to ask of him when the moment came.
Belladonna sat rigid at first, her spine holding the same disciplined line it held through every waking hour of her life, turning the same question over and over in her mind even as Kara’s hands worked. What could a noblewoman possibly want badly enough to lower herself into a role reserved for servants and slaves.
Noblewomen were notorious for the opposite instinct entirely, accustomed to being pampered rather than doing any pampering themselves. Whatever Kara wanted, it had to be something substantial. Something worth this strange, uncharacteristic effort.
Belladonna refused to let her guard slip while that question remained unanswered.
Kara’s fingers found a knot high along her shoulder blade and pressed into it slow, working the tension loose with a patience that surprised even Kara herself. Belladonna’s breath caught, just slightly, just once, and her jaw tightened immediately after, as though she’d caught herself in some small, embarrassing lapse.
A few minutes passed. Then a few more, the water lapping soft and warm around them both, steam curling lazily off the surface.
Somewhere in the space between one long, unhurried stroke of Kara’s hands and the next, Belladonna’s eyelids grew heavy, the pull of sleep tugging at her with a persistence she hadn’t felt in longer than she could remember.
She fought it instinctively, the way she fought everything, forcing her eyes to stay open even as her shoulders eased down from the rigid set they’d held since she first sat. She would not sleep.
Sleeping meant surrendering something she wasn’t prepared to surrender, not here, not in water, not in front of a noblewoman whose motives remained entirely unclear. But her body, stubborn in its own quiet way, had already stopped listening to whatever argument her pride still tried to make. Muscle by muscle, her body settled into something loose and unfamiliar, even while her eyes stayed open and alert, fixed on nothing in particular.
She wouldn’t say a word of it out loud. Not to Kara. Not to anyone. But something in her had shifted, however briefly, and she knew it the moment it happened.
~~~~~~~~~
Back in his room, Stefan sat waiting, restless, glancing toward the door every few seconds like Kara might walk through it at any moment with news one way or the other.
Then the system chimed, sudden and clear.
[MISSION COMPLETE.]
Stefan sat up fast, heart lifting at the sound of it.
[Rewards dropping.]
The notification unfolded in front of him, numbers scrolling past, Miracle Authority climbing back into territory he hadn’t seen since before the jacuzzi disaster, Charm ticking upward alongside it. Then, last of all, the wooden chest materialized in the corner of his interface, plain, unassuming, nothing like the gold-obsessed aesthetic of everything else on this planet.
It creaked open on its own.
Stefan leaned forward, his eyes fixed on whatever sat inside it, and his jaw actually dropped when he caught sight of what was inside.
"Oh, my my...."