Nyrius
She's walking toward me when I notice the table.
Blades wrapped in cloth, stacked with deliberate care. Four more in various stages on the anvil. I know the order size Cyran flagged from the transit points — this matches it exactly.
I put my hands on my hips.
Edria stops two feet away and reads my face. Her chin lifts.
"Don't," she says.
"You're filling the order."
"I'm working."
"Edria." I nod toward the table. "That's not horseshoes."
She turns back to the anvil and picks up her tongs like the conversation is already over. "You've been gone a week. You don't get to walk in and start issuing opinions."
"I'm not issuing opinions. I'm telling you the patrols in this are have doubled. I personally increased them." I step further into the forge. "You know what they're looking for."
"I know how to move through those woods without being seen."
"Once. Twice. Eventually the odds stop working in your favor."
She slams the tongs hard against the anvil. "What would you have me do instead?"
"Stop."
"And then what?" She turns to face me, hands on her hips. "Stop, and watch Finn go without medicine? Stop, and tell Papa we're cutting meals again? You don't get to tell me how to keep my family alive."
"I'm not telling you how to live." My voice rises slightly. "I'm telling you this particular route is compromised. The buyers are being tracked. If a patrol catches you in transit—"
"Then I'll deal with it."
"How?" I take another step toward her. "What exactly is your plan when two armed dark elf soldiers stop you on a forest path with a bundle of illegal blades?"
She stares at me. "I've handled worse."
"You haven't." I shake my head. "You've been lucky. There's a difference."
Her eyes sharpen. "You have no idea what I've handled."
"I know what happens to humans caught supplying rebel factions." I don't soften it, because softening it would be a lie. "It's not a fine and a warning, Edria."
"I know what it is." Her voice drops. "I've always known what it is. I do it anyway because the alternative is watching my family fall apart piece by piece and doing nothing." She takes a step toward me. "Must be simple, from where you stand. Just stop. Just don't. As if stopping costs me nothing."
"It's not simple." I don't move back. "None of this is simple."
"Then stop acting like it is." She crosses her arms. "You don't get to ride in here and tell me the risks I already know about and call that help."
"I'm not trying to—"
"You're trying to tell me what I can and can't do for my own family." Her voice cracks, briefly, on the last word. "You have no right to that."
I look at her. The fire behind her throws orange light across her face, and she's furious, and she's exhausted, and she's been doing this alone for so long that someone pushing back reads as an attack.
"No one will take care of them," I say, "if you're in a prison cell or dead."
The forge goes very quiet.
She takes a slow breath in through her nose. Some of the heat drains out of her face, replaced by something rawer. She looks away, toward the blades on the workbench.
"It must be a luxury," she says, "not worrying about where your next meal comes from."
The words land exactly as she intended.
I let a moment pass. "That was wrong of me to say."
She keeps looking at the table.
"I've been thinking about you." I say it plainly, no performance around it.
"Since I left. More than I've wanted to.
I keep going over the patrols I've set up trying to figure out how much cover I can give you without making you more visible.
" I stop a foot away from her. "There's only so much I can do from a distance when you're still taking deliveries. "
She turns back to me. The anger is still there, but it's sitting differently now.
"Is that why you almost kissed me?" she asks. "Worry?"
I watch her mouth for one second before I look back at her eyes.
Then I lift my hand to her face and run my thumb slowly across her lower lip.
A shudder moves through her, visible from her shoulders down, and whatever had been holding the space between us dissolves all at once.
She closes the last inch.
Her mouth is warm and certain against mine, nothing tentative in it, her hand coming up to grip the front of my coat. I slide my hand from her cheek to the back of her neck and kiss her back with everything I've been not doing for weeks.
Her fingers work at my coat and then move to my shirt, pulling it free.
I break the kiss long enough to pull it over my head.
Her vest and shirt follow, her hands quick and sure, and when I find her eyes in the firelight she doesn't look away.
I bring my hand back to her neck, her loose collar, and find the tie of her braid.
I pull it free and run my fingers through her hair until it falls around her face in dark auburn waves.
She exhales against my jaw.
I put my hands at her waist and lift her.
She wraps her legs around me without hesitation, her hands braced on my shoulders, and I carry her across the forge to the long worktable and set her on its smooth surface.
She leans back on her hands and watches me pull her boots off, her pants following.
The firelight catches the angles of her face and the burn scars on her forearms and the rise and fall of her breathing.
She reaches out and runs her fingertips down my chest, slow and deliberate, tracing the contours of muscle and dark skin. Her eyes move over me the same way she eyes a piece of work she's deciding whether to claim. My skin hums under her touch, and heat builds in my groin, my cock stiffening.
I get rid of my pants.
Her eyes drop, and her lips part. Then she lowers her hand and wraps her fingers around my cock, drawing them slowly along the length. The heat of her touch is immediate and consuming. A groan leaves me before I can redirect it.
I lean forward and cup her breasts in both hands, rolling her nipples between my fingers, watching her head tip back. A moan escapes her, low and unguarded, her back arching slightly into my hands.
She plants her palms flat on the table behind her. I move between her thighs and press my cock to her entrance, slick and hot and ready, and push inside.
Her breath releases in a rush. I slip one arm around her hips, drawing her to the table, my other hand curving around the back of her neck as I bring her mouth back to mine.
She kisses me hard, open-mouthed, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
I drive into her in a steady rhythm, deep and rough, the drag and press of it drawing sounds from both of us.
She tastes like ash and iron and something warmer underneath, and I can't get enough of her mouth or the heat of her body or the way she moves to meet every thrust.
The pressure builds in long, grinding waves.
I drive deeper, her hips rolling against mine, her thighs tightening around me, skin slapping against skin in an intoxicating sound that has the world fading around me.
Then she tears her mouth from mine and grabs both my shoulders, her fingernails biting into my skin.
A loud moan breaks from her and her thighs shake hard against my hips, her insides clenching around me in tight, rhythmic pulses.
The sensation rips through me. I bury myself deep and groan from somewhere low in my chest, releasing into her with three final, forceful thrusts, my arm locked around her hips.
We stay like that with no intention of moving. Her forehead is tipped against my shoulder, both of us breathing hard. The forge fire has burned down while we weren't paying attention.
Then her hands flatten on my chest and push.
I step back. She slides off the table and moves to her clothes without looking at me, dressing quickly, efficiently. When she straightens her eyes travel to the blades on the table, then at the forge, then at the wall beside me.
"You have to go," she says.
Her voice is steady. Every wall back in position, mortared in place before I can say anything to stop it.
I pick up my shirt from the floor and say nothing.