Elliot made a courteous gesture to Colonel Whiteleaf’s sword, already half drawn.
“If I die, the story gets told. So if you keep fighting, you maybe take the camp, maybe not, but everybody knows that your son is not your son, and he is disgraced and you are both a famous coward and the laughingstock of the otherlands. Or you were overpowered by the brave young heroes of the Border camp and came to realise that your doubts had been wrong and that Commander Woodsinger was a brave and inspiring leader. You stood your troops down, and you and your son declared your support for the commander,” said Elliot. “Which is it going to be?”
Whiteleaf’s hand clenched on the edge of the desk.
“If I let you live,” he said, “and follow your terms, do you swear to say nothing?”
Elliot bit back a smile at the dizzy joy of victory, and said: “I swear.”
When he left the room, he found Luke still waiting on the steps, his head still in his hands. Luke leaped to his feet when he saw Elliot.
“Now explain to me what you were doing,” he snarled.
“Oh . . .,” said Elliot. “Nothing, really. I had an idea, but it didn’t pan out.”
“Nothing?” Luke repeated. “You risked your life for nothing? Do you realize how short-sighted and selfish and irresponsible you were being? Do you think this is a game?”
“Yes, yes,” said Elliot. “My behavior was very wrong. I see that now. But I do have good news.”
They held a feast to celebrate the truce between Colonel Whiteleaf and the reinstated Commander Woodsinger. Serene sat beside Elliot at the feast and told him about how she and Luke had argued down students who wanted to go over to Whiteleaf’s side.
His friends always seemed to be fighting different battles than the ones Elliot was fighting, and Serene was always fighting on the war-training side. But Elliot liked to think Serene had used her council-training skills when she convinced the vast majority of the camp to keep faith with their commander.
He saw Commander Woodsinger look over at their table occasionally, and once he caught her dark, watchful gaze. It felt like she was trying to tell him something, but Elliot looked away. She was probably looking at Serene.
Elliot did not know, and perhaps could not appreciate, exactly what the war-training class and soldiers of the Border camp had done. But for once, because it was the way to peace, he was happy to let them take the credit.
He let Luke tell him off over and over again for being dumb enough to go out in the midst of a battlefield. He let Serene, and Dale, and Luke tell him all about their adventures. He sent Dale on his way with the sweet smile Elliot used on the elves, and Serene looked at him sharply from her place beside him on the bench.
“What did you do?” she asked.
Elliot smiled a real smile. “I might have helped a little. In my fashion.”
Serene said nothing, but she helped him to his feet, and they left the feasting hall together. She paused once they were outside, then stepped up to him and kissed him again.
A lot of the buildings had been torched, but there were tents set up around the Border camp. They found one and tumbled inside it, still kissing, kissing and kissing: Elliot did not want to let her go, not ever, and perhaps he would never have to.
“I have struggled against my passions, and I can struggle no longer: they have me in an irresistible grasp,” said Serene.
“Grasp away,” Elliot advised her.
“A man cannot understand the force of a woman’s desire,” Serene continued.
“I’ll give it a try,” said Elliot.
“And I cannot—I do not offer you marriage,” Serene added, the words almost lost between their mouths, kissing and clinging. “You should send me away. You should preserve your virtue. I find I cannot help myself in the face of your charms and I fear if you do not spurn me from your door at once I will besmirch you utterly.”
There was no door to speak of, since they were all in tents. Through the rough cloth of the tent, Elliot could hear the murmur of people passing by, the crackle of fires and sound of blades being sharpened and all the other sounds of a battlefield settling back into peace. War was over, at least for a time, and he was warm, his head on a soft pillow, tangled up in soft blankets with the only girl he had ever loved tangled up with him. She hovered above him, murmuring words that only meant, to him, that she did want him after all.
Elliot could not help but smile, and he felt her smile blossom against his mouth in response to his. He curled his fingers around her long dark hair and tugged her down the last fraction of an inch toward him.
“Besmirch away,” he said.
He didn’t know whether he had Peter’s educational manuals or Serene’s helpful instructions to thank, but Elliot thought the whole thing had all gone rather well.
He was lying amid tumbled sheets, looking up into Serene’s flushed face, when he finally had the courage to bring up a certain matter. Moonlight and starshine were growing faint behind her dark hair, diffused into the pale glow of morning.
“You know,” Elliot said, a little shyly, “I used to think that you . . . maybe liked Luke.”
Serene was levered up on one elbow, looking at him with pleased soft eyes. She liked it when he was shy: he’d noted that before, on the rare occasions that it happened.
“Luke?” she repeated blankly. “Our Luke?”
She started to laugh.
“Hahaha, I know, so silly,” said Elliot, greatly gratified. “Why are you laughing, exactly?”
“Luke and I have always had a relationship that was firmly platonic and based on our shared passion for honor and weaponry.”
“Oh,” said Elliot. “You were bros the whole time?”
“That’s a human idiom, but yes,” said Serene. “Moreover I do not find golden-haired gentlemen sexually appealing. They remind me of Golden-Hair-Scented-Like-Summer, than whom there is nobody more infuriating.”
“This is awesome news.”
“Golden thinks he is so pretty, and so well-behaved,” Serene continued.
“Sounds like the worst,” Elliot contributed.
“He called me a rogue last summer, you know, in front of his whole clique of snotty friends, and everybody laughed.”
“Okay,” said Elliot. “I’m no longer worried about Luke, but I am starting to be a little worried about someone else.”
Serene glanced over at him, an odd expression on her face. Elliot thought it might be simple surprise: it only lasted a moment, and then was gone, replaced with what Elliot was incredulously pleased to identify as an admiring look.
She leaned down, close enough to kiss but not quite kissing yet, and her dark hair fell down all around him so the dying night was veiled and the only starshine was her eyes.
“You have no need to be worried about anyone,” murmured Serene, and kissed him. Her mouth was warm and lingering, her hand tight around his arm. Elliot felt the calluses from bow and sword against the sensitive skin on the inside of his elbow. He shivered.