Baldwin felt that something special was happening as the necromancer laid hands on him.

  The revenant had not suffered much that he had noticed from the way his wounds had sat, untreated, gradually accumulating more wear and tear, over the last week. He had not felt that he was missing something—or perhaps he had only convinced himself that everything was fine.

  But if that was true, what was this? This feeling of well-being that swept through him?

  It was the first time since he’d become an undead that Baldwin had enjoyed a sensation like that of consuming a health elixir and suddenly being better. It seemed strange to appreciate being healed when he hadn’t even been in pain beforehand.

  This feels good, though. Better than a health elixir ever did. Much better. Not like I’m just being restored to normal. More like being put back together better than I was.

  Baldwin found himself recalling an incident from when he was a young child. A plague had struck his village, and he had been sick. A particularly generous priestess had visited them, and for no charge, she had healed him with Love Goddess Astara’s divine light.

  The moment when she knelt over him, it had been as if he was looking up at an angel.

  I thought I forgot her face. But this sensation running through his body had triggered a deep memory and brought that beautiful image instantly to mind.

  The revenant stood stock-still for an amount of time he couldn’t have described later if his life depended on it. All he knew was that the necromancer had finished with his neck and kept moving from one injury to the next, spreading this sensation of well-being from one corner of the revenant’s body to another.

  For the first time, Baldwin felt, in the presence of Tybalt, something worthy of the title “master.”

  The necromancer’s energy wasn’t merely something nice to replace the general feeling of cold emptiness that the revenant lived with most of the time. As Baldwin received the maintenance, it felt like he was basking in the glow of a god’s grace.

  I guess… maybe there’s something to that Death God that we serve, he thought. Maybe Tybalt actually deserves some of this loyalty he’s forced from me.

  The necromancer’s eyes were closed almost the whole time as he worked. Baldwin had no idea how Tybalt knew where he needed to go next or that he was done healing a specific region, but the necromancer seemed infallible as he concentrated totally on this single task.

  It was this absolute focus that caused Baldwin to be the first one to spot her.

  Lieutenant Sperry came walking up the path, her eyes cold and hostile as they locked onto the revenant.

  The bottom dropped out of his stomach, and Baldwin felt an irrational urge to prepare to defend himself. That was foolishness, of course. The Lieutenant had become Tybalt’s ally and probably even his lover. She wouldn’t attack the person the necromancer was spending so much energy on healing. Probably.

  Sure enough, a moment later, the fire mage’s eyes lit on Tybalt, and her face changed. She lowered her eyes as if she felt anxious or guilty about something.

  The Lieutenant stopped when she was ten feet away from Tybalt and Baldwin.

  The necromancer had just begun to heal the revenant’s gore wound, close to the stomach, but as he heard the crackle of a snapping twig, he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at the fire mage.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Hey yourself,” she replied with an awkward smile that quickly faded.

  “Come closer,” he said, his own lips curling in a slight smile.

  She did.

  “Did you, um, finish your strategy conversation with Vidalia?” the fire mage asked, standing over the crouched necromancer. She swallowed, visibly nervous.

  “Oh, yes,” Tybalt said, staring her in the eyes. “I’m really glad you’re back. I feel strange that you left at all. Next time, you will stay.”

  Lieutenant Sperry’s face shifted into an expression Baldwin had never seen on her before, a shy smile.

  “Whatever you say,” she said, twiddling her fingers together nervously. She brushed a strand of hair back that had slipped in front of her face.

  She looks like a maiden with a crush, Baldwin thought, slightly stunned. This bitch was tough as nails, wasn’t she? Stick up her ass? Had nothing but disdain for all the men of the squad except maybe the Commander? Where did that Lieutenant Sperry go?

  Tybalt turned, rose to his full height, then leaned down and gave the Lieutenant a lingering, open-mouthed kiss, one hand placed possessively on her waist. Baldwin forced himself to avert his eyes. It felt like he was in the bedroom with them.

  When he turned to look back, the necromancer was whispering something in the Lieutenant’s ear. The revenant caught the words “display of affection,” and Sperry giggled. Giggled!

  Baldwin heard her response in full.

  “I don’t mind.” She said it with pink in her complexion and eyes lowered demurely.

  Then she happened to turn her head in Baldwin’s direction, and her gaze hardened. She gave him a look that would have curdled butter.

  He could almost hear her thinking, What the fuck are you looking at?

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

  Maybe those wouldn’t have been her exact words, but that feeling was there.

  The fuck did I do now? the revenant thought.

  Then he understood. He raised his hands and very pointedly looked away from the couple again. He immediately heard more whispering, though he couldn’t make out any specific words, and another giggle from the Lieutenant.

  I will never be able to look at you the same way again, he thought.

  Baldwin looked again as she whispered something else in Tybalt’s ear. The necromancer chuckled and said, “That sounds good, thank you, Mariella.”

  Oh, yeah, somehow I forgot she had a first name…

  Lieutenant “Mariella” Sperry, smiling brightly and blushing, turned toward the hut and walked back inside, swaying her hips as she moved in a distinctively feminine way that the revenant thought she might have deliberately restrained when she had been in the squad. She seemed to have forgotten that anyone in the world besides herself and Tybalt existed, or the revenant would have expected her to be more self-conscious about his gaze.

  Once she was out of sight, the fire mage stayed in the hut for a little while, enough that Baldwin thought that the surreal experience of observing the couple might be over.

