Page 54 of Tusk Love

“Very nice wreath,” he said.

“It’s a flower crown.” That was the only warning she gave before plunking it over his head.

“Guinevere.” Oskar levied his most fearsome scowl upon her. “Kindly take this thing off me.”

“Whatever for?” she protested. “You look rather dashing!”

“I don’twantto look dashing,” he snapped, “and I don’t want to wear a damn flower crown, either.”

“But—but I made it for you.”

Her beautiful face took on a plaintive expression. Hah. That wasn’t going to work on him this time. He would harden his heart, by the gods.

Her bottom lip wobbled.

Fuck.

Minutes later, Oskar was holding Vindicator still while Guinevere slipped another flower crown around the latter’s head. The stallion eyed Oskar with something like distress, but no one could help either of them now.

“We’ll get through this together, old friend,” Oskar muttered to him.

Pudding merely shot him an amiable grin, her eyes half-closed beneath her own flower crown, while Guinevere surveyed the three of them with her hands on her hips, her satisfied smile as radiant as the sun.

“Why aren’tyouwearing one?” Oskar demanded.

He sounded like a rude son of a bitch, but Guinevere was unfazed. She pointed to the once colorful patch on the ground. “There aren’t any flowers left.”

“Not very environmentally friendly, now, is it?” he said under his breath as he tucked their waterskins back into the rucksack dangling down Pudding’s side.

“Sorry?” Guinevere looked over at him, all sweet, blissful innocence. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Nothing, dear.”

It came so easily to him, that endearment. It rolled off his tongue the way a breath was exhaled by the lungs, an action that required no mulling over. It simply…was.

“Oh, Oskar,” Guinevere scoffed, and she turned away from him, but not before he saw her smile brighten even more.

Vindicator’s new accoutrements appeared tohave thoroughly sapped him of his pride. There was a distinct lack of vigor in the stallion’s steps as he bore Oskar and Guinevere across the golden grasslands and into the procession of travelers entering the Wuyun Gorge.

As their party eased into an open space between two other groups, the five human riders behind them didn’t bother hiding their stares—first at the flower crowns on Oskar and the horses, and then at Guinevere, at which point the staring turned to outright gawking. Some of their jaws actually dropped.

Oskar shot them a nasty glare over his shoulder, his arm tightening around Guinevere’s waist. Then it washerturn to look around, wondering what bee he had in his bonnet. Or, to be more accurate, in his flower crown.

But soon her attention swiveled back to what lay in front of them. It truly was an incredible sight. Oskar had passed this way before, but he was far from immune to the awe it inspired. The Wuyun Gorge was a large ravine that snaked down in a stony gash through the center of two mountain ranges—the rugged Cyrios, which cordoned off the Menagerie Coast from the rest of Wildemount, and the Ashkeeper Peaks, the forested and treacherous spine of the continent that separated the Dwendalian Empire and the Wastes of Xhorhas. From left to right, there was only ridge as far as the eye could see, holding up the gray sky like the shoulders of giants.

The heart of autumn had burst upon the world. The mountains looked as though they’d been dipped in fire, their vast slopes boasting endless waves of scarlet and ocher and magenta, the highest peaks wreathed in silver mist. And slicing into the middle of it all, the burnished carpets of foliage abruptly giving way to platforms of barren red rock, was the enormous gorge, which lay as though in wait.

“I feel…small.” Guinevere’s soft voice threaded through the chime of hoofbeats and wooden wheels echoing all over the road. “But not insignificant. Like I’m a part of something greater. Like maybe I’m meant for better.” She turned back to Oskar then, sharing this moment with him, her violet eyes alight, her pale hair streaming in thewind. “Like—I don’t know, Oskar. Who could ever describe this feeling? I don’t have the words.”

“I do,” he said, staring at her, framed as she was against a backdrop of open road and high mountains. “I feel like the look on your face.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Guinevere

All things considered, it was a miracle that she didn’t fall off Vindicator’s back once they entered the Wuyun Gorge. She was half out of the saddle, so busy twisting from side to side, taking in every inch of the walls of sheer rock that surrounded this final stretch of the Amber Road.

It wasn’t proper, of course. Ladies were supposed to sit quietly on their horses, backs straight and eyes gazing straight ahead. But ladies weren’t supposed to disrobe in the woods and let a man kiss them between their legs, either, so Guinevere felt that this was a moot point.

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