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Chapter Twenty-Six

Oskar

Spilling inside Guinevere was a religious experience. Not to say that every moment prior had been anything short of sacred.

He collapsed on top of her, his ears ringing. She prodded him in the ribs. “Oskar, you’re heavy.”

“Five minutes.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Just let me catch my breath.”

She huffed but reached up to card her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes, savoring each soothing caress.

“That was rather wonderful, wasn’t it?” Her pleased voice drifted in as though from far away, slipping comfortably through the haze of his afterglow.

“They say it usually hurts the first time, and there was a bit of discomfort, but now I can confidently state that if one’s partner is as gentle and respectful as you were—”

“Mmm.” Being gentle and respectful had damn near killed him. But he was happy that she was happy.

“You weren’t very respectful toward the end, though,” Guinevere remarked. “I’ve no issue with it, I don’t think, but it’ll take me a while to get used to that kind of love-talk. You may try it again in the future.”

He dozed off to the dulcet singsong of her chatter, his face nestled in the valley between her breasts. When he woke up, the fire was burning lower in its hearth and the sky beyond the lone window was pitch-black.

Guinevere regarded him with violet eyes at half-mast, a smile lurking at the corners of her lips. “I have heard that men tend to fall asleep right after.”

“Sorry.” Oskar rolled over but took her with him, so that she was now the one pillowed on his chest. “I guess I’m a typical man in this regard.”

“Nothing about you is typical,” she told him softly, and his heart might have skipped a beat right then and there, but he’d be damned if he would admit it.

The room smelled like sex, and her silver hair was delectably rumpled, falling in waves over satiny brown skin that glowed in the firelight. Ah, but he could get used to this.

They ate their sandwiches in bed, not bothering to put clothes back on.

She licked a stray drop of mustard off his chin with an impish giggle, and he forgot himself long enough to smile at her.

Eventually he poked his head out the door and asked a passing chambermaid to draw a hot bath, and he and Guinevere spent an idyllic—if comical—thirty minutes squeezed into the too-small slipper tub, washing each other.

“Enjoy this,” he warned her, ducking so she could lather soap into his hair.

“This is your last bath until Trostenwald.” He’d decided that they wouldn’t stop in Alfield, which was the next settlement after Zadash.

Alfield was a small farming town hardly equipped to deal with a rash of mercenary activity.

“I’m sure we can find another waterfall somewhere along the way,” she murmured, looking at him through lowered lashes, and he felt his face heat and his cock twitch.

While they were drying off by the fire, his gaze fell on her ripped dress. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said dourly. It was a waste of a perfectly serviceable garment.

Guinevere chewed on her bottom lip in a way that made him want to do it for her. “I found it rather exciting, to tell you the truth.”

“Well, it’s not going to happen again. My working-class heart can’t take it.”

“It shall remain a treasured memory, all the more special for its unique nature,” she vowed.

He laughed. He wasn’t the sort of man who just…

laughed —but she brought that out in him.

And he didn’t consider himself the sort of person who cuddled, either, but after they changed into their sleep clothes and went to bed, nothing was more important than curling around Guinevere, tucking her smaller body into his as they lay on their sides like spoons in a drawer, all sparkling and clean and snug.

Now that her magic was out in the open between them, it seemed easier for her to tell him things—things like how Elaras had told her to listen, and what she had heard when she touched the trunk.

“There’s something enchanted inside,” she said. “But the trunk itself contains an enchantment, too. Where did Mother and Father get this? We don’t deal in magicked wares; there’s a whole other trade license you need to apply for.”

If there was one thing Oskar hated more than treehuggers and mercenaries, it was mysteries. But he didn’t have any answers for her, so he just held her tighter.

“Oskar?” Guinevere sounded worried, her fingers gliding frenetically along his arm wrapped around her waist. “What if the mercenaries find us in Nicodranas? Mother and Father…”

“Where are they staying?”

“At Lord Wensleydale’s manor.”

His stomach hollowed out at the mention of her betrothed. But she was in distress, and he had to fix that first. “That’s your problem solved, then. A fancy lord has more than enough guards. You’ll be safer in his manor than you’ll ever be on this journey.” Safer than you’ll ever be with me.

It was no competition at all. Oskar had no armies, no piles of gold with which to hire them.

It was up to him and him alone to keep Guinevere alive and unharmed until the Menagerie Coast, where he would turn her over to people better equipped to protect her and give her the life she deserved.

He would see his duty through until the bitter end.

And then he would let her go.

They had a shockingly late start the next morning. Oskar maintained that it was no fault of his.

“How can it not be!” Guinevere’s pert nose was the highest point in Zadash as they trooped out of the Song and Supper with all their luggage. “I did my part, didn’t I; I nudged you to wake you up and everything—”

“It’s not that you nudged me, it’s where you nudged me,” he patiently explained. “I thought it was…an overture.”

“I was aiming to elbow you in the ribs. I didn’t mean for my hand to touch your—your—” She faltered, then bristled. “Am I the sort of woman who would purposefully, without so much as a by-your-leave, grab someone’s—someone’s staff—”

He let out a bark of laughter. She glared at him as they entered the inn’s stables. “You could have inquired as to my intentions. There was no call to ravish me straightaway.”

“Would’ve been unsporting of me to stop once you started begging me not to,” Oskar cheerfully pointed out.

