Chapter 3 #2
When he was just nineteen, after fighting with Mal, he had gone to live with Rosemaris and the dwindling population of elves in their hidden sanctuary above the clouds.
Stormveil. There were certain perks to having elven royalty for distant relatives—though having them in his bloodline hadn’t granted him their incredibly long life, heightened senses, or subtle magics, they had treated him as one of their own, educating him on everything from the arts of healing and speaking their ancient language to why their people had retreated from the world with what remained of their light.
On his other side, Liam began to stir. Griff withdrew his hand from Alys and turned to look at his boyfriend.
The locksmith was curled up with his back to Griff, one arm wrapped snugly around their little red hound dog, Badger, who was still snoring away. Griff rubbed his work-worn fingertips down Liam’s back just the way he liked, trying to gentle his rest.
“He hasn’t left your side, not once,” Alys confided quietly as Liam’s eyelids fluttered. “Rosemaris had to give him something to help him sleep a while … even though he’s not the one you’ve been asking for in any of your fever dreams.”
Him asking for Mal wouldn’t have surprised Liam, Griff thought with a guilty twist in his numbed gut.
Mal was the reason they had started seeing each other casually in the first place.
Liam looked just enough like his old friend that Griff could fuck him from behind in the dark while paying him a pretty price to call him by another name.
Always Right there, Mal and Harder, Mal, I need to feel you. Always Mal.
Of course, Liam didn’t have Mal’s perpetual sneer curving his lip, and he was far kinder to Griff than Mal had been in many years.
Somewhere along the way, Griff had started using Liam’s actual name when they tangled together in the dark, and then in the light.
Liam stopped taking Griff’s money and emptied out a couple of drawers.
Griff’s late-night visits turned into morning pancakes and tea and kisses that lingered and coming home to each other to write songs by the hearth or go out with their friends.
They got a small red dog, called Badger because he was relentless in getting people’s attention.
They shared their love of music and their histories.
Behind the many locks on their front door—put there by Liam to keep out his father’s fists—they had been busy building a fine and cozy life.
Pulling Griff back to the present before he could begin to think of how he would make things up to Liam, Alys continued thoughtfully, “Mal hasn’t been here.
He still doesn’t know anything about the attack.
I … we, rather,” she amended, glancing at the restless Liam, “thought it best you decide for yourself what you want to tell him, once you could talk to us.”
“I don’t want him to know anything,” Griff said firmly. He didn’t even have to think about it. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Deserve is—” Alys started to argue, but after another look at Griff’s face, she quickly changed course.
“Okay. I understand. But between you and me, there’s no denying that you think of him.
Often. And he makes sure we hear your name plenty at home, even if perhaps not in ways you’d like. If you would just—”
“How did you know I was in trouble, anyway?” Griff interrupted, trying to get his pulse back under control before it could make him sick. “You, Liam, Rosemaris? Did Vic drag me all the way back here herself and come find you?”
“I dreamed it, actually,” Alys admitted, picking at a loose thread on the quilt that covered Griff’s legs.
“I saw you in the Wood, in the dark, and you were drenched in blood. The shock woke me, and then I felt this pain here …” She touched a spot below her navel, just off to one side beneath the belt that held her sword and knives.
“And I knew it was real. I found a horse, and Liam and I rode out to get you.”
“You just found a horse?” Griff asked, the most trivial of questions somehow standing out as important.
Alys smiled sweetly. “Well. I suppose I stole it, if you want to get technical.”
There was the Alys he knew. Always taking what she wanted from the world without apology and damn the consequences, just like her mother.
She was Wynnie and Rhun’s daughter by blood, though they had taken in Griff and Mal when their parents were killed, allowing the three children to grow up under one roof and become the best of friends.
Alys had made quite a name for herself as a mercenary in the past several years, one Griff couldn’t escape even from a distance.
The Warg of the West, he’d heard her called in every tavern from here to Mayfair proper, because rumor had it that if you happened to be unlucky enough to get closer than the end of her blade, she’d tear you up with her teeth and use her little knives like claws until you were begging for her to end it quickly.
