He doesn’t smile back but nods once. “Fine by me.”
That old brownie is a real grump, but gee, can he cook a good breakfast.
The spread is incredible—croissants, Danish, muffins, berries （some I’ve never seen before）， bacon, every style of egg, mushrooms…
I eat some of everything and then keep on picking still because I’ve never been so hungry in my whole entire life.
I pluck a strawberry and then get up from the table, looking around his cabin.
Jem follows after me, shirtless because I’m in his shirt. He tugs on it as he wraps his arms around me from behind.
And then these gold things catch my eyes on an otherwise empty shelf.
“What are these?”
I reach up and pluck one down, rolling it over in my hand.
It’s a trophy.
“That’s from the Blood Tide.” He nods at it.
I look back at him, blinking. “The what?”
He smiles. “They’re wee games here. Every four years.”
“Oh.” I perk up, understanding. “Like the Olympics?”
Jamison shrugs. “Sure, but people d?nnae really die at the Olympics.”
I frown up at him. “But in these, they do?”
“Aye.” He nods.
“Why?” I ask nervously.
“They’re fighting beasts.”
I give him a dubious look. “Like what?”
“This from a lass who fought a minotaur.” He gives me a tall look. “This is another world, here. Last games, I fought a typhon.”
“And you lived?” I stare up at him.
He gives me a proud smile. “Aye, I won.”
The Blood Tide, Jamison tells me, happens every four years. Anyone over the age of sixteen can enter, but barely anyone does, just a handful of people each time.
Jamison says it’s for glory and for nothing else.
There are four tournaments, one after each of the elements.
In each game, there’s a creature they battle. For example, in the last games, Jamison and the others had to battle a Midgard serpent for the water challenge, and the fire beast was a salamander. No one or nothing has to die for there to be a winner, but often, Jamison says, people （and beasts） do. There’s a totem hidden somewhere—first to find it wins. Each player also has a personal talisman that they have to collect to qualify into the next round. You can play the next round even if you didn’t win it, but you can’t if you don’t collect your talisman.
At the end, the person with the most totems is the victor.
“You have so many.” I peer at them. There’s six.
“I’ve won the tournament twice,” he tells me with a shrug, and he tacks on a smile at the end. “If I win next year, I’ll have won more than anyone else has before.”
“There’s one next year?” I blink.
He nods. “You’ll like it,” he tells me.
“If it’s dangerous, I’m not sure I will.”
Jamison rolls his eyes and puts his totem back up on the shelf.
“You’re dangerous,” he says, backing me up into the bookshelf with a thump, and he starts kissing my neck.
I flick him a look.
“Ye are.” He nods, resolute. “Look at that face.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’d fight fer that face,” he tells me with a nod, and then his face goes solemn almost. “Sure, but I’d die for that face.”
Then he kisses me and carries me back to bed.
We don’t leave his cabin the entire day.
Not because we’re animals but because I love it here.
It’s so nice to be in a room with walls and a ceiling. It’s so nice being in any old room with him.
In the afternoon, we sit in his bed and read next to one another.
That evening, we take a ridiculously squashy bath. Briggs isn’t pleased with the water spillage, but I enjoy myself, Jamison behind me, me leaning back into him.
I’m the happiest I’ve been since I got here, and I feel silly that it took me so long to realise it.
We do go outside the next day, and I feel like the cat who got the cream being on Jamison’s arm.
He holds my hand, fingers interlocked, as we wander through his little village.
He greets people, smiles at them, kisses me in corners.
We wander towards the edge of town, where the village starts to fade into the jungle. There are a couple of boys fixing a rowboat under a palm tree.
Orson’s snoozing away, loosely overseeing the project, when I spot someone I think I recognise— I blink a few times.