17. Gunnar
Gunnar
I’m not following her. I’m outside. Those are two different things.
The rest of them can stay in there holding a meeting about what went wrong and whose fault it is — it’s Vick’s, by the way — and I’ll be out here, holding up a tree, not following the woman who bolted into a forest, just making sure she doesn’t accidentally burn it down.
Somebody had to.
Fine. I wanted to.
She found the prettiest clearing in walking distance, one I didn’t know was here, and that’s saying a lot. I’ve never seen the land change for anyone before. I heard stories, right along with the ones about female dragons. Two fairytales in one.
Huh.
She drops onto the rock in the center like she owns it and starts arguing with the trees.
“Mates,” she tells them. “That’s not a real thing.”
I’m grinning.
I don’t notice I’m grinning until my face starts to ache and—
No.
No, no, no. Grinning at women in forests is Rayner’s entire personality, and one of him is plenty—
“—and always — always — have big dicks. Let’s be real, Gerald.”
She’s not wrong.
The grin is back. Bigger.
Fuck.
“And they live in books,” she informs the plant. “Where the authors put them. On purpose. Because that’s where they belong.”
She’s arguing with reality. Out loud. To a houseplant. And reality should just pay up now and save itself the trouble, because I’ve been fighting this woman since Chicago, and the outcome is never in my favor.
I have personally argued with weather. She’s better at it than I ever was.
I let my head fall back against the bark.
For the record, I fought it. Like my life depended on it.
It felt like it did.
I can’t fight this anymore.
Look at her. She is so fucking amazing and she has no idea. Full of life, hands going, arguing with nothing. Her whole world was flipped upside down and shaken twice — and she’s still standing. Still swinging. Still funny.
Then her voice changes.
The friend. The fairy tale. The scream she’d scream. And then — will I ever see her again — and somewhere in the middle of that sentence, nothing out here is funny anymore.
My parents are.
She’s crying.
She’s crying alone in the middle of the woods. I can’t have that, and I’m off my tree and moving before I—
The plant moves.
Wait. Is that…
What the hell is Gerald doing out here?
And he’s shaking. Leaves faster, bigger, way bigger than a plant should—
What the fuck?!
And then Gerald shifts, he’s not a plant anymore.
No fucking way.
No way.
That’s not— those don’t—
I stop dead, because I am looking at a familiar.
A familiar.
Familiars are extinct. Extinct like female dragons and changing lands are extinct.
Which, as of a few days ago, is apparently a very negotiable word.
They live in the same stories that she does — the ones you stop believing right when responsibility shows up.
But I’m looking at one.
It’s small — small enough to fit in her arms — armored in those leaf-shaped scales from nose to tail, little hooked claws, eyes too bright and too smart, like it’s been listening for years.
Because it has. It’s been sitting in a pot in her apartment listening to everything, this whole time, disguised as its own damn self, and not one of us caught it.
Elara has gone so still I’m not sure she’s breathing.
The familiar picks its way toward her, slow, careful, and she folds. Knees in the dirt, arms out, and it’s in them, and the sound she makes—
Two days I’ve known her, and this is the happiest I have ever seen her.
I am not jealous of an extinct animal.
I am a little jealous of an extinct animal.
I come in slow. The familiar’s head comes up before I’ve taken two steps, and then it pours out of her arms, curls, and rolls to me — rolls, an armored ball across the forest floor — and unwinds at my feet and puts its nose against my knee.
Sniffs. Makes a sound I don’t recognize.
Does one full lap around my boots like it’s checking my references.
Then it steps back.
Apparently I pass. I’ll take it.
Elara’s still on the ground, face still wet, and she’s wearing the kind of smile I usually have to work a whole room for. The familiar got it for free.
Noted.
I hold out a hand and she takes it before she remembers she’s mad at me. I pull her up. Her knees are covered in dirt, so I brush them off, because her hands are shaking and mine aren’t.
“You know,” I say standing back up, “I never said I didn’t like being in your nest.”
“Gunnar. Don’t.”
I take a step toward her.
She takes a step back.
“What? Can’t handle the truth, Beautiful?”
Another step. Another step back.
Her back finds a tree.
Her chin comes up, and there she is — red-eyed, dirt on her hands, cornered against a tree on a strange world, and reaching for a comeback anyway. “I know exactly how to handle men like you.”
Her face changes in a second flat.
Angry.
I love it.
I lean down until my mouth is an inch from hers.
“Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“Easy. I just pretend you don’t—”
I press my lips to hers.
She goes stiff for exactly one heartbeat — I feel it against my mouth — and then she doesn’t. Then her hands are in my shirt, and they’re not pushing, they’re pulling, and everything goes quiet.
Everything.
I didn’t know I could do quiet.
Her mouth is soft and furious at the same time. Of course it is. She kisses like she argues.
I get a hand in her hair and her back off the bark, and somewhere between one breath and the next that sound starts up in her chest again — low, rolling.
Only it’s not a growl this time.
She’s purring. Against my chest.
For me.
I could burn down a city with what that does to me.
I pull back before I can’t. Just far enough to see her — eyes still closed, lips parted, and for the first time in two days, no comeback anywhere on her.
And because my mouth has never once protected me from anything, what comes out next is quiet, and it isn’t a joke.
“I just wish you had built the nest for me.”