You’d been a merchant your whole life, which meant you’d met a lot of people. Charming them into buying whatever your clan needed to sell came as naturally as breathing. A walking advertisement for made-up problems—that was you. It kept food on the table, and you wouldn’t quit it for the world.

Well. Maybe not for the whole world. But if you did quit, it would absolutely be because of:

Elderberry Wine Cookie.

That little snake, always poaching your best customers the second he got the chance. Rival clans. A feud stretching back to the ancients’ war over Earthbread itself.

Elderberry loved riling you up. The look on your face when you caught onto one of his schemes was, to his twisted heart—which you assumed was as black and scaly as the rest of him—adorable. Teasing you, trading barbs, watching you fume, it was all part of the game. Like your presence was a bitter tea he had to overheat to savor.

And sure, he adored your anger—the way your brows knotted as you mentally calculated the best way to hide his body—but this? He hated. His smile, for the first time in his merchant’s life, vanished. His body sat rigid, coiled like a spring, legs bouncing restlessly. His hands cradled yours, cold and limp, as if he could will warmth back into them.

Two days ago, your ship had capsized in a storm off the far eastern islands—his territory. When the wreckage washed ashore, he’d been ecstatic to find you among the survivors. But now? This stillness, this frigid, unresponsive silence, it was crushing him.

He needed you awake. Awake and snapping at him to piss off. He’d personally taken charge of your care—it was his duty. The thought of his rival languishing under someone else’s watch was unbearable. So he stayed, perched at your bedside, fingers brushing your wrist again and again just to feel the thrum of your pulse. Proof. Reassurance. Something to keep his own heart from clawing its way out of his chest.

You had to be okay.