“Please, sir,” quailed the young stable hand who had been waiting by the doors, “that’s six copper pieces for the two horses’ keep and hay and water overnight. I—I brushed them down, too.”

Guinevere’s face could have fried an egg. Enjoying himself immensely, Oskar paid the stable hand, adding a little extra for the latter’s trouble.

On their way to Zadash’s southern gate, they came across a blacksmith’s shop.

Guinevere had elected to walk with Oskar and help him guide the horses, but now she let out an excited squeal, grabbed her satchel of wares, and ducked beneath the hammer-and-anvil sign over the entryway before he could even blink.

Bewildered, he waited outside with Pudding and Vindicator. After all, he couldn’t just leave the trunk there, despite the ever-present Crownsguard patrolling the vicinity. Guinevere skipped back into view a few minutes later, minus the satchel but looking inordinately pleased with herself.

“Go on,” she told Oskar. “I’ll watch over the horses and our effects.”

“What have you done?” he asked, alarmed. It was nothing against her. Not really. She couldn’t help the strange ideas that popped into that pretty, whirligig head.

“It’s a surprise,” she insisted.

Oskar went inside the shop full of misgivings. The dwarf blacksmith was waiting for him with the friendly smile of someone who had been paid very, very well.

“Absolutely not,” said Oskar.

“My lady mentioned you might say that,” the dwarf replied. “In which case, I am obliged to inform you that we don’t offer refunds. The weapons have been paid for, sir. You need only make your selections.”

The thing was—it did make sense to replace the swords Oskar had lost. He could hardly fend off the mercenaries in close combat with a hunting knife and a plucky horse.

He would give the purchased weaponry to Guinevere at journey’s end, he decided.

Then she could gift them to her betrothed or…

whatever. It would be no business of Oskar’s by then.

After several minutes of browsing, he selected two of the blacksmith’s finest swords.

They were plain in appearance compared to the ones with engraved hilts or jewels set into their pommels, but the blade was the important thing, and these blades were as sharp as ice, crafted for fighting rather than display.

Gods help him, but he was in a buoyant mood as he left the shop. He had started the morning making love to a beautiful woman, and now she’d bought him a pair of dwarven-made swords. He had to thank Guinevere sincerely.

“You gave away everything left in your satchel?” were the first words he barked at her.

“You were the one who believed I should have no qualms exchanging the wares for what I needed,” came her lofty response. “And I need you to be adequately armed if you are to protect me from the mercenaries.”

But she was clearly fighting to suppress a smile, her frame vibrating as though she wanted to jump up and down, awash in the simple joy of gift-giving. He scowled and took her hand and didn’t let go of it until they reached the city gate.

Afternoon found them on Vindicator’s back, trotting along the Amber Road behind a procession of two covered, ox-driven wagons that bore a ragtag assortment of travelers and all their earthly possessions.

One of them was an orange-skinned goblin—a musician who liked to dangle his brightly stockinged feet outside the wagon’s canvas bonnet while strumming his lute and singing lusty songs that Oskar fervently hoped went over Guinevere’s head.

There was an entire army of goblin children, too, occasionally hopping down to run beside their conveyances’ spinning wooden wheels, flying kites and blowing soap bubbles out of pipes.

As the hours wore on and boredom set in, more than a few of them took to doubling back and pestering Oskar and Guinevere’s own party.

“Leave that alone!” Oskar bellowed at the tiny horde of devil spawn who had clambered onto Pudding and were using the pearwood trunk strapped to the mare’s back as a drum.

The children ignored him. Where were the parents? He glared at the musician, who was the only adult visible in the wagon a few feet ahead. “Can’t you do something?”

The musician plucked a mournful note from his lute. “Those’re my sister’s kids. They don’t listen to me.”

“Can’t we leave them be, Oskar?” Guinevere pleaded. “They’re just having fun, and Pudding appears to like their company.”

“I doubt Pudding understands what’s going on around her enough to form opinions on people,” Oskar muttered.

“She’s a very sweet horse,” Guinevere said loyally.

“She is,” he agreed. “Like treacle. And just as slow.”

Offended on their pack mare’s behalf, Guinevere turned around with a huff and spent the next several minutes looking straight ahead at the road, shoulders rigid, refusing to talk to him.

He poked and prodded at her, stifling his chuckles every time she so very pointedly veered from his touch as far as the saddle would allow.

Eventually, he couldn’t stand it any longer, and he pressed a fond kiss to the side of her neck, nipping at the sensitive skin.

She shrieked with laughter and half-heartedly tried to push him away, but he persisted.

Another kiss. Another little nip. She sighed, leaning back against his chest.

“Ah, the bloom of romance!” the goblin musician called out. In a fit of inspiration, he wove a beautiful melody from his lute. The sound of strings was lighter than sunbeams on a forest pond, serenading the autumn leaves and the clear horizon, impossible not to get lost in.

“Oh, my beloved’s eyes are violets, her hair spills like a moonlit stream.” The fine tenor of his voice rang exquisitely over the open road. “She is a gentle warrior, she handles my sword like a dream—”

“I’m going to kill you!” Oskar roared.

The children cackled. Their uncle hastily vanished into the darkness of the wagon in a flash of bright stockings, the echoes of goblin music still haunting the air.