Mal drummed his fingers against the side of his leg for a moment before answering, trying to get the hammering of his heart under control. “I don’t expect a trip to change a damn thing, no. But you’re hardly my worst demon.” In stark contrast to the dusk, the temperature in his voice rose steadily as he added, “Just say you’re not going already.”
Griff rubbed his hands over his arms like he was trying not to shiver again, and leveled a look at Mal, one he held for a long moment as he asked, “If I go … is there any hope for us?”
There was a younger man’s petulance in Mal’s voice that he couldn’t quite disguise as he demanded in return, “Hope? What the hell does that mean? That we’re suddenly going to be friends again? That I’ll come over and make nice with your boyfriend and eat his shitty cooking like Alys does?” The questions burned with frustration, like they came from a caged animal glancing at things beyond his power to reach for, to give.
Peeling away from the beam he was leaning against, he knelt before the spot where Griff sat, fixing him in his unflinching gaze. “When are you going to accept that this is who I am? You always ask me things even though you know you won’t like the answers, and then no matter what I say, you judge me for it. I don’t know who it is you want me to be, and frankly, I don’t care anymore,” he snarled, letting that animal out of its cage for a moment, stretching its weary limbs. “When am I going to be enough for you just as I am? Ever? Is there any hope ofthat?”
Griff reached for him. Two callused fingers slipped beneath Mal’s chin, through the gold stubble growing there, and rose torest against his cheek as Mal’s eyes widened in surprise and he lapsed into dumbfounded silence.
Neither breathed for a moment, but Mal’s pulse raced beneath Griff’s fingers.
Neither moved.
Griff could surely smell the whiskey on his breath, they were so close. Cheap stuff, swill, though Mal could have afforded better. And beneath it—the lemon soap Vic had always scrubbed his clothes with.
Mal couldn’t look away. Not because he had any fear that Griff might strike, but because he could smell sweat and rosemary shampoo and the kohl that often lined Griff’s eyes, a distinct combination that set his face more firmly into his usual nettled expression; nothing good ever came of getting this close to him, though Mal could see why so many men did. Not that he was keeping track. Griff had the sort of classic, poetic beauty that belonged on a painted fresco dedicated to some god or another, and half the time he didn’t seem to know it. He applied himself to things so earnestly. He loved to learn; he was such a hopeless dork—
Mal stopped himself there, before he could have another stupid, useless thought.
“I’ll go,” Griff breathed at last, and the tightness in Mal’s chest eased just a little. “I’ll go,” he repeated, sounding more certain now, as Mal’s pulse continued to flutter wildly under his touch. “And I’ll tend the fire and clean your cuts and sleep at your back without judgment. And maybe you’ll realize somewhere along the way that you’ve always been enough—you just haven’t let me get close enough to show it, or to try to make anything right. Not since …”
Did Griff know his fingers were trembling against Mal’s skin? He couldn’t think what had possessed Griff to reach for him like this when nothing had really changed.
Soon enough, Griff lowered his shaking hand. And as he did, he said in a would-be casual tone, “Who knows? Out in the Mire, you might even find out whether I’d die for you.”
As Griff’s hand fell away, a spell was broken. A breath of relief at gaining some distance escaped Mal’s lips as he rose to his feet, steady and lithe as ever—as if that touch hadn’t made him weak at the knees.
It had also, inexplicably, made his tattoo burn. Or perhaps that was just the result of too much vicious scratching.
Griff, on the other hand, didn’t move. He seemed to have every intention of sitting on his chopping block a while longer before retrieving his shirt.
But behind him, something did shift away—a shadow, taller than Griff’s, unfurling itself to its full imposing height as it separated from the fabric of night. Mal blinked hard, but still the thing remained. Even Griff shivered at the chill radiating from it, though Mal was certain he couldn’t see it; he had only been able to see ghosts himself since he’d died for a few seconds in Thrallkeld. They never spoke to him, at least not in any language he could hear, but seeing them was punishment enough for having cheated death. Though usually they showed their faces, unlike this figure of solid darkness.
Maybe that explained why his tattoo was suddenly searing. After all, this thing had to be some servant of the Shadow Queen.
“It’s just a job,” Mal repeated brusquely to Griff, as if nothing at all were amiss, as he adjusted his cloak against the coming night, not remotely because the absence of Griff’s hand against his cheek had left him colder than before. “And nobody’s going to die. I’ll make sure of that.”
It was the least he could do.
Mal’s feet were itching to hit the road again; he’d had his fill of Griff’s questions for now, and this had been their longest conversation in years. Most of all, he wanted to get away from that strange shadow—though when he glanced at it again, it had already vanished, absorbed back into the night. Often, these things appeared just for a little shock; this one, he decided withmore conviction now, had appeared to speed him on his journey, or else to check out the man who had just agreed to join the expedition.
“When do we leave?” Griff asked, rubbing his hands along his arms as if to warm them. He drew in a breath, then said quickly, gruffly, almost like he didn’t know how, “I’ve missed you, you absolute shit.”
While a flash of discomfort crossed Mal’s face at such genuine emotion offered so casually, the crude nickname made the sentiment a little more palatable. A soft, appreciative snort issued from his nostrils as he set his feet on the path to home.
“Don’t get all sappy now, you sentimental fuck, or this trip really will be a hazard to everyone’s health,” Mal said with a half-roll of his eyes, feeling a little more like himself now that the shadow had gone and his tattoo wasn’t burning so much.
But something uncertain washed over his face just after, something that made him turn hastily away from Griff before the foreman could read whatever showed there as he wondered if he could trust what the other man had said: that he had missed him.
After everything.
The emotion in his voice had sounded real enough, as real as the darting shadow or the wood-splitting maul resting on the stump. But all the insults he had fired back at Mal over the years—those had been real too.
Mal had no more idea of what to do with that than he did the large shipment of dwarven crystal glasses for which he still hadn’t been paid, which were currently sitting packed in large wooden crates in a hidden glade in the Wyrmwood.
“Oh, and we leave in the morning. First light, so you’d better try to get some rest while you can,” he added briskly over his shoulder before breaking back toward the road, and the far more reliable warmth of a yet-distant fire.
Chapter SevenTrustfall