Her mother must be so proud.
But however feral Alys was, however cunning and manipulative and selfish he’d known her to be over the years, she had apparently been certain that something was wrong with someone she loved and been determined to save him at any cost.
Griff was quiet for a moment, trying to let this all sink in. Then he started to protest: “But to come all that way when we haven’t—”
“You’d have done the same for me,” Alys insisted over him. “That’s what friends do.”
“Of course I would,” he agreed without hesitation. “Whether we’re friends or not. Because you’re you.”
Things grew quiet then, neither of them entirely sure what to do with that after so many years of silence.
Before Griff could figure out what to say that might get them talking again, the bedroom door swung open.
Badger woke at once and wriggled out from under Liam’s arm, scampering to the foot of the bed to stare at the newcomer. He didn’t bark, but he also didn’t wag his tail in its usual frantic pinwheel of welcome.
“Oh, Griff. Finally,” Liam’s sleep-roughened voice said near his ear.
“I missed you so much.” Having awoken at last with the dog’s sudden movement, Liam buried his face in Griff’s hair without even glancing toward the door, and Griff’s arm came up around his back at once, pulling him in tighter—stitches be damned.
But before they could really start getting reacquainted, Morwyn Kindrick-Mordecai commanded from the doorway, “Everybody out. Now.” Her onyx eyes were unreadable as they settled on Griff’s. “I need to speak with my son.”
Kicking off her boots as the others departed, Wynnie settled on the bed in the spot Alys had vacated beside the tousled-haired, green-eyed, sharp-jawed man who didn’t look a thing like her, though she had known him from birth and been his guardian since he was five.
“You could do a lot worse than Liam Blackthorn,” she said, rather than asking how he was feeling.
“Good lad. Keeps his nose out of other people’s business, and that can’t be easy, job like his.
Oh, and that raspberry crumble cake he gets for breakfast from Bluebell’s?
It could win Mayfair’s spring baking showdown if that woman was bright enough to fill out the entry form. ”
Griff stared at her as he cradled his water glass between his hands. How the fuck would Wynnie know Liam’s breakfast preferences? It wasn’t her business to know that. Bad things tended to happen to people Wynnie decided to know too much about.
And yet here she was, smiling at Griff with some semblance of motherly affection over the rim of his glass as he lifted it to wet his throat again.
It wasn’t her small, calculated smile either, the one he had seen most often over the years.
If he had to guess, he would have said this one was real.
It softened the lines of her face in such a way that for a moment he could even imagine how on an evening long ago, her future husband Rhun had mistaken her for a goddess of mercy come to ease his suffering after a troll attack laid him out at an inn most often frequented by bandits and smugglers.
Of course, the warmth of that smile was utterly ruined when Griff noticed a fleck of crimson on her neck.
“Why are you here?” he asked bluntly, impatient to get back to Liam and apologize for calling out that other name in his fevered state.
“To check on you, love.” She pushed some of her thick blond hair over her scarred shoulder, revealing the familiar hilts of the long knives strapped to her back. “Just like I’ve been doing every day since they brought you home.”
“And whose blood is that on your neck?” he asked around another sip of water, as casually as if he were inquiring about the weather. “Have you dropped by to see how they’re healing too?”
After all—Griff knew the story by heart at this point—Wynnie had approached Rhun on the night of the troll attack with the intention of slitting his throat and stealing his gold, not carrying him up to the heavens, but she’d seen something in him as she reached for him.
And for a time, the quick-fingered, murderous thief had become what Rhun believed her to be.
She’d never stopped sleeping with a knife under her pillow, but she had stopped thieving and killing and become a wife, mother, and neighbor who baked the best peach pies.
At least, until the world took Rhun away from her, putting her right back where she had started: on no one’s side but her own, the most cutthroat of sell-swords.
Having briefly worked for the Shadow Queen but somehow escaped her service, she was happiest serving only herself.
