“I did the best I could with what I had,” an older woman relayed wearily. Vic. Where was Wynnie? “Those bandits took everything useful.”
“Can you bring him back from the dead?” There was Alys again, sounding much clearer and nearer now, dancing on the edge of hysteria.
The panic in her voice touched some reluctant part of Griff. If he could have felt his fingers, if he could have reached for her, he would have done so for the first time in the achingly long years since their friendship abruptly ended with him fleeing their shared home for good. He would have rubbed her shoulder and pulled her against him like a best friend should, done his best to shield her from the hurt no matter what hurting had happened between them. He wished he could see her face again.
“Nobody’s dead yet, so I wish you’d stop fucking saying that,” Liam snapped, his voice rough with tears.
Griff could hear him coming undone too, and wanted to sing him one of their songs, something they’d written together on a late giddy night by the hearth shortly after he’d moved into the narrow little house with several locks on the front door. But from wherever he was, he could only listen to Liam’s muffled sobs. He would miss Liam’s face too, the sandy-blond hair that fell into eyes of light gray flecked with a blue so deep it was almost violet, the proud grin he wore whenever he solved any kind of puzzle, the way he was too humble to realize he was usually the smartest person in the room (except, maybe, when it came to Griff).
He would miss walking beside Vic in the Wood, making birdcalls to delight her, watching her point out flowers and herbs that caught her eye, marveling at the way one who had been raised in such tumult and violence as she had now took such genuine pleasure in simple things, regarding meadows and brooks and flocks of starlings with a childlike wonder.
He would even miss Wynnie. Much as he’d run from her when he was older, they were still connected, bound by years and memory and love for the same people. Chosen family, like his and Mal’s and Alys’s parents had been to each other—all Wardens but Wynnie, and the best of friends.
But if everyone around him was losing control, there wasn’t any hope left for him.
“Griff, my dearest friend … come back to us. You’re still needed here.” The soft, smooth voice he’d heard earlier was now whispering louder inside his mind, and he was ashamed he hadn’t been able to place it right away as her features flashed vividly to mind: ruby lips, soft brown skin, and leaf-shaped ears peeking through hair as white as snowdrop petals. It was Princess Rosemaris: only royal daughter of the elves’ last stronghold and the person who had saved his life more than once.
Her words somehow dampened the sounds of the others, letting him better focus on finding his way out of this strange bright place and back to himself.
Yet it wasn’t her voice but a scent that tugged him finally, unexpectedly, back into his body—that of lavender and lemon balm tea, a brew he’d sipped so many times when ill that he could already taste the floral mixture coating his tongue. And there was something else too, beneath the fragrant herbs: a certain musk mixed with leather, crushed grass, muddy boots, and the gut punch of cheap whiskey.
He’d know that combination anywhere, dead or alive.
“Mal?” Griff asked thickly, not yet opening his eyes in case this was some cruel trick of after-death.
“He’s not here,” Alys said, sounding less tearful and more exhausted now than when she’d been begging for someone to practice necromancy on his still-warm body.
It made sense, even to his drowsy mind, that he would smell Mal if she was near. Recently, he knew from the town gossip, she had moved back into Wynnie’s cottage with her three children after Alys banished their father back to his hometown once she was through with him. And these days she often borrowed Mal’s more practical clothes. As if Griff needed any more remindersthat she had taken Mal’s side in that stupid fight long ago, signaling the end of their friendship too.
Still, his earlier urge to embrace her hadn’t fully gone away, and at last he opened his eyes to find he was in bed, propped up on pillows and thoroughly bandaged below the waist in the small one-story row house he shared with Liam Blackthorn, Linden’s busiest locksmith and his boyfriend going on four years now.
The light streaming through the curtains had the hazy quality of late afternoon.
It painted Alys’s ivory complexion and her lily-pale hair in shades of muted gold as her summer-blue eyes gazed into his, her head resting half on his pillow, so close their breathing was in sync. “Welcome back. How do you feel?” she asked, touching a few fingers to the side of his face like they hadn’t just gone years without speaking. Like he’d been there for birthdays and Yules and to offer congratulations on the birth of her newest daughter—what would it have been, a year ago? Maybe two? And condolences (or perhaps more congratulations) on sending the children’s father packing when she realized she wanted something else from life.
“I feel … numb, mostly, below the bandages,” he answered finally, his voice gravelly with disuse. “Maybe that’s a mercy.” He could feel the contours of Liam’s body pressed against his back but didn’t turn away from Alys to check on him yet, fully captivated by the strangeness of seeing her here. “How long have I been out? Where’s Vic?”
More than anything—more than lavender-lemon tea, a hug from Liam, or extra bandages—he needed to apologize to her for being a drunken fool when he was supposed to be the one on watch keeping them safe.
“Vic’s home resting—she’s not hurt, just worried. You’ve been out for just over a week,” Alys murmured, pushing a few ringletsof raven hair back from his slightly damp brow; his curls were getting long enough to brush the tops of his shoulders, longer than they had been the last time they were this close. “According to the calendar, anyway. Feels more like a year. Don’t move—Rosemaris said you’re not supposed to put any strain on your stitches yet, and you won’t be able to feel them with the numbing balm on there. I’ll get you some water.”
“Rosemaris?” Griff echoed roughly, reaching thoughtlessly to put a hand on Alys’s forearm before she could pick up the glass on the bedside table. “Rose is here? She’s actuallyhere?”
For elven royalty to leave the sanctuary of Stormveil, it must have been a matter of life and death indeed.
“She was,” Alys said, going still under his touch, staring at his hand on her arm as if something as unexpected as a baby dragon had landed there. Not that there were any dragons anymore. “But she left as soon as she knew you were out of the woods—to hear her tell it, she isn’t exactly allowed to leave home.”
That was an understatement. He wasn’t sure she had ever left, or at least not in the time that he had known her. Few elves ever did.
When he was just nineteen, after fighting with Mal, he had gone to live with Rosemaris and the dwindling population of elves in their hidden sanctuary above the clouds. Stormveil. There were certain perks to having elven royalty for distant relatives—though having them in his bloodline hadn’t granted him their incredibly long life, heightened senses, or subtle magics, they had treated him as one of their own, educating him on everything from the arts of healing and speaking their ancient language to why their people had retreated from the world with what remained of their light.
On his other side, Liam began to stir. Griff withdrew his hand from Alys and turned to look at his boyfriend.
The locksmith was curled up with his back to Griff, one arm wrapped snugly around their little red hound dog, Badger, whowas still snoring away. Griff rubbed his work-worn fingertips down Liam’s back just the way he liked, trying to gentle his rest.
“He hasn’t left your side, not once,” Alys confided quietly as Liam’s eyelids fluttered. “Rosemaris had to give him something to help him sleep a while … even though he’s not the one you’ve been asking for in any of your fever dreams.”
Him asking for Mal wouldn’t have surprised Liam, Griff thought with a guilty twist in his numbed gut. Mal was the reason they had started seeing each other casually in the first place. Liam looked just enough like his old friend that Griff could fuck him from behind in the dark while paying him a pretty price to call him by another name. AlwaysRight there, MalandHarder, Mal, I need to feel you. Always Mal.
