Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Quiet Game
When Griff had gone, Mal wrapped the shirt tightly around himself and smiled a little, because he liked the black. Black reminded him of Griff.
He didn’t think that the shadow was the reason he was still cold enough to appreciate the bonus shirt, but he couldn’t be sure.
He hoped the mark he had scratched into the dirt would help take care of that, too, at least while they were resting.
It was something that had popped into his head when he saw Alys’s drawing. An old lesson from Vic, not Wynnie.
It was a ward against spirits, one she had learned from her people.
Vic came from Asnan, an area of clannish, often-warring folk who frequently stabbed each other over contested land and resources.
Hers was the kind of folk belief that Rhun would have looked down on, by all accounts, and deemed superstitious nonsense.
Seemed like the man might have gotten further out here if he’d been a little more superstitious, or listened to someone like Vic.
Hopefully, the mark would at least be enough to keep the shadow out of the narrow circle of their camp; he hadn’t thought to bother when it came to the dark queen’s watchful spirits, because they didn’t seem able or interested in hurting him and never came as close as the bolder shadow.
With the cool night pressing in around him once more, Mal tried to slide a little farther down in his seat to get comfortable, only to be met with a protest from his stitches again.
With a frustrated sigh, he settled instead with his back against the trunk and rolled up the too-long sleeves of Griff’s shirt.
The light of the fire had grown lower with no one tending it, so Mal had to search for a good angle by which to read. Yet on page ten, where he expected to find familiar words about ale and ethics, a neatly folded piece of paper greeted him instead.
Mal’s eyes roamed over words written in the neatest penmanship he’d ever seen from a man wielding a piece of stubby charcoal.
His brows arched in certain places and drew together in others.
Grins sometimes played at the corners of his mouth as he read, while other times he frowned or his throat tightened.
Then he read it all again.
Three times over.
Mal,
It was beautiful and serene in Stormveil, and I hated it.
Even seated among the most esteemed of our parents’ friends, even in the concerned company of the princes and princess, my heart was only for you and my thoughts turned to despair the longer the silence stretched between us; that was worse than any distance.
You would have hated it: constant hushed voices, all the rules, the small niceties that felt like another language we had never learned how to speak.
For years, your ghost was all I had, and most of the time I was content to be haunted by you forever rather than lose you entirely.
Other times, I won’t deny that I was resentful of the way I could never fully give myself to another, because even when you didn’t know it, you had me.
You always have me. From the first time I can remember looking into your eyes, you’ve had me.
… I set out to recreate for you here all the letters that were burned without my knowledge, bit by bit from memory, but then I realized they were all part of the same refrain, and you know the melody well enough by now.
Maybe you don’t need new letters about old wounds, anyway.
Now that we’re something more, something pulled right from my wildest dreams—you’ve ruined me for anyone else now, whether you intended it or not—it seems right to talk about what’s next.
After all, you promised me a horse, and someone had better put that in writing so there’s no question of ownership when I’m ready to collect.
And that got me thinking, I owe you a few promises, too: I promise that you’ll never again know me only by the void my absence creates.
I promise I’ll never again lash out at you in anger, with fists or words, so that one day the past will be like a fever dream and you’ll question whether you ever knew anything but safe harbor when you turn to me.
I promise, too, to make a place for us, if you’d welcome it.
For you and me, with my own hands. I know of some land outside town.
I can plant good crops and put up walls to keep out the world, at least the parts of it that don’t suit us, walls with far more space than the cottage and plenty of room to grow.
Room for a horse or two, some good dogs, your weapons, that big bed and bigger stove you said you’re going to buy.
It wouldn’t be the castle I know you dream about, but at least it would be ours. Just say the word—I’m at your command.
Before I go, have I told you lately—or perhaps, though I’m ashamed to write it, have I ever told you—how proud I am of who you’ve become?
You’re not like Wynnie or Rhun or Vic or anyone else.
You’re your own. And you’re stronger for it.
