Chapter 4
Four
The heavy wooden door thudded shut after the last patron stumbled outside, and Sass thunked a pair of tankards on the bar. “All clear!”
The kitchen doors swung open, and Lira emerged with Crumpet perched on her shoulder, the flutterstoat’s white fur dusted with what looked suspiciously like cinnamon.
The half-elf’s auburn hair had come loose from its bun, wisps of it decorated with flour, and there was a buttery smudge on her cheek.
“Tomorrow morning’s crumpets are ready,” she announced, stretching her arms overhead with a satisfied groan. The winged stoat chittered, his tiny wings fluttering as he groomed flour from his whiskers.
“About time you emerged from your baking cave,” Cali said, as she helped flip chairs on top of tables, the pantheri’s tail swishing languidly. “I was beginning to think you’d been buried under an avalanche of dough.”
“Nearly was,” Lira admitted with a laugh, making her way to the fire. She sank onto Korl’s lap with obvious relief, and Crumpet immediately relocated to her lap, curling into a contented ball. The orc wrapped his arms around his fiancé, comforting her without saying a word.
Sass finished her sweeping, wrapped up the sea shanty she’d been humming, and propped the broom against the wall before joining them and pulling up a chair. “You know your wedding is all anyone’s talking about.”
Lira sighed. “It’s turned into a village project.”
“You can’t blame them, love,” Iris said. “Two of Wayside’s own getting married? One of whom vanished for years before returning.”
Lira rolled her eyes but snuggled against Korl. “I didn’t vanish, and I did come home.”
“Even though the entire town is excited about your wedding,” Iris said, as she swung a finger between Lira and Korl, “it’s still yours.”
“Is it?” Lira asked with a weary exhale that Vaskel suspected came from more than hours in the kitchen.
Iris crossed to Lira and rested a hand on her shoulder. “It is, so if it’s turning into something you don’t want, we can fix that.”
Lira looked up at the woman, her lips quirking. “We as in…?”
Cali joined Iris and threw a gray striped arm around her shoulders. “All of us.”
Lira laughed. “It might take all of you to talk Pip out of a five-tier cake.”
“Who said the cake was a bad idea?” Sass asked, jutting out one hip. “Dwarves can eat a lot of cake, and now there are two of us.”
“So one tier for you and one for Thrain?” Cali asked.
Sass smiled wryly. “If it’s Pip’s cake we’re talking about, that sounds about right.”
Even Korl laughed at this, and Vaskel grinned from the bar, glad to see Lira smiling about her wedding plans. Maybe she wasn’t as nervous about it as he and Cali had suspected.
He listened to their continued wedding talk with half an ear as he polished the bar top, the familiar motion soothing even as the marks on his arm seemed to seethe beneath his flesh.
He’d avoided thinking about them for the past hour, losing himself in the routine of closing work, but now that he was almost done, it was hard to ignore the burning sensation.
Crumpet’s snores carried all the way to the bar, making Vaskel glance up.
Cali laughed as she stretched her slender arms overhead. “He has the right idea. I should head back to the inn before the snow starts again.” She glanced at the window where frost had crept up the glass in delicate patterns. “You coming, Vask?”
“I have to do a few more things. You go without me.”
Cali shrugged, then slipped out into the night, letting in a flurry of frigid air that made the fire flicker and its shadows lap the ceiling. Sass yawned enormously, not bothering to cover her mouth.
“Right then, I’m off to bed too,” the dwarf announced as she stood. “I should save my energy for the wedding festivities.”
“It’s a wedding, not a bacchanal,” Lira said.
Sass brushed a loose brown curl from her eyes. “Dwarf wedding celebrations last days, and the hangovers last even longer.”
“Good thing we aren’t dwarves,” Korl said, his words rumbling low and husky.
“You should be so lucky,” Sass called over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs to the second floor of the tavern and her bedroom. “’Night all. Don’t stay up too late.”
That left Lira, Korl, Iris, and Vaskel in the quiet tavern. Lira carefully transferred the sleeping Crumpet from her lap to Korl’s as she stood.
“I should give the kitchen a final once-over before we go,” she said, though her movements were slow and her voice laden with exhaustion.
