She blinked, coughed, gulped desperately for air — and then heard herself bark a laugh, bright and shrill, echoing in the small, wonderful room. “Ilike?!” she croaked at him. “Good gods, Joarr. It’s impossible. It’smagnificent. How” — she had to gulp for more air, flapping her hands in front of her face — “howlong have you been doing this? How have you managed it without any sun? And how many varieties do you evenhavein here?!”
Joarr’s mouth had twitched up, and something shifted in his eyes, glittering in the greenish light. “I make this since I first come to this mountain as an orcling,” he said. “And mayhap I… show you, should you wish?”
He sounded tentative again, almostshy— but Gwyn couldn’t fathom why, and she was nearly bouncing on her feet, her hands gripping tight to his arm. “Yes,” she breathed. “Gods, yes. You utter deviousfiend. Show meeverything.”
Joarr huffed a husky, strange-sounding laugh, but he nodded, and again guided her forward, along a narrow, winding stone path. And then he began to speak, toexplain, his voice still unusually thick. Telling her how he’d explored the entire mountain when he’d first come here — and how he’d run across this room with a few mushrooms growing in it. How he’d then discovered — he leapt up at the wall as he spoke, clinging to a little ledge with his fingers — this crack in the wall, which led to a tunnel, which led up to the surface. Which, thanks to some luckily-placed light-coloured stones, had reflected bits of sunlight into the room, just enough for the mushrooms to grow.
And then, how he’d worked to propagate the mushrooms that were already there. How he’d next sought out new varieties in the forest, and worked to propagate those, too. And how it had kept growing, and he’d kept working away at it, adding bits here and there over the years, until… this.
Andthis, it turned out, included not only this room, but a second room deeper below, also illuminated with the honey-mushrooms’ greenish light. And this room felt far larger than the one above, sprawling wide beneath the earth, and it was chock-full of massive posts and boulders, and rough-cut stone pillars that rose from the floor to the high ceiling above.
“Up is for growing,” Joarr told Gwyn, his eyes sparkling as they flicked toward the ceiling. “But down is for playing, ach?”
With that, he crouched and leapt into the air, landing lightly atop a nearby boulder — and with another flying leap, he soared over to another one, an astonishing distance away. And as Gwyn again stared, her mouth agape, he darted all the way to the opposite wall, without once touching the floor — and then spun around, and made his way back. But this time, he hurled himself at the tall, jagged stone pillars, clinging and climbing with his claws and his legs as he flew from one, to the next, to the next.
When he landed back beside Gwyn again, he’d barely broken a sweat. And once she’d croaked some kind of weak, ineffectual response, he grinned down toward her, flashing her all his sharp teeth. “Wish to try?” he asked. “Come. Hold me.”
There was no refusing an offer like that, and Gwyn eagerly climbed onto his back, and held on tight. And then, as she peered over his shoulder, he did it all over again. His fluid powerful body crouching and leaping beneath her, his laughter ringing through the room.
It was pure, whirling exhilaration, swooping through Gwyn’s belly, thrumming in her hands and feet. And when Joarr finally put her down, and next coolly informed her that she had to try to find him, she instantly raced after him from boulder to post to boulder, doing her damnedest to catch the sneaky bastard, while he taunted her from a distance, and even threw mushrooms at her with infuriating and hilarious accuracy.
He finally stopped when Gwyn was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe, her hands on her knees, the tears streaming down her face. And when Joarr swaggered back toward her, all twinkling taunting insolence, she couldn’t seem to stop drinking up the sight of him, her heart furiously swerving in her still-wheezing chest.
“You are a menace,” she gasped at him, as she snatched up one of the nearby mushrooms he’d thrown at her, and hurled it back toward his face. “And a dirty rottenscoundrel.”
He easily caught the mushroom with a quick flick of his fingers, and then tossed it up into his mouth. “Ach,” he said, as his teeth snapped down, followed by a single gulp in his throat. “You like. Wish for more.”
And yes, good gods, she did. Even if he was tormenting her with it, she still couldn’t stop staring at him, smiling at him, needing him closer, here, under her hands. And as usual, he somehow just knew, closing that last space between them, and again snatching her bodily up into his arms.
“Wish for me,” he murmured, his voice low in her ear, as he strode back toward the far side of the room. “Forme. Ach?”
Gwyn rapidly nodded, circling her arms tighter around him, inhaling the scent of his neck. So caught in its rich, lovely sweetness that she scarcely noticed where he was taking her — at least, until he deposited her on something soft, and flat, and… familiar?
Gwyn blinked hazily around her, rubbing her hands at the softness — the furs — beneath her. They were surrounded by a ring of tall, looming boulders, almost as though this were a little room within the room — and here, in the middle of the boulders, was this large, flat stone, perhaps waist-height, covered all over with furs…
“Joarr,” Gwyn said, her voice strangled, even as he put his knee to the furs, nudging her own knees apart. “Whydo you have another Bautul altar in your secret shroom-room?!”
Joarr stilled, brief but unmistakable — and then leaned back to frown mightily toward her, his forehead furrowed. “This is noaltar,” he countered. “This is bed.Mybed.Imake this. Forme.”
But he surely hadn’t made the ring of boulders around them, that was clear, let alone this stone itself. Without question a highly similar size and shape as the others, and Gwyn could see Joarr’s eyes looking at it too, and then narrowing back at her face.
“Canny witch,” he muttered, under his breath, dragging a hand through his hair — and then he gripped her chin, gave her head a little shake. “Youneverspeak to Bautul of this. No Stella, no Kalfr — most of all no Silfast.Mygarden.Mybed.Oursecret. Ach?”
A shiver of warmth trilled up Gwyn’s spine, and she felt herself smile back at him, slow, affectionate. “Of course,” she said. “I’m honoured that you shared such a delightful secret mushroom-room with me.”
But there — wait, there — was something, in his eyes. A twitch, oh so brief, of his mask. His…hidingsomething.
Gwyn’s breath stuttered in her chest, and she searched those eyes, searched beyond the mask — and somehow found truth. Heavy, cold, dragging up darkness she’d desperately wanted to keep deep below…
“Oh, so it’snota secret room, then,” she heard herself say, her voice damnably uneven. “You just — kept it secret fromme.”
Joarr’s eyes closed, brief but thoroughly betraying, and Gwyn fought to ignore the sudden, awful plunge in her belly, the rapid-fire beat of her heart. The clear, devastating realization that hestilldidn’t trust her, not even after all she’d done, all she’d sought to prove to him. She’d helped him, she’d understood him, she was even pregnant with his child. She’d committed to a life here. To him. And maybe this meant — maybe —
“No, woman,” Joarr’s voice cut in, fervent and low. “I only — wished to be sure. Of you. Ofus.”
Us. His eyes were glittering on hers, hard, bright, even as his hand reflexively reached up, stroked that tooth around his neck. “Wished to be sure,” he whispered, “of all I saw. How you no curse me. No betray me. You…loveme. You are mine.Always.”
Oh. Gwyn’s heart was still thundering, her throat swallowing, her eyes fixed on his face. On what he was admitting, what he was confessing.
