Harwal, book 3

Chapter 29

"Maybe… maybe it's better we get out of the room," I mumble as Harwal struggles breathing deeply.

He clenches my thigh and blows a long death. "That would be for the best. I will lose my sanity if this keeps up."

I smirk smugly, and he narrows his eyes at me. "Dont play with me," he rumbles, tightening his hold.

I tap his hand and scrunch my nose. "I wouldn't dare."

Harwal nudges his leg up, bouncing me on it. Then he lifts us both up, and I stumble to stay on my feet.

"What was that for?" I hold my hand on him to steady myself and scoff at his huff. "We aren't done with this talk, so when you feel better, let's have a little chat."

"As you say," he mumbles, covering his face. I can hear his deep breaths through his mouth.

I scrunch my nose and grab a towel from the counter. I wipe my chest and neck and then throw it to Harwal.

He looks at the towel with a displeased expression and then lugs it to a corner of the room. "It stinks."

I roll my eyes and take a new towel, wet it, and slap the wet thing on his stomach. "You can't go around with blood on you."

Harwal pulls the sticky towel off, giving me a nice view to stare at. It's probably healthier for me if he just keeps being covered in soot. His bare skin is deadly to me. It feels so wrong that I'm all hot and bothered, but he's disgusted. It makes me feel like a freak.

"Maybe going around the workshop clears your mind? And the stink," I say and rip my eyes off his body.

Harwal nods, looking slightly sickly, if that's even possible. As soon as I open the door, Nox unfolds from her ball-like form and leaps up on Harwal's shoulder. I'm a bad pet owner. I forgot she exists for a moment there.

I look for the group of nerds, finding them all huddled by a big table near the forge. They're all doing something with scraps. There's also a big metallic box in front of Marco and Dante. Did they finish it?

"The old radios have the circular thing," Dante says, and Macro claps his hand on Dante's shoulder.

"Atta boy, go fetch," Marco says with a grin, and Dante rushes off between the tall shelves.

Greece sits on the table with her legs crossed, and the older Atorus, Oris, is explaining something about the thing he holds. Rios is crafting some kind of small device, and Marco starts shifting the metallic box around.

"Uh, how's it going?" I ask.

Greece's head shoots up from whatever she is looking at. Her expression turns into a wicked one, and I immediately shake my head out of reaction to it.

"We need only a few pieces," Marco booms and shows off the metallic thing he has. "Can you imagine that this can reach outer space, to lengths we humans don't even know about? How amazing is that?"

Uh. "Sure. Wow."

Marco nods excitedly, missing my unenthusiastic reply. "It's amazing. It seems so silly now that we made this. How simple it was all this time."

"It's useless if you don't have the necessary digits and coordinates to make contact," Oris says and rounds the table to Marco. Then he also lifts it, to show it to me and Harwal. "This is primitive. It needs the digits. This planet doesn't have any energy cores to make a better version."

"So, are you going to contact your dad?" I ask, not caring about the tech mumbo-jumbo.

"Yes," he says and then turns to Harwal. "Col'Karshok, I would like to ask you to join me on that call."