Chapter 6 #2
Mal circled partway around the spot where Griff was pacing, leaning against one of the beams already secured to the bakery’s foundation, the partial roof throwing him into shadow as the sun sank lower.
“Then stay here,” he said, voice and eyes flat as the road that led toward home; he could generally count on Griff to do the opposite of what he asked for, anyway.
“Work your straight jobs and play hero like your dear old dad.” His withering tone made it sound like such a bad thing, which was mostly habit at this point.
He always made the things Griff did or wanted sound so small and stupid.
It was the only defense he had when Griff acted so far above him, like he was a precious elf from Stormveil and Mal was some shambling corpse of the dark queen’s, trying to bludgeon him to death.
“Parade around town with your boring little boyfriends, and keep on telling yourself you’re so much better than the rest of us.
Alys and I will get rich and not have to share the extra coin with you. ”
Turning more fully toward Mal, Griff sank onto the chopping block, casting aside the maul to make space and then resting his chin in his hand. For a moment, it looked as though some true pain had crossed his face—was the wound still bothering him? That didn’t seem normal. Too much time had passed.
“Alys put you up to this,” he accused, distracting Mal from his concern. “This is all starting to make sense—she made you ask me along because she still thinks we can all be friends. You don’t actually want me there.”
Mal’s gray eyes narrowed, his mouth becoming a thinner line. He hated that Griff really could read him still, after all this time. “So? Like I said, you don’t have to come. It’s just a job.”
“Like cozying up to helpless old widows to get your name on the deed to their land is just a job? Like that scam you ran on the farmers outside Barcombe where you were a ‘wolf hunter’ was just a job?” Disdain dripped from Griff’s voice.
“What the hell is in the Mire that’s worth risking life and limb for, anyway? ”
Mal shrugged, trying to let Griff’s sneering judgment bounce off his weathered cloak like rain.
“Look, a job is just a job as far as I’m concerned—not good or bad, just work.
Some jobs just happen to make more money than others, which is where I go, because I’m in it for me,” he said coolly.
“It’s a hungry world out there, in case you haven’t noticed, and all I’m trying to do is not end up on anyone else’s plate. ”
Griff shook his head like he had heard this all before, which was probably true.
“I found myself in possession of a map recently,” Mal continued while he still had Griff’s attention.
Normally, he had no problem walking away from Griff’s unwelcome scrutiny, but he couldn’t do that this time.
Not when thoughts of Kage making a second attempt on Griff’s life while Mal waded around in some swamp kept flashing vividly to mind.
“The writing on it is Rhun’s, Alys thinks,” he clarified, having saved this reveal in case Griff really needed convincing.
“It looks like it leads to the stockpile of riches the Wardens were searching for when they went out there and came home without him. Ancient gold and weapons and armor from one of the first elven empires, all tucked into the barrows of their kings.”
He paused there to let the words sink in, and sure enough, Griff’s green eyes swiftly widened.
He didn’t need to spell out the significance—that the treasure, or the hunt for it, might tell them the truth about what had befallen Rhun in the end.
He crossed his arms. “Anyway, I don’t see the need to elaborate unless you’ve decided to come. ”
Mal was certain, by the time he finished, that he could see a spark of interest in Griff’s eyes. It wasn’t a yes, not yet, but it was at least a step toward taking him far away from the agents who would want to finish the job and might not care about Mal’s treasure hunt.
“Say I was. Planning to come, I mean. For Rhun and Alys.” Griff leaned forward on his elbows. “Could we actually travel together for several weeks and not come to blows? You think it would change things between us? You really think we can be anything but each other’s demons?”
He shivered a little, no doubt becoming more aware of the chill working its way over the city, a rapid cooling now that the day was done.
Mal drummed his fingers against the side of his leg for a moment before answering, trying to get the hammering of his heart under control.
“I don’t expect a trip to change a damn thing, no.
But you’re hardly my worst demon.” In stark contrast to the dusk, the temperature in his voice rose steadily as he added, “Just say you’re not going already. ”
Griff rubbed his hands over his arms like he was trying not to shiver again, and leveled a look at Mal, one he held for a long moment as he asked, “If I go … is there any hope for us?”
There was a younger man’s petulance in Mal’s voice that he couldn’t quite disguise as he demanded in return, “Hope? What the hell does that mean? That we’re suddenly going to be friends again?
That I’ll come over and make nice with your boyfriend and eat his shitty cooking like Alys does?
” The questions burned with frustration, like they came from a caged animal glancing at things beyond his power to reach for, to give.
Peeling away from the beam he was leaning against, he knelt before the spot where Griff sat, fixing him in his unflinching gaze.
“When are you going to accept that this is who I am? You always ask me things even though you know you won’t like the answers, and then no matter what I say, you judge me for it.
I don’t know who it is you want me to be, and frankly, I don’t care anymore,” he snarled, letting that animal out of its cage for a moment, stretching its weary limbs.
“When am I going to be enough for you just as I am? Ever? Is there any hope of that?”
