Chapter 9
Sky
“Don’t we need shelter or something?” I stared at the patch of dirt Moerrven had selected for the night. “This is literally just going to be the ground with a fire on it.”
“It’s a clearing with good drainage and a natural windbreak.” He was already unloading the wagon with irritating efficiency, setting up Poppy’s travel habitat with the same care he’d give a five-star hotel suite. “I’ve camped here before. It’s perfectly adequate.”
“Adequate is not a word that inspires confidence in a sleeping arrangement.” I hugged my arms around myself.
The sun was dropping behind the mountains and the air had gone from pleasant to bite-your-nose cold in about twenty minutes.
We’d been crawling through these mountains for two days, and now Moerrven was selecting a patch of dirt with the quiet satisfaction of a man checking into a resort.
“Where I’m from, camping involves a tent.
And a sleeping bag. And sometimes a cabin with a hot tub, which is the best kind of camping. ”
“We have bedrolls.”
“But bedrolls still go on the ground?”
“Yes. Where else would they go?”
“I don’t know, Moerrven, I guess I was hoping you’d pull a cozy inn out of your pocket.”
“One more night of camping after this one, and we reach a town,” Moerrven said.
One more night. I supposed I could manage that.
He shot me a look, his mouth set in a flat line but his eyes gone soft at the corners in a way that told me he wasn’t completely furious with me.
Then he went back to arranging Poppy’s blankets in her habitat and setting out her evening fish.
I watched as she circled her blanket nest three times, and settled in with the calm of a creature who trusted that her personal staff would handle everything.
Moerrven latched the habitat door, checked the latch twice, and checked it a third time.
“I’m pretty sure it’s locked,” I said.
“There are foxes, and I don’t want her roaming at night.” He checked the latch one more time and turned his attention to the fire, which he’d built in a ring of stones with the ease of someone who’d done this a hundred times. The flames caught and the warmth hit my face, drawing me in closer.
Moerrven paused in his circuit of the campsite to study me. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not shivering, I’m vibrating with displeasure.”
He chuckled softly, then sat down beside me and, without commentary or fanfare, put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his side.
His body was a furnace. Every troll-warm inch of him radiated heat through my shirt.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressed my face against his chest, and sank into it with a sound that I will describe as dignified relief.
“Better?”
“Shut up.”
His chest huffed once, which I chose to count as a laugh.
We sat like that while the sky turned from gold to violet to deep blue.
The stars came out in a way I’d never seen before — thick, impossibly bright, so many of them that the sky looked crowded.
There was no light pollution, no buildings, no cars, no screens, only mountains, stars, the sound of the fire, and the enormous man whose arm was around me.
I leaned my head against his shoulder and pulled out The Frozen Hearth.
“You’re still reading that?” he asked.
“I’m invested, despite the questionable sex scenes. I need to know if they’re going to be okay.”
“They’ll be okay.”
“Don’t spoil it. You said you haven’t read it.”
“I haven’t. But it’s a romance, and I know the author. They’re always okay.”
“Shhh. You’re ruining the suspense.”
“I didn’t want you to feel anxious,” he said. “But go ahead, enjoy your anxiety.”
“I will, thank you.”
This chapter was quieter, Hoareyn and Joku settling into a shy domesticity. It was gentle and aching and my only complaint was that I wished I had a better feel for what intimacy was like between them. Then I turned a page and Hoareyn was touching Joku’s horns.
It was a quiet scene. They were in the bakery after hours, the ovens cooling, flour dust settling. Hoareyn reached up and ran his fingers along the curve of Joku’s left horn, and the description of what happened next made my heart sink.
I stopped reading, looked up from the book and stared at the fire.
Then I looked at Moerrven.
He was looking at the stars. His profile was sharp against the firelight, the curve of his horns a shadow against the dark sky.
I had been touching them for days. On the wagon, I’d reached up and scratched the base of his horn the way I scratched Poppy behind the ears.
In bed, I’d pressed my face against his chest with my hand curled around his horn.
And every single time, his body had gone rigid. His breathing had changed. His ears had flushed blue.
“Moerrven.”
“Mm.”
“Is what this book says about the trolgar gland real? Or is that just some extra fun made-up fantasy stuff that they invented to make things more exciting?”
