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“Or because you’re the sub, not me.”
“Am I, though? Still not the reason,” I said.
“And you know that if you even try, I’ll find a way to make you regret it.”
“Nope.”
“Then it’s because you’re boring?”
I glanced at him with suspicion. “Is that an attempt to provoke me so you have an excuse to punish me?”
“Maybe.” His teeth shone in the moonlight, fixed in a broad grin even as he shivered. “Mi amor?”
“Yes?”
“You fucking did it,” he whispered, the backs of his cold fingers brushing mine. “You saved us.”
-
“I...think that looks right,” I said, doubt hitting hard even as I spoke, and we both surveyed the crooked pile of sticks on the ground before us. Half of it promptly collapsed in on itself as we stared.
“Close enough,” Ren agreed cheerfully. “How do we do the part where it bursts into flames?”
We glanced at each other uncertainly. We’d kept moving through the forest that bordered the river all Blessed night, exhausted and aching – and in Ren’s case, occasionally bleeding from his shoulder whenever his tired feet caused him to stumble or fall – but too afraid to stop for more than a few minutes at a time in case our pursuers caught up to us. But we’d seen their own campfire flare up a dozen miles back, and the knowledge that they were taking the time to rest had lent us confidence to do the same now that the sun had risen and the flames wouldn’t be visible from a distance.
Yet neither the hunger nor the chill in the air could be staved off by an assortment of dry sticks that we had no idea how to light.
“Oh come on,” Ren said after a long silence. “You must have had to do it before. Isn’t the north colder than this?”
“Sure,” I conceded. “But the palace fires were lit by servants, and as a political hostage I never travelled without supervision. You?”
The prince cocked his head, still gazing at the pathetic stick pile as if he could make it ignite with nothing more than the heavy weight of expectation. “My guards always handled it. Ademar used to kind of…crouch next to the wood and it burst into flames.”
“I think there’s more to it than that,” I said wryly and then frowned, trying to remember. “Rocks, maybe?”
“Rocks don’t burn, Mat.”
“It was…they smashed them together?” I looked around for some stones we could use, hissing out a breath of irritation when Ren didn’t move. “We’re still attached, asshole. Could I trouble you to possibly help?”
Ren leaned in and licked my cheek.
I raised an eyebrow, trying not to laugh. “That was not remotely helpful.”
“I could lick something else instead?”
“You’re still not contributing in any useful way.”
He shrugged. “Then I’m out of ideas.”
But he gestured vaguely to a spot on the ground with his boot, and sure enough there were a handful of pebbles half-sunk into the soft ground, possibly deposited by the river when it had trailed a different course through these woods long ago. Yet after twenty minutes of fruitlessly scraping them together, which admittedly produced the desired sparks but did not, in any way, result in the sticks catching fire, I finally gave up.
Ren clicked his tongue. “Is it too damp or something?”
“Oh, I don’t fucking know,” I said, scowling. The sun was now heating up our little glade quite nicely, so maybe we didn’t need a fire after all. Still, the waste of time and energy was depressing, and my stomach was growling loudly. “We’re terrible at this shit.”
“We absolutely are. Next time you have the fantastic idea of leaving a comfortable city to go gallivanting across the country with absolutely no supplies or servants, remind me to tell you to fuck off.”
“And the next time you want to stay within a mile of the palace in which everyone wants you dead, remind me to let you.”
