Chapter 9 Mav
MAV
Cinnamon and woodsmoke tickled my throat as I settled into a seat at the kitchen table.
Thistle had whipped together something that tasted suspiciously like magic and memory—soft, warm bread brushed with honeyed herbs, stewed pears that practically melted on my tongue, and a tea that somehow managed to be both calming and mildly hallucinogenic.
I didn’t ask what was in it. Some questions were better left unanswered.
Quinn sat across from me at the table, her silver-threaded gown traded for one of Thistle’s homespun wraps. She looked too human in the morning, too soft and real. The sort of person who shouldn’t be carrying a curse older than some kingdoms.
She reached for the honey spoon, and I decided—maybe unreasonably—it was the perfect time to ruin her morning.
I leaned back in my chair, tilting it far enough to find that sweet spot between balance and stupidity. “You talk in your sleep, you know.”
Quinn froze. One perfect drop of honey clung to the edge of the spoon. “I assure you, I do not.”
Her voice was clipped, sounding both offended and embarrassed.
I shrugged, entirely too pleased with myself. “Well…you did.”
Thistle, hunched near the hearth with a mug too large for her hands, chuckled into the rim. Vesper, perched in judgment on the windowsill, let out what could only be described as a condescending snort.
Quinn narrowed her eyes. “And what, pray tell, did I say?”
If she’d been aiming for indifference, she’d spectacularly failed.
I let the pause drag. Watched her fidget with the crust of her bread. Forcing my tone into something intentionally casual, I said, “My name.”
Quinn’s face spoke before she did. Color burst across her cheeks like a match struck beneath her skin, tinting them a deep red. She turned her face away, but could not hide the shocked parting of her lips.
“With your name on my tongue, I clearly was having a nightmare,” she retorted.
I tried, unsuccessfully, not to laugh. “Sure you were.”
Worth it. Entirely worth it.
“Do not flatter yourself,” she added, stabbing a piece of pear with her fork as if it had insulted her dignity instead of me.
“I’m merely reporting the facts,” I crooned, stretching my legs enough to brush hers beneath the table. Purely accidental, of course.
Quinn pulled her legs as far away from me as the small space allowed.
Thistle sighed and stood, rummaging through a drawer for something she clearly didn’t need. “You two are exhausting,” she mumbled. “You spar like this and call it flirting?”
“I have done no such thing,” Quinn declared.
“I’m not flirting,” I said at the exact same time.
Quinn and I looked at each other, a silent truce exchanged with a glance. Thistle muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Idiots.”
A chipped teacup hid my smirk as I took a long drink. Saints, she was adorable when flustered. Utterly undone by a single name murmured in sleep. I’d liked hearing it. Even if she’d only meant it inside the walls of some awful nightmare. Even if she’d woken with no memory of saying it.
My name.
From her lips.
In sleep.
As if she’d been thinking of me even then.
A feeling I didn’t deserve or dare to name curled low in my chest at the thought. Busying my hands, I picked up another piece of bread, spread it with Thistle’s herbed butter, and hoped the movement masked the slight tremble there.
Quinn composed herself as if preparing for a royal address. “It is rare for me to dream,” she confessed.
“Maybe it was the moonfruit cordial,” I offered, biting into the bread.
Her eyes caught mine, something unreadable behind them. “Perhaps.”
But I wasn’t convinced.
Thistle returned to the table, flopping down with a grunt that defied her stature. “If either of you starts serenading the other, I am sending Vesper in with a bucket of water.”
“I’m inclined to allow it,” Vesper said from his perch, not bothering to open his eyes.
Quinn shook her head and reached for the teapot. She was still pink-cheeked and avoiding my gaze. And I was grinning into my bread like a man who had just been told he had two weeks left to live and had decided to enjoy every second of it anyway.
Whatever the dream had been, it was hers.
But my name in her mouth?
That was mine.
The morning air promised warmth too soon, spring masquerading as something gentler.
Thistle led the horses out from her half-collapsed stable, reins looped loosely in one hand.
I waited near the front door, already pushing the limit of the tether, a half-chewed sprig of mint clamped between my teeth.
Thistle insisted I chew it “for nerves and nausea.” She hadn’t clarified which ailment she thought I suffered from.
Quinn was still inside—either gathering the last of her things or avoiding me—likely both.
She’d barely looked at me since breakfast. While a sensible man might’ve felt guilty for teasing her, my lack of sensibility allowed me to be shameless.
The way she’d said my name played over and over, the chorus of a new song I was desperate to learn the rest of the lyrics to.
Beside me, Thistle tightened the buckles on a saddle, only half paying attention, the movement so familiar it required none of her focus.
“She’s something, that one,” Thistle said with the casualness of discussing the weather instead of a cursed, centuries-old woman.
I snorted. “She’s a complication.”
“Since when did you avoid those?”
“Since they started coming with spells and magical tethers.”
Thistle chuckled. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s awkward,” I countered, tugging the girth more forcefully than necessary.
“It’s possible to be both.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”
“No,” Thistle said, untwisting a tangled stirrup leather. “But you didn’t say it was a good thing, either.”
The truth scratched, brambles against my skin. I huffed a breath, stepping back from the horse. Quinn had overcome my defenses with record speed. “She’s…” I started, then stopped, brushing dust from my palms. “She’s not what I expected.”
“I think you like her, Mav.”
My glance skittered to the open window. Vesper was yammering about star-blood and “the indignities of low shelving.” Quinn’s laughter followed, unguarded and bright. I closed my eyes for half a second and let the sound settle in my chest.
“She is in there, talking to a cat that thinks he used to be a star,” I said, nodding toward the cottage.
Thistle waved a dismissive hand. “Vesper only lies about petty things. He really was a star once. Probably still is in his own mind.”
