Of course, Liam didn’t have Mal’s perpetual sneer curving his lip, and he was far kinder to Griff than Mal had been in many years. Somewhere along the way, Griff had started using Liam’s actual name when they tangled together in the dark, and then in the light. Liam stopped taking Griff’s money and emptied out a couple of drawers. Griff’s late-night visits turned into morning pancakes and tea and kisses that lingered and coming home to each other to write songs by the hearth or go out with their friends. They got a small red dog, called Badger because he was relentless in getting people’s attention. They shared their love of music and their histories. Behind the many locks on their front door—put there by Liam to keep out his father’s fists—they had been busy building a fine and cozy life.
Pulling Griff back to the present before he could begin to think of how he would make things up to Liam, Alys continued thoughtfully, “Mal hasn’t been here. He still doesn’t know anything about the attack. I … we, rather,” she amended, glancing at the restless Liam, “thought it best you decide for yourself what you want to tell him, once you could talk to us.”
“I don’t want him to know anything,” Griff said firmly. He didn’t even have to think about it. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Deserveis—” Alys started to argue, but after another look at Griff’s face, she quickly changed course. “Okay. I understand. But between you and me, there’s no denying that you think of him. Often. And he makes sure we hear your name plenty at home, even if perhaps not in ways you’d like. If you would just—”
“How did you know I was in trouble, anyway?” Griff interrupted, trying to get his pulse back under control before it could make him sick. “You, Liam, Rosemaris? Did Vic drag me all the way back here herself and come find you?”
“I dreamed it, actually,” Alys admitted, picking at a loose thread on the quilt that covered Griff’s legs. “I saw you in the Wood, in the dark, and you were drenched in blood. The shock woke me, and then I felt this pain here …” She touched a spot below her navel, just off to one side beneath the belt that held her sword and knives. “And I knew it was real. I found a horse, and Liam and I rode out to get you.”
“You justfounda horse?” Griff asked, the most trivial of questions somehow standing out as important.
Alys smiled sweetly. “Well. I suppose I stole it, if you want to get technical.”
There was the Alys he knew. Always taking what she wanted from the world without apology and damn the consequences, just like her mother. She was Wynnie and Rhun’s daughter by blood, though they had taken in Griff and Mal when their parents were killed, allowing the three children to grow up under one roof and become the best of friends.
Alys had made quite a name for herself as a mercenary in the past several years, one Griff couldn’t escape even from a distance. The Warg of the West, he’d heard her called in every tavern from here to Mayfair proper, because rumor had it that if you happened to be unlucky enough to get closer than the end of herblade, she’d tear you up with her teeth and use her little knives like claws until you were begging for her to end it quickly.
Her mother must be so proud.
But however feral Alys was, however cunning and manipulative and selfish he’d known her to be over the years, she had apparently been certain that something was wrong with someone she loved and been determined to save him at any cost.
Griff was quiet for a moment, trying to let this all sink in. Then he started to protest: “But to come all that way when we haven’t—”
“You’d have done the same for me,” Alys insisted over him. “That’s what friends do.”
“Of course I would,” he agreed without hesitation. “Whether we’re friends or not. Because you’re you.”
Things grew quiet then, neither of them entirely sure what to do with that after so many years of silence.
Before Griff could figure out what to say that might get them talking again, the bedroom door swung open.
Badger woke at once and wriggled out from under Liam’s arm, scampering to the foot of the bed to stare at the newcomer. He didn’t bark, but he also didn’t wag his tail in its usual frantic pinwheel of welcome.
“Oh, Griff. Finally,” Liam’s sleep-roughened voice said near his ear. “I missed you so much.” Having awoken at last with the dog’s sudden movement, Liam buried his face in Griff’s hair without even glancing toward the door, and Griff’s arm came up around his back at once, pulling him in tighter—stitches be damned.
But before they could really start getting reacquainted, Morwyn Kindrick-Mordecai commanded from the doorway, “Everybody out. Now.” Her onyx eyes were unreadable as they settled on Griff’s. “I need to speak with my son.”
Kicking off her boots as the others departed, Wynnie settled on the bed in the spot Alys had vacated beside the tousled-haired,green-eyed, sharp-jawed man who didn’t look a thing like her, though she had known him from birth and been his guardian since he was five.
“You could do a lot worse than Liam Blackthorn,” she said, rather than asking how he was feeling. “Good lad. Keeps his nose out of other people’s business, and that can’t be easy, job like his. Oh, and that raspberry crumble cake he gets for breakfast from Bluebell’s? It could win Mayfair’s spring baking showdown if that woman was bright enough to fill out the entry form.”
Griff stared at her as he cradled his water glass between his hands. How the fuck would Wynnie know Liam’s breakfast preferences? It wasn’t her business to know that. Bad things tended to happen to people Wynnie decided to know too much about.
And yet here she was, smiling at Griff with some semblance of motherly affection over the rim of his glass as he lifted it to wet his throat again.
It wasn’t her small, calculated smile either, the one he had seen most often over the years. If he had to guess, he would have said this one was real. It softened the lines of her face in such a way that for a moment he could even imagine how on an evening long ago, her future husband Rhun had mistaken her for a goddess of mercy come to ease his suffering after a troll attack laid him out at an inn most often frequented by bandits and smugglers.
Of course, the warmth of that smile was utterly ruined when Griff noticed a fleck of crimson on her neck.
“Why are you here?” he asked bluntly, impatient to get back to Liam and apologize for calling out that other name in his fevered state.
“To check on you, love.” She pushed some of her thick blond hair over her scarred shoulder, revealing the familiar hilts of the long knives strapped to her back. “Just like I’ve been doing every day since they brought you home.”
“And whose blood is that on your neck?” he asked around another sip of water, as casually as if he were inquiring about the weather. “Have you dropped by to see how they’re healing too?”
After all—Griff knew the story by heart at this point—Wynnie had approached Rhun on the night of the troll attack with the intention of slitting his throat and stealing his gold, not carrying him up to the heavens, but she’d seen something in him as she reached for him. And for a time, the quick-fingered, murderous thief had become what Rhun believed her to be. She’d never stopped sleeping with a knife under her pillow, but she had stopped thieving and killing and become a wife, mother, and neighbor who baked the best peach pies.
