"Forget the contract for five seconds!"
The words leave my mouth before I can catch them. They hit the air between us and detonate.
Silence.
His jaw flexes. The muscle jumps twice.
I reach for the tiny first aid kit from the bathroom and close the distance between us. Three steps. That's all this room allows. I'm standing directly in front of him and my head barely clears his collarbone. I pull the first thorn from his forearm.
He hisses through his teeth.
"Baby."
"That one was barbed."
I pull another. Green blood wells up, dark and warm against my fingertips. His skin is rougher than human skin. Thicker. The scars on his arms are layered so dense they create their own topography, a braille history of every fight he's walked awayfrom. I trace around a particularly savage one near his wrist while reaching for the next thorn.
His hand catches mine.
Wraps around it completely. My entire fist disappears inside his grip.
"Magnolia."
My name in his mouth sounds different than it's ever sounded in anyone else's. Heavier. Like it has weight and texture. Like it means something specific in a language I don't speak.
I look up.
His pupils are blown wide. The gold ring of his irises is almost gone, swallowed by black. His pulse hammers visibly in his throat.
"This isn't in the contract," he says.
"What isn't?"
His thumb drags across my knuckles. Slow. Deliberate.
"Any of it."
The first aid kit hits the floor.
I don't pick it up.
The first aid kit spills antiseptic wipes and tiny adhesive bandages across the floor like confetti. We don’t move to collect them.
His thumb is still on my knuckles. That single point of contact hums through my skeleton. The lamp flickers. Outside, someone in the hallway laughs, high and champagne-drunk, and the sound belongs to a different universe entirely.
"You built yourself a bed on the floor," I say.
"Affirmative."
"Out of a wardrobe."
"The mahogany was structurally sound."
I look down at his construction project. He'd stripped the wardrobe into planks and laid them flat, then folded a singlecountry club towel on top as a mattress. A towel. For a six-foot-nine Orc mercenary covered in thorn wounds. The planks are arranged with military precision, each edge flush against the next, the towel centered with geometric exactness.
Not breaks.Snaps. Like a rubber band pulled past its limit. Like the moment bread dough tears because you've kneaded it one second too long and the gluten just surrenders.
"That," I say, pointing at the pallet, "is the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life."
