There was no need for blankets after that, with flushed skin kept warm by the tangle of their limbs.
Brushing a few coins off the bed, Griff leaned in to kiss the scar over Mal’s heart. It gave a strong kick in answer.
“You’re so good at … everything,” Mal murmured as he lazily trailed his fingers down Griff’s stomach until they came to rest between his legs, cupping him with a gentle familiarity. “I love you. And I love this too.”
“You’re going to get me going again,” Griff warned with an ambitious smile of his own. But after all they had demanded of their bodies over the past few days, it was apparently a dare for later.
“Welcome home, Griff,” Mal whispered as his eyelids grew heavy.
And he was pretty sure he heard Griff answer loud and sure as he drifted off, “Been there for a while now. No more bad dreams.”
The weeks of a long, golden summer tumbled one into another like frogs hopping along the banks of the creek, becoming a sweltering blur of days spent working or tadpole catching with Alys’schildren and firefly-bright nights with Griff where they made plenty of their own heat, the kind a window flung fully open couldn’t even touch.
True to his word, Mal continued with his other businesses as usual, though now sans any late nights at the tea shop—only the occasional overlong call at the widow’s place. Griff was on leave from his construction job yet again as he rested his leg and shoulder and picked at his surviving lute, sometimes doing odd repairs around the cottage that Wynnie and Vic had neglected. The lute wasn’t even that annoying. At least, not in Griff’s hands. Sometimes Mal even sang along despite his own dubious ability to carry a tune, forgetting himself and remembering how to have fun. He was still more talented than those damned Yule carolers who dared climb the cottage porch each winter anyway.
As Alys started restamping their silver coins to look like the crescent-marked half-dollars that circulated in Mayfair, Mal set aside some of his hard-earned pay from each job. He told Griff that the money would be going toward the new, bigger bed he wanted (they were, in fairness, putting the old one through its paces)—that is, until he came home early one day, holding the reins of a handsome black horse for Griff.
He still reached for the flask on occasion, only to find his inner pocket full of little notes from Griff instead, which he now collected like the treasures they were. Griff left them everywhere for him to find, since his world had gone so quiet with the loss of his hearing. He’d spot them slipped under a plate of egg-in-a-hole at breakfast; in the mirror; under his pillow; curled into a boot. Some were silly drawings of things that had happened recently, like the mule kissing Mal on the mouth, while others were words of encouragement and love, or even stories of things that had happened in their long years apart.
They still had plenty of catching up to do.
And they did. Over breakfast in bed on the weekends, when they would crack open his dwarvish book of philosophy and pick a page to discuss for hours as they nibbled their bacon and toast and sipped the flavorful tea that Griff made to help with Mal’s occasional cravings for something stronger.
It was helpful enough that he stayed sober, and so did Griff along with him.
Griff held him through plenty of those cravings, just like Mal held him through his nightmares, though they seemed far less frequent by the time summer was nearing its end.
By then, Griff was even helping Mal with his wolf business, such as it was, howling outside the homes of various marks to convince them that they needed Mal’s hunting services in order to keep their livestock safe. Griff seemed to take particular pleasure in spooking Leo Raintree this way to pay him back for years of childhood transgressions. While perhaps his howls weren’t very realistic, the moonlight threading through his hair—grown longer and lovelier as summer had passed—combined with the kohl around his luminous eyes, made him look like some kind of mysterious, otherworldly creature at times as he’d turn, breathless, to look at Mal before darting off into the cover of the trees.
Mal didn’t mind that he had to work harder than ever in the absence of his paychecks from the tea shop. What mattered was that they had made it back alive from the Mire, all of them. All his treasures and loves were right where he wanted them, safe at home to admire.
And then one day, when the air turned crisp again, Mal came home to smoke rising from the cottage chimney and the familiar rhythmic sound of a splitting maul echoing from the backyard. From the kitchen window, a glass of water in hand, he watched as Griff swung that maul, as wood fell off the stump, never havingimagined he would see this particular figure performing this chore in this very spot again outside of his wildest dreams.
Just like that, he was the wealthiest man this side of the Teeth.
He drank the water in a long, slow gulp, watching for quite some time—long enough that Mags, who was playing nearby, came over and started chatting at him. Long enough for her to grow frustrated when she realized he wasn’t listening at all and demand to be picked up.
From the circle of his arms, she watched with him for a while, sometimes looking at Griff doing yard work and sometimes simply studying her uncle’s oddly relaxed face as if she had never seen him smile quite so gently.
But then Vic threw a towel at Griff and told him to wash up at the creek, and Mags poked Mal in the cheek extra hard just to see what would happen. At the same time, the two new sort-of-dogs Mal had brought home from a dodgy connection earlier that week—long-nosed, pointy-eared, whip-thin beasts with sleek coats and nubby wings that allowed their feet to skim above the ground in pursuit of prey, no ordinary rabbit hounds as advertised—decided to chase each other through the house, knocking over swords and boots and a coatrack, and it was back to business as usual.
Chapter Thirty-FourGood Castles
When the leaves on the trees began to turn and the village ran with color like the time Mags upended one of Alys’s paint palettes onto the worn floorboards, Griff and Mal stole away from the cottage and headed to the Wyrmwood for a week.
It was strange for Griff to consider how much had happened since they had come home. Alys and her children had moved into a small house in Linden not far from Liam’s, bought with some of their silvers. Dove was in and out of town, keeping a close eye on the tea shop and Wills from Griff’s construction crew—that traitor—among other things, like who was running a counterfeiting scam in Mayfair. And who had murdered three travelers and stolen their mule somewhere east of Mayfair, leaving only their disoriented cook to tell the tale about a couple of masked madmen in red and black scarves.
Griff himself was finally back at work, back to swinging his maul and putting up new homes and businesses around Mayfair with his crew (even Wills, still alive but subdued after his encounter with Wynnie, from whom he now kept a wary distance despite his efforts to make it seem like nothing had changed. Mal thoughtit was safest this way). The numbness in his shoulder hadn’t gone away, which meant the damage there was likely permanent. But at least he didn’t have random pains from his stab wound anymore.
Business as usual.
What wasn’t usual was the scuffle Mal had gotten into with Liam, right in the middle of the main thoroughfare through Linden; Mal claimed Liam started it, and Liam didn’t exactly deny it, or say anything about it at all to Griff. Mal had ended up with yet another broken nose, while Liam had taken a dagger to the leg and was now as hobbled as Griff had been after an arrow to the leg. Alys and Dove had both witnessed the whole ordeal and nearly gotten into a scrap themselves, which was all anyone in town was talking about as Griff and Mal packed their bags and headed on their getaway to hunt coneys in the Wood like old times.
The swelling in Mal’s nose had finally returned to normal, although there was a touch of darkness to one eye where Liam had landed a blow, and some cuts on his face still healing that Griff would put salve on when they decided to camp later that night.
“Wynnie should be back by the time we get home,” Mal panted to Griff as he staggered through shafts of sunlight beaming through the trees on a crisp but golden afternoon, the bulk of their old dog Whiskey slung across his shoulders.
Nothing was wrong with the dog, technically, but his joints were stiff and creaky and he liked to be carried like a princess sometimes.
