CW:

Mild Sexual depictions of the self-indulging kind
For mature eyes only! <3

The morning mist was dense, clinging to the river like a burial shroud. The old barge drifted slowly down the clogged river, past old gnarled trees and into dense forest. Through gaps in the canopy, weak sunlight touched the water, turning it the colour of old brass. Hjordis shivered in the red dress, her mother's cloak did little to fend of this new cold that had settled within her.

She was tired, so tired. Her dress did not fit her anymore. The fabric plastered against a body that wasn't hers — too soft, too much weight over her chest, everything proportioned wrong. It was all, just wrong. She sat curled up against the ropes, eyes shut hard.

For once, blessed quiet from the bow.

Tryggve had attempted five rhyming games since dawn broke, each verse more ridiculous than the last.

"I'm softer than silk when I first appear, yet grow harder the longer I linger. Sought by the wise and the foolish alike—"

"Stop," Hjordis said.

"It's cheese, Poopsie. The answer is cheese. Which brings me to our next topic.”

The particular nasal tone of his voice, his constant chatter made her stomach lurch, or maybe that was the thing coiled in the back of her skull — the demon that jumped from him to her like a flea finding warmer blood.

Hjordis inhaled steadily, then exhaled with a shaky breath. The rapid knocks of a woodpecker echoed somewhere in the sparse pine forest beyond.

The burn on her hand was proof it was real. Perfect outline of the Demon Slayer's dragon-shaped grip, seared into flesh. Her father's legendary sword rejecting her like a body spitting out poison.

Her head went heavy. Dozed off for—

Now Tryggve sprawled across the bow, one leg hooked over the railing while his bare foot guided the rudder. Ten years wearing stolen faces, and now he couldn't stop touching his own skin.

"—and the thing about Gouda—" Tryggve shifted his weight, hips canting upward as he adjusted himself, hand tracing his jawline as if checking it was still there. "—is that the Zyrellian variety ages with considerably more dignity than that Myrian blue. Myrian blue: the colour of Magistracy hubris and the taste of a Maester's breeches."

Hjordis ignored him, watched a heron lift from the reeds.

"No apples in this entire continent, which I find troubling."

"What the heck are apples? Another cheese?"

Tryggve tilted his face up to the weak morning light, and she watched dully as he closed his eyes against it. "A fruit, dear Ms. Helmbane. An entire civilisation and no one thought to cultivate the apple. Pear. Pear the brilliant elves managed down in Baal. Not the same though." He ran his fingers through a tense golden lock. "My hair will be a problem on the road. Gold catches light and all that."

Hjordis glared at him, eyes puffy, mouth a flat line. Blinked. Tryggve grinned back at her, lovingly, adjusted the barge's trajectory with his feet while he bowed his head to braid his thick hair into a plait at his neck.

"Could acquire a hat, of course, though hats do flatten the—"

Hjordis pressed her weak thumb into the burn on her palm.

He was the sword's real heir. Oskar's apprentice apparently. This one. Not his actual blood. This babbling, self-touching, cheese-opinionated one was Rumenor's true heir.

The old elf woman's face surfaced. The white braids with their strange rings.

Freed before caught.

The elf had smiled with ruined teeth and sent Hjordis south like a dog given a scent.

I find his fate most interesting, she'd said.

Hjordis looked at the side of Tryggve's face as he kept talking about everything and nothing. To her or to the far-away woodpecker, it made no difference. Tryggve kept talking like he knew no better.

She'd done exactly what the elf wanted. Found him in Graywell, put the blade through him. Yet it hadn't been enough. She was the one cursed instead. She'd killed, murdered that girl. There was still blood on her hands, stuck in her nails.

Meanwhile, Tryggve was sitting there chatting to the forest around him. No one talking back except the echo of his voice. He didn't seem to care.

Hjordis's eyes thinned. Tryggve had fished some paper from his satchel. Folded a paper creature while his mouth never stopped moving, large round toes gripping the rudder with exact confidence.

"People dismiss folding as children's entertainment." His fingers moved violently but exact. "But it requires actual intelligence. Spatial reasoning." He released the crane, watching it spiral up through the mist. "Once crafted a paper courtesan so exquisite, a duke proposed marriage."

The laugh that followed was bright and bitter, like the smell of his clothes. Mads's clothes.

"I jest of course. The courtesan in that scenario was little old me. But it did earn me two silver ducats and a jealous wife."

The mist was burning off now, summer warmth creeping back despite the early hour. Soon they'd be baking under Ferno's sun, two cursed things drifting toward an uncertain shore.

