Chapter 8
Savla
It was late afternoon, the kind where the light hit the rooftops just right—warm, gold, and too pretty for the kind of work I was doing.
Delicate, tiny work that had me so focused I couldn’t even glance at the perfect sunset.
Ribbon was sprawled near my feet, belly-up, looking entirely unhelpful as usual.
I was halfway through tempering the metal on a small carving—a cluster of tiny flowers forged from scrap to be used as a circlet for a dainty female head that bore absolutely no resemblance to anyone I knew in real life *cough, cough*—when I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Light ones. Careful, but definitely not an orc’s.
The part of my chest that had been having a gnawing, achy sensation in it eased at once. The instinctive piece of my brain, that I currently refused to acknowledge, knew exactly who it was. The door creaked open, and before I could even look up, a familiar voice said softly, “Oh. Wow.”
I sighed. “This isn’t a public gallery.”
Hanna stood there, blinking as though she’d stepped through the wrong door and found herself in another world.
Which, to be fair, she kind of had. Her hair was tied up messily, and her dress was dusted with something that was could’ve been either flour or some powdered ingredient for a potion.
She looked more witchy at the moment. Curious, slightly chaotic and entirely too alive for my quiet space. Too beautiful, too.
“It’s a beautiful space,” she said, eyes sweeping over everything. “The last time I came, it was so dark that I... Well, I figured I’d been imagining it, to be honest.” She shrugged her beautiful, curved shoulders that I would never want to run my tusks along.
“I was just trying to find some air. The coven kitchens smell like ten different kinds of mushroom stew,” she continued, and I made a face.
“Air’s free,” I said, not looking up from my work. Or, more correctly, pretending I hadn’t been looking up at her. “Just don’t touch anything sharp.” The warning was more a tease than anything else, but she wouldn’t be able to tell from my tone.
She ignored my warning completely, stepping closely to the nearest table.
Her gaze flicked over the rows of metal miniatures that I’d been working on.
I’d started experimenting with metal as an accompaniment for some of my more intricate pieces, but I was finding that while it was soothing for accessories and add-ons, it didn’t give me the same pleasant frame of mind that wood did.
Still, I’d created quite a few pieces as my experiments had carried on. Warriors frozen mid-battle, creatures from old Hellplane myths and even a carved wooden scene of the clan gathering hall with tiny metal trinkets and embellishments.
“You made these?” she asked, running her delicate fingers over the pieces. My own fingers clenched in response, but I looked away quickly.
“Mm.”
“They’re incredible,” she said softly. “Detailed, but… gentle.”
I glanced up at that, thrown by the word. “Gentle?” I asked, my voice disbelieving. My art had been called many different things, and not all of them good, but gentle was new.
She smiled a little. “Most warriors I’ve met don’t carve tiny flowers or give toads a safe place to stay.”
At the mention of toads, Ribbon chose that exact moment to hop toward his newest nemesis—a half-finished metal sculpture of a very large frog. He gave it one suspicious croak, then tried to bite it—as usual.
Hanna gasped, reaching for him immediately. “Ribbon, no!”
She bent down and shooed him gently, laughing as he blinked up at her, utterly unrepentant. “You could hurt yourself biting that, silly thing.”
I leaned back, crossing my arms. “You two are going to get along disgustingly well, aren’t you?”
She looked up at me, grinning, and it was like a gut punch to my chest.
There’s the smile. The real one. The one that’s been missing. The one that I’ve only seen a few times when we’re alone.
“He just has great taste. He knows good company when he sees it,” she said with a teasing tone.
“The roof’s not for socializing,” I muttered, uncomfortable with the roiling emotions inside me. The relief and the joy. I turned back to my tools.
“Then it’s lucky I’m not socializing. I’m just… existing nearby,” she quipped.
I shot her a look over my shoulder. “That’s a very specific form of trespassing.”
She smirked at me. “Would you like me to leave?”
The problem was—and it always was when it came to her—that I should’ve said yes. The workshop was my space. The place I came to escape everyone else and I should keep it as a Hanna-free space for my own sanity. But instead, I hesitated.
Ribbon had already hopped closer to her, settling by her boots as if Hanna belonged here. As if she’d been here the whole time. A part of our tiny family of two. And Hanna, without asking, had filled the air with something softer, more welcome, than the echoing silence that usually filled it.
“No,” I told her, finally, trying to keep my tone even. “Just… don’t break anything.”
Her grin widened. “Deal.”
She wandered around the workshop the way a ray of sunshine might. Quiet, curious and touching nothing but noticing everything. I tried to get back to work, but it was useless. Every movement from her tugged my attention in her direction.
