Raiju and I sat together on the floor for half an hour as I reviewed her Status before I started asking her questions about what I was seeing. Ylsa had left us behind to go and talk to Gabby about the loot she’d be in charge of managing a few minutes before while Volta conveniently left on patrol around the glade.

  I leaned back and pointed at her Stats. “Your stats are pretty incredible, given your level. Do you have any idea how that happened?”

  She nodded, swallowing the piece of jerky she’d been working on. “I got a notification about it. It said my new body wasn’t capable of handling so much power, so some of my Stats were used to make my new coat. I got just over fifty percent of most of my old Stats, with a few of my mental stats getting a boost and [Divine] going up a full hundred points. It’s not like I expected to keep anything from my past self, so even what I got is pretty incredible.” She popped another piece of jerky in her mouth and I saw a flash of her elongated canines digging in before she closed her lips around the meat.

  “OK, that makes sense.” I scrolled down and stopped on [Gale Wolf Form] in her Unique Skills. “You can shapeshift into a [Gale Wolf]? That’s pretty cool.” Her face darkened. “What, are you not excited? You can go back to four legs whenever you want…”

  “Don’t wanna.” She practically spat, crossing her arms over her more than ample bosom. “I like the way I am now.”

  My mouth opened, but I was smart enough not to say anything I was thinking. Instead, I closed my jaw with an audible clack and smiled. “I can see why, you’re even more radiant now than you were before.”

  Her eyes lit up like blue flames and she licked her lips. “I’m glad you think so!” Her lupine ears flicked a few times and her tail wagged hard enough to leave a bruise on my leg.

  Totally oblivious, I moved on to her Passive Skills. “Looks like you got to keep most of your old Skills, but you picked up a few in their places. [Language Sponge], [Animal Speech], and even a Unique Passive, [Storm-Blessed]. Those should make your transition to two-legged life a lot easier. Actives got a similar treatment, but from what I can tell a lot of your Skills were ready to evolve, so these are just those modified to fit your new Class and Race combo. There’s a new one there too, [Whirling Dervish]. I wonder if that’s a signature for your Class or something.”

  As I continued to muse, her gaze got more intense until I turned to look at her. “What–”

  She bowled me over and held me down as she kissed me while straddling my waist and grinding on me. For just a second, I enjoyed kissing someone I wasn’t related to for the very first time, but then deep seated insecurity reared its ugly head and I knew I couldn’t just let her do as she pleased.

  She’s like this because of me! I let her die and now she’s kissing me? What’s going on?

  “Shtop.” I mouthed around her lips as they actively sought my own out. “This isn’t right!” I heaved myself to the side, sending her sprawling out onto the polished wooden floor.

  Hurrying to my feet, I looked down at her in horror. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

  Tears streaming down her face, Raiju activated [Whirlwind Rush] and launched herself out the double doors onto a balcony before hurdling the railing and plummeting toward the ground. I knew she had [Swift as the Wind] still, but that didn’t stop me from panicking. Rushing over to the balcony, I spotted her tail entering another room via a balcony a dozen floors below me.

  Flopping down to the ground, I sat back against the railing and held my head in my hands. “What did I just do?” My mind raced with all the things I should have done, but none of that changed what I did. “Did I just ruin our relationship?” I murmured to myself.

  “Welcome to the club.”

  I looked up to find Uncle Galloway standing in the doorway off the balcony. Wiping nascent tears from my eyes, I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  He flopped down next to me with an uncharacteristic lack of decorum. He proffered a metal drinking flask to me and I shook my head. “More for me.” He tipped it back and took a deep pull before setting it down between us. “I’m guessing Raiju made her move?”

  Eyes red, I glared at him. “You knew she’d do this? Why didn’t you tell me?!” I was mad, but there was no heat to my tone. I was hurt, but I’d done it all to myself.

  Instead of answering, he pulled out a well-worn locket I’d never seen from his shirt and opened it up so I could see what it contained. Inside were two yellowed portraits, the left side was decorated with a picture of the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen outside of Dominus, sitting on a chair made of tree roots. But it was her smile that told me who she was. It was his mom, Elaine. The right side had a portrait of a couple, a young looking male human and an older halfling woman. They were holding each other, with the man holding the woman in his arms as he dipped her low for a kiss.

  “The three people I love most in the world, followed closely by you and your folks of course.” He rubbed a finger over the right side and sighed. “Take it from me. Don’t let guilt wreck a good thing or you’ll regret it the rest of your very long life, especially with your [Toughness] and [Suzerain].” He took another pull from the flask and groaned. “All out.” The flask disappeared to his spatial ring and an almost identical one replaced it a moment later. One sip later, he put it between us again.

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  “I understand why you have a picture of Elaine in there,” he winced and I felt bad, but I was curious and hurt, so I pressed on, “but who are those other two?”

  “The loves of my life.” He closed his eyes and rested his head against the railing. “Or they were at one point.”

  “What happened?” My eyes went wide as I pushed my own trauma to the side. “Do they not love you back?”

  He let out a short bark of laughter before looking at me with a single eyebrow raised. “Ironically, I had exactly the opposite problem. They loved me, but I didn’t feel right accepting their affection.”

  Ignoring his look, I pressed. “Why not? You’re amazing.”

