Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Dark Signs
Griff wasn’t sure Mal remembered the deal they had struck about actually eating some breakfast, but while he didn’t touch any of their rations, he also didn’t pull out his flask upon waking—not even when Griff sat down by the dwindling remains of their fire to take a look at the cuts on his hands and properly wrap them while Alys ate her own breakfast in a rare moment of quiet contemplation.
“Turn your hands over for me,” Griff instructed, eyes down, waiting patiently until he was afforded a view of Mal’s livid-looking palms just across from him in the golden light of early morning.
“We’re going to need to wrap these after I put some balm on them.
And maybe we’ll put your mittens over the bandages to keep them extra dry. ”
“That bad, huh?” Mal said without emotion as he, too, studied his bloody hands.
“Bad enough that I’m sure you’re wishing you’d stabbed me instead,” Griff admitted as he began to dig in his pack for the salve he’d brought.
“Or maybe you wish you’d stabbed me a long time ago and been done with it.
That might have been easier for me, too, because then I wouldn’t be out here, spilling blood and feelings all over you. ”
He had finally let it out. Finally told Mal everything he had kept inside for too long, and the world hadn’t ended.
Part of him was surprised to wake up and find how little had changed—but then, maybe the changing had started back in Mayfair, when Mal approached him that night.
Or maybe Mal really couldn’t love anything as much as he loved gold.
Mal sighed, a hint of discomfort flitting over his face as Griff applied a dab of the balm and tried to smear the strong-smelling herbal mixture along the lines bisecting his palms with the lightest strokes possible. Still, he didn’t make any of the foul remarks Griff expected.
“A lot of things would be easier if we could change history,” Mal agreed on an exhale.
“But we can’t. And I don’t want you dead, believe me.
Far from it.” He tried to flex one of his swollen, crusty palms a little and blanched, immediately relaxing it again.
“You’ve killed me in so many ways over the years, and then I saw what looked like …
well, a lot more than it was, for a second, and hurting you back felt like the natural next act in the tragedy you started. ”
Griff’s eyes rose to Mal’s, wondering what had bothered him so much about seeing him kiss anyone.
He paused, another dab of salve on his fingers, not yet applying it.
“You know I’m gay, right?” he said matter-of-factly.
“Just so we’re clear. Alys knows too, and it’ll never be like that between us.
” That part was easy. What was harder was admitting, “Back when you first got with your girlfriend at the time—Sage? Saffron? Sorrel? Sorry, I’ve tried really hard to forget her name.
Anyway, I was crazy jealous because—because of how I felt about you.
I couldn’t stomach seeing you kiss her. I overreacted.
” He somehow resisted the urge to point out much like you did last night.
“I said some stupid shit I didn’t mean, and then I went to live in Stormveil. ”
Okay, so perhaps he still had Mal beat for overreaction of the century.
Mal regarded him back steadily, coolly, his voice lowering as if he were about to impart some terrible secret the world shouldn’t know.
“You were my closest friend. And then you weren’t.
When you left, I evolved.” Holding up those bloodied hands, palms still turned to Griff, he added, “This is it. This is me now, or what’s left of me.
I don’t know whether I could love you. I’ve never even been with a man.
I guess … I’ve never really thought about it much.
But you should stay out here with us if you want to.
I just need time. And when it comes to you and me, know that I can’t promise you a thing. ”
Griff thought then, as he had on their several nights out on the plains, of how warm the hearth would be with Badger curled in front of it.
He thought of a door opening, of arms that readily reached for him, and knew there was a chance he could still ride back and make amends with Liam.
He thought of easy kisses and effortless laughter, pancakes and flowers on the table.
But there were flowers out here. Wild ones, strong and untamed, dancing in the wind.
If he had wanted easy, deep down, he never would have put his boots on that morning. He would still be in Linden.
He put his own hands on his knees, palms down, inviting Mal’s gaze there.
“Work accidents,” he said, as he had the first time he’d been asked about those scars.