“Right,” I muttered. “And I’m the king of all lands.”
“No,” Thistle said, passing me to adjust the bridle. “But you used to be someone with purpose. When you were a knight—”
“Don’t,” I warned. Her words shoved into the soft spots between my ribs.
“I’m not here to rehash a past I know you’d rather forget, but seeing you this time reminds me of the Mav I used to know,” she said softly.
“You didn’t need moonbeam elixir to sleep through the night.
You’ve actually had an appetite. And there’s a little light back in those miserable eyes of yours. ”
“None of that has anything to do with her.” The words spilled out in a jumbled rush.
Thistle gave me a slow, knowing look. “That’s the most convincing lie I’ve heard all day.”
“I’m not—” I broke off, rubbing the back of my neck. “We are magically indentured to each other. I don’t think I’m supposed to like her.”
“You know, Mav,” Thistle began, as she pressed a small pouch of travel rations into my palm. “Just because you never ask for what you want, doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.”
No response sprang to mind, leaving my mouth hanging open without words to fill it.
She brushed a stray leaf from my arm. “Don’t make a mess of things.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Exactly,” she deadpanned. “That’s what worries me.”
Thistle moved to finish preparations for her horse while I stood steeping in her words. My fingers curled tight around the rations pouch, the faint scent of dried apples and rosemary rising through the fabric. “It doesn’t matter. Two weeks, and she’ll be gone.”
“And you’ll be back to brooding in a chair with a bottle of regret,” Thistle said over her shoulder. “You don’t have much time to figure out if this could be real.”
As if on cue, Quinn stepped through the door of the cottage and into the yard. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, fair eyes squinting against the brightness as if she had not quite gotten used to the world again.
Truth wrapped its spindly fingers around my throat.
As much as it irked me to admit it, Thistle had been right about two things.
The first: I did like Quinn, an absurd amount for someone I’d only met four days ago.
The second: I was already making a mess of things.
The horses drank lazily from the stream, tails flicking at flies.
We rode for an hour or two in companionable silence, then paused to water the horses.
Quinn stood a few paces off, borrowed boots pressed into the moss-damp earth, arms crossed tight as though holding herself together by force alone.
Her cloak stirred faintly with the wind, shadows feathering her profile.
She was frowning again—not at me, I hoped.
I stepped closer, careful not to crowd her. “You all right?”
She didn’t look at me. “I am awake for fourteen days. No more, no less.”
I waited.
“During such time, I am meant to aid someone,” she said finally. Her tone wasn’t angry, but there was an edge of disappointment to it. “And you…” She turned then, meeting my eyes squarely. “You do not seem to have a quest.”
Ah.
There it was.
I shifted, pretending to check the cinch on my saddlebag. “So I’m your worst prospect?”
“You are no prospect at all,” she snapped, shoulders lowering an inch. “I do not mean to be ungrateful. It is only…every time I wake, I have so little time. I need to matter to someone. To fix something.”
There was nothing sharp in her voice now.
Only exhaustion. Frustration without a place to land.
I bit my lip, fighting the instinct to bristle.
She wasn’t wrong. I didn’t have a quest, not in the heroic sense.
I wasn’t hunting a beast, or claiming a crown, or righting any great wrongs.
Most days, survival was the goal: keep my boots dry, my ribs unbroken, and my head above water.
But hearing the truth of it reflected back to me made it all sound rather pathetic.
I looked at her and found something I hadn’t expected. Hope. No—that was wrong. It wasn’t hope at all. It was the complete absence of it. As if she’d stopped expecting to find meaning here, and I was another wasted hour on a ticking clock.
Maybe I was.
But I didn’t want to be.
“Starting now,” I said, letting my voice carry. “My chosen quest is finding a way to break your spell.”
She turned toward me slowly, one perfect brow lifting in dry, unamused skepticism.
“Happy?” I added with a smile.
Quinn blinked once. “Ecstatic.”
She didn’t smile, but there was a softening around her eyes. A loosening in her shoulders, as though she’d finally exhaled.
I counted it as a triumph.
Small, maybe. But a triumph all the same.
The rest of the ride stretched in quiet.
Quinn rode a little ahead of me. She hadn’t said much since our “quest” agreement, but the tether between us had gone warm and steady, as though it approved.
Saints knew I wasn’t trying to earn its approval.
But I’d take silence over the gutted look she’d given me by the stream.
Thistle hummed an old tune I didn’t recognize.
Vesper perched on the saddle behind her like a monarch presiding over his domain.
By the time the first signpost appeared on the edge of Pinehelm, I was more than ready to stretch my legs.
The trees thinned, giving way to low hills and clustered rooftops.
Shop signs carved from driftwood swung lazily in the breeze.
At the center of town, a spire leaned west, tired of holding itself upright.
Carts rattled over cobblestones worn smooth by years of passage, and the distant clang of a blacksmith’s hammer echoed through the hills.
Thistle halted her horse in front of an unassuming red brick building.
The placard overhead read simply:
“Branrir’s: Knowledge, Mostly Useful”
I eyed the dust-smeared windows. “This is it?”
Thistle nodded, swinging down from her horse with a grunt. “This is it.”
Quinn dismounted beside me, brushing a curl from her face as her eyes swept the shop front.
I nodded toward the door. “Ready to go curse-hunting?”
She let out a soft breath. “I suppose I do not have a choice.”
“I suppose not,” I said, inclining my head.
Her lips curved—too much to be a frown, too little to be a smile. Thistle reached the door first, giving the worn wood a firm shove. The hinges groaned like an old man rising from his chair.
I braced myself for the smell of dust and age but found something else entirely waiting on the other side. The scents of ink and lemon balm wafted through the air, as if someone had spilled tea over half a library.
The door swung shut behind us with a slow, deliberate moan.