Chapter 4 Quinn #2
Mav nodded to a few other patrons, murmured thanks to Wren, and returned his empty bowl without complaint. He seemed accustomed to being overlooked.
The street beyond the tavern’s door was narrow, its houses lopsided and roofed with moss. Children ran barefoot near the well. Vendors pushed handcarts with bruised apples and stale bread.
It was nothing extraordinary.
But it was achingly human.
And it had been centuries since I had stood in the midst of anything that felt so alive.
Mav led the way down the narrow lane, passing shuttered shopfronts and moss-slick walls until the smell reached me—pungent and inescapable.
It smelled worse than I expected. Hay and sweat and the sharp tang of waste, thick enough to taste if one breathed too deeply.
The sun had begun its slow climb, pale gold catching on the stable’s warped roof, but no light could disguise the grime.
Flies drifted lazily through the rafters, and the floor was a patchwork of trampled straw, hoofprints, and something too viscous to name.
Mav took up a shovel without a word and began mucking stalls with a practiced rhythm of the scrape of metal against packed earth and the squelch of his boots.
I stood just outside the paddock, skirts lifted from the ground in one hand.
I had not dressed for stables. Then again, I had not dressed for anything in particular.
I owned precisely one gown, and it had not been made with horse stalls in mind.
Still, I found myself watching him. The ease in his movements.
The way he neither balked at a stallion’s toss of the head nor faltered when a broom caught on a cracked board.
He simply carried on as though labor had been his truest companion.
A pale gray stallion with a faint limp approached, his dark eyes full of inquisition. He stretched his neck and nosed the hem of my gown.
“Oh,” I murmured, caught between amusement and dismay. “Please do not eat that.”
Mav looked up briefly, brushing hair from his brow. “That’s Clove. He likes pretty things.”
“I have nothing for him,” I said, unsure whether to retreat or offer my hand.
“You’re standing right there,” Mav replied, already turning back to his work.
Heat touched my cheeks.
Clove nosed higher, warm breath spilling across my wrist. I stilled, then hesitantly let my fingers glide through his coarse mane.
He leaned into the touch, a soft huff escaping him.
And I laughed. Not a polite exhale, but a true laugh—bright, brief, and foreign on my tongue.
It startled me as much as it startled Clove, who drew back, ears flicking.
Mav paused mid-motion, straightening to look at me as though I had parted the clouds. The sound lingered in my chest, ripples across once still water. Clove resumed nosing my sleeve.
“You all right?” Mav asked, his voice lower now, stripped of teasing.
I smoothed a hand down the gelding’s neck, smiling. “I think I had forgotten what it felt like.”
“To laugh?”
“To mean it.”
He studied me for a moment, then returned to his work. “Guess we’ll see what other miracles you’ve got in you, princess.”
I lingered by Clove until the last stall was done. When Mav set the shovel aside, he gave the horse an affectionate pat, then glanced at me. “Come on. Time to earn the next meal.”
The path to the trees was narrow, half-swallowed by vines and old stone. At the edge of the wood, he wrenched an axe from its resting place in a gnarled trunk. I discovered an uneven stump, slick with moss, but perched upon it nonetheless, skirts gathered close.
He swung with clean, practiced force. The blade bit deep into the wood, splitting it with a satisfying crack.
He moved as if unaware of my attention—or else unwilling to acknowledge it.
Each strike was deliberate, the rhythm steady, the motion of a man who had done this a thousand times.
His shirt clung to the breadth of his shoulders, already damp, the fabric tracing each line of muscle as though it could not help itself.
The faint sheen of sweat along his neck caught the light, and I followed a single drop as it slid over his collarbone, vanishing beneath the open throat of his tunic.
I ought to have averted my gaze.
Yet doing so proved, quite suddenly, impossible.
As did breathing.
His chestnut hair fell forward when he leaned to lift another log, shadowing eyes that caught flecks of green in the forest light, gold near the fire.
Hazel, I thought distantly, framed by lashes too long for someone so maddening.
His jaw was unshaven, shadowed in a way that looked effortlessly deliberate.
His mouth always held some half-smile, half-warning that promised trouble.
He was carved for endurance, not ornament. The kind of strength shaped by hard work, training, and as I had recently discovered, the occasional tavern brawl. I found myself wondering what it might be like to touch him—to feel the heat of that labor-warmed skin beneath my fingertips.
He was distractingly beautiful.
Another log cracked beneath his swing. He looked up.
And caught me staring.
The smirk came slowly, curling at the edges of his mouth. “Something I can help you with?”
“I—” Blinking rapidly, I grasped for composure. “I am simply making sure you avoid splitting your foot in half.”
He stepped around the woodpile, axe resting on his shoulder. “You were watching me.”
The denial caught in my throat.
“I was merely—” The excuse withered on my tongue. What lie could I offer? I had been watching him with rapt attention and increasing interest.
“Saints,” he murmured, voice low now, “don’t look at me like that or I’ll assume your thoughts about me are bordering on impure.”
Loath as I was to admit it, my thoughts had long since crossed that border.
Heat climbed the back of my neck as I scoffed.
“In your imagination only.” Shifting on the stump, I smoothed my skirts to have somewhere to place my eyes and hands.
I had seen many things in my life, yet somehow a man chopping wood on the edge of a forgotten town felt more perilous than any monster.
I managed a soft clearing of my throat. “The tether demands my presence here.”
“Is the tether blushing too,” he asked, head tilted, “or is that just you?”
“I do not blush.”
His grin deepened. “Right.”
The clearing felt warmer than the sun could account for. I nodded toward the bundle of wood he was tying together. “We should deliver those.”
“You giving me orders now?” he asked with a raised brow.
“Not that I’m opposed to a beautiful woman telling me what to do.
” He closed the distance between us with several lazy steps.
“In fact, I am solidly in favor of it,” he said, his voice low and full of suggestion I could not allow myself to consider.
“No. I am supposed to be helping you, though this hardly counts as a quest.”
His expression flickered, something unguarded flashed in his eyes, before charm smoothed it away. “Of course,” he said. “The tethered helper.”
I rose, brushing bark from my palms. The magic could not be to blame for the quickening of my pulse.
It was him.
And Saints help me, I was not sure that was better.
Magic had rules. He did not appear to have any. And I would not—could not—forget the difference.