Griff surprised even himself with the grin that flickered over his face.
The next crash of thunder sounded a little farther off than the last. As the sound softened, the ravens in the trees chattered to each other as if discussing the new arrivals.
“I wonder if Papa planned to take these coins home to Wynnie when he left the Mire,” Alys murmured as she stashed the ring in her pocket, perhaps reconsidering the shadow’s identity after all. “They look really old,” she added, plucking a loose silver from the mud and rubbing it clean with her shirt to study. “We could always melt them down for the metal. I doubt they’re in circulation anymore.”
“Definitely not,” Griff agreed, blinking rain from his eyes to take a better look at her on his left, then at Mal on his right. “Anyway, I think we ought to open this thing together. Unless you’d rather do it yourself, Mal, as group leader …?”
“This is a strange place,” Alys murmured, no answer at all, her voice small and full of foreboding. “Maybe Papa wanted us to have this treasure instead of the one we’re looking for. Maybe he wants us to take this and turn around here, because he knows something we don’t …”
A raven overhead cawed in answer.
Mal hardly seemed to be surveying the glittering coins or listening to Alys’s uncertainty. Instead, he was still holding Griff’s gaze. “You know, I seem to recall you not that long ago promising you wouldn’t do anything as stupid as going off and dying on us, and I intend to hold you to it.”
“Have you considered why it matters so much to you?” Griff asked softly, his eyes searching Mal’s. He had made it clear how he felt. It was up to Mal to figure out the same.
But the temptation of the chest seemed to prove too great for Mal at last, finally claiming his focus. Nudging at the splintered wood to test its strength, he answered Griff’s first question instead of his last: “The three of us should open it together, I think.”
The ravens seemed to approve. As Griff and his companions each put a hand on the chest, the birds began leaping back and forth from branch to branch, their chatter a near-constant hum that was building to something more, craning and elongating their necks as they peered down from the heights.
Mal scowled upward.
“You think they’re going to let us take anything we find out of here without a fight?” Alys whispered.
“Screw them. We can carry a hell of a lot more, and we’re not walking away empty-handed, not after we’ve come this far,” Mal vowed as, together, they popped open the old iron latches.
The wooden lid practically came apart in Griff’s hands, and the force of the impact rocked them all back onto their heels in the muddy water.
Inside was a large and decorated brass goblet, a couple of blue glass bottles, and a glittering heap of the same star-adorned silver coins mixed with mud. There was a wide hole in the side of the chest, which explained how dirt had gotten in and some of the coins had slid into the surrounding earth, even if it explained nothing about the shadow’s true purpose in guiding them here.
The ravens grew even more enthusiastic at the sight that had just been revealed. A few began to dive into a patch of slimy moss on the opposite side of the chest, perhaps having spotted something to eat, tearing up the turf with their beaks and claws.
“These coins are of an old elven design,” Griff said above the din, running his fingers over a few of them. “And those bottles—that’s elven wine, the good stuff. Rhun would have tried it when they treated him in Stormveil after the war.”
“This stuff is probably cursed,” Mal said darkly, picking up a handful of coins and, despite his words, looking pleased at the sound they made as they slipped through his fingers and clinked back into the pile. “If anyone wanted us to find it, that’s why. But joke’s on them. I’m already cursed anyway. Doomed to sufferuntil I die. But this still makes us rich at the end of the day,” he concluded with cheerful spite, abandoning the coins in favor of rubbing his shirtsleeve where it covered his tattoo.
Griff was no expert, but he didn’t think tattoos were supposed to trouble a person that often. It hadn’t looked infected when he’d gotten a glimpse, merely irritated from the frequent scratching, but it was still strange. He also didn’t think they should be taking any of this stuff if Mal really suspected it was cursed—just like he wasn’t convinced that the man himself had been cursed—but before they argued about any of that, he wanted to get out of the rain and away from the birds. Find shelter, as Mal had suggested.
Eyes dancing in the low light as she showered herself in a handful of coins, some of her good humor clearly restored, Alys asked, “What are you going to buy first, Mal?”
“A bed fit for a king, the biggest bed this side of the Teeth,” Mal answered like he’d thought about this before. “And for you, Alys, the most expensive paints,” he said fondly. His gaze then shifted to Griff, and he leaned a little closer. “And for you—what would you like? Another lute? Or how about a horse?” A grin tugged at his mouth as he added, “One that you can name.”
Up close, Griff realized that Mal had mud splattered on his face from not wearing his hood. He reached slowly toward a spot above the other man’s eyebrow to wipe some away before it could fall right into his eye, saying warmly as he did so, “Sure, Mal. I’d love a horse.”
Mal’s grin widened in answer, wild and full of teeth, as it always did when he was excited. But the look softened into something more like curiosity or wonder as he took in the length of Griff’s sodden hair trailing down over his shoulder.
Mal wasn’t the only one who hadn’t bothered with his hood this afternoon.
The thief reached out and ran his fingers through that river of darkness, following the path of a curl to its end. “Your hair’s gotten longer,” he observed on a breath that gusted over Griff’s lips. “Pretty. I like it like this.”
Griff’s heart was lodged so firmly in his throat that he found he couldn’t speak around it, and all he could do was nod dumbly as he practically tasted Mal. And if his eyes fluttered as Mal stroked those fingers experimentally through his hair, well, some things couldn’t be helped.
Gray eyes widening and narrowing as he continued his scrutiny of Griff’s face up close, Mal went on in the same sort of low exhale, “For all everyone says it, even me, you don’t actually look much like the portraits of your father. You look just like … your own. Like Griff.”
“Is that a good thing?” Griff managed to ask, sharing a little of his breath in return.
Mal gave a nod, slight but firm. He leaned closer still, a fire in his eyes Griff had never seen there before, one that had nothing to do with riches or giant beds or adventures. Well, maybe a giant bed could be involved.
“Mal,” Alys said urgently, interrupting as she reached for the bird-topped dagger that had been Rhun’s. “I—I think we should get going …”
