Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Good Castles
When the leaves on the trees began to turn and the village ran with color like the time Mags upended one of Alys’s paint palettes onto the worn floorboards, Griff and Mal stole away from the cottage and headed to the Wyrmwood for a week.
It was strange for Griff to consider how much had happened since they had come home.
Alys and her children had moved into a small house in Linden not far from Liam’s, bought with some of their silvers.
Dove was in and out of town, keeping a close eye on the tea shop and Wills from Griff’s construction crew—that traitor—among other things, like who was running a counterfeiting scam in Mayfair.
And who had murdered three travelers and stolen their mule somewhere east of Mayfair, leaving only their disoriented cook to tell the tale about a couple of masked madmen in red and black scarves.
Griff himself was finally back at work, back to swinging his maul and putting up new homes and businesses around Mayfair with his crew (even Wills, still alive but subdued after his encounter with Wynnie, from whom he now kept a wary distance despite his efforts to make it seem like nothing had changed.
Mal thought it was safest this way). The numbness in his shoulder hadn’t gone away, which meant the damage there was likely permanent.
But at least he didn’t have random pains from his stab wound anymore.
Business as usual.
What wasn’t usual was the scuffle Mal had gotten into with Liam, right in the middle of the main thoroughfare through Linden; Mal claimed Liam started it, and Liam didn’t exactly deny it, or say anything about it at all to Griff.
Mal had ended up with yet another broken nose, while Liam had taken a dagger to the leg and was now as hobbled as Griff had been after an arrow to the leg.
Alys and Dove had both witnessed the whole ordeal and nearly gotten into a scrap themselves, which was all anyone in town was talking about as Griff and Mal packed their bags and headed on their getaway to hunt coneys in the Wood like old times.
The swelling in Mal’s nose had finally returned to normal, although there was a touch of darkness to one eye where Liam had landed a blow, and some cuts on his face still healing that Griff would put salve on when they decided to camp later that night.
“Wynnie should be back by the time we get home,” Mal panted to Griff as he staggered through shafts of sunlight beaming through the trees on a crisp but golden afternoon, the bulk of their old dog Whiskey slung across his shoulders.
Nothing was wrong with the dog, technically, but his joints were stiff and creaky and he liked to be carried like a princess sometimes.
Griff slipped up beside Mal to take a turn carrying the old boy, calling to the other two not-quite-dogs who were bounding just out of sight, leaves crunching under their enormous paws: “Rooster! Wally! Not too far now!” Then he turned to Mal, pulling Whiskey up onto his own shoulders as he thought about Wynnie.
Thrallkeld was just over a week’s ride away on a fast horse.
Not distant enough to explain the time this errand was taking her, even if Renaud was as dangerous as Mal said and making a move on him would have required some months of careful observation.
“And if she’s not?” he asked, louder than usual, since he didn’t have a hand free to sign.
Mal leaned against a tree for a moment, catching his breath and sipping some of the tea Griff had made from his canteen. “Then we’ll go after her,” he said without hesitation. “Because she’s Wynnie.”
Just then, the younger dogs decided to circle back and see what was keeping their humans.
Calling them dogs was, perhaps, a generous term, but it had been generous of Mal to try to buy them in the first place, and Griff knew what they were meant to be.
The excitable, stubby-winged, knockoff rabbit hounds were huge, and more like cats than dogs in that they didn’t seem to particularly heed either Griff or Mal or care about pleasing them in the slightest.
At least they seemed to enjoy catching coneys.
And eating Mal’s belt.
They were, like Griff and Mal, a work in progress.
By the time the two men were covered in sweat and practically swimming in their clothes anyway, Griff called a halt to the hunting for the day with five plump rabbits to fix for supper, a feast for themselves and the dogs.
They made camp near a pond where they could bathe and then see to the cooking.
As the pups splashed and Whiskey took a nap while pretending to guard their packs, having thoroughly overexerted himself while being carried all day, Griff pulled out a couple of small wooden sailboats he’d made and they raced them across the cool, dark water.
Mal won, of course, because Mal always cheated at boats, but Griff pulled the thief’s body fully against his own in the chill and kissed him until he was sure he was winning too.
And when Griff swept Mal off his feet and carried him back to camp, there was no protest at all from the younger man at such treatment. Only laughter, arms thrown carelessly around Griff’s neck, and hands tangled in his long hair, Mal’s body relaxing as Griff carried the weight of him.
As the light began to rapidly fade, Griff banked up a fire, and all three dogs gathered to watch as Mal sliced up the meat and Griff got it roasting over the flames.
While they waited for it to cook, Mal leaned back against him, dagger still in hand, and showed Griff how he could balance the point of it perfectly on the tip of his index finger.
