“I shouldn’t have ignored you, though,” Vade said. “I should have shown you the city.”
A strand of hair blew into her eye, and before she could move it, Vade tucked it behind her ear. His fingertips lingered on her skin and his eyes flitted to her lips.
The memory of him kissing her in the halls of the Pony came rushing back—the way his lips felt on hers, his hard body pressed against her chest, him moaning when she slid her tongue into his mouth.
Orelia found herself drifting closer. Vade leaned down like he was going to kiss her, cupping the side of her face with his hand. His rough calluses brushing her cheek sent a shiver down her body. When her lips parted at the sensational touch, he yanked his hand back like she’d burned him.
Vade put some distance between them and cleared his throat. “I’m going to look for dinner.” In a few giant strides, he was gone, the axe forgotten.
She reached up and touched her cheek where his hand had been. He could be abrasive and thorny, but there was a layer to him she had begun to peel back where something softer resided, even if he tried to keep it hidden.
As Orelia gathered her clothes that had finished drying, she wondered just how deep those layers went.
The shadows stretched long, and the orange sun dipped below the trees as Orelia readied her bedroll. She’d watched Vade start a fire enough times to try it on her own. She used the tang of her dagger, and it took twenty strikes on the flint before she got a spark.
When the kindling she’d gathered began smoking, Orelia blew on the bits of dried moss until a small flame started. “Ha! I did it!” She looked around the forest, but Vade was still out hunting. Her shoulders slumped. She wanted him to see she was capable of doing something other than screwing up.
He returned a short while later with a doe slung across his shoulders and blood dripping down his bare front, tunic and vest wrapped around his hips. The fire made the sweat on his face and neck glisten, and his chest heaved with obvious exertion from carrying the animal. He looked delectable in his dark leathers, his body sun-kissed and bronzed.
“Good job on the fire,” he said with genuine praise.
Her chest swelled. Orelia avoided watching him prepare the animal, and soon enough he had pieces of venison skewered and roasting over a spit.
She laid on her stomach with her face in her hands, watching Bute. He was moving better, but his hind leg still couldn’t bend allthe way. He needed more space to roam than the glass jar, but if she let him out, odds are she’d lose him in the grass.
Vade settled onto his bedroll opposite her, and to Orelia’s surprise, he didn’t sharpen his knives while waiting for dinner to cook. “I didn’t think you were serious about bringing that frog along with us,” he said.
Bute croaked, and Orelia chuckled. “His leg is looking a little better, so it shouldn’t be too long before he heals.”
Vade rested an elbow on his knee and began dragging the tip of a stick through the dirt. “You really can’t help but heal broken things, can you?” The question wasn’t asked in jest, but in earnest.
Her heels tapped her backside as she swung her legs up and down, watching Bute bury himself under a section of moss. “It’s what I was meant to do.”
“You think you were meant to live for others? What about what you want?”
The question took her by surprise. “I want to help people.”
“But what doyouwant? For your own life? If you couldn’t heal people, what would you do?”
Her legs stopped swinging as she thought about his question. She’d always thought the usefulness of her existence came from her ability, but she’d never actually thought about what she'd do if she couldn’t heal. Orelia sat up and curled her legs underneath her. “Well, I’d want a job that makes me happy. I’d love to have a garden so I could sell what I grow at market. That’s what I was doing with the spell when I—” Shepaused.
There was a glimmer of playfulness in the fae’s eyes. “When you hit me with it?”
“Sorry about that. Again . . .”
He chuckled and continued dragging his stick through the dirt.
Orelia smoothed the hem of her tunic, pondering what else she wanted. “I don’t know if selling food at market would make me enough money, but I’d enjoy it. And I’d like to find someone to spend my life with and start a family. Someone who wouldn’t mind a quiet life in Minro with me.”
Vade’s response was something between a grunt and a snort, a new sound of his that she didn’t know how to interpret.
The orange sky melted into a deep blue as the two of them watched the crackling fire, enjoying the cool breeze and quiet calm of the forest. Vade’s silence was different tonight. He wasn’t doing anything other than watching the fire or playing with the stick. Neither happy nor sad. Just . . .content.
“You’re nice like this, you know,” she said.
He frowned, which only made her grin.
“I just mean you’re not yelling at me or busying yourself with your knives. You’re just sitting here casually. Like we’re friends.”
