Erza's POV

The next morning as I went through my early morning routine of exercising and practicing my swordplay while everyone else slept through the crisp, pre-dawn morning I found myself humming happily. Last night I had spent several glorious hours dancing and all of my dance partners had been very forthcoming with their information about what they thought of their Duke. I had passed on the information to the Raijinshuu members throughout the night and had honestly forgotten about my own team's job.

When Natsu had pushed my dance partner aside and told me that Phaedra, Gray, and Lucy had all returned to the inn I had been disappointed that my relaxing evening had come to an end, but I was impressed to hear that Phaedra had managed to get the Duke to sign an agreement. I thought back to how uncertain she had seemed and I couldn't help but be impressed with her efficiency.

We had quickly gathered Wendy and Shararu and headed back to the inn. Wendy had nearly fainted when she had seen Phaedra's injured hands and after hearing that Phaedra had caused the injuries herself she had scolded her as harshly as I had ever seen the small girl get. Shararu had joined her partner in scolding Phaedra and I had watched with silent interest as Phaedra simply bowed her head and took the scolding with a quiet acceptance.

Later that evening, after Phaedra had been healed and she, Shararu and Wendy were all curled up sleeping soundly, Lucy had explained to me what she had seen and heard in more detail. It made me sad to think that Phaedra was choosing to close herself off even though it seemed like what she desperately needed was a family and a place to belong. I hoped that once she came back to Fairy Tail with us that she would perhaps change her mind and consider joining.

As I flowed through a practice sword dance that helped me with connecting my swords movements and making it feel like an extension of my own body instead of a weapon I was holding, the face of a man with blue hair and a tribal-like blue tattoo running down one side popped into my mind. My concentration faltered for a second and I twisted my sword with a little more force than I had meant to, neatly slicing through the trunk of a thin tree and causing it to topple over with a loud whump. I nervously glanced around, wondering if anyone had seen and then slowly began walking back towards the inn as the sun began its steady climb into the sky.

I shouldn't have been surprised that my thoughts had wandered to Jellal when thinking about someone who refused to accept a place to belong. His mission to right the wrongs his evil-doing had caused was noble in its essence, but I hated it that he was using it as a way to "atone" for his sins. I recognized that I didn't really know what it felt like to have your mind and heart twisted into making you follow a path of evil and destruction, but I still felt that Jellal deserved happiness. And, as selfish as it was, I secretly wished that he could find his happiness with me.

Squaring my shoulders with determination I sent my sword back with my Requip magic and walked into the still quiet inn. Opening the door as silently as I could, I was surprised to see that Phaedra was no longer in the queen-sized bed with Wendy and Shararu.

Just then the door of the bathroom opened with a small squeak and Phaedra stepped out of it silently. She was already fully dressed in her black leather pants, jacket, and fingerless gloves. She wasn't wearing shoes, but I was surprised to see that she was even wearing black socks that disappeared underneath her pants, blocking every pore of her skin from the sun. The only thing that was different from usual was that her hair was left down and loose and she was rubbing a towel gently from the crown of her head down to the tips of her hair that hung to her waist.

Phaedra's eyes instantly snapped to mine as she froze mid-step coming out of the bathroom. I frowned when a momentary panic flashed through her eyes and they flicked down to look at herself, almost like she was afraid she had forgotten to put on clothes. A small sigh escaped her lips and she met my eyes once again, the panic had completely vanished and she smiled quietly at me as she continued to pat her hair dry.

"Good morning, Erza. The bathroom is open now," Phaedra whispered over to me as she moved towards the bed she had slept in and swiftly slipped her feet into her black, knee-length boots and zipped them up with ease.

"I was happy to hear that you will join us back at Fairy Tail for a visit," I said after a slight pause. Phaedra looked up at me with a surprised expression but then she shrugged lightly.

"I like to keep moving. As long as the visit is quick I don't mind going back towards Magnolia," she whispered with hardly any emotion, but I saw her eyes flick over to Wendy and Shararu sleeping soundly.

Phaedra's confession from the other day swept through my mind. I wasn't ready to say goodbye, she had said. I smiled kindly at her and nodded once before going into the bathroom and closing the door.

An hour later, after crashing into the boy's room and making sure that they understood they were needed awake, our team was assembled in the eating area of the inn enjoying our breakfast. We had just begun discussing whether we should rent a carriage to take us back to Magnolia quicker, to which Natsu was vocally against, when the innkeeper came out laden with a tray of small pieces of cake.

