Except Daella did not feel like a stranger, not anymore. I knew more about her past than I did about most of the folk who lived in Wyndale, people I’d spent the better part of fourteen years with, side by side, every day. It was a strange realization, one I didn’t quite know what to do with.
Had I really kept myself that closed off?
I moved over to the wooden table along the back wall and held up a metal bracelet.
Daella frowned. “A bracelet? That’s…nice. But it’s not what I would call impressive. I saw your secret stash of swords. You can do much, much better than that.”
“This won’t be for the challenge.” I smiled. “I’m going to teach you how to blacksmith, and we’re going to start with something a novice can handle. That’s this.”
Her eyes darted from the bracelet to my face, almost eagerly. “Shouldn’t you make something without much help from me? I didn’t do an amazing job with the last trial.”
I chuckled. “That’s why we’re starting with this bracelet.”
20
DAELLA
R ivelin fired up his forge and flames engulfed the brick oven. Sparks danced in the air like fireflies, and wisps of smoke curled up the chimney. I watched, transfixed, as the orange heat poured through the shop. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And the scent of it all, the smoke and steel, it grounded me.
It took all day for Rivelin to teach me how to make a bracelet. Blacksmithing was a lot more complicated than I’d ever appreciated, but it was good, hard work. As minutes turned to hours, sweat drenched my shirt and hair, and every muscle in my body ached.
But at the end of it all, I earned a simple bracelet and a nod of approval from Rivelin.
“Here you go.” I held out the bracelet. Crafted from iron, it formed the shape of a C with both ends tapered to a flat point. In the center, I’d twisted it four times so it had a decorative touch to the otherwise plain jewellery. Truthfully, it still didn’t look like much, but I had to admit I was damned proud of my effort.
“No.” Rivelin gently pushed my hand back, and an avalanche of steam gushed between us. “You worked hard for that. Keep it. Wear it, if you’d like.”
I smiled and fitted the bracelet over my wrist. It was heavy and warm. I liked how it felt. When I looked up again, I caught the way he watched me with an intensity that made my soul match the warmth from the forge. A charming smile brightened his handsome face.
“Ah, I see what you do now,” I said. “It’s a good tactic, really. I bet it works more times than not.”
He cocked his head. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
“When I was dancing the other night, I overheard someone calling you a charmer, and I thought they were making a joke. But now I understand. You bring potential lovers into your forge and teach them how to make a bracelet. It’s a simple task so they feel good about their efforts, and then they have a piece of pretty jewellery to remind them of you. Very clever.”
“I’ve never taught another woman to make a bracelet, Daella. I don’t like other people poking around my forge.”
My breathing went shallow. “What?”
“I’m not a charmer,” he said, lowering the tongs to the anvil, all the while keeping his eyes locked on my face. “Who did you hear that from?”
“The pixie with the pretty wings I met the other day?”
“Odel. She only said that because she thinks I’m handsome.”
I unintentionally snorted, then instantly coughed, hoping I could cover it up.
“Well, that’s not the reaction I wanted to get from that statement,” he said, though he sounded amused and his eyes were doing a twinkling thing that made my stomach feel funny.
“You’re not not handsome,” I admitted.
“High praise.”
“You’re an elf, and you’re a blacksmith. It’s a given that you’d have some…appealing attributes.”
“Is that so?” He inched closer, and I stumbled a step away but my backside pressed into the edge of the anvil, halting my retreat. “And these appealing attributes would be…？”
I smiled. “You misheard me. I said appalling, not appealing.”
He leaned in close and braced his hands on the anvil, one on either side of my hips. “You can try and backtrack all you like, but I heard you. What was it you said the first night? I should keep my hands to myself?”
I swallowed. “Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Hmm.” His eyes swept across my face and lingered just a moment too long on my mouth. Suddenly, my lips felt impossibly dry, and it took all my self-control not to sweep my tongue across them. The moment stretched into another, the room silent but for the crackling flames from the forge. Was he going to kiss me? What a wild, ridiculous idea. Still, the tension between us felt palpable, so tangible it rose between us in a haze of steam.
And then suddenly, he shoved away from the anvil and stepped back. I nearly sagged forward—from relief or disappointment, I wasn’t certain. Perhaps neither. Perhaps both. Fates be damned, I didn’t want him to kiss me. I just…I shook my head to free myself from those kinds of thoughts.
“Something wrong?” he asked in a voice just a little lower than usual.
“No.” I moved away from him and looked for something to busy myself with. A pair of metal tongs sat on the lip of the forge. We needed to clean things up before we went inside the house. As I reached for them, Rivelin let out a strangled yell.
Frowning, I lifted the tongs and glanced back at him. “What?”
He stared at me, his eyes wide. “That’s been sitting by the fire. It’s too hot to handle without gloves. Put it down, Daella.”
“Oh.” I set down the tongs and looked at my hand. The skin on my palm was perfectly fine. “Look, no burn. The tongs are hot, but they must have cooled off enough to touch.”
Rivelin shook his head and moved to my side before poking at the tongs. “No, they’re still burning.” Gently, he lifted my fingers before his eyes and examined the skin, but I didn’t know how well he could see with all the steam billowing everywhere. The air seemed to crackle, or maybe that was just my stomach. After a long moment of inspection, he let go of me. My hand tumbled heavily to my side.
“You’re fine,” he murmured. “Are orcs immune to fire?”
“No,” I said quietly, my heart twanging. The moment suddenly dissipated like the steam. “My mother died in a fire, remember? From the Draugr.”
“That’s right.” His face softened. “Perhaps just immune to heat, then.”
“Perhaps.”
Where a moment ago, an intoxicating tension had hung between us, now I just felt awkward. I shouldn’t have touched anything. It only reminded us both of where I came from and what I’d come here to do. And the future that awaited me.
Quietly, we tidied away his things. I left him to handle the hot tongs with his gloves. We didn’t have much to say for the rest of the night, even when we sat down for dinner in the kitchen, hand feeding Skoll our scraps. In the morning, we’d start working on the item we’d enter for the competition. Not a sword, he said, but something just as magnificent. I went to bed with images of fire and sun-kissed eyes in my mind, and I was so exhausted from blacksmithing I slept like the dead.