“Because sometimes when I should be paying attention to whatever tool is in my hand, I’m thinking about me and you and how I let it all get so bad. ”
Mal sat silently, seeming to take it all in. Then he offered his upturned palms to Griff’s salve again, his face more relaxed this time as Griff spread balm over the cuts.
“Bandages and mittens. Between my hands and your leg, we’re going to look like quite a set,” Mal finally said, a grin briefly tugging at his lips.
But just as quickly, he was frowning again.
“I’m afraid you’ll lose that leg if you don’t take good care of it.
You’ll need to ride Little Griff for as long as the Mire permits, stay off it.
And I can get you more herbs. We can still make good time without putting you in more pain. ”
Beyond the repeated annoyance of the mule’s name, there was something more to Mal’s offer. Griff wasn’t sure exactly what, but he found himself smiling a little as he said, “Okay. You can get more herbs—thank you.”
Still, Mal continued to frown as Griff unwound a clean roll of bandages. It was a good thing he had packed so many, along with two precious vials of the cherry-red elven medicine he hoped they wouldn’t need.
“I always thought you loved it in Linden. Or at least in Stormveil, up above everything. I thought you hated all this.” Mal swatted at a mosquito near his ear, then swept his hand in a grander gesture to indicate the waiting dark trees of the Mire and the plains behind them.
“But if you actually like being out here, I have it on good authority that there are treasures out in all this wilderness like you wouldn’t believe, not just the one we’re after … ”
Griff had seen the particular gleam that lit Mal’s eyes as he mentioned treasure a few times before, when he spoke of how well certain jobs paid. It was a look that contained both passion and ambition, a dragon’s hunger for a hoard of gold and shiny things.
“Actually, the place I feel most at home is out in the Wood,” he said as he started wrapping Mal’s left hand. It was a tribute to this shaky new peace between them that he didn’t add when I’m not getting stabbed in the middle of the night.
“Where we used to race the dogs and try to grab the bell off the sheep’s collar?” Mal asked, looking up from his hands again and narrowing his eyes, not in anger or derision this time but as if studying something new: a face that had been present for so much of his life.
Griff nodded as he started to wrap bandages over Mal’s other hand.
Those hands had done some damage to him over the years, but he was just as guilty.
“Back when we didn’t fight.” He glanced up, cautiously, to the other man’s face.
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore.
That’s not who I want to be to you. I want …
” With Mal returning that gaze, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say more than, “… so much, with you. But most of all, whether you can love me that way or not, I want you to know that you can count on me again.”
Mal pulled his newly bandaged hands back. Griff thought he might grab his mittens himself and rise. Instead, he demanded of Griff, or the Mire, or perhaps the odd shadow he kept seeing, “Who the hell am I supposed to fight, then, if not you?”
His eyes moved back to Griff’s, and something in Mal seemed to coil and shift, a serpent picking a new direction to strike.
He reached out and grabbed a handful of Griff’s black shirt as if he needed something to steady himself even while on the ground.
“I’m not sure I know how to stop throwing punches at any of us,” he admitted on a bitter breath.
“But I do know that my world changes whenever you come and go from it. If you don’t stay … ”
Caught by the front of his shirt, his heart picking up speed, Griff leaned closer. Just like the night before, blood was pounding in his ears, but he was still sure of what he had just heard from how closely he was watching Mal’s lips. “I want to stay—for good, this time.”
And while there was no further tug on his shirt, Griff kept leaning in until his lips were just brushing over the curve of Mal’s ear as he spoke—words for him alone.
“I want this. You. Your problems, your cold, your foul mouth, your warmth. I’m sick of living in my head.
I wasted years wishing things were different, but I’ve made my choice.
I made it even before I told you the truth, when I agreed to come.
Even if it’s to my own peril and you do kill me.
At least I’ll have died on my own terms. Maybe even died happy, and how many can say that? ”
Mal didn’t offer him the reassurance of any words in return, but his bandaged hand shook slightly where it gripped Griff’s shirt. And as Griff’s lips grazed over his ear with steady words about wanting and staying, a low groan slipped from Mal’s throat.
Griff wondered if the Meanest Mouth in Mayfair was as soft and pliant as it looked.