The sound of her bracelets clinking, the little hum that she made when she found a piece that she liked or the way that she kept glancing toward Ribbon as if he might start a conversation. Everything she did was settling something inside of me. A restlessness that I’d never been able to control.
For someone who claimed she wasn’t here to socialize, she had a remarkable way of undoing all the peace I thought I needed and replacing it with her presence.
I should have been annoyed. I wanted to be annoyed.
To tell her to get the hell out of my workshop and leave me alone.
But even I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Not if she was looking for a little break from everything else.
I pretended to go back to what I was doing, but the entire time I just stared at her out of the corner of my eye, hoping that she would stay longer. And to both my chagrin and delight, she did.
The first time she wandered up to the roof had been an accident. But every time after that had been because she wanted to be here. Near me. And I didn’t want to savor and appreciate it, but I did.
In fact, it became a pattern. Every few afternoons, just when the light started to turn that beautiful honey color over Grebath’s rooftops, the door would creak open and Hanna would appear. Always with something in her hands.
Sometimes it was tea, sometimes it was a basket of herbs or half-finished potion ingredients that just needed the sunset light. Once she’d had a pie that she’s sworn was an ‘experiment’. And it had exploded. Twice.
And then of course there was Ribbon. He obviously loved her. The traitor.
He’d croak and hop straight over to her the moment she arrived, abandoning me completely.
She’d crouch down, murmur nonsense words to him, and then feed him dried flies that I was certain she stored in her pockets.
I ignored the pang of affection at the gesture, instead turning it into annoyance.
Meanwhile, I’d keep working—or at least pretend to.
Today was no different. She was sitting cross-legged on a stool near the workbench, her elbows on her knees, watching me sketch the outline for a new sculpture I was planning. I could feel her gaze as though it was sunlight through glass.
“What?” I muttered without looking up.
“Nothing,” was her answer, as always. She said the same thing whenever I caught her looking at me. And the fact that she did look at me shouldn’t please me as much as it did.
Yet my stupid insides were always game for her gaze. But this time, there was a prolonged pause.
“Well, something,” she admitted, and I stiffened. “You just have this little frown when you’re concentrating. It’s cute.”
I froze mid-line, my lip curling. “Nothing about me is cute.”
“You’re wrong about that,” she said cheerfully. “And it’s cuter that you pretend you’re not.”
I set the pencil down on the workbench before narrowing my eyes at her with an irritated look. “You’re supposed to be working on your potions or... whatever the hell it is that witches do with their free time, am I right?”
“I’m multitasking,” she said, smiling that secret smile of ours again. No. Not ours. Hers. It had nothing to do with me. “I’ve decided that I’m going to start studying creative concentration in orcs. It’s for science.”
I huffed out something between a laugh and a groan. “You’re impossible.”
“And yet,” she said, reaching down to scratch Ribbon’s head, “you still let me stay.”
That statement hit a little too close to home for me. I didn’t have a response for it, so I went back to what I was doing. The silence between us stretched—comfortable this time. The kind that filled itself with the sound of tools, wind and soft croaks from the third member of our little group.
After a while, Hanna stood and wandered toward one of the shelves, where I kept half-finished metal flowers. She picked up a small one—a simple bronze stemmed flower with petals that I’d never quite gotten right.
“This one’s my favorite,” she whispered, and maybe she didn’t mean for me to hear it, but I did. “It’s a little crooked, but it’s trying its best.”
I glanced over at her, intrigued. “Do you like broken things, then?” I asked, and while I was almost certain I meant it as a joke, the question was filled with something that wasn’t quite literal. Something that bothered me.
She looked at me over her shoulder. “I like honest things,” she said instead of giving a straight answer.
Damn females and their way to twist words until they’re unfathomable.
Still, it silenced me more effectively than any spell could have. She set the flower back down, then smiled.
“All right, grump. I’ll leave you to your masterpieces before you explode from human contact.”
I snorted. “You’re not human.”
“Exactly,” she said, winking as she headed toward the door.
When it clicked closed behind her, the workshop felt different. It was quieter, yes—but so much emptier, too. The way it used to be... before. My fingers flexed of their own accord, and that ache that I’d been ignoring in my chest—the one that disappeared when she was close—was back.
Ribbon let out a low croak, staring at the door then turning to me with a baleful expression.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered. “She’s not staying. She’s just a visitor here, and she shouldn’t be here all the time.”
He blinked. And for some reason, it was a loud blink. As if he was telling me something that I should understand. I glanced away, not wanting to look at him, because I wasn’t accustomed to lying to my toad.
“Fine,” I said, reaching for the next sketch. “Maybe she can come back tomorrow.”