They left the cave and set off through the woods, morning dew still clinging to leaves and spiderwebs like scattered stars. Thorne stomped ahead, a living landslide in boots, swiping branches out of the way and occasionally muttering things like, “Too purple,” “That one bit me last time,” and “Don’t trust anything with a face.”

Aelorian trailed behind him with all the enthusiasm of a cat being asked to walk on a leash.

“Ugh,” he groaned, stepping delicately over a patch of moss. “Is everything in this forest moist? It’s like walking through the armpit of a sleeping dragon.”

“Better than walking through its digestive tract,” Thorne called over his shoulder.

“Dare I ask how you know that?” Aelorian snapped, arms crossed.

“Nope,” The ogre said. 

They bickered all the way to a patch of vaguely edible-looking foliage, where Thorne crouched low beside a bramble patch and inspected several clusters of red berries with a care so precise it bordered on reverent. He plucked them slowly, thumb brushing away dew, sorting them into his hand with an attention that didn’t fit the beast built like a siege weapon. 

Aelorian stood nearby, lips parted–not a sneer or a pout this time, but something more like curiosity. “You’re…oddly delicate with those,” he said at last, frowning as Thorne gently nudged aside a leaf with the back of his knuckle.

Thorne didn’t look up. “Don’t want to squish the good ones, or the not-good ones. They’ll make all the others bitter and ruin the taste of them.”

“You know which is which?” Aelorian asked.

“Mmh, been doing this a while,” Thorne said.

Aelorian slowly uncrossed his arms, stepping closer, skirts swishing over the damp moss. “What, ogres have a secret berry-harvesting school I didn’t hear about?”

Thorne huffed, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Nah. Just had a lot of days where it was this or go hungry. Learned what worked. What didn’t. The war didn’t provide many provisons, least not enough to feed an army of ogres. Not enough to feed anyone, really. We marched half-starved most days, chewing bark, boiling weeds. Saw plenty of good men fall because their bellies were empty before their chests ever were.”

His voice dropped lower. “Seredane–” he spat the name like a hollowed seed, bitter and hard, “--used to ration us on purpose. Fed us just enough to fight, never enough to think. Said hunger kept an army obedient. Ogres, starving, marching where he pointed. And if one of us dropped–hell, his Generals would step right over the body, tell the rest to keep moving. You learn quick which berries you can stuff in your cheek when the priest’s men aren’t looking.”

Aelorian's eyes dropped. He couldn’t quite look at Thorne’s scarred hands without picturing them, red and raw, digging through dirt to steal life back from the priest’s famine.

“Here, elf,” Thorne said finally, and stood, offering Aelorian a handful of plump, red berries. “You have the first taste. You waste so much damn energy yapping and flapping, you need it more than I do.”

Aelorian stared, momentarily disarmed. The berries sat like rubies in Thorne’s calloused palm, gathered with care, cupped like something precious. For a moment, and for the first time, he felt like taking what Thorne offered might be something perilously close to sacred. 

He reached out, hesitant, fingers brushing against Thorne’s palm as he plucked one perfect berry from the bunch. The touch lingered longer than it needed to, but Thorne didn’t move or flinch. He just watched him with an unreadable expression, brow slightly furrowed like he couldn’t decide if this was a good idea or a terrible one.

Aelorian popped the berry between his lips. 

Sweetness exploded on his tongue. A little tartness followed, like summer and stubbornness, drawing a startled smile from him for the first time in what seemed like forever. “It’s actually good!”

Thorne arched a brow, still holding out the rest of the berries. “You sound shocked.”

“Filthy berries don’t exactly strike me as gourmet,” Aelorian said, but he ate them. Slowly, thoughtfully. One by one, lips pursing as if he were sampling fine wine and trying very hard not to look impressed. Thorne watched for a beat longer, then turned back to the bramble patch, resuming his quiet work.

They moved in tandem for a while after that, Aelorian trailing after Thorne like a particularly talkative shadow, occasionally moaning dramatically about the heat and the bloodthirsty insects while Thorne bent low to inspect roots and mushrooms and strange leafy things that, apparently, weren’t cursed to shoot blood out of every opening in your body. The ogre gathered them by the handfuls, his hands big enough to hold roots and berries alike. 

