Page 45 of Tusk Love

“This is the best we’ve ever eaten while camping,” she told him, and he grunted agreeably as he shoveled more pottage into his mouth.

The Bonecrusher beside Guinevere—a half-elf named Iaz—touched her arm. “Big man like that needs his food, and lots of it,” she whispered. “Do you know how to cook?”

“No,” Guinevere admitted.

“Nothing to it, but you have to learn,” said Iaz. “Wherever you two decide to settle down, ask your neighbors for their recipes. There are some basic techniques…” And she quickly went through the steps for boiling and frying.

At first, Guinevere listened only to be polite. She and Oskar were certainly not going to be settling down anywhere together; that was merely the fiction that they’d created. The longer she paid attention to Iaz, though, the more an odd little daydream began to form in her head. A daydream of Oskar coming home to a hot meal on the table,prepared by her. Perhaps she’d still be wearing an apron when he came in. Perhaps the house could be by the shore of a shimmering mountain lake, surrounded by trees. And he would be the first thing she saw every morning, and every night she would fall asleep in his arms.

There would be no jewels or silks in that life. No balls or high teas or pianofortes—none of the things that she was used to. Could she be happy?

But there was no point to this mental exercise. She could never abandon her duty, and Oskar would never want to be saddled with her for the rest of his life. Stricken, she banished that impossible future to nothingness.

After supper, the children were sent to bed, and the adults passed around their homemade grog—a potent spiced drink that, in contrast to Zugri’s pottage, Guinevere found utterly vile. She imbibed enough to be courteous; Oskar, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy it. Rodregg broke out his lute, and, with some good-natured moaning and groaning, his kinsmen let him perform. Drinks flowed and music lilted and firelight flickered, and it was such a beautiful night, there beneath wisp-clouded velvet skies, there in the heart of autumn. Guinevere soaked up every moment the way a plant soaked up the sunshine. She was at peace, and all was right in the world…

“What’re you so aloof for, boy?” Nan yelled across the campfire at Oskar, waving her bottle of grog at the space between him and Guinevere as though it were a personal affront. “You stole her away from her lord father, the least you could do is cuddle!”

“Hear, hear!” the Bonecrushers shouted raucously.

Guinevere considered it a small miracle that she didn’t panic enough to manifest Teinidh and burn the whole forest down. As it was, she could only blush furiously and avoid Oskar’s gaze.

“There’s really no need—” she started to tell the Bonecrushers, only for the rest of the sentence to wither in her mouth, suddenly dry as Oskar draped a heavy arm over her shoulders, hauling her close to his brawny frame that she had already memorized with her hands.

“Regretting your lie already, princess?” he murmured in her ear.

She couldn’t respond. There was just…something—about beingclaimed so openly, even if it was a charade. Their audience cheered, and Rodregg switched from a lively dancing tune to a familiar soft ballad. He was continuing his song from earlier.

“Oh, my beloved is the bronze of the linden trees, she sets fire to my soul,” the musician crooned. “She smiled at me as she went down on her pretty knees, she swallowed me whole—”

Oskar threw a turnip peel at him. The rest of the clan thought this was great fun, and they joined in. Poor Rodregg was pelted with more turnip peels, leaves, and the occasional pebble, but he valiantly kept strumming his lute.

“Oh, everyone’s a critic, it’s brutal out here,” he sang in the same tune but in a much louder voice, caught in the agony of creation. “You’re all bastards, that much is exceedingly clear…”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Guinevere

“One day I’ll be famous and you’ll all be sorry,” Guinevere sang as she and Oskar walked to a nearby stream the next morning. “So put that turnip down, my horrid sister, Zugri.”

“Sing something else,” Oskar begged her. “Anything. I couldn’t sleep last night because that accursed jingle kept running through my head.”

“It’s stuck in mine, too.” Guinevere offered him an apologetic smile. “Rodregg has an ear for melody, you have to admit.”

“But his lyricism leaves much to be desired.”

Oskar was carrying a chest full of the used bowls and spoons from last night’s supper. He had volunteered to do the washing, and Guinevere was accompanying him because she wanted to be useful, for once. Not that she knew how to wash dishes, but how hard could it be?

“Where is the soap?” she asked brightly, sorting the utensils as she and Oskar crouched by the stream.

“And so her diabolical plan is revealed,” Oskar muttered, opening a round wooden container filled with…something. “She wishes to bathe while I toil away.”

Guinevere chuckled. “The soap for thedishes,Oskar.”

He blinked. “Why would you waste soap on cleaning the dishes?”

“What are we supposed to use, then?”

He showed her what was inside the container. The ashes from the campfire.

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