Griff reached for him. Two callused fingers slipped beneath Mal’s chin, through the gold stubble growing there, and rose to rest against his cheek as Mal’s eyes widened in surprise and he lapsed into dumbfounded silence.
Neither breathed for a moment, but Mal’s pulse raced beneath Griff’s fingers.
Neither moved.
Griff could surely smell the whiskey on his breath, they were so close. Cheap stuff, swill, though Mal could have afforded better. And beneath it—the lemon soap Vic had always scrubbed his clothes with.
Mal couldn’t look away. Not because he had any fear that Griff might strike, but because he could smell sweat and rosemary shampoo and the kohl that often lined Griff’s eyes, a distinct combination that set his face more firmly into his usual nettled expression; nothing good ever came of getting this close to him, though Mal could see why so many men did.
Not that he was keeping track. Griff had the sort of classic, poetic beauty that belonged on a painted fresco dedicated to some god or another, and half the time he didn’t seem to know it.
He applied himself to things so earnestly.
He loved to learn; he was such a hopeless dork—
Mal stopped himself there, before he could have another stupid, useless thought.
“I’ll go,” Griff breathed at last, and the tightness in Mal’s chest eased just a little.
“I’ll go,” he repeated, sounding more certain now, as Mal’s pulse continued to flutter wildly under his touch.
“And I’ll tend the fire and clean your cuts and sleep at your back without judgment.
And maybe you’ll realize somewhere along the way that you’ve always been enough—you just haven’t let me get close enough to show it, or to try to make anything right. Not since …”
Did Griff know his fingers were trembling against Mal’s skin? He couldn’t think what had possessed Griff to reach for him like this when nothing had really changed.
Soon enough, Griff lowered his shaking hand. And as he did, he said in a would-be casual tone, “Who knows? Out in the Mire, you might even find out whether I’d die for you.”
As Griff’s hand fell away, a spell was broken. A breath of relief at gaining some distance escaped Mal’s lips as he rose to his feet, steady and lithe as ever—as if that touch hadn’t made him weak at the knees.
It had also, inexplicably, made his tattoo burn. Or perhaps that was just the result of too much vicious scratching.
Griff, on the other hand, didn’t move. He seemed to have every intention of sitting on his chopping block a while longer before retrieving his shirt.
But behind him, something did shift away—a shadow, taller than Griff’s, unfurling itself to its full imposing height as it separated from the fabric of night.
Mal blinked hard, but still the thing remained.
Even Griff shivered at the chill radiating from it, though Mal was certain he couldn’t see it; he had only been able to see ghosts himself since he’d died for a few seconds in Thrallkeld.
They never spoke to him, at least not in any language he could hear, but seeing them was punishment enough for having cheated death.
Though usually they showed their faces, unlike this figure of solid darkness.
Maybe that explained why his tattoo was suddenly searing. After all, this thing had to be some servant of the Shadow Queen.
“It’s just a job,” Mal repeated brusquely to Griff, as if nothing at all were amiss, as he adjusted his cloak against the coming night, not remotely because the absence of Griff’s hand against his cheek had left him colder than before. “And nobody’s going to die. I’ll make sure of that.”
It was the least he could do.
Mal’s feet were itching to hit the road again; he’d had his fill of Griff’s questions for now, and this had been their longest conversation in years.
Most of all, he wanted to get away from that strange shadow—though when he glanced at it again, it had already vanished, absorbed back into the night.
Often, these things appeared just for a little shock; this one, he decided with more conviction now, had appeared to speed him on his journey, or else to check out the man who had just agreed to join the expedition.
“When do we leave?” Griff asked, rubbing his hands along his arms as if to warm them. He drew in a breath, then said quickly, gruffly, almost like he didn’t know how, “I’ve missed you, you absolute shit.”
While a flash of discomfort crossed Mal’s face at such genuine emotion offered so casually, the crude nickname made the sentiment a little more palatable. A soft, appreciative snort issued from his nostrils as he set his feet on the path to home.
“Don’t get all sappy now, you sentimental fuck, or this trip really will be a hazard to everyone’s health,” Mal said with a half-roll of his eyes, feeling a little more like himself now that the shadow had gone and his tattoo wasn’t burning so much.
But something uncertain washed over his face just after, something that made him turn hastily away from Griff before the foreman could read whatever showed there as he wondered if he could trust what the other man had said: that he had missed him.
After everything.
The emotion in his voice had sounded real enough, as real as the darting shadow or the wood-splitting maul resting on the stump. But all the insults he had fired back at Mal over the years—those had been real too.
Mal had no more idea of what to do with that than he did the large shipment of dwarven crystal glasses for which he still hadn’t been paid, which were currently sitting packed in large wooden crates in a hidden glade in the Wyrmwood.
“Oh, and we leave in the morning. First light, so you’d better try to get some rest while you can,” he added briskly over his shoulder before breaking back toward the road, and the far more reliable warmth of a yet-distant fire.