But where Vic loathed the shadows and the Wardens in equal measure, Wynnie still counted a few among the knights as friends—or at least, not adversaries—dancing toward whatever allegiances suited her in the moment, or killing when that was more convenient.
“Oh, that’s from a rabbit. Last night’s supper wasn’t going to skin itself,” Wynnie answered smoothly, touching a few fingers to the spot she’d missed and blinking guilelessly. “Anyway, I wanted to see you so—”
“So my blood could end up on your neck too?” He had never made a secret of his disapproval of the way Wynnie handled her affairs. After all, Vic got by in life without hurting anyone, even if she was just as much on her own side in all things.
It required a practiced eye to note the way Wynnie flinched at the mere suggestion.
Griff, having such well-trained vision, felt a small thrill of satisfaction at the damage he had just inflicted after all the times she had let him down over the years—times she had chosen murder and mayhem over being there for birthday parties.
“Why were you researching what my boyfriend likes for breakfast, anyway?” he demanded while he had the advantage.
Wynnie took a breath, recovering herself with remarkable speed, true to the tales of all the blows she’d survived over the years. “Knowing who you’re in bed with is part of keeping you safe, which you’ve clearly demonstrated you aren’t capable of doing on your own.”
Griff’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t remember asking for you to be my personal guard. And I know that’s not rabbit blood on your neck, so cut the shit about my love life and tell me why you’re really here, or get out so I can spend some time with the people who actually care rather than pretending.”
“You want to talk pretend?” Wynnie invited, her nostrils flaring as she pressed a hand into the quilt between them.
Little crescent moons from someone’s nails crossed all over the back of her hand—that rabbit had put up a hell of a fight.
“You think you’ve walked around so free and easy all these years since you left—writing lines in your love songs that clearly aren’t about your precious boyfriend-of-the-moment, auditioning to join the ranks of those Wardens you call heroes when all they ever did was send your parents to their deaths—without a cost?
You think you cut yourself off so thoroughly from the rest of us lowlifes that the gods deemed you Good and Righteous and gave you some special protection from ever having a target on your back?
” Now her eyes narrowed, her voice growing dangerously soft.
“You’re free and safe to follow your whims because I do what you won’t.
I pay the price for you, and I’m here because it seems you’re still in danger. ”
She paused for a moment, her eyes seeking his. “Maybe I am the monster you clearly believe me to be, but how can you be so sure when we don’t even know each other anymore? I miss you, Griff. I wish you’d come home.”
He stared into those dark and depthless eyes that asked so much of him, certain that without some kind of map, he was bound to get lost in them. Her gaze was a lightless, airless place, an ocean he could drown in. And wasn’t he supposed to find some comfort there rather than lose himself?
“You’re wrong,” Griff said softly when he found his voice again. “I do know you, and I have a pretty good understanding of what particular flavor of monster you are.”
Wynnie flashed a smile that was all teeth, not about to let him see her flinch again. “You’re so much like your father. Always so judgmental. So certain that you know just how to be good, but what is that, anyway? Good isn’t anything, darling. It doesn’t exist.”
She stood and started pulling on her boots.
“Anyway. You might want to keep watching your back. And I’ll watch it too, no matter how much you disapprove, no matter what you think of me, no matter how much that hurts.
I won’t ever stop trying to keep my family safe.
It’s a big world out there, and it’s going more to the orcs with each passing day. ”
She leaned in and gently smoothed his wayward hair back from his face, then drew away.
He didn’t speak again until her hand was on the door; something about her leaving so soon and the unsettled warmth of her fingers having passed through his hair made him say, “Wynnie.”
She turned back at the sound of her name.
“What kind of blood was it, really?”
“Mix of things,” she said, leveling with him at last. “Human, mostly. Hunting your attacker.”
“Okay,” he said on a heavy breath.
“I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow,” she told him, opening the door to reveal Alys, Liam, and Badger waiting in a huddle just on the other side, clearly having heard every word. “Vic too.”
“See you then,” he agreed, and she vanished quickly like smoke.