Page 32 of The Orc’s Comfort

“No,” I say. “You won’t. Now sit down. I made pasta. It is probably not as good as anything you have ever made, but you are going to eat it and tell me it is wonderful.”

Something moves across his face, careful, like a man testing whether ground will hold his weight.

“It will be wonderful,” he says. “I am already certain of it.”

He sits down. We eat mostly in silence. Not the comfortable kind. The kind where both of us know how much closed tonight and how much, deliberately, didn’t.

His grandmother’s recipe sits on the counter between us. The comb holds in my hair. Both things are true at once: he gave me every honest thing he has, and I am still not all the way back to trusting him.

I don’t say that part out loud. I think he already knows.

Chapter Thirteen

Rhazgar

I sleep four hours.

This is more than I expected.

When I wake, the condo is still dark and Julia’s morning routine hasn’t started yet: no soft sounds of footsteps drifting through the wall, no kettle, no unconscious humming. I lie still for a moment and take inventory of my condition. The weight I’ve been carrying for six days is gone. Something else is in its place, not lighter, more like the tension of a bowstring that has been drawn and released. The arrow is in the air. I can’t call it back. I’m not certain I want to.

By the time I rise to make her morning broth, something in my chest has gone quiet.

My hands move through the preparation with their usual precision and I notice, for the first time since the eighth day of her recovery, that I am not lying to myself about what I am doing. This is not a courtship preparation. It is simply food, made with full attention, for someone I care about. The distinction feels significant.

Three booming knocks rattle my door at precisely the moment I am sealing the container.

I did not text an update to Grulk. He always knows anyway.

“Enter,” I call.

He stops two steps inside. His nostrils flare. His gaze sweeps around my condo as though he’s reading the room. Then he looks at me.

“You told her,” he says.

“Last night.”

He pulls out a chair and sits in it, which is not how Grulk usually arrives. For a long moment, he just looks at me.

“How did she take it?”

“She was angry.” I pause. “Appropriately so.”

“And then?”

“She put on my grandmother’s hair comb and ate mediocre pasta and told me I was going to have to earn her trust properly.” I find I am not afraid of that.

Something moves across Grulk’s face. Not his usual exuberance. Something quieter. “You gave her your grandmother’s hair comb.”

“And her broth recipe.”

He is silent for a moment. Then he nods once, slowly, the way he does when something matters more than he’ll say out loud.

“Good,” he says finally. “That was right.”

He folds his hands on the table. “I am still going to walk you through the Courtship Guide.”

“I didn’t ask for that.”