Page 27 of The Orc’s Comfort

“She accepted the courtship meals.”

“Without knowing they were courtship meals.”

“Yes,” he says simply. “That is the problem.” He wraps his hands around his cup. “So tell her.”

“I know I need to tell her.”

I owe her not just honesty about what I did. I owe her the acknowledgment that choosing not to tell her was a choice. That it was not care. That I treated her like someone who needed to be managed, and I knew better, and I did it anyway because the alternative required courage I had not yet found.

“Then why haven’t you?”

I pick up my cup. Put it down. Outside, the building eases into its evening sounds: footsteps above us, a door closing down the hall, the ordinary sounds of lives proceeding normally.

“How old were you,” I say finally, “when you first courted someone?”

Grulk looks at me for a long moment. “Seventeen.”

“I was twenty when my grandmother began teaching me the full courtship preparations. She said I would need them soon.” I look at my hands. “The portal opened four years after that, and then there was the integration, the adaptation, the preservation work.”

Grulk is very still.

“I have never courted anyone,” I say. “Not here. Not properly on our world either. I was young, there was always going to be more time.” The words feel strange in my mouth, too plain, too revealing.

“I know every traditional preparation. Every stage of the progression. I have the knowledge my grandmother gave me and I have used almost none of it as it was meant to be used, not until her.” I look up. “And the first time I take it beyond the meals, I do it without her knowledge or consent, with a human woman who doesn’t understand our ways, and then I kiss her with silver thistle and she kisses me back and I still cannot find the words to tell her what is happening.”

Grulk is quiet for long enough that I begin to regret speaking.

Then he sets down his cup.

“You have been waiting,” he says slowly, “to have an experience you were never going to get any other way.”

“Yes.”

“There is no version of this where you already know how to do it.”

“No.”

“So you have been standing at the edge waiting to feel ready.” He looks at me steadily. “Rhazgar. You are not going to feel ready. That is not how this works. That has never been how this works.”

I know he is right. Knowing it has not helped.

“What stops me,” I say, “is not telling her I have feelings for her. I could do that. It would be terrifying, but I could do it.” I press my palm flat against the table. “What stops me is the rest of it. The meals. Over a week. Sitting across from her every morning and every evening while she thanked me and asked questions about my culture and had no idea what she was accepting.” I look at him. “I have to tell her that, too. All of it. And I don’t know how to say I did something wrong to someone I…”

I stop.

Grulk’s expression does something complicated. “Someone you what?”

I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He’s known me long enough to hear what I don’t say.

“Then that is what you tell her,” he says quietly. “Not just the courtship meals. Not just the tradition. You tell her that you are a man who has never done this before, who did it badly, who knew he was doing it badly, and who is asking her to understand why.” He pauses. “That is not a small thing to offer someone. That is the truth.”

“And if she cannot forgive it?”

“That is her right.” He stands, collects both cups, and takes them to my sink. “But she kissed you back, Rhazgar. With the silver thistle on your tongue, knowing it meant something she didn’t yet understand, she kissed you back.” He turns. “That is also information.”

He moves toward the door.

“You cannot practice being honest with her,” he says, hand on the frame. “You can only be honest with her. The rest…” he shrugs, HammerFall practicality distilled into a single gesture, “the rest is just waiting to feel ready for something you will never feel ready for.”