Chapter 5 #2
“Maybe,” Dove agreed, her full lips twitching into a smile before she added, “Or maybe somebody’s thinking about finally taking Mayfair’s Most Eligible off the market for good, if you get my drift.”
Griff wasn’t proud of that nickname, often heard throughout the city, though he knew Dove meant it fondly, in the way of acknowledging how many men admired him or wanted to be with him—not in the way of chastising him for having made a few too many conquests even for his own liking since returning from Stormveil.
But so what if he’d dated more than his share of Wardens and often taken home whoever happened to have the nicest smile at the pub that night?
He didn’t owe anyone anything from before he started seeing only Liam.
There was, admittedly, the time he got down on his knees, sloppily and against his better judgment, for an entire company of visiting knights from the kingdom of Kattan—all eight of them—but that had been after a stupid fight with Mal, and he had been trying to heal his black eye by soaking it in whiskey.
A bit of field medicine learned from Wynnie, of course.
“You really think?” Griff asked Dove at last, her meaning finally starting to sink in.
He’d had a foreman’s steady hand in building the life he and Liam shared, and he planned to keep waking up to raspberry pancakes and going on walks with Badger for a long time to come.
He didn’t need to dream any bigger than that.
Liam knew almost every detail of his past and accepted it all, the good with the ugly.
Liam had taught him how to do some amazing things with his mouth.
Liam was a better musician than him. And Liam loved him.
“Huh. Griff Sayer-Blackthorn. I like the sound of that.”
Dove’s smile widened. “It does have a certain ring to it. Just don’t tell him I dropped any hints or I’ll never hear the end of it, yeah?”
Griff held up a hand, folding in a few fingers.
“Warden-in-training’s honor,” he vowed, even though he wasn’t exactly that anymore.
That big dream of his own was out of reach unless he fully healed, and he wasn’t sure what the path ahead looked like if he didn’t—dark, and full of thorns.
The grin quickly slid from his face and he added, lower, “Any other news?”
Dove—whose real name, of course, wasn’t actually Dove; that was only adopted to protect her kin from any retaliation by the Shadow Queen’s people—frowned and shook her head.
She was one of several of his Warden friends trying to track down his attackers.
But neither they nor Wynnie had made much progress yet.
They said their goodbyes and Griff continued on his way, his head too full of lovers past and present and a wedding in his future to remember that he had wanted a coffee.
He and Liam had something with the potential to last, and apparently, Liam saw it too.
Something true, a growing love that Griff was often afraid he would somehow shatter if he didn’t hold it carefully enough, and didn’t quite know what to do with.
He didn’t know how to stay, did he? His parents hadn’t stayed.
Nor had Rhun. Nor even Wynnie, in her way.
Still, what he had with Liam was the realest thing he had ever felt for a man in his bed.
And Griff Sayer-Blackthorn had such a nice ring to it.
He stopped only once more on his way to work, to help an elderly widow cross the cobbles at a busy intersection where horses and carts were speeding past. “Where are you headed today, Miss Isabel?” he asked her kindly, intending to help her all the way to her destination before moving on.
She pointed to a striped green-and-white awning above a darkened door with faded gold lettering painted directly on the glass, and Griff’s shoulders tightened.
Of course. Served With Love. Most locals knew to leave the unassuming tea shop well enough alone and looked the other way at who came and went, but there were some older folks like the widow who really appreciated the strong taste of what their shop girl put together—and none of it was poison, at the end of the day. That would be awfully bad for business.
“Have a good day. And be safe,” Griff said, holding open the heavy glass door for her without once glancing into the dim interior.
Then he finally got to work.
It felt good, sweating in the summer sun again as he swung a hammer with his crew, to have a body that more or less did what he asked of it—aside from the occasional breathless stab of pain that made him drop a tool here or there.
He had missed this. Though not, apparently, as much as his crew had missed him.
All but Wills, who the others said had been out sick for the past week or so.
“What’s it like, boss?” Owin apparently couldn’t help asking as he passed by, carrying an armload of heavy beams to be cut to size.
He was a rosy-cheeked, curly-haired stout young halfling, as strong as any strapping man on the crew, though he didn’t yet seem to have developed a sense for what kinds of questions might be too personal.
“Almost dying and all that? Bad as they say?”
“Keep swinging those crossbeams around without looking at who you’re about to hit, and you just might find out,” Griff answered with a grin as he sharpened his wood-splitting maul.
After so many weeks away, he had even missed the lad’s constant chatter.
“Cool me off after you put those down, would you?”
Owin tossed some water from his open canteen, spraying Griff and everyone around him.
Griff shook his wet hair like a dog drying off from a swim, and his crew scattered, swearing and laughing and slapping him on the back as they fled.
He was back to doing what he loved, and before he knew it, the sun was sinking behind the roofs of the nearby houses.
Smoke rose steadily from their chimneys in thin streams, fragrant cedar, birch, and applewood carrying to Griff on a cooling breeze.
The streets were quickly clearing—a dwarven couple returning home with an armload of groceries here, a few men and what looked like some distant elf-kin there, ducking into a nearby pub for dinner and drinks.
Griff had someone waiting for him at home too. It was almost time to call it a day.
First, though, he had one last pile of wood he wanted to split to prep for tomorrow. He tugged off the inconvenience of his damp shirt, cast it aside, and grabbed his maul again, his calluses fitting comfortably against worn impressions in the handle.
As he got to work, a shadow fell across his path—a familiar shadow, one that made his blood run cold and his skin prickle with certain, present danger.
He was sober again, since the attack; there was no way he was seeing things.
But he decided to let that shadow be a phantom for as long as it liked, focusing on the job at hand rather than calling any attention to it.
Though it surely wanted his attention.