GRP Chapter 15

Mariaeks darted back to the bed and sat.

With her thirst somewhat eased, she finally had room to take in her surroundings. Her gaze caught on the wooden ornament hanging on the wall. A considerable size—odd that she'd missed it until now. Something about it was familiar. She recalled it quickly: the same design was carved into the fortress gate.

Inside a circular frame of bare, dry branches, a fox sat. The Fox's Den. Only then did she understand—this enormous fortress of stacked stone had taken the Fox's Den as its emblem.

It did not suit that man at all.

Even Mariaeks, who knew little of worldly affairs, understood that humans preferred names that sounded formidable— "the Golden Dragon's Nest," or "the Underground Giant's Palm," that sort of thing. No matter how she turned it over, the Fox's Den seemed far too delicate. It seemed like the kind of name that would crumble at the vibration of a frost giant rolling over in its sleep, and blow away at the first prank of a spirit.

Why, of all things, had they chosen this name?

Her shoulders jolted.

Her gaze tracked a presence drawing steadily closer—that blazing, consuming force she had grown accustomed to in recent days.

Garthe.

Mariaeks carefully stilled her breathing.

The battle... is over.

He was drawing closer. Beyond the fortress walls. Along the broad road where humans walked. Across the square. Up through the castle. Up the stairs. To the firmly shut door of her room.

It felt as though her windpipe was being slowly tightened.

Mariaeks stared at the door handle as it rattled in its frame. The door swung open with a creak, and cold air thick with the smell of blood swept in.

Mariaeks and Garthe's eyes met.

For all that he was wrapped in a savage energy that seemed capable of destruction or butchery at any moment, his face was no different from when he'd left. Not a single brow furrowed. No trace of fatigue. Were it not for the blood spattered across his face, the sharpness in his eyes, and the killing intent she could feel clearly, it would have been difficult to believe he had just come from battle.

Mariaeks, still sitting on the bed, straightened her back. She placed her slightly trembling left hand beneath her right.

Garthe came toward her, one step at a time. His boots—caked with snow and blood—came to rest at the tips of her feet. Whether from the cold or some instinct not to be touched, her feet curled inward.

"Keeping the house in order?"

Mariaeks managed a small nod.

"Good."

Garthe smiled, eyes narrowing to slits. Even while radiating killing intent from every pore, the words he let fall were almost gentle. His emotions were opaque, his actions impossible to predict. With no idea how to handle him, Mariaeks did nothing but read his signals with desperate care.

Without warning, Garthe lowered himself and crouched down.

Mariaeks could not swallow, could not blink. She stared down at him. Garthe let her gaze wash over him without interest, then bit the fingertips of his glove and worked his hand free. In the taut silence, a large hand latticed with scars closed around her foot. He must have come through the blizzard, yet his hand was scalding—as though boiling. Mariaeks had to summon a vast, taxing reserve of willpower just to keep her foot from flinching back on instinct, making herself surrender it like an object with no will of its own.

Holding her foot, Garthe tilted his head from side to side, rolling his neck slowly. Releasing the stiffness of battle. Her cold foot gradually warmed inside the heat his body was producing. And as it did, the piercing killing intent and the roughness of his divine power radiating outward also began, little by little, to settle.

A little more time passed. Garthe, his gaze directed downward, slowly closed his eyes. Then opened them. The edge that had lived in his eyes—at the moment he closed them and opened them again, it stilled to something like a windless sea at night.

"Hm."

The corner of Garthe's mouth rose.

"Interesting."

His tone carried nothing of the word's usual meaning.

The violent energy had subsided, but Mariaeks could not bring herself to lower her guard. He was harder to read than an unpredictable natural disaster.

Garthe lowered his head to look down. A single drop of blood had been gathering at the edge of his jaw. When his head dipped, it fell onto the back of her foot. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. Everywhere he touched, she froze.

Garthe began searching through his clothing. Mariaeks imagined a wickedly shaped weapon, or something like shackles. Instead, what he drew from inside his clothes was a square of white foot-wrapping cloth and a small leather shoe.

"Lift your foot."

With practiced ease, Garthe wrapped the white cloth around her foot and slid the leather boot over it. He tied the laces into a neat bow, then stood abruptly. Mariaeks's gaze drifted up after him. He knocked the snow from his hair with a perfunctory brush of his hand, shrugged off his coat—thick with gray fur—and dropped it carelessly on the floor. Then he walked to the table Mariaeks had wiped earlier and scraped his boots against the edge, knocking loose the snow packed with blood and straw.