“I do not know what the book says. I haven’t read it.” The fire crackled in front of us and the stars wheeled overhead and his arm was still around my shoulders, which seemed significant.
“I’ve been touching your horns,” I said. “A lot. Like, casually. Like they were a convenient handhold. Which means I’ve been violating your most intimate place.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t tell me!” I sat up and turned to face him. “I mean, sure, the first time was a genuine mistake, but all you had to do was bat my hands away and ask me not to touch you there, and I would have listened. And instead, you just… let me fondle you.”
“You weren’t fondling. You were… it was casual. You treated them like—”
“Like horns. Because I thought they were just horns.”
He looked at the fire. His jaw worked. The blue had spread down his neck.
“Moerrven. Why wouldn’t you tell me if I was doing something that was such an intimate violation?”
The silence stretched until the only sounds were Poppy shifting in her habitat and Clover breathing where she was tethered and the fire eating through a log with a series of small cracks.
“Because it felt good,” he said. “Because no one ever touched me there and I did not expect it to feel so… right.”
“Didn’t your wife touch you there?”
“No.” He stiffened, and glanced at me. “You knew her name, back at the inn. I never told it to you.”
“I may have overheard a few things while we were staying in your village.”
There was another long silence, and he blew out a breath.
“You heard right. I had a wife. Her name was Bryndala, and she was wonderful. We met when we were in our early twenties, and we were the best of friends. She was an engineer, working on bridges, and there was an accident. About five years ago.”
“Oh, Moerrven.” I blinked back tears.
“I had over a century with her. It would be greedy to yearn for more.”
“But you expected to live out the rest of your days with her, that’s not greedy, that’s normal, when you marry a person.”
“Yes, well.” He huffed, and I dropped the book beside me and crawled into his lap and hugged him tight. He hugged me back, his breathing shaky as we held each other.
“Tell me more about her,” I said.
“She was kind and so smart, just a brilliant mind. One of the best engineers in all of Qoksmere. When we were young, she designed and helped build the bridge where you and I met.”
“Oh! Was that why you were underneath it?”
He chuckled softly. “Yes. The county wasn’t taking a loose stone seriously!”
“The horror!”
This time, his laugh was deeper, rich and rumbling against my chest. “Well, Bryndala would have been alarmed. She had a true talent for understanding these things. She could talk about stone arch configurations for hours.”
“I would have liked to have met her.”
He chuckled. “I mean, in all honesty, her obsession with arches bordered on slightly dull, but I loved her too much to care. She took on more and more challenging projects over the years, and became even more famous than I am for my writing.”
“Is that why everyone meddles in your affairs?”
“They wish me the best. It has been five years since the accident, and they still worry.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Not today,” he said, and the way he said it closed the subject.
I hugged him tighter. “I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible.”
He was quiet for a beat, his hands doing slow circles on my back as he held me close.
“The thing is,” he said, “she was fearless when she was working on bridges, climbing over cliffs with just a rope to secure her. But she wasn’t fearless in love, not even with me.
She was afraid of the trolgar. The bond it can form over time is intense, all-consuming. She never wanted to experience that.”
“That’s what the book described. A deep and lasting bond for the troll character. Joku could sense Hoareyn’s emotions when they touched. Is that true?”
“Only if bonded with the right person. I do not know what it is like, since I have not truly experienced it.”
“So you don’t experience it with me?”
He went silent, his jaw working, then blew out a breath. “I do experience it with you. Not a deep bond yet, just a glimmer of what it could be. And it is… pleasant. Addictive.”
“Why would she fear that?”
“It becomes a lasting bond, with the kind of permanence that is difficult to shake. Perhaps that is what she feared. Or she may have feared that we were not compatible in that way, that she might lose me if we were to attempt it without success. I suppose I’ll never know, because she was adamant and I did not press her for more.
But it is less common these days for trolls to deliberately engage with it.
We are a sensible people, and a deeply emotional bond such as that seems better suited to the grand romance of books. ”
“Is it in your books?”
“Yes. I do enjoy including it, because imagining that deep, lasting bond… it’s just…” He trailed off with a dreamy sigh. “I only wished to experience it, and once I realized you were compatible, it was too tempting to resist. But I apologize for not explaining what was happening.”