"You quarantined my gift."
"It had aphids."
"It did not have?—"
"Seventeen aphids. I counted."
"You counted individual aphids."
"Pest management requires accurate data."
I grip my side of the rail. My fingers land two inches from his. The cedar is warm where his hands have been holding it,almost hot, and the wood grain is slightly compressed under the pressure of his grip.
"Flynn."
"What."
"Your tattoos are still glowing."
His eyes snap down to his front. The runes pulse. Bright. Brighter. The serpent-and-moon sigil over his heart flares like a coal being blown on, and the green-gold light catches in the sweat on his collarbones and turns his skin into something luminous, something almost sacred, and he's close enough now that I can smell cedar shavings and steel oil and underneath it all a dark, woody musk that bypasses every rational circuit in my brain and plugs directly into my lower spine.
He doesn't step back.
His fingers shift on the rail. One inch closer to mine.
"They do that."
"When you're exerting yourself."
"Yes."
"You're not chopping wood anymore."
The silence stretches. A bead of sweat tracks down his temple, catches the light of his runes, and rolls along the hard edge of his jaw. His pupils are wide. His breathing has changed. Something raw and magnetic crackles in the twelve inches of cedar between us.
His pinky finger touches mine.
His pinky is a furnace. One square inch of contact and my entire nervous system recalibrates around it, every nerve ending in my body rerouting to that single point where rough green skin presses against my dirt-caked knuckle.
Then he pulls his hand back like the fence bit him.
"I need soil."
I blink. "What?"
"Organic soil. Mine is synthetic-nutrient-optimized. Valerius will have his grounds enchanted with fae-grade amendments. I can't compete with synthetic against magical." He crosses his arms over him, which does catastrophic things to his biceps and absolutely nothing to dim the runes still pulsing across his ribs. "I need living soil. Heavy mineralized compost with active microbial cultures."
"You're asking me for dirt."
"I'm asking you for consultation on biological soil composition."
"That's dirt, Flynn."
His jaw tightens. The serpent rune flickers. "I have seventeen forty-gallon barrels in my garage that need mixing. The base compound is clay-ite aggregate. It requires manual integration with worm castings and volcanicite powder. The barrels weigh approximately two hundred pounds each when loaded."
"And you need help."
The words physically pain him. His whole face contorts like he's passing a kidney stone made of pride. His arms uncross, cross again, drop to his sides. He looks at the fence. Looks at the sky. Looks at a spot roughly six inches to the left of my ear.