There was no clearer signal that his business here was concluded.

The man appeared occupied with his perfunctory grooming. Mariaeks dropped her tense gaze to the leather shoe he had put on her foot. Slightly loose, but the craftsmanship—layers of tanned leather stitched with uncommon skill—was anything but ordinary. The embroidery: flowers, wrought with the delicacy of snowflake crystals. A beautiful shoe.

What Mariaeks felt, looking at it, was this:

He really seemed like a crazy person.

He had stridden in with that murderous air, and what he had done with his own hands was put a pretty shoe on her foot. Gods were said to be fickle as jam boiling over, but this was in a different category entirely. The man's mind was clearly flickering in and out.

Samthyeon had said he wanted to research the great god of Heimdrykze, but Garthe seemed even more suitable as a research subject.

Mariaeks observed this more suitable research subject. Given the dense smell of blood, it was no surprise that his tunic beneath the coat was soaked in it as well. Garthe undid the leather cord at his waist, seized the hem of his tunic, and lifted it up in one motion.

The candlelight traced his outline. Broad shoulders and back. The thick line of his waist following the spine downward. His body, armored in muscle, called to mind a predator that hides its presence in the dark and wind. The scars—large and small, scattered across him—made the impression complete.

Garthe wiped himself down roughly with the removed tunic, then turned back and walked toward her. Ridged muscle at his abdomen, a broad and solid chest—all of it exposed.

Mariaeks stared at the scar carved into his chest. The wound she had made—or rather, the wound Garthe had made by seizing her wrist and pressing himself onto it. The cold of that moment seemed to wash over her again. Her fingertips rang with it.

Garthe passed by without sparing her a glance. He rummaged through the nightstand beside the bed, drew out a neatly folded tunic, pulled it on, and tied the leather cord at his waist. Grooming concluded, efficiently and without ceremony. He pushed his disheveled hair back and stood before her again.

"Shall we?"

He behaved as if some arrangement had always been in place. Having no courage to ask where they were going, Mariaeks followed the man who had already started walking, out of the room.

The interior of the fortress was dark in the settled night. Candlesticks hung at wide intervals illuminated the long, windowless corridor. Mariaeks walked after Garthe for a considerable time. As they descended the spiral staircase, the murmur of voices drifted up to meet them. On account of the battle just finished, the mood inside the fortress was unsettled in a way that didn't fit the hour.

Where one corridor intersected with another, Samthyeon appeared—abruptly, as if stepping from nowhere. He acknowledged them with an unhurried nod, with the composure of someone who had predicted exactly when Garthe would come down.

"Lady Mariaeks."

Samthyeon passed her something white he had been carrying. A fur-trimmed coat, the same kind Garthe had been wearing earlier. The fur was white; so was the leather. However it had been treated, it was glossy and soft, and despite its thinness, astonishingly warm.

"Made from that wolf he hunted last time?"

Samthyeon covered his mouth and murmured something to Garthe. Mariaeks could not see what.

Wolf fur...

Mariaeks ran her fingers along the edge. The texture was coarser than Ullri's and Baen's.

Samthyeon, having delivered the fine cloak, disappeared without a farewell, as if his business was done. Garthe set off ahead. Mariaeks hurried the cloak around her shoulders and followed. The boisterous sounds from a distance grew louder as they walked. Light spilled through the gaps between the door and the stone wall ahead—that was their destination, it seemed.

"Wah-HA-ha!"

"Uh-HA-ha!"

"Uh-heh-HEH!"

The wide space was packed with people. Rough-looking humans with rough-looking weapons—the ones she had seen from the window earlier. Mariaeks was quietly surprised. She had not understood it from a distance. Every single person in this space was not an ordinary human. Every one of them carried a divine power greater and larger than even their formidable bodies suggested.

"Huh—Anir?"

Someone spotted Garthe and let out a dazed exclamation. In that moment, heavy silence fell over the space that had not stopped laughing.

Mariaeks noted that the humans were deeply intimidated by Garthe.

"Why—why are you here, Anir?"

One man, so flustered the words had bypassed his brain entirely.

Crazy bastard. The woman standing behind him smacked him on the back.

"Were we... were we too loud? Should we keep it down?"

The woman who had just reprimanded the first man was also talking nonsense. All of them, flustered beyond the point of composure, plainly terrified and babbling.