“Wait. Are those edible?” Aelorian asked and gestured to a craggy clump of fungus that looked like it had been cursed three times and banished to the swamp for just existing.

“Cooked right, yeah,” Thorne said, slicing off a lump with the flint he’d gathered last night, “Helps if you boil it with salt and bark. Tastes like burnt socks otherwise.” 

Aelorian wrinkled his nose. “Have you eaten burnt socks?”

“No, but I’ve eaten this fungus, so I figured that’s what it’s like,” Thorne replied, and gestured to a bundle of mushrooms nearby. “Come closer. See those ones over there? You don’t touch those. Those’ll kill you faster than you can call for help.” 

Aelorian tried to imitate him, crouching low to see what he was seeing, but wobbled, his skirts snagging on every branch like a vine of thorns was holding him hostage. He lost his balance almost at once, flailed wildly, and crashed into a bramble bush before Thorne plucked him out by his robes and set him on his feet, shaking his head in amusement. “You okay, elf?”

Aelorian’s cheeks flamed. He couldn’t meet Thorne’s gaze, afraid his fluttering pulse might betray him. “I’m fine, ogre. I just lost my balance a little.”

There was a beat — that delicate, suspended moment where the forest seemed to hold its breath alongside them, then Thorne bent and grabbed the bottom of Aelorian’s skirts, ripping, causing the elf to grab onto his shoulder to keep his balance.

The sound was obscene. A long, brutish rrrrrip that echoed through the forest like the start of a duel.

“Thorne!” Aelorian shrieked as half his skirts came away in the ogre’s fist. He tumbled forward, catching himself against Thorne’s shoulder in a wild flare of moonlight, silk, and outrage. “You monster! You can’t just tear the clothes off an elven heir! My thighs are exposed! My dignity is exposed! This is a war crime under Moonwrit law!”

Thorne slung him over one shoulder like he weighed nothing at all. His hand braced high against the back of Aelorian’s thighs—rough, hot, and mortifyingly steady.

“Do you have no shame?” Aelorian squirmed, trying desperately to shove the fabric back down. “If the hem lifts one more inch, it becomes a sanctionable offense! My thighs are a diplomatic incident!”

“You keep wiggling,” Thorne rumbled, “and I’ll drop you.”

Aelorian gasped when a heavy palm landed, quick and warning, across the curve of his ass. “That—” his voice cracked, “—was lewd!”

“That,” Thorne said evenly, “was survival. You’re sharp and dramatic. I’m trying not to get stabbed in the eye by your damn knees.”

“This is how I die,” Aelorian groaned, clutching at his bare thighs like modesty could be stitched back into place. “Carried into the woods like some tavern wench while an ogre fondles me—”

“I am not fondling your thighs,” Thorne growled. “If I was, you’d know.”

The elf made a noise so shrill it startled the bats out of the trees. “You’re not helping!”

One last vicious tear and Thorne set him down, abruptly, as if letting go before temptation could turn into something worse. Aelorian staggered against a tree, clutching at the ruined edge of his robes with scandalized horror. “You—you animal! You defiled my clothing!”

“I liberated your legs,” Thorne said, already stuffing mushrooms and herbs into the torn silk like it was a forager’s pouch. “You’ll thank me when you stop tripping.”

“I’ll thank you in hell! My thighs are a national treasure!”

“If your thighs start wars, maybe don’t wrap them in treaty silk.”

Aelorian went crimson, half out of rage, half out of the unbearable breeze sliding over his skin. He stormed after him in long, undignified strides. “You’ve humiliated me! There are pinecones staring at me.”

Thorne side-eyed him. “You’re fine. If anything, the forest’s impressed.”

“Oh gods.” Aelorian threw his head back with operatic despair. “First, you manhandle me, then you strip me, now you’re flirting. What’s next? Ogre seduction? Am I meant to swoon?”