“Show-off,” Griff growled against his ear.
Mal’s lips parted as he made a telltale noise in answer, and then he smiled. And did the trick again.
Despite the cooler air, a few fireflies appeared in the dimness, diving and doing tricks of their own as the men ate, talking about their week and the dogs’ antics, and then set up their tent.
Given the deepening chill of the nights lately, it would help to have the weatherproofed, oil-slicked canvas blocking out the cold.
After supper, Griff made hot herbal tea, and they lingered at the fireside for a while with Whiskey and the two near-pups, one of which had gotten ahold of a pair of pants stuffed in the top of a pack and was shredding them without a hint of shame.
The men joked and laughed and howled at the moon, the dogs joining in like a pack of wild things, until something in the distance howled back. Coyote, probably. Though Griff’s maul was within reach, just in case.
“Seems like our new pups could be good for business,” Griff teased, though his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking of the way the murky water of the Mire seemed to sparkle whenever Mal smiled or laughed, and wishing he had bottled some.
“Business? What’s that again?” Mal breathed as he adjusted the black scarf around Griff’s neck, using it to tug him toward the inviting warmth of their tent at last. “The moon is out, we’re the only two for miles around, and all I can think of are all the things I want to do with you tonight.”
If there was one thing Griff had learned since setting out for the Mire, it was how to listen to Mal like Mal was learning to listen to him—his words and looks and silences, like the way he held Griff’s eyes as Griff went to light the candle in the glass jar they used as a lantern.
Abandoning the task, he gathered Mal into his arms instead, knowing what Mal was going to say before he even said it, because he had read it so plainly on his face and in the light pressure of the fingers stroking along his cheek.
“Griff, will you … fuck me tonight?” Mal asked softly, eyes on his prize. “I’m ready. I want you to have me, any way you want.”
The words themselves didn’t have to be delicate to carry so much more than their simplest meaning.
Mal was holding open a heavy door just for him, no knives or armor to defend this most vulnerable of positions.
Offering himself almost like a proposal, or as close as someone who despised the institution of marriage was likely to get.
For Mal, this was everything, given freely to the one he trusted most.
Griff pulled him closer, and as he pressed his lips to the other man’s in answer, he was suddenly sixteen again and in a too-small sweater. But instead of crying over the emptiness, he reveled in how the sweater was hugging him back tight.
Mal’s hand slid into Griff’s hair.
Now Griff was nineteen again, and instead of drinking himself to death to conjure visions of Mal to his cold, empty room in Stormveil, he was saddling up a horse to go after the Mal he already had. One who was brash and flawed and perfectly meant for him.
He was here in the Wyrmwood, and maybe he couldn’t undo those old mistakes, as Mal had said with surety many times—but he wasn’t who he used to be, and neither was Mal. They were two saplings still growing, but now growing together, limbs stretching toward each other like they were the sun.
He tugged Mal into his lap with care, smiling at the changes in the other man’s breathing as he slid his hands under Mal’s shirt and started to kiss his neck with growing enthusiasm for what was to come.
Mal tipped Griff’s face back up toward his own, and his answering kiss was deep and inviting in so many new ways. An open door. And a warm hearth beyond it, one where the fire had never fully died, and now was blazing brightly.
Griff had built many walls, put up solid doors and roofs, learned how to make a place safe and sound far more effectively than he had ever learned how to cure a fever; he had been building things for so many years now that he was practically an expert.
But with Mal’s eyes gazing into his, he somehow found he was just as adept at kicking open doors to invite Mal all the way in, as safe with this man he chose as he had ever been on his own.
More than ready to let that solid roof and those sturdy walls shelter two against the shadows as capably as one.
In his professional opinion, with the foundation they had here, they were well on their way to building a good castle already—even if the Widow Isabel’s land wasn’t theirs yet.
He kissed Mal until their lips were swollen and they were both breathless, teasing Mal’s tongue with his own to remind him of all the things his mouth could do, running his hands over the short, rough ends of Mal’s hair to show him the kind of care he could expect all night.
Pants joined shirts in the tent corner, along with a belt that Griff didn’t really care if the dogs ate or not.
Inside the close, hot world of their tent, there was no armor, no knives, no treasure.
It was clear as Mal climbed into Griff’s lap that what he was offering, for once, wasn’t his skills or a lie but simply himself.
Nothing mattered to Griff but the man in his arms. He had never known a love like this before, one he wouldn’t run from but toward, for the rest of his days.
After so many long and bitter years away, he was home.
And they stayed the rest of the night in each other’s arms.
And the night after that. And again.
Because it was real.