Hjordis's eyelids grew heavy. Tryggve kept talking nonsense.

"My name translates to trustworthy in Old Zyrellian." He released another crane. "The gods do enjoy their little jokes."

As her borrowed body demanded rest, Tryggve's voice droned on, his fingers kept moving over old paper, and despite every instinct screaming against defenselessness, consciousness began to slip away.

The river moved like black syrup beneath stars that seemed too bright, too close. Tryggve sat with head cocked. Silent. Watched her. That pretty face slack in sleep, red curls spreading across the barge's damp planks like spilled wine.

He sighed, his thin lips jerked sideways.

Peculiar creature. Even wearing dead Nellie's curves, Hjordis's sharp angles showed through in how she curled defensively, knees drawn up, hands fisted. A hedgehog in a peacock's plumage.

"Oh Trig, you've done it again!" He breathed out. Smiled softly.

His demon, birthed from a decade of torture, passed to her now. Oskar would flay him alive if he knew what his disaster apprentice had done to his only blood.

He wondered what she dreamt of. He'd never known sleep with that thing inside his head. She still slept. That was a good sign. A very good sign she hadn't taken on all his abilities. That other part — the coming back bit — was still all his.

An insect in amber, he said softly to himself.

He looked at Hjordis. Could end her suffering before the hunger came. He could. He looked down at his hand. Then at her face, pitiful in her too-small dress. He let out a long breath and looked away.

"Ach." He looked at his blurry reflection instead, something pale and golden in the dark mirror below. He closed his eyes. He'd never been a killer, not until he had no other option and the demon found him. He thought of that bag. The small mewing inside it, tiny paws scratching at rough fabric, his stepfather's voice.

"Here's yer chance to prove yer a man now Tryggve, throw the bag in the river!"

He hadn't been able to. Sixteen years old, a man by Zyrellian standards, sobbing like a four-year-old over a bag of unwanted kittens. His stepfather had done it for him. Tryggve had watched the bag sink and cried openly the whole day — all but one person laughing. The one with the consoling blue eyes, who'd clapped his shoulder with calm understanding. And Tryggve had taken that hand and drawn it to his mouth and—

Creak. The barge shuddered. Wood screamed against stone as they struck a submerged rock. Water geysered through splintered planks, cold as judgment. The craft listed hard to starboard, throwing Tryggve against the rail.

"Oh, splendid! The universe's timing remains impeccable!"

Hjordis stirred but didn't wake, even as river water soaked through her underskirt.

He tossed away the half-finished folding in his hand, flung his satchel over his shoulder and hoisted Hjordis up over his. Heavy lass. He kicked the rudder and the sinking vessel veered left, straight toward shore. Hjordis snored in his ear, slept on. His boots slipped on wet wood as the barge tilted further, water rushing in earnest.

"Come now, Poopsie. Time for an impromptu swimming lesson."

He leaped just as the craft capsized, hitting the shallows hard. His knees buckled under the combined weight, but he kept his grip, kept her above the surface, staggering through knee-deep water toward the bank. Hjordis murmured something — might have been Catrain's name — but remained limp as wet laundry.

The shore presented itself as a small cove sheltered by ancient willows, their trailing branches forming natural curtains. Tryggve deposited his burden gently on a bed of moss, arranging her limbs carefully. She looked younger in sleep, despite wearing a dead woman's face. Something vulnerable in the way her fingers curled, seeking warmth that wasn't there.

Behind them, the barge surrendered to the river with a final, mournful gurgle.

"Brilliant. Our noble vessel joins the fleet of my failures." He stripped off the soaked cape, wringing the red wool with violent twists. "Though I suppose walking has its charms. Fresh air, highway robbery, the constant threat of discovery. What larks await!"

He managed a modest camp, dragging fallen branches close, constructing a rough windbreak around Hjordis's sleeping form, produced flame with the help of persistence and creative cursing.

She never stirred, even when he tucked that mostly-dry cape around her shoulders. The demon's mercy perhaps, letting her rest in a gray cocoon before the hunger came.

Tryggve settled against a young oak, keeping watch as night deepened. A nightingale began its lament. He just sat there. Waited.

Dawn arrived shy like a tentative question, painting the eastern sky in watercolours. The sun cut through behind leaves, making the whole river glitter like molten mithril. Hjordis hadn't moved all night, her chest rising and falling steadily.

A woodpecker had been at a nearby trunk since first light. Tap-tap-tap. Relentless. Satisfied with itself.

