Chapter 8 Quinn #2
The table settled again. Dishes passed hand to hand. Thistle recounted a story about a potion she once brewed that accidentally made a farmer’s cow sing for three days. At the end of the meal, I offered to help with the dishes, and Thistle waved me off.
“You may rinse the goblets if it’ll make you feel useful. But I charmed the stew pot to clean itself. Grew tired of scrubbing it by hand after so many years.”
Warmth seeped into my bones. For the first time in an age, I felt included. Not observed. Not requisitioned. Simply welcome. I could not recall the last table that was an invitation rather than a performance.
When the plates were cleared and the fire burned low, Thistle caught Mav by the forearm.
“Did you still need some elixir for the evening?” she whispered.
Whether the elixir was for pain or sleep, I knew not. I supposed it was not my place to inquire.
Mav patted her hand. “Not tonight, thank you.”
Thistle’s brows lowered, but she said nothing further on the topic.
She waved a weathered hand down the narrow hallway, beaded bracelets jingling together with the motion.
“You know where the guest room is. Won’t you show the actual guest where to go?
There’s a washroom directly across the hall from the guest room.
We’ll leave at first light, Branrir is only over in Pinehelm, so it shouldn’t take more than half a day’s ride. ”
Mav muttered something under his breath and walked ahead.
I lingered only long enough to scratch behind Vesper’s ears. He pretended not to enjoy it, but his rattling purr betrayed him.
The guest room was little more than a broom closet with ambition.
Two narrow beds had been pressed into the space with little regard for grace or symmetry, their patchwork quilts nearly touching at the corners.
A single shelf jutted from the wall above the headboards.
The air smelled of thyme, dust, and wood warmed by a hundred summers.
“I shall—” I pointed in the direction of the washroom across the hall. “Return shortly.”
“Right. Go ahead,” Mav nodded, digging through his pack.
The corridor was quiet, save for the patter of my footsteps.
I closed the washroom door behind me, leaning briefly against it while I caught my breath.
My reflection in the cloudy mirror looked worn—hair disheveled, eyes ringed with exhaustion.
I peeled away my one and only gown and pulled Mav’s navy tunic over my head.
The fabric hung loose, smelling faintly of smoke, salt, and something quintessentially him.
I ran a hand through my hair, attempting order where there was none, then drew a breath to steel myself and stepped back into the hall.
The latch clicked softly as I reentered the room—only to stop short.
Mav stood with his back half-turned, bare to the waist, tugging a clean shirt from his pack. Candlelight caught across his shoulders, gilding muscle and scar alike.
“Oh—Saints—my apologies,” I stammered, spinning half around. “I should have knocked.”
He chuckled, unbothered. “It’s nothing you haven’t already seen, princess.”
“Not a princess,” I muttered under my breath.
That earned another low laugh, one that faltered when he finally looked up. His gaze caught on me, on the tunic draping too loosely over my frame, the sleeves rolled clumsily past my wrists. For a long, suspended heartbeat, neither of us moved. The air seemed to thicken, charged and uncertain.
“I hope you do not mind,” I managed, smoothing the hem, painfully aware of where it ended at my mid thigh. “I had nothing else, and you had been kind enough to lend it to me the other night…”
“Not at all.” His voice cracked, seeming strained. He cleared his throat and tried again, steadier this time. “I don’t mind.”
“Thank you,” I smiled at him. I could not help but notice that wearing his clothing seemed to affect him, though I could not define the extent of it.
He dropped onto one of the beds, hands resting behind his head. The small candle on the shelf cast a wan amber light over his face, gentling his brow from furrowed to thoughtful.
I perched on the edge of my own bed, uncertain how to commence the pretense of sleep. In time, I slipped beneath the quilt. Silence stretched between us.
I could feel his attention on me.
“Do you always stare when you think no one will notice?”
He did not bother to feign innocence. “Hard not to,” he murmured. “When someone looks as though they stepped out of a dream. But, I imagine you’re used to that.”
“I assure you, I am not.”
A long pause.
Then, softly, he added, “You know, if I believed in fate, I’d say it has a twisted sense of humor.”
“What persuades you so?”
A smirk in the half-light. “Because out of every poor soul you could be tethered to…you ended up with me.”
I turned toward him fully, folding my hands beneath my cheek. “Perhaps fate knows something we do not.”
He gave a small laugh that faded too quickly.
His eyes caught mine, and there was a flicker of something I could not name in the depths of that look.
Was it possible that fate, in all its cruel arithmetic, had balanced its scales by leading me to him?
For a time, the only sound was the wind moving beyond the shutters.
Then his voice came again, quieter. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“This tether—” he hesitated, eyes tracing the now invisible connection between us, “—you can’t hear what I’m thinking, can you?”
The question startled me. “No,” I said. “It does not share thoughts, only emotions.”
He exhaled, half-relieved, half-uncertain. “But when I feel something…you—”
“I sense it, yes,” I finished for him. “The stronger the emotion, the more easily it crosses the bond. The same is true in the inverse. You can sense my emotions as well.”
His lips pulled into a frown. “Why do you think it works that way?”
“I am not certain,” I admitted. “But if the tether binds souls, then emotion would be the most natural current to flow between them. Words belong to the mind. Feelings belong to the soul.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “I didn’t realize you were so…sad.”
The words pierced more deeply than expected. I managed a small smile that did not quite hold. “I have known tremendous sorrow,” I confessed, “but I seek every opportunity to find joy. Both are part of living. Even for one who has not lived in a very long time.”
His gaze lingered on me, gentle and uncertain, as though he wanted to respond but could not find words to suit.
The candle burned lower, its final flame shrinking into a golden curl before vanishing with a whisper.
I lay still beneath the quilt, eyes open to a ceiling I could no longer see.
My thoughts drifted—not through centuries, for once, but through now: this narrow room, this fragile hush, this man who looked at me as if I were a person rather than a possession.
I thought of Vesper’s words. “Life is an accumulation of small, meaningful things.”
I had not known what he meant then. Not fully.
But lying here, Mav’s steadiness wrapped around my solitude.
What would it be like to be wanted only for who I was?
Neither for the magic in my blood, nor for the curse I bore.
Wanted for the girl who picked wildflowers and named constellations she imagined no one else could see.
For the woman who still dared hope for a glimmer of happiness after decades of loneliness.
The tether pulsed softly, more promise than chain.
My eyes closed.
And still, I could see him.
The subtle lines at the corners of his eyes. The quiet ache hidden in his laugh. The way his hands moved when he was not thinking—always prepared to catch, to carry, to defend. I was not ready to name it, whatever this was between us, yet the weight of centuries lessened in his presence.
Perhaps sleep was not always a prison.
Not if someone waited on the other side.