  He shook out his long chestnut hair and rolled his shoulders, as if he was shouldering a heavy weight. “It was almost a hundred years ago, before I even started adventuring with your parents. I was walking through this forest, looking for a rare mushroom I needed for a tincture I was working on, and stumbled upon Eugene and Marielle. They were huddled inside the hollow of a tree, both bleeding from multiple wounds, as a huge, level thirty [Spitethorn]. The damn thing had cornered them and was mostly waiting for them to succumb to its toxin, just taking a few random swipes to keep them in place.”

  His eyes glazed over as he remembered. “I tried talking to the thing, but it wouldn’t give up its prey, so I killed it. I was level forty-five even back then, so it was easy. I called out to them after I got rid of it, but they didn’t respond. The damn [Spitethorn]’s toxin had already done its work and they were unconscious. I knew they didn’t have long, so I pulled them out of the tree hollow and stripped them right there.

  “Each of them had at least a dozen small scratches and a few deeper lesions from the monster, so I knew I had to work fast. I hit them both with [Neutralize Poison], but it didn’t work. The damn thing had [Invigorated Toxin], so instead of healing them, I’d just made it worse.”

  “What happened next?!” I leaned in, hanging on his every word. Uncle Galloway always told the best stories, but never about his past outside of his time with Mom and Dad. “How did you save them?”

  He scratched his head. “I cheated. I used [Subsume] on the [Spitethorn], denying the world its nutrients and synthesized an antidote over the next few minutes. It was a close thing, but they lived. Over the next two months I watched over them in my cabin in those woods, but they didn’t even stir. It wasn’t until I returned from town on a supply run that I found the two of them entwined on my bed. Their passion, it was almost as frightening as it was enticing.

  “When the door opened they sprang apart, but I waved them off. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen the Dryad’s doing back home before I got old enough for them to start lusting after me. They apologized and introduced themselves to me. They were both slaves, him a woodsman and her a concubine, who escaped so they could be together. I assured them that they were welcome to stay with me for as long as they wanted and they took me up on it.

  “We lived together for almost two years in that little cabin in the woods. About six months in, the pair of them approached me about joining them, but I politely declined despite desperately wanting nothing more than to agree. You see, I’d saved their lives so I thought it was just Healer’s Heart, not actual affection. That, or they felt obligated, since they’d been going at it on the regular since waking up, especially at night when they thought I was asleep.”

  “Healer’s Heart? You mean the thing that Auntie Megara says helped her snag Uncle Arlo?” I frowned. “He always laughed her off, but they never really explained it.”

  “It’s what they call it when someone falls for the person who healed them. Healers of most clergies can have their membership revoked for getting involved with a patient, it’s serious stuff.” He snorted. “Not that I’m like them, but I still didn’t feel right taking them up on their offer. They tried over a dozen times, citing seeing the way I’d looked at them and telling me how much the pair of them loved me. In the end, I left them there with a big bag of gold, a map to the nearest town, and moved a thousand miles away.”

  “Why?”

  He shoulder bumped me. “I can ask you the same thing, but I’ll explain for your sake. I was afraid to wreck what we had, so I left rather than let it change. Sound like anyone you know?”

  “This has nothing to do with what happened–” I started to rant, only for him to cut me off.

  “Wrong.” He ran his thumb over Eugene and Marielle’s faces. “She saved you and you saved her right back, but instead of returning her feelings, which my [Heartsight] tells me you do, you pushed her away. You made the same decision I did, but you can still fix yours. My chance at love is gone, but yours is still alive and well.”

  “I mean… wait, why didn’t you use [Heartsight] to look at Eugene and Marielle?” I tried to deflect the embarrassment back on him, but he wasn’t having it.

  “I didn’t learn it for another twenty years and the second I did, I hightailed it back to that tiny town. I found they’d founded an inn with the money I’d left them, they called it Galloway’s and the sign was my name with theirs hanging off the beginning and end. I used a [Minor Alteration Potion], went inside, and found Eugene behind the bar. He’d aged gorgeously, all smile lines and gently aging muscles. Marielle came out a bit later and I heard them talking to a traveler about the name of the inn. They said they’d named it after the person they loved more than anyone but their children, which they had six of. [Heartsight] confirmed what they said, pink lines ran strong between the three of us.”

  “What did you do then?”

  He shook his head. “I left. Our time was done. They had kids and adding me to the mix would have just confused them.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I missed my chance at a happy future. Don’t do the same.” He patted my leg hard enough to jolt me out of my own daze. “The connection you two have is strong, don’t forsake it because you helped her achieve her dream early.”

  A notification light in the corner of my vision finally caught my attention and when I opened it, I couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks for the Skill, something tells me [Heartsight]’s going to make its way onto my permanent list pretty quick. It’s perfect for a [Suzerain].”

  [Heartsight Acquired with Skill Dominance]

  I removed [Sunburst] and [Silent Step] from my Dominated Skill Slots and immediately slotted [Heartsight].

  “Stuff that.” Ylsa’s stern voice sounded from the doorway. I looked up and she was already next to me. She lifted me by [Hydra’s Ward] and threw me over the railing. As I fell, I heard her call after me. “Make it right now, or that girl will never forgive you!”