Flynn's heaves. One breath. Two. The runes flare brighter.
He drops the axe.
The blade bites three inches into the chopping block with a sound like a bone snapping, and the handle vibrates, humming in the afternoon air. He doesn't look at it. Doesn't flinch. Just releases his grip and lets the maul stand upright in the stump like Excalibur buried in stone.
Then he walks toward me.
No. Walk is wrong. Stalks. Covers the distance between the chopping block and the fence line in four strides that eat the ground, each footfall deliberate, his bare shoulders rolling with a predatory economy of motion that makes my hindbrain light up like a switchboard. Six foot seven. Moss-green skin sheened with sweat. Cargo shorts riding low on hips that have no business being that defined on a man who mows lawns for spiritual fulfillment.
He stops at the fence.
Twelve inches of cedar plank between us.
This close, the runes aren't just glowing. They're warm. I can feel the heat radiating off his skin, cutting through the afternoon sun like a second source, and the light shifts and pulses in rhythm with something I'm pretty sure is his heartbeat. The sigil over his sternum—the one shaped like a coiled serpent eating a crescent moon—burns the brightest.
His jaw works. Tendons flex in his neck.
"You have comfrey on your face."
My hand flies to my cheek. Dried paste flakes off under my fingertips.
"It's a poultice. For the flamingo bites."
"You treated flamingo bites with comfrey."
"Comfrey promotes cell regeneration. It's basic herbalism."
"You could have used a bandage."
"Bandages don't have antioxidants."
A muscle jumps in his jaw. His eyes—amber, deep amber, with vertical pupils that contract and expand like a cameraaperture adjusting to light—drop to the scratches on my forearms. The ones from this morning's wrangling. Red welts crisscrossing my skin where animated plastic beaks drew blood.
His nostrils flare.
"Those need cleaning."
"They're fine."
"They're not fine. Animated constructs carry residual enchantment particulate. You need to wash them with a saline solution and apply a neutralizing?—"
"Did you just march over here to lecture me about wound care?"
His mouth opens. Closes. The runes over his ribs flicker.
He grips the top fence rail. The wood groans under his hands. Each knuckle is the size of a walnut, scarred across the ridges, and his fingers wrap so far over the cedar plank that his fingertips nearly brush my side of the rail.
"I marched over here because you were staring."
The blush comes back. Thermonuclear. I swear the comfrey paste on my cheeks starts to cook.
"I wasn't staring."
"You've been standing at this fence for four minutes."
"I was checking on my vine. The one I gave you. Where is it, by the way?"
"Quarantine."
