He Pushed Me Into the Void, So This Time I Said No novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Warmth for Sale
On Day 8, the first thing I did was open my eyes and find Gabe's hands still against my ribs.
They were pink and warm and moving.
He woke a second after I did.
"Morning," he said, in a voice full of gravel.
"Your hands work."
"They work great." He flexed his fingers once against my skin. "I'm going to move them in a minute."
"Take two," I said.
He laughed, low and surprised, and we both stopped when we realized neither of us was moving.
Then he took his hands back, slowly, and sat up, and looked anywhere but at me.
"You said something last night," I said. "Right before you fell asleep."
His brows drew together.
"Did I? What?"
"Sorry I was late."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I don't know why I said that," he said slowly. "I don't know what I'd be late for."
He said it plainly, and I believed him, and that scared me more than a lie would have.
The chat did not give us a chance to talk about it.
A player: [IS THE HEARTH QUEEN ONLINE]
SkyDragon: [She's asleep, you animals, let her sleep.]
I scrolled up.
Overnight, the zone had lost eleven thousand players.
Their names hung gray in the feed, one after another, and I read as many as I could stand.
[Eliminated: frostbite. Eliminated: frostbite. Eliminated: out of fuel.]
I had known the number would be high, and the names were still hard to read.
But the zone had also kept eighty-nine thousand, and forty-two of them had burned small fires all night because I told them to buy one lump of ooze.
They had a name for me, and I hated it.
Hearth Queen.
I opened a trade window for the freezing.
LaceyOrmond: [I can infuse logs. A log from me burns for eight hours. Fifty logs each, one per player, until my Ember Points run out. I'm not charging for ooze.]
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