Chapter 118: A Roundabout Promise

Sophia’s heels dug into the bark as she leaned forward, the moonlight gilding the edge of her hair. From her perch the festival lights below glittered like a distant sea of fireflies; the murmur of the square drifted towards them. It should have been enough to make her forget the ache of the past hours, but she had other priorities.

"You promised," she said, crisp as frost.

Orion’s brows knit. He squinted up at her, the shadow of the tree cutting his face into angles. "When in the goddess’s name did I promise to show you around the festival?"

"Earlier," she replied without hesitation. "This morning, when you were walking me through the stalls. You said you’d come with me if I wanted to try the moonfins. You said I might see you at night. You said..."

He groaned, a low sound that seemed to come from somewhere behind his teeth. "I don’t remember promising you anything of the sort."

Sophia blinked, mouth falling open in mock offense. "You don’t remember? Oh, don’t tell me the mighty Alpha memory has selective amnesia now."

He exhaled, slow and annoyed. "Sophia, I didn’t promise..."

"Yes, you did," she interrupted, leaning in until a strand of hair slipped over her shoulder.

"No, I did not."

"Yes, you did." Her voice brightened like a bell. "Maybe not outright, but it was a promise. A roundabout promise."

He gave her that look: patient, incredulous, the kind he saved for ridiculous things and stubborn people. "A roundabout promise," he repeated, as if tasting the phrase for the first time. "That’s not even a thing."

"It is a thing!" she shot back, tapping the trunk for emphasis. "You asked whether I’d see you later, and you said maybe. You told me you’d come with me to scoop moonfins if I wanted to. You said so many small things that together added up to ’I will show you around.’ That’s a promise in a roundabout way."

Orion’s mouth quirked. "Promise-energy," he said slowly, half amusement making its way through the skepticism. "Now you’ve coined a term."

"Tone of hidden sincerity," she corrected with a grin. "You have it. It’s very you."

He rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture a small admission of defeat. "That wasn’t a promise. It was...conversation."

"Conversation that sounded suspiciously like an arrangement," she countered. "Besides, it’s part of the deal you actually agreed to."

At the mention of the deal, his posture shifted. For a beat the stubborn wall he kept around himself flickered and he looked smaller, human less the unshakeable Alpha and more the boy she’d learned about, the child who had carried guilt like a second skin.

"The deal," he said carefully, "was that you’d work on finding your memories and I’d...practice being more present. I didn’t sign up to become your personal tour guide."

Sophia’s grin unfurled. "Exactly. But being more present includes showing me the festival grounds, doesn’t it? You promised not to sulk on a branch all night and..."

"I wasn’t..." Orion shook his head before he could finish the words. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"So the deal was a two way deal. You get what you want by me showing you around the festival and therefore involving myself." He pointed out.

"Who would have thought you were so smart." She said to him.

"I thought you were going to back out of the deal but I’m glad you did not." She said to him.

He huffed a long, theatrical sigh. "You aren’t going to let this go, are you?"

She shook her head, affirmative as a bell. "Not until you show me the festival grounds and actually talk to people without sounding like you swallowed a thunderstorm."

He glanced towards the compound, he could not see exactly what was going on but the sounds drifted towards them. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to involve himself after all.

"All right." He said as he pushed off the branch and dropped, a single, controlled motion.

Leaves shivered; bark scraped; his boots met the snow with a muffled thud. He stood beneath the tree for a long moment, looking exactly like an answer she hadn’t expected: steady, calm, the shadow of the Square behind him. He dusted stray snow from his sleeve and looked up.

"Um...why are you still up there?" He asked her.

"What?" She asked with a look of disbelief.

"What aryou doing up there? If we are going to attend the festival then we have to walk there. We can’t do it with you up there." He told her.

Her eyes narrowed. "Pray, do tell, how am I going to get down?" She followed the downwards arc of her gaze. "You jumped down like you invented gravity. How do you expect me to jump down without breaking every bone in my body? I climbed up and mimd you, I barely did because when I got up here, I was huffing and puffing like I’d just run a marathon and you want me to leap like some acrobat off the same tree?"

He looked up, one brow lifting, looking at her like he inspected a stubborn knot. "Sophia..."

"Don’t you dare Sophia me you idiotic ogre. How do you expect I’ll jump down like you did without me breaking a bone? Hell just looking at the distance and what you did, my bones quake..."

"Sophia..."

"...and let’s say I climb down, how the fuck do I even do that? Only the goddess knows what kind of miracle I even used to get up here. Instead of climbing, I’m sure id slip through and land on my bottom and then it’ll be sore for days..."

"Sophia!" Orion said more sternly this time which stopped her rant.

She looked cute while she was doing so though and he had to fight the smile threatening to break out on his face because he knew if she saw him smiling then there would be hell to pay and he did not have the energy so he asked her a not so simple question, onethat required a simple answer.

"Do you trust me?"