When he gaped at her, the pantheri shrugged. “Iris told me you were her best customer. I decided not to inform her that hellkins rarely get sick. You’re welcome.”
“I wonder if she’d take some of those back,” Vaskel said. “They’ve started to take up too much space in my room.”
Sass winked at him. “I’ll bet she’ll do anything you ask her to do if you kiss her like you did last night.”
Thrain pounded his hand on the bar as he roared with laughter.
“Let’s go easy on Vask,” Lira said.
“That’s right.” Cali nudged her friend. “You’re about to be a honeymooner. I guess you’re the next to be teased.”
Lira slid off her stool, leaving her ale untouched and heading for the kitchen. “I won’t be a honeymooner until after our second wedding.”
She disappeared through the swinging doors, and the rest of the group exchanged confused glances.
“Did she say second wedding?” Cali asked.
Sass hopped off her stool. “She hasn’t even had the first.”
Vaskel led the way as they followed Lira into the kitchen. “What’s this about a second wedding? I’m assuming you haven’t found a second groom.”
Crumpet and Bramble were clambering from their nests and stretching as Lira poured milk and spices into a pot for chai and chuckled. “Hardly. My brother wants me to have a second wedding in Lananore so the rest of my family can be there. You’re all invited, of course.”
Just then the kitchen doors flew open and a pile of burgundy fabric waddled into the room. A pile of fabric with a gnome face protruding from the top.
“No talk about a second wedding until we make it through the first one,” Tin said from beneath the fabric. “Have you seen the snow out there? Fenni says a blizzard is heading toward us.”
“A blizzard?” Lira almost fumbled the bottle of milk. “The day before my wedding?”
Sass squinted at the window, where the snow was indeed cascading from the sky. “Do you remember how you said you wouldn’t mind getting married in front of the tavern fireplace with just us?”
“It still sounds perfect,” Lira said as she stirred the warming chai.
Vaskel took in the cozy kitchen and his friends gathered in it, and he drank in the aroma of cinnamon and cardamom. It was moments like these he loved even more than all the epic quests.
Like warm chai on a wintery day, joy comes in sips, not gulps.
Epilogue
Cali tuggedat the claret-colored vest that topped a matching pair of pants, grateful that she’d been spared the torture of wearing a dress for Lira’s wedding. Although she hadn’t been spared the task of being a bridal attendant, which required that she leave her bow and quiver of arrows behind.
Her tail twitched uneasily. After being knocked unconscious and dumped in a dungeon cell, she would have preferred to go through the rest of her life well-armed. She shifted on the tavern barstool and tried to suppress thoughts of her time with Marina and how foolish she’d been. No matter how many times Vaskel assured her that many had fallen for Marina’s ploys before, embarrassment and shame still made her whiskers pinch.
At least her foolishness hadn’t resulted in anyone from Wayside getting hurt or the wedding being postponed. Cali had never been so happy to be at The Tusk & Tail in her life. Or at a wedding, for that matter.
It helped that the place had been buffed and polished to within an inch of its life, thanks to Sass. The long wooden tables were draped in off-white linen, and runners of greenery wounddown the centers of them with flowers bursting forth in colorful clusters interspersed with chunky candles sheathed in glass. Even the wrought-iron chandeliers dangling from the rafters boasted swags of greens.
The fire was crackling in the hearth, but stacks of logs burned instead of chunks of peat, giving the great room a pleasant smell—wood smoke mixed with greenery and prodigious amounts of lemon cleaner.
Pip fussed with the wedding cake at a round table near the front door, placing a sprig of greenery around the five-tier confection covered in fluffy white icing before stepping back to admire his work.
“Looks good enough to eat,” Cali called out.
Pip jumped and spun around, pressing a small hand to his chest. “Bless the stars! You’re so quiet, I forgot you were there.”
Cali grinned at him. As grateful as she was for being saved from the dungeon, she was more grateful that none of the villagers knew that she’d considered running off with a hellkin crew. Her friends that did know, had not held it against her.
She thought about what Vaskel had said to her. “If I wasn’t your friend through thick and thin, I wouldn’t be much of a friend.”