The ogre stopped walking.

The silence that followed was too heavy to be safe. Slowly, his gaze dragged down Aelorian’s body, deliberate and merciless, lingering on the pale stretch of thigh, the fragile edge of silk caught on his hip. His jaw worked, muscle flexing, teeth set against a restraint that looked painful.

When his eyes finally came back up, they were darker than the forest itself, unblinking, hungry, and Aelorian swore the ground tilted. This wasn’t just want. This was an absence. Famine. A beast who hadn’t fed properly in half a century.

Fifty years. He could feel it in the weight of Thorne’s stare, the ache of a man who had marched through wars, slept on cold stone, fought until his hands bled, and never once been allowed the simple grace of a touch.

And suddenly, Aelorian’s scandalous little mind was off like a runaway horse. 

Fifty years without sex? Fifty years without lips or hands or heat? Was that even possible? Could a body even contain that much unspent hunger? Stars preserve him, the ogre would be feral. Unpracticed and rough, yes, but relentless. Boundless. What would it even mean to be his first taste after half a century?

Which would’ve been fine, normal, appropriately dramatic, if not for one very small, very treacherous problem: he had lied.

He had told Thorne he’d tumbled with two priests, like some depraved altar scandal. Said it smugly no less, chin high, because what else was he supposed to do when an ogre saw him as a frilly little blossom? Admit the truth? That the most anyone had ever done was brush his sleeve at a court dance? That his thighs, his so-called “national treasures,” had never been touched by anyone but himself? 

Absolutely not. He’d die.

He’ll know. If he so much as puts a hand on me, he’ll know. My lie will collapse like wet parchment. He’ll look at me with those golden eyes and know I am–

His ears went hot, his whole body flushing.

–virginal. Untouched. A fraud with a big mouth and even bigger skirts. 

Aelorian’s stomach swooped, equal parts horror and heat. Absolutely not. He was not imagining this. He was not picturing being pressed into moss by hands that had known only steel and survival. He was not–

Thorne leaned in, not touching, not yet, but close enough that his breath rasped hot against Aelorian’s cheek, close enough that his sheer size crowded the world down to muscle and heat and threat.

For one endless second, Thorne's hand twitched at his side—fingers flexing like he might reach out, take hold of silk or skin, and end the restraint strangling him. But he didn’t. Instead, he held himself still, the promise of it worse than that.

“I said,” Thorne muttered, voice low and dangerous, rough as gravel sliding down stone, "If I was gonna want you...you'd know. And you'd be wishing I hadn't waited this long."

Aelorian’s lungs forgot how to work. His pulse slammed against his ribs, frantic and traitorous. He could smell iron and pine sap, feel the heat radiating off the ogre and see every scar carved into that broad chest, rising and falling too slowly. And for one terrifying, intoxicating instant, he thought Thorne might actually kiss him. Right there in the damp rot of a mushroom patch, with bats screaming overhead and pine needles biting into his ankles.

And gods above–he realized he wanted it.

The thought was unbearable.

“Scandalous!” Aelorian shrieked, wrenching his robes down like a shield and stumbling back. “Absolutely outrageous! You can’t–you practically fondled me with your eyes! Do you want me to summon a tribunal? Because I will! A celestial grievance for thigh harassment!”

“I didn’t say anything,” Thorne said, gruff again, pushing past a thicket. “You imagined it. That’s either a sign of heatstroke or vanity. Might wanna get that checked out.”

“I did not imagine it!” Aelorian huffed, chasing after him, cheeks pink, voice climbing octaves again. “You said it with your mouth!”

“Walk faster, elf,” Thorne called over his shoulder. “If you're gonna complain, you better keep up. Your thighs can’t be that fragile.”

Aelorian made a sound somewhere between a growl and a gasp, tripped over a root, and caught himself in another tangle of limbs and humiliation.

“I can’t stand you,” he hissed, storming after him.

But the wind kissed his legs again, and his heart wouldn’t quite slow down. And the worst part about it was the way his fingers lingered at the hem of his robes, half pulling it down, half…not.