  Tybalt resumed the work of fixing Baldwin, though it was noticeably slower, halting—less divine intervention, more like mending a patchwork quilt.

  He’s distracted. The both of them are distracting each other.

  It had been a long time since Baldwin had seen or felt that in any relationship.

  Then the revenant heard the sound of metal and pottery clanking together. He smelled the odor of pork cooking. It took him a moment to realize that the fire mage was actually inside making food for Tybalt.

  The necromancer’s face broke into a big smile as the smell wafted over them. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Baldwin could tell that in Tybalt’s mind, he was still seeing the Lieutenant.

  As the necromancer stopped even pretending to finish the repair, Baldwin decided that the command not to interrupt his work probably no longer applied.

  “So, she’s, um, doting on you, huh?” Baldwin said awkwardly. “You and the Lieutenant look way too comfortable. Are you a pair of newlyweds or something? From enemies to… this.”

  “Honestly, you’re not far off,” Tybalt said in a reflective tone. “We like each other a lot. We’re probably going to be married… if we both survive the next few months.”

  “Few months? Is that, um, short? I mean fast? For an engagement?”

  “Not really. Nobles often engage their children from a young age, but when they do it as adults, short engagements are the norm. Sometimes that means they know each other for days or weeks, sometimes months or so, but there’s no custom of longer engagements than that. We know each other well enough. Mariella knows I’ll take good care of her, and I know she’d be a good wife.” He wrinkled his nose. “I just wish we could get past the rest of the world’s bullshit.

  “Oh. Um, yeah. I guess her family’s going to be an obstacle for you…”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Uh, got it. I won’t.”

  “Say, how did you and your wife meet, Baldwin? Did you have a long engagement?” Tybalt asked. “Entertain me, my focus isn’t really on the work right now, and a break might be good.”

  “There’s really not that much to tell, master,” the revenant said. “I was the boy who pulled her pigtails, and she was the girl who threw mudballs at me. It was natural. Everyone knew we would be together since we were four.”

  “It must have been nice that things were so simple. Sometimes I’ve thought I could have done that—married a peasant girl from my village. Lived a normal life and been happy enough.”

  “I guess you’re glad you didn’t do that now?” Baldwin asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t trade Mariella and Vidalia for anyone,” the necromancer said. “I think they’ll make me very happy. Possibly another woman, too, but I’ve never actually spoken to her, so that’s something to figure out later. Still, I think that I might end up regretting not choosing that simpler life someday, if the path I’m on ends up having a painful ending.”

  “You’re unusually melancholy today, master.”

  “Why did you join the Army?” Tybalt asked. “A job that would take you away from your wife for long stretches of time.”

  “Well, my heart was made to yearn for more,” Baldwin said, shrugging. “More status, more money, more women, than was meant to be my lot in life.” He grinned conspiratorially, but Tybalt didn’t return the expression.

  “How do you suppose your wife deals with you being away all the time, by choice, Baldwin?” Tybalt asked, giving the revenant an ugly look. “Screwing the neighbor?”

  Baldwin forced himself to shrug in response. He was surprised to find he genuinely didn’t care overly much about the remark. “If not, there are probably cobwebs growing between her legs. I’ve certainly not done anything there in years.”

  “You were supposed to entertain me a bit,” Tybalt reproached. “You’re lowering my mood instead.”

  “Sorry, master. If you’d like, we could try to find me a jester outfit, and I’ll pretend to be amusing for you instead of being a man you murdered and raised from the dead.”

  “What, you’re still mad about that?”

  Tybalt and Baldwin’s tense expressions each lightened a little at the necromancer’s sarcastic words.

  Then came the sound of Mariella’s footsteps approaching. The necromancer turned his head, and both Tybalt and Baldwin saw the beaming Lieutenant as she drew close and handed Tybalt a steaming bowl of something.

  That pork smell has to be the same boar I brought them the other day, Baldwin thought. I’m glad they carved it properly and got to eat it.

  Despite the fact that he had no appetite, and contrary to what he was consciously thinking, he felt a bit of envy in the back of his mind. The food was just for Tybalt. The revenant did not need to eat, of course. But it rankled slightly that he was a mere thing, unworthy of consideration.

  “Do you like it?” the Lieutenant asked as the necromancer popped a spoonful into his mouth.

  He opened his mouth almost immediately and fanned the inside.

  “Hot,” he said. He looked at Mariella. “It’s good, though.”

  She looked pleased.

  “I’ll go and share with Vidalia, then,” she said, appearing to try—and fail—at containing her smile.

  “Good, thank you,” Tybalt said. He reached out and gently squeezed his woman’s hand.

  Then the necromancer watched her walk away, while the revenant—in response to a silent command from Tybalt—averted his gaze.

  “Still hard to believe she’s mine for real,” the necromancer muttered after the fire mage had gone inside. “But I have to fight for her. That much is real. No, that’s the proof that it’s real. Nothing good in my life comes without a fight.”

  “Good luck,” Baldwin said softly. For all the vitriol he and Tybalt could hurl back and forth at times, the revenant realized he did, at least in that moment, actually want the necromancer to succeed with the Lieutenant.

  “Let’s take another look at that last wound, and then I’ll work on the dead bodies you brought me,” Tybalt said. “I’ll need you in good shape for later. I have a mission for the two of you, along with a large number of new undead that I created in my sleep…”