"You should be resting."

You look up to see Rael standing at the entrance of your camp and shrug, removing the hot blade from the anvil. Your injuries still sting, sure, but they shouldn't reopen anytime soon. In the meantime, you need to fix your sword.

When things first kicked off, you'd known nothing about her; not of her hunt for her parents' killer, nor of her prowess with money.

She'd found you sleeping in the middle of a clearing, freshly murdered bandits littering the wreckage of a caravan. Rael had asked you to kill someone for her. Lucevan, the Head of Giacosa, a famous merchant company. She told you she'd pay well, so you'd accepted without a second thought.

Then, things went wrong.

She'd orchestrated a meeting with Lucevan under the disguise as the representative of a rival, hoping to make a deal. However, the middleman betrayed her. The two of you had walked right into a trap, and when Lucevan had offered to double her price, she thought you were going to kill her on the spot.

You didn't. He got away, and the two of you barely escaped with your lives.

After killing her parents, Lucevan had taken her in, had taught her that every relationship was transactional. Without money, nobody would be willing to take her side. Rael held that close to her as a fundamental truth. She'd done horrible things for her revenge, but in that moment, crumbled. Without you...

You open your mouth. "Do you still have things you need to take care of?"

Rael blinks, before shaking her head. "I'm just wrapping things up." She eyes the cuts crisscrossing your back and arms, sighing. "You need to get some rest."

She walks over to you, nudging you towards your cabin, grinning despite your disgruntled expression. A relationship driven by trust, instead of money. Rael wants it more than she thought.

"Let me take care of you," she singsongs, shoving you down into your bed. She fights down the blush threatening to show. If Rael can pretend that she's trying to seduce you to keep you by her side, then...