Page 30 of Into Ember

“You used every soft thing you owned,” I say, gently, because facts can be delivered gently, “and you built walls.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. I watch her run her own memory of that night — the blankets, the count, probably trips back for more — and I watch her get halfway to it and turn back.

“It was a guest bed,” she says. “A thorough guest bed.”

“She means the blanket fort,” Gunnar offers, and there is something wrong with his voice that I don’t have time to think about.

“THANK you.” She points at him, vindicated. “A blanket fort. Exactly. Humans make blanket forts all the time, it’s practically a craft, and you’re all being extremely weird about—”

“Yours had walls,” Rayner says. Warm. Sincere. Deeply unhelpful.

Gunnar goes. Both hands over his face, coffee abandoned, laughing so hard it’s mostly air, and he can’t finish, he’s wheezing, and Rayner is patting his back with the tolerant rhythm of a man who has done it for centuries. Erik hasn’t said a word this whole time, but there’s something in his face that came up the moment I said built and hasn’t left, something quiet and proprietary, and I know for a fact that man would carry that pile of blankets into a war before he’d give one pillow back.

Elara isn’t looking at any of that.

Elara is looking at Gunnar.

Her head has turned, slow, and the whole interrogation turns with it. The weather moves off my shoulders and settles on his, and God forgive me for what I feel about that, because what I feel is wonderful.

“You knew.”

Gunnar’s laugh dies wrong, halfway out.

“Knew what?”

“Upstairs. When he said nest. You were laughing before anyone explained anything.” Her eyes are terrible and green. “You laughed like a man who already got the joke.”

“Was I?”

“Gunnar.”

I pick my coffee back up and settle in against the counter.

My turn is over. His is just beginning, and I intend to enjoy every minute of it exactly as much as he enjoyed mine.

Chapter 11

Gunnar

“Gunnar.”

My name. Said like a sentence. The kind with a judge attached.

This was funnier when it was Brock.

Thirty seconds ago this was the best morning I’ve had in a decade. Brock stuttered. Brock. The man talked a peace treaty out of a king with a knife at his throat, and one small woman with bed hair broke him before breakfast. I had plans for that. Long plans.

Now everybody’s looking at me.

Brock has his coffee back. Serene. The bastard.

Fine. She wants an answer. What she’s getting is the room back.

“Careful, Beautiful.” I lean back, hook an arm over the empty chair, and give her the grin — the good one, the one that’s started three fights and ended two. “Keep looking at me like that and the others are going to get jealous.”

Nothing.

No blush. No eye roll. Not even the mouth-twitch she does when she’s fighting one.