Yup, they’re dead, Lucas thought, gripping his staff tightly. He would have incinerated them right there with his AoE fire attack if it wasn’t for the fact that he knew it would summon the wrath of the nearby guards. Still, he wasn’t going to let them get away with how they were treating Nick. Even if Nick wasn’t his friend, per se, he had been reliable and honest and had gone above and beyond what Lucas needed him to do, only filing the occasional complaint as he did so.

“Ah! There you are!” another voice chimed from out of nowhere. Unlike the last two, however, this one was pleasant and welcoming. It was also Lucas’s primary target and his reason for being here.

Lucas turned toward the princess and found her rushing over from what must have been the town hall. “Glad you waited for us, Princess,” he said as a way of greeting along with a huge smile.

The princess beamed at him, her radiant smile shining brighter than the midday sun as she fluttered her eyes at Lucas. “How could I not? It’s not every day that I meet a man such as you.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Nick grumbled.

“Please don’t compliment me so much,” Lucas warned dryly. “It’ll make me uncomfortable.” Especially since I’m about to put you through a very serious ordeal.

“But I must! I have stayed in this village for years observing every itinerant adventurer to pass through our gates, but never have I seen one with both kindness and capability. It is almost always but one or the other, often only the latter, as their deeds and the lengths to which they’ll impose their will on others harrow me with fear and wonder. Yet, here you stand, a paradigm of what a moral man can be, so how could I not divvy out merits where they are due?” She cozied up to him as she spoke, eventually wrapping herself around his arm and then using it pull him along toward the town hall. “Now, come. You have a king to meet and a reward to be bestowed.”

Lucas shirked a little, automatically withdrawing from her touch. The last person who had led him in such an intimate manner had been his wife. He hadn’t realized it until just then, but this was the first time he had felt a non-violent touch like this from a woman—aside from the quick greeting hug he had given his sister-in-law—in months. She was warm and comforting, but that pleasantness crawled across his skin like a centipede of guilt as his brain tried to reject the foreign source of happiness. Yet, despite however much discomfort it gave him, he allowed himself to be directed along. He glanced over at Bonnie to make sure she was ready for her part in this, and she returned a not-so-subtle thumbs up and a wink.