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Jealousy and anger flared that he was protecting Theo,myTheo and I’d come close—far too close—to hauling off and punching Seff right in his pretty jaw. The last threads of my common sense held me back, but they were only fragile little strings now after days of irritation and frustration at the situation with Theo.
For three days, I have been lashing out at everyone, snarling and snapping at my employees. My control over the berserker side of me is slipping as its compulsion towards Theo grows more agitated.
The beast had been sated at least, seeing him slip down the stairs with Seldon before they’d headed out earlier. I’d seen them through the window on the kitchen door. They’d been laughing together. I couldn’t hear about what, but the sight of Theo with his head thrown back, giggling with his new friend, had soothed something inside me. Not a lot, but enough that I could focus without the haze of violent anger clouding the edges of my vision.
“I honestly don’t know, Mauvy… I’m sorry. I really am. I shouldn’t have unleashed on Woodsy this morning.”
I finish stacking the glasses back into their place under the bar and stand, squeezing my eyes shut until the colours burst behind my lids and run my fingers over my beard, pulling at it lightly. “I’m just-”
“Completely torn up by the kid?” I open my eyes to thin slits and glare at her, mouth pulled into a tight frown.
“Don’t call him that.”
Mauvy snorts at me, rolling her eyes and turns towards the kitchens. I follow, along behind her, her hooves clattering on the flagstone tiles.
“That’s what you’re focusing on there?” She clocks the blush hiding behind my thick beard and shakes her head, jumping up on the stool at her work table and pulling a bowl close to her to tip the dough out onto the table, kneading it with her small but incredibly strong hands.
She ignores me pointedly, working the dough, shaping it into loaves and moving onto the next bowl. She moves along with her dinner prep in silence.
This is a time-honoured tactic of hers, her patience absolutely endless because she knows the pressure will eventually get to me, and I will spill everything. I can already feel it, the burgeoning impulse to tell her the whole sorry tale. My hands drum on the bench, ringing out through the otherwise empty kitchen. Hildy is resetting outside, and the other kitchen staff are on their breaks before it all starts again. Mauvy likes to prep on her own in peace—the kitchen is her domain, the food her magic. It’s a faun thing.
From across the workbench, she unpacks the vegetables for dinner. I groan loudly and throw my head back, sliding out one of the stools tucked under the prep bench and slumping into it in defeat.
“Fine. We messed around at the cottage the other day, and I reacted badly…”
Mauvy says nothing, but the metallic ring of the long and extremely sharp knife she pulls out to chop the carrots probably says enough. I wince as she bluntly cuts the tip of one particularly large carrot while holding eye contact.
“Yeah. I know.”
I scrub my face with my hand again, trying to get hold of my racing thoughts. Like, how can I tell her everything without coming out like a giant jackass? “I didn’t mean to, it was just… intense. And he’s so… There is just something about him that makes me a little crazy.” At this she snorts, rolling her lips into her teeth like she is trying her best to contain her smile. Or her comments.
“Yeah, yeah. Shut up.” I wave her off.
“I know. I’ve not been myself since we got back. It was just finding him there on that table, Mauv. He was sobroken. I thought he was dead.” My head drops to the cool surface, the sudden chill anchoring me in the present while the memories of that day tease at the corner of my mind.
Another steadying breath and Mauvy’s hand on my shoulder, patting comforting circles brings me back.
“It did something to me to see him like that. I just felt this… compulsion towards him.”
“Obsession more like, from what I’ve heard,” Mauvy whispers under her breath, and I only hear because she’s so close.
“Not going to lie to you, Mauvy,” because I’ve never been able to, not even when we were tiny kids playing together on the grassy grounds of the tavern hunting butterflies, “you’re not wrong. Whenever he’s not around, I get this anxious feeling under my skin. It just gets worse and more intense until I get this feral feeling built up, and I explode. And it’s not even any betterwhen he’s around. It’s like… he’s opened up this side of myself that I’d always been able to keep under control.”
“Because you see him as a victim? Because he was hurt?” Her words rankle, echoing too closely to those spat at me by Theo himself. I shake my head, tucking loose strands that escaped their bun behind my ear, my eyes trained out the back window of the kitchens, unfocused.
“No, definitely not.” But then I tilt my head, eyes focused on the corner of the kitchen, considering those first couple of days.
“Maybe. At first. But that wasn’t all of it. I saw him, flashes of the real him as we made our way home. He is far more resilient than he gives himself credit for. Funny too. And so fucking sassy. He just never gives me an inch. I like it.”
I finally turn to Mauvy and wink at her, she rolls her eyes, giving my shoulder one last pat before returning to her prep.
“I don’t think I feel like I need to protect him because he’s some victim.” I pause. "No matter whathethinks.” Mauvy raises her eyebrow but lets me continue without interrupting, chopping and peeling with practised efficiency. “I want to protect him because he feels likemine.”
Even without turning to face her, I know she is staring at me hard, her eyes boring into the side of my head like she is trying to burrow into my skull. “Roan, are youcertain? That boy has been through enough-”
“I know Mauvy. Iknow. Shit, what weallwent through in the Woods was enough. I don’t think Seff is quite over it yet, either. Tor sure as shit isn’t. But Theo obviously copped the worst, Mauvy. He needstime, to heal, to figure out what he wants. Not to be-”
“Thrown over your shoulder and carried off to the nearest bed to shag until you both pass out from dehydration?” Mauvy cuts in with a bark of laughter at her own joke. I flip her off and scrunch my nose up at her.