"On the house!" the man, who had seemed almost depressed just the day before, said with a boisterous laugh. My heartbeat quickened as one of the pieces of the delicate chocolate cake decorated with a beautiful stipe of berry jelly on top was placed in front of me. One of my great loves in this world was sweets, and although I normally chose strawberry flavored treats, I was happy to indulge in anything presented to me.

"It looks delicious, sir. But are you sure we can't pay you?" I asked, resisting the temptation that was mounting by the second to drop my fork through the cake and sample its chocolatey goodness.

"No need! An announcement was just made that the Duke has cut back our taxes by nearly a half! I'll finally have enough money to hire some help around here! This is my celebration treat," the man said with another belly-shaking laugh. We all thanked the man for his kindness once more before he left. I swiftly and carefully sliced the tip of the cake off and popped it into my mouth. My tongue seemed to sing from the beautifully sweet chocolate and the pop of tartness from the berry jelly on top.

"I guess Laxus-san and the Raijinshuu were able to complete their job," Wendy said with admiration as she too sampled the delicious cake.

"What do you think they did to him?" Natsu asked with a wicked grin as he stuffed half of the cake into his mouth all at once. My vision turned red and I reached out and slammed my balled-up fist into his abs, knocking him and his chair onto the ground.

"This cake is too good to simply wolf it down," I said seriously as I glared down at Natsu, who was heaving for breath. "Eat it slowly in appreciation for the innkeeper's hard work," I ordered firmly. Natsu nodded mutely as he writhed on the ground. I expelled a frustrated snort through my nose before turning back to my cake and portioning another small sliver into my mouth.

"Would you like my cake, Erza?" Phaedra asked, nudging her own slice towards me.

She really is a good person, I thought as what sounded like angels began singing in the recesses of my mind.

"Are you sure?" I asked, holding back my hand from its desire to snatch the cake immediately.

"I don't like chocolate," Phaedra said quietly, pushing the cake closer to me. Gray and Lucy both began to cough comically at this declaration as my own brain tried to unsuccessfully process what she had just said. For some reason the words "don't like" and "chocolate" refused to exist in the same portion of my brain. It felt like my brain was going to self-implode as I tried to convince myself of what I actually heard.

"You don't like chocolate, Phaedra-san?" Wendy asked with only a mildly surprised tone, which did not seem to match the gravity of this travesty.

"I never had it growing up. The flavor coats my mouth and makes my tongue feel all sticky," Phaedra said quietly. My shock slowly melted as I saw that she was looking over at me. "You seem to enjoy it though, Erza. So I would be happy if you ate it for me."

"I will be happy to," I said, reaching out and pulling the piece of cake to me. I made a mental note to visit a sweets shop with Phaedra so I could introduce her to the beautiful world of desserts another time.

It was decided that we would travel by carriage back to Magnolia. Wendy cast her Troia spell over her and Natsu, but even with that spell, they were still both in agony all the way back. We took frequent breaks and for a few hours throughout the day Shararu and Happy took pity on their partners and flew them above the carriage, but they could only keep that up for so long so we urged the carriage driver to go as fast as he could to lessen our friends' sufferings.

As we traveled I noticed that Phaedra seemed much more relaxed than normal. She and Lucy had a long, upbeat discussion of the things that Lucy was learning from Capricorn about the power that he called "Star Dress".

Listening to Lucy describe with excitement that with this power she would actually be able to help fight the bad guys that we so often had to face, I felt happy that she had found this new way to contribute. Lucy was a kind-hearted girl who did not want to take advantage of her spirits in any way. I hoped that with this new power she would be able to feel more like an equal partner with her spirits and draw even closer to them.

Gray's POV

It was a little bit ridiculous how happy it had made me feel when Phaedra approached me after our first day in the carriage and asked me to charge her cooling lacrima for her. It took me a few tries to figure out how to do it, but eventually, I was able to imbue some of my ice magic into the slender lacrima. She actually thanked me when she took it back, although she refused to pay me less than 20,000 jewel. But I figured I would just count it as a win for now.

As the carriage pulled through the gates of Magnolia, Natsu instantly began crawling desperately across our laps in his frantic need for escape. I kicked him hard in the back, causing him to somersault through the door that Phaedra had just opened and fall flat on his face on solid ground. I chuckled to myself as Natsu laid on the ground awkwardly, dry heaving as the effects of his motion sickness slowly ebbed away.

"Come on, Wendy," Phaedra said in a soft, soothing voice. She reached out and gently pushed Wendy into a sitting position before helping her out of the carriage and sitting her down on a bench where she and Shararu gently fanned her with their hands/wings.

Lucy left the carriage next, squatting down and patting Natsu's back gently as she encouraged him to at least move his leg that was still half-inside the carriage. Erza and I came out next. After only a moment's hesitation, I turned towards Phaedra while Erza went to give the driver the money we had all previously contributed to pay for the ride.

