Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (z-lib.org).mobi

“It was a stupid risk. I should know better.” He picked up a twig from the
forest floor and threw it away angrily.
“I still have the roll,” I offered lamely, pulling the squashed, lint-covered
lump from my pocket. It had been baked into the shape of a bird to celebrate the
spring flocks, but now it looked more like a rolled-up sock.
Mal dropped his head, covering it with his hands, his elbows resting on his
knees. His shoulders began to shake, and for a horrible moment, I thought he
might be crying, but then I realised he was laughing silently. His whole body
rocked, his breath coming in hitches, tears starting to leak from his eyes. “That’d
better be one hell of a roll,” he gasped.
I stared at him for a second, afraid he might have gone completely mad, and
then I started laughing too. I covered my mouth to stop the sound, which only
made me laugh harder. It was as if all the tension and the fear of the last few
days had just become too much.
Mal put a finger to his lips in an exaggerated, “Shhhh!” and I collapsed in a
fresh wave of giggles.
“I think you broke that guy’s nose,” he snorted.
“That’s not nice. I’m not nice.”
“No, you’re not,” he agreed, and then we were laughing again.
“Do you remember when that farmer’s son broke your nose at Keramzin?” I
gasped between fits. “And you didn’t tell anyone, and you bled all over Ana
Kuya’s favourite tablecloth?”
“You are making that up.”
“I am not!”
“Yes you are! You break noses, and you lie.”
We laughed until we couldn’t breathe, until our sides ached and our heads
spun with it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed like that.
We did actually eat the roll. It was dusted with sugar and tasted just like the
sweet rolls we’d eaten as children. When we’d finished, Mal said, “That was a
really good roll,” and we burst into another fit of laughter.
Eventually, he sighed and stood, offering a hand to help me up.
We walked until dusk and then made camp by the ruins of a cottage. Given
our close call, he didn’t think we should risk a fire that night, so we ate from the
supplies we’d picked up in the village. As we chewed on dried beef and that
miserable hard cheese, he asked about Botkin and the other teachers at the Little
Palace. I didn’t realise how much I’d been longing to share my stories with him
until I started talking. He didn’t laugh as easily as he once had. But when he did,
some of that grim coolness lifted from him and he seemed a bit more like the
Mal I used to know. It gave me hope that he might not be lost forever.