"Well, go on then. What are you waiting for?" Elisa was sure

"…of herself. Or she was just too stubborn to know better."

Lavender had already turned for the door. He'd gotten what he came for. The rest of the village had coughed up their tribute the moment Proxima's shadow crossed their thresholds, and this last house had nothing left worth carrying out except the girl on the table, and he wasn't in the business of carrying girls.

Behind him, the table creaked.

"Hey. Hey! I said take me. I'm the offering. That's how it works."

He kept walking. The doorknob was still hanging off its hinge from where he'd punched it.

"Don't you dare walk out on me, brigand."

A hand closed around his hip. Small. Soft. Nothing like the grip Proxima's fingers were built to shrug off. Elisa hauled on him with everything she had, heels digging into the floorboards, and the truth was she couldn't have moved him an inch if he'd wanted to keep going.

But Lavender stopped.

He stopped because he'd learned, in the weeks since the Mushroom village, that the people here were softer than he was in his natural state. The fight with the hags happened in the open but every time he had crushed a foe with Proxima's blow he could see the houses falter. Now that could be Proxima's strength or the vulnerability of the structures here. Either way Proxima was a tank and it was better to tire out this lady than fight her.

So he stood there and let her tug.

"You think I can't tell?" Elisa said, breathless from the effort. "You're walking out because you don't think I'm good enough. Some big strong knight comes to my door and decides I'm not worth the trouble."

Lavender shook Proxima's head, to an onlooker it looked like a golem shaking its head. There was no mead. He wanted mead. That was his nectar.

"Then what?" She let go of his hip. Her hand slid down to her nether, curious and quick, over the curve of Proxima's thigh, over the grafted plate that ran along the hip, and then flat against the seam between the legs.

Lavender went very still. This wench was grabbing him in inappropriate areas. Still he remained like a stone--

Until his knee involuntarily buckled and he was halfway through a squat. What the devils was …