“Then I’m at your service,” Griff said, a telltale warmth creeping up the back of his neck that made him grateful for the cover of darkness. Conditions were still too damp for a fire, which also meant he had to use the faint starlight for guidance as he unwrapped Mal’s soggy bandages.
“One of Renaud’s men knocked over a lantern in the tent where they were holding me,” Mal finally continued in a low voice as his tender hands were exposed to the air, being turned this way and that for Griff’s inspection. “I wasn’t in any shape to move on my own, but Tansy—Ella’s girlfriend—pulled me out of there and got my heart beating again. She’s some kind of witch. Usually avoids people because she can’t stand the noise of cities and the things we build over her rivers. But she healed me for months in her cottage, in a swamp not so different from this one, and talked me through suddenly being able to see ghosts.” He sighed, his eyes roaming warily over Griff’s face before he went on. “She said dying for a minute is what changed me.”
Griff took another sip from the goblet, passing it back toward Mal and studying the unwrapped wounds along the other man’s palms as closely as he could in the dimness, taking both Mal’s hands in his again. “These aren’t as bad as they first looked. You should let them get some air tonight, and they might be even better by morning. Probably no scars, either.”
With his healer’s judgment delivered, no need to dig out salve or other bandages, Griff knew he could let go of Mal’s hands then. But he didn’t. He was very much aware that he was still holding on to them both, aware of every place they touched, the heat of fingers and palms, and just as aware that Mal wasn’t pulling them back.
“Mal,” he said, his voice steady despite a sudden dampness in his eyes. “What I did to you back then … the things I said … I hurt you so much worse than anything you faced in Thrallkeld. I was a coward, running off like that. Just because of feelings I was too scared to even admit. I’m sure it doesn’t matter now, but—I’m so fucking sorry.”
Mal’s hands were heavy in his, and Griff gladly took their weight. “Renaud may have tried to cut out my heart,” he murmured, “but someone else beat him to it.” He exhaled slowly, his eyes silver in the starlight as they roamed over Griff’s face. “Plenty of others have tried to claim my heart, but they never understood that what doesn’t stay never really belonged to them.”
“I almost came for you,” Griff admitted, though he could feel his throat tightening. “So many times. When I found out you’d gone to Thrallkeld, I wrote you every day. Every damn day. Letter after letter, begging to reconcile, telling you how I really felt. When you didn’t answer, I almost went down there anyway. Apparently, Lord Valerian was burning all those letters. They never even got sent. Rosemaris told me, much later, when she found out. Her father thought it better that I stay in Stormveil.”
It was, Griff knew, a poor excuse for not just leaving anyway. He hadn’t been the elves’ prisoner. He had just beenscared—scared of what Mal would think of him, scared Mal wouldn’t want him back, scared he couldn’t be what Mal needed. He still was. He didn’t have treasure or castles or plans for a life far grander than the one he had already built, all the things that seemed to put an extra spark in Mal’s eyes.
But tonight, with the wine giving him courage, he was determined to try. To stay.
Chapter SeventeenUncharted Territory
Mal’s eyes widened at the admission, then narrowed, and quickly slid away from Griff’s. There was a certain bile rising in his throat, one he hated more than the taste of rats. Emotion, a well of it threatening to escape him all at once. But there were still things he wasn’t ready to say, and he needed a familiar place to shelter. “It’s fine. I mean, I’m fine now. I didn’t need any stupid letters, anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
The words stuck in his throat, much the way a bit of extra moisture stuck hatefully in the corners of his eyes—but if Griff noticed, he didn’t call attention to it.
“Fucking elves,” Mal added with a bit of extra venom. He glanced at the nearly empty goblet. They had already demolished a good portion of what was in the bottle. “Sitting in a tower singing sad songs and having tea parties seems like a waste of several centuries to me. You ought to spend less time around folk like that.”
“Good thing I’m down here to stay, then, isn’t it?” Griff was trying to tease, to lighten the air between them again.
But Mal was utterly serious as he curled the fingers of his left hand around Griff’s and murmured, “It is. Good. You shouldstay. With me.” He raised his other hand, an explorer mapping the edges of some new land as he used it to push a lock of Griff’s unruly hair out of his eyes, his thumb then trailing over the curve of Griff’s cheek.
The tingling in his fingertips had to be some side effect of the elves’ wine. Mal really had to give it to them—that was one thing they had gotten right, even if they apparently tore apart families and friends by burning mail that didn’t belong to them.
Mal tightened his fingers around Griff’s, gently tugging the other man toward him.
Choosing what he wanted, if not what he deserved. He didn’t deserve Griff after what he had done, but he was a thief and he had a taste for the finer things that wouldn’t ever be satisfied with less. He was Mister Dangerous, and from now on, as long as he drew breath, all that meant for Griff was that he would be safe in Mal’s company.
At the tug, Griff tipped forward ungracefully, as if his whole world had just been knocked off its axis, catching himself with a hand at the top of Mal’s thigh and bringing them nose to nose. He seemed unable to look anywhere but into Mal’s eyes. Right where Mal wanted him.
Maybe Griff knew something about staying after all.
Mal gazed back, finding Griff framed in a halo of light at the center of his focus. If there were any shadows or green-eyed ghosts lingering beyond the edges of this golden glow, beyond this face that was somehow new to him, he couldn’t see them right now. Didn’t need any more reminders of what was at stake when it was gently breathing over his lips.
“What a lightweight,” he observed, his voice offhand and distracted as his eyes continued their survey of Griff’s face in this fresh light, “tipping over before the toasting is done.”
“What the fuck are we doing?” Griff whispered. With his free hand, he brushed his thumb across Mal’s lower lip, asking adifferent question altogether. It was a request and a prayer and too tenuous yet to be given breath.
That thumb moving across Mal’s lower lip was all the encouragement he needed to cross the border into a rich expanse of uncharted territory. Silent questions were answered in the way Mal closed that last sliver of distance between them, breath warm with an aroma of sweet wine and sultry whiskey. “We’re doing whatever the fuck we want,” he boasted quietly, stealing a brush with Griff’s lips, as if such thievery were inherent to the path they were stepping down together. “That’s how it’s done in my world. So stay.”
Running his tingling fingers up into the soft and welcoming texture of Griff’s hair more freely now, he let his hands offer a hint of guiding pressure, an invitation for a deeper, longer kiss.
“A pack of wargs couldn’t keep me away,” Griff assured him in the narrow space between their lips just before they met again. He ran the heat of his palm down Mal’s thigh, like he needed the feel of fabric and solid flesh there to let him know this was real and not some daydream conjured by the elf-wine.
The kiss took Mal’s breath away, their lips and tongues sharing honey and fire and a hint of bottled summer sunshine; in a world of spirits and liars and things that were never quite what they seemed, Griff’s kiss was the realest thing Mal had ever known.
And the taste was just right. The shape of the thigh beneath his hand and the stubbled cheek scratching against his own seemed to have been pulled right from his own quiet, unvoiced desires, an answer he badly needed.
Hands that had once traded blows with this very body now roamed over it with reverence, Griff’s fingers delving gently into the gold tangles of Mal’s hair, then lowering to frame the sides of Mal’s face like he wanted to remember how he looked in this moment forever.
“I think I like it here, doing whatever-the-fuck with you,” Griff murmured against his mouth before kissing him harder still. He grazed his teeth along the curve of Mal’s ear as he added, “I mean it. I’m staying.”