And I’m actually quite grateful I didn’t die, because now I’ll be around for whatever you do next. You continue to amaze me.
—Griff
With trembling fingers, Mal folded the paper back up and slid it into the book, giving the Mire—for once seemingly empty—one last warning glance. Then he pushed to his feet, tucking the book under one arm, and crept across the camp by the light of embers, leaving Vic’s ward to guard them.
Mal found Griff’s eyes just drifting closed when he stepped over the dark-haired man’s bedroll, straddling him before dropping to his knees as gracefully as someone could with stitches tugging at their side.
Then he placed the book just beside Griff’s head with silent meaning before holding up a finger to his lips and laying it gently over Griff’s mouth.
When he leaned in, he swiftly removed his finger and replaced it with his lips.
That letter was still running through his mind as Griff wrapped his good arm around him and pulled him in closer.
Griff met his lips hungrily, with the intensity of someone who hadn’t eaten in days, though his hands were much more cautious than his mouth as they gently sought beneath Mal’s shirt, mindful of the tender places he had stitched.
Mal answered that rising hunger with a deepening of the kiss, trailing his fingers up Griff’s chest and growling softly in the back of his throat.
They needed to be quiet. To not wake Alys, or attract anything that usually hunted by night. But there was still so much they could do while hardly making a sound.
This time around, Mal made faster work of Griff’s buckle and buttons.
There was so much heat between them they didn’t even need to tend the fire.
As he deepened their next kiss, his tongue sliding against Griff’s, the foreman impatiently grabbed the hem of his shirt and started to peel it away with his good arm.
Mal tried to help by wiggling out of his shirt, wincing only once or twice at some unpleasant twinges in his side in the process. And though his skin was warm, even hot to the touch, a shiver ran through him as he was bared to the night.
“Fuck,” Griff mouthed as they broke back from another breathless kiss. Whether it was a prayer, a curse, an invitation, or all things in one seemed to be left open to Mal’s interpretation. Maybe there were some good curses, after all.
“Not just yet. But maybe, if you’re good,” Mal whispered teasingly, satisfying them both for now—or perhaps only stoking the fire—by rubbing himself slowly against Griff until he was sure they were both leaking from the friction, until Griff’s panting became too loud and he had to force himself to stop because he realized his thigh was twitching and he was near to bursting from the pressure of Griff pressed against him like this.
Regaining focus after a few heavy breaths, he blazed a trail of hot kisses along Griff’s body that started on his chest and moved with intentional slowness down toward his navel. “Good work gets rewarded. And you want to win the Quiet Game, don’t you?”
Griff nodded, exhaling a little noisily, like he was fighting back a moan.
As Mal continued those kisses, he left one hand close to Griff’s cheek, almost as if to stroke it—but really it was lying in wait, ready to muffle any unexpected sounds if Griff suddenly lost their game in the midst of an escalating stream of pleasures.
His breathing was already growing increasingly ragged the farther south Mal’s lips traveled.
“That’s right,” he whispered in encouragement as he licked and teased his way down the foreman’s body. “Just like I thought. Good boy, Griff. So fucking good for me.”
Gazing up from between Griff’s legs with a sly grin, Mal made a few swipes with his tongue up the other man’s thigh, deliberate brushes of his nose and lips sending Griff sprawling back against the bedroll.
When Mal added the fingers of his better hand as well, dragging lightly over places where the skin was thinnest, Griff grabbed at handfuls of the grass, which Mal took as a sign that he was heading in the right direction. And went lower still.
Gently pushing Griff’s cheeks apart, he flicked his tongue between them, soft licks and kisses given right against his entrance, an experiment—curious to see if Griff would open for him like this.
And, just as he hoped, he did. Mal pushed the tip of his tongue inside, another new taste, sharper and wilder but still right somehow.
Griff tensed beneath him as he tried to hold in yet more noises, now using the hand of his good arm to stroke Mal’s hair.