Wendy had just started to come back to normal when I walked over and stood behind Phaedra, who was crouched in front of Wendy. It was really cool how obvious it was that Phaedra adored Wendy. Pretty much everyone in Fairy Tail had adopted Wendy as their little sister, but I had noticed that even though Phaedra seemed the most relaxed around Wendy, she didn't seem to underestimate Wendy or her magic powers. The night Wendy had gotten angry with her for hurting herself she had listened seriously to the young sorceress and seemed to acknowledge the wisdom in her words disregarding their age difference.

"Thank you, Phaedra-san. Thank you, Shararu," Wendy said, her voice still sounding slightly weak as the two continued to fan her gently.

"You don't need to use an honorific with me, Wendy," Phaedra said with a gentle smile. I swallowed quickly, trying to ignore the sudden wish that she would look at me that way too.

"But it would be impolite not to," Wendy said while furrowing her small brow. Phaedra shrugged and shook her head lightly.

"Where I am from we don't use honorifics, so it would actually make me feel more at ease if you didn't use it," Phaedra said gently. My ears pricked up a little bit at that as I once again wondered where Phaedra actually was from. Wendy glanced up, seeming to notice for the first time that I was standing there and she smiled.

"Are we ready to go, Gray-san?" she asked. Phaedra glanced over her shoulder at me and, although the gentleness vanished from her expression, I was glad that she at least wasn't glaring at me.

"Natsu should be fine as soon as Lucy gets his foot out of the carriage," I said with a smug grin as I watched Lucy and Happy both pulling on his foot. From what I could tell in his crash landing his sandal had somehow gotten wedged in the folds of the carriage flooring and they were struggling to get it loose. As we watched, Erza came over and with ease yanked his foot free, dangling him several inches off the ground by his foot, and asking if he was ready to travel yet. I grinned evilly as Natsu's motion sickness slowly began to fade and wished that he was always as pathetic as this.

Once we were all ready to go it was less than an hour to walk through Magnolia to get up the hill where the Fairy Tail guild was waiting for us. Erza spent most of the trip pointing out all of the different bakeries and candy stores throughout Magnolia to Phaedra, who seemed to be feigning polite interest. Natsu dragged me into several spats as we walked by spots where he insisted he had won a fight against me and I countered that his brain was too charbroiled to remember anything correctly. Most of these spats were met with an inhumanly strong fist to the back of my head, courtesy of Erza, and I began to wish that Phaedra would use her light barrier cage trick again. 

As we finally approached the open doors of our home the familiar sound of raucous drinking and games being played greeted us. I wondered briefly how Phaedra would react to the normally rowdy antics of our guild. Just before I was about to give her a warning though I heard something that made my entire body feel like I had just frozen my own blood by accident.

"Grrrraaaayyyyy-samaaaaaa!" Before I could turn and book it for all I was worth a familiar girl with flowing blue hair, dressed in a fur-collared blue dress with a daringly long slit that showed off her shapely legs came flying towards me and tackled me in a hug.

"Juvia has been waiting and waiting for you to get back! Juvia even went out on a job thinking that her Gray-sama would be back when she got home to welcome her, but you were still gone when Juvia returned!!!" My skin crawled crazily as Juvia pressed herself against me and rubbed her face against my chest, which for once was actually covered by a shirt.

"Get off me, Juvia!" I growled angrily, pushing against her death grip on my waist.

"But Juvia has a present for Gray-sama! Juvia has been waiting patiently to..." Life-giving air suddenly flooded my lungs as Juvia's grip on me slackened and I was able to successfully pry her off of me.

Wondering what had caused her to let go so easily I followed her gaze and felt my blood run cold as Juvia's eyes fixated on Phaedra. She had positioned herself half in front of Wendy and one of her lips was curled up in a silent look of disgust. Because I had spent nearly a month with her, I realized that she was probably disgusted at this blatant show of inappropriate affection in front of the innocent Wendy, but if you didn't know her it could possibly look like...

"Gray-sama... brought home... a lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo..." Panic coursed through me as Juvia's tongue seemed to be in overdrive trying to get past the first syllable of the phrase she normally associated with Lucy.

"Juvia, don't..." I said, gripping her shoulders tighter. But before I could finish, Juvia sprang up, transforming her legs into great jets of water as she propelled herself towards Phaedra.

"LOVE RIVAL!?!?!?!"

A/N This chapter and the next one is dedicated to @boredbraixen for her absolutely fantastic suggestion that this scene should be a thing. I am so excited for the next chapter! I hope you are looking forward to it XD