Only when his hand relaxed around her did Nettle realize she was clutching her arms around his pointer finger.
Silver looked down the passage, and at first she thought he was rattled by the second shot, before a grin crept up around his tusks. He caught her eye, and if Nettle could, she would have clutched her heart with both her hands to keep her glow from flaring again.
“Light the way, firebug.”
3
“There was a shortcut this whole time?” Silver asked in disbelief, when the first passage came to an end, and the pair emerged into a small circular room, barely ten feet across.
The stacked stones led upwards for a few hundred feet to no ceiling, but a peek at the stars. Not that one could truly admire them from down here.
“It’s not much of a shortcut. You have to get almost to the top of the mountain just to have to climb down,” Nettle replied with minimal eye rolling. “And you have to be sure you have enough rope to make it back. You see that one dangling, about halfway up?”
He squinted up at the dark ledge for a long moment, and Nettle eyed the better view it gave her of the outline of his neck, his jaw.
“Are we at the bottom of a well?”
“We are. This gauntlet leads to an ancient spring at the bottom of the Chasm. My court has long believed it has restorative powers.”
Silver raised an eyebrow to that. “I didn’t realize there were any Fey still living in the Chasm.”
“I wouldn’t show you where a doorway was, if that’s what you’re asking,” she scoffed. The entrances, little pockets of forever spring in the woods that were more visible during the winter, but one still needed Fey magic to open the doors. “We don’t let in outsiders.”
Silver rolled his eyes and didn’t respond to her defensiveness, rather taking in their surroundings.
“We’ll camp here for tonight,” he decided after a moment, his attention dropping to the dry bottom of the well. He walked around the space, gathering up the few branches that had fallen in.
While he built a fire, Nettle flew partway up the well, stopping when she found a familiar wild raspberry bush growing out between some of the stacked stones. The truly strange places some plants flourished in never failed to amuse her. How could it be finding any of the things it needed in this odd place?
She plucked an armful of the raspberries and brought them back to the campfire. Silver caught her eye, a brow quirked.
Nettle held out a berry to him. He took it from her, delicately pinching it between two fingers.Then he held her gaze just as carefully as he brought it to his mouth, licking some of the juice off the tip of his thumb.
For her own sake, Nettle looked away quickly.
In the last few hours of walking and chatting, she’d gotten a little more comfortable with her bounty hunter’s coarse manners. She still wasn’t charmed by them, of course. And if she’d happened to have laughed at even one of his jokes, well, she would just keep that to herself. No one back home needed to know.
She settled on the largest and flattest of a pile of stones rather than sit directly on the dirt. Every few moments, she couldn’t help but steal another glimpse at him.
Nettle noted the tears in the sleeves of his rough shirt, the myriad belts and buckles hanging off his hips. He seemed to keep everything he needed on his person. She watched as he undid the buckle that ran over one shoulder and across his chest, removing his cloak. He rolled it up into a makeshift pillow and made himself comfortable.
Sprawled out on the ground across the fire from her, the orc picked up one of the little birds he’d roasted over the fireand started taking careful bites around its delicate bones. He dragged the arrow he’d used to skewer the bird against his teeth, his clever tongue savoring the last scraps of its meat.
“You’re not getting any of this,” he told her when he caught her watching him. “Those kitten eyes won’t work on me.”
“Oh, we’ve graduated to small animals now? Did you run out of insects you can name?” she teased. She couldn’t help but giggle at the thought that the gruff bounty hunter might be warming to her.
Silver scoffed and rolled his eyes, but tucked in the corner of his mouth, Nettle spied a hint of a smile.
Nettle turned away quickly. She was spending much too much time just staring at him. She needed to focus on anything else, or he’d start growing on her.
Her attention moved to the berry between her thighs. Not that one, the other one. The raspberry she’d foraged for dinner.
With her back to him, she separated each juicy kernel from the rest, each one its own perfectly sized bite. She spit the seeds out and tossed them towards the campfire, though few reached it.
The campfire crackled as they fell into a comfortable silence. Nettle yawned, closing her eyes and stretching. She rolled her neck, arching her spine with her palms flat on her lower back. She needed a dip in a hot spring, or at least a hot mug of water back at the inn when this was all over. But a couple of nights roughing it and sleeping on the ground would be worth it to get her treasure back.
She linked her fingers together behind her head, stretching her shoulders out. At first she thought she heard a little sound like her joints popping, but it continued.