“Go home,” Vaskel told her from behind the bar. “The kitchen is fine. I’ll check it for you if you want, but you should get some rest.”
Lira gave him a grateful smile. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d have a less charming bartender,” he said lightly, though something twisted in his chest at her trust.
“So true. Durn wasn’t exactly drawing crowds.
” Lira crinkled her nose at the memory of the old, grumpy tavernkeep before a yawn split her face.
She crossed to the door and pulled her cloak off the hook.
“Night, Vask. Night, Iris.” She smiled at the apothecary.
“You sure you’ll be safe from Vaskel’s charm? ”
Iris laughed. “Oh, I think I can resist the blue-eyed hellkin’s wiles.”
Vaskel attempted to ignore the warmth seeping up his neck at Iris’s teasing tone and the fact that the same words by anyone else wouldn’t make his pulse nearly as jumpy.
Korl gathered the still-sleeping Crumpet in his arms and headed into the kitchen, presumably tucking the creature into his nest of dishtowels. Then he emerged through the half-doors, took Lira’s hand, and led her out. That left Vaskel and Iris alone in the great room, the fire crackling softly.
Vaskel continued polishing the bar, aware of Iris watching him from her chair by the hearth. After a moment, she rose and made her way to one of the bar stools.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve lived long enough to recognize when someone’s carrying a burden they’re afraid to share.”
Vaskel’s hand stilled on the cloth he was using to polish the wood. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course not,” Iris said. “Just like I don’t know why you keep tugging at your left sleeve or why you’ve been avoiding looking at your wrist all evening.”
He looked up sharply to find her green eyes studying him with a mixture of concern and understanding. There was no judgment there, only patient waiting.
“It’s nothing,” he said automatically.
“‘Nothing’ doesn’t make a hellkin’s brow pinch.”
Vaskel dropped the cloth and braced both hands on the bar. He’d faced down dragons, angry mages, and more bar fights than he could count, but somehow the apothecary’s quiet concern undid him.
“You can’t tell Lira,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.
“That depends entirely on what you’re about to show me, but I’ve seen many strange things in my years, and very little shocks me anymore.”
Vaskel hesitated for another long moment, then slowly pushed up his sleeve. The marks were darker now than they’d been earlier and they curved fully around his wrist.
Iris went still. Then, without asking permission, she reached across the bar and took his wrist in her hands. Her touch was warm and surprisingly steady, and Vaskel’s heart seized.
“How long?” she asked quietly, her fingers tracing just above the marks without quite touching them.
“I noticed them tonight, but I think they might have started earlier. When I returned the ring to you, I slipped it on. It was only for a moment, but it prickled my skin.”
“The ring only warns of danger,” Iris murmured, her gaze locked on the marks. “It couldn’t have made these.”
“Could it be from dark magic? The last time I saw marks like these, they were on Malek.”
Iris was silent, her fingers still ghosting over the marks. She knew who Malek was, who he’d been to Vaskel and Lira. She also knew how dangerous he’d been. Then she carefully released his wrist and met his eyes.
“Come to the apothecary tomorrow.”
“Can you help?” He hated how desperate he sounded, especially since Iris wasn’t a mage.
Even in her crewing days, she’d been a rogue. She’d opened an apothecary shop as a cover when she and Lira’s gran had settled in Wayside. Her shop peddled herbs for healing, not magical cures.
“I need to consult some of my books.” She stood, sliding her glasses to the tip of her nose. “Tomorrow, Vaskel. And try not to worry too much tonight.”
“Easy for you to say,” he muttered, dragging his sleeve back down.
She paused at the door, glancing back at him. “You’re not Malek. Whatever these marks are, wherever they came from, you’re not him. Remember that.”
Then she was gone, leaving Vaskel alone in the tavern with the dying fire and the spreading marks on his arm. He looked down at his wrist where her fingers had traced above the dark lines, and he could still feel the warmth of her touch, the spark that had passed between them.
When he finally doused all the candles, smothered the fire, and stepped from the darkened tavern into the cold, the spark he’d felt at Iris’s touch hadn’t faded.