Tryggve's clothes had dried stiff with river silt and every muscle ached from holding still so long. And he stank. Gods how he stank.

Time for ablutions.

"Just a quick dip to wash off," he informed Hjordis's unconscious form, already stripping down to nothing. "Keep watch, will you? Excellent sentry work thus far."

The riverbank sloped gently, carpeted with moss and early bluebells that trembled in the morning breeze. Tryggve picked his way through them with careful toes, not to step on any of them.

"Pardon me, ladies. Just a naked immortal passing through. Don't let my magnificence overwhelm your delicate sensibilities."

He eased into the water just far enough to rinse away the worst of the grime. The cold river lapped at his calves, his thighs, creeping higher until it kissed the tender skin below his cock. He sucked air through his teeth. 

Quick scrub with sand, washing away the last remnants of Mads. Submerged for two seconds. Gasped hard as he re-emerged, hair dark and plastered against a slim head, tall ears exposed. Shook the water from his hair and the curls bounced back into position. 

Another quick scrub, a quicker retreat to a sun-warmed boulder partially hidden by young alders.

The stone had been drinking the sun since dawn and gave it back freely, warm against his spine, his thighs, the back of his skull. He spread himself across it without ceremony. Legs loose. One arm behind his head. The morning air moved over his skin and he let it, taking inventory.

Still his. All of it, still his.

"Finally," he sighed, settling back against the granite's warm embrace. Sunlight turned his freckled skin to burnished gold, catching the pale down of his forearms, the sharp jut of his hip bones, the darker blonde patch of hair below the flat stomach.

His cock lay soft against his thigh, unimpressive at rest, flushed pink from the cold water. He wrapped his fingers around it, looked up at the dancing leaves above, listened to the gentle rustle of wind and waited. Not much happening yet. Ten years of borrowed responses. No longer borrowed. The loose skin in his hand was his.

He worked at it slowly. His free hand moved up his stomach, across his ribs, found a nipple and pressed down hard. There, he sighed. That still worked.

The sensation travelled direct, no delay, and he watched himself begin to fill. It took longer than he remembered. The flesh stayed spongy and reluctant, half-hard and sulking. He adjusted his grip. Tightened. His hips shifted against the stone.

Come on then.

Slowly, stubbornly, it arrived. The blood moving south at a grudgingly slow pace. The skin pulling taut at last, the head darkening. He exhaled, relieved. Stroked upward. His thumb pressed just below the head and his legs went tight against the stone.

There it was. His eyes closed.

The usual unbidden fantasies bloomed. Someone who could match his sharp tongue with sharper teeth, who'd pin his wrists above his head and make him shut up with just one look. In his mind, bookish yet strong hands moved over him, tracing his chest, his neck, his working arm down to help his moving hand.

His back arched off the stone as pleasure built to unbearable heights, toes curling against moss-slick rock.

A rustle in the undergrowth made him freeze, eyes snapping open to scan the alders where Hjordis lay sleeping. Just wind through leaves — she remained motionless, lost in whatever dreams plagued the demon-touched. Good. This moment belonged to him alone.

Reassured, he let his head fall back, mouth dropping open as ragged pants escaped his lips. In his mind's eye, his phantom lover's voice grew tender, reverent:

"Look at you, so beautiful. But it's not just that — you're good, Tryggve. So good to everyone, even when they don't deserve it. Sweet and kind, despite everything they've done to you."

"No," he gasped aloud, the word torn from his throat. "Not good, not—"

"You are," the voice insisted, hands gentle, worshipping. "Everyone wants you, but you're mine. Mine to cherish, mine to protect. Not a monster — never a monster. Just mine."

He was close, so close, balanced on the knife's edge between control and chaos, rolling against the sun-warmed stone as sensation crested—

And then nothing. He stared at his dry hand in horrified fascination.

"What in Shiin's putrid ball sweat..."

He tried again, pumping furiously as if violence might produce what gentleness failed to coax. But when pleasure crested a second time, still nothing came.

"Oh, you bastard!" The curse exploded in Zyrellian. "Twenty years of horror and now this? Can't even grant me the courtesy of a proper wank?"

He slumped back on the boulder, arm flung over his face, and saw only the pink insides of his eyelids.

 His mother's voice surfaced from memory: "Mind yer flesh ain't mockery of yer spirit, lad. The Old Ones curse empty vessels that still cast shadows."

The woodpecker continued. Satisfied, productive, making a tangible impact on its environment.

"Right," Tryggve said, to no one, to the gods, to the particular cruel intelligence that had designed this specific punishment. "Right. Very funny."