Page 13 of Wed to the Orc Captive

“That’s an exaggeration. Half.”

My mind was slipping on the loose soil along with my shoes. “Your blood is half theirs, but they don’t care about you at all?”

“I don’t know. Did your town care about you?” He jumped to a branch, started climbing a pine tree. “The Droth like me well enough.”

“Then we should go back.”

“It’s me they like, little witch. We’re hiding for you.” He wrenched something from a snarl up in the tree, and twigs and branches showered down. A pack. He’d retrieved a pack, stashed in the nest of rubbish. He leapt down, landing in front of me. “Because I’m not sure they like me enough to be nice to you, do you ken?” He reached out, and I stiffened, as he reached for my head⁠—

—and pulled back a twig.

“Come on. We need to keep moving.”

I caught my breath. My face was hot. My stomach was roiling, from the womb-poison I’d chugged yesterday or from the ridiculousness of this situation. And it was foolish perhaps to be this angry, but, “What will happen to the town?”

“Hmm?”

“My people!”

He lashed my dowry bundle to the top of the pack frame as he walked, worked with the straps. “The Gol Droth are leaving on their own accord soon after this. They have meatier prey to the east, and there are rumblings that the magisters hire for war.”

I stumbled. “So they’ll be safe?”

“They’ll be no less safe than if they’d successfully sold you to the locals. Is that what you want to hear?”

My whole chest hurt. “Yes,” I said to his back. “Yes, because I actually care about the people I leave behind. Because I’m not a monster.”

He turned.

His eyes were calm, but I still stepped backwards.

“Alright,” he said, something honeyed and deadly in the roll of his words. “You’re right. I never lied, but your people are so stupid that I didn’t have to, because they don’t think orcs move around, yes?” He was smiling, and it didn’t reach his eyes, and my gut was screaming at me to run. “This marriage agreement was coerced on my side, and on your side was on false pretenses, yes? Because I would marry you again to save my own hide, and I won’t apologize for that.” His tone was velvet, and I shivered, fear and dread. “But you know about the truth now. You can back out of this, and I should, having shared your bed, be honor-bound to help you with that. Do you want me to take you back to the Gol Droth? They’d receive you in some manner, I’m sure, a pretty peace offering. Maybe you’d end up a wife. Who am I to say? Some of them might honor the codes.” He stepped closer, his gaze a fire. “I can’t promise whichever one won their challenge would be as handsome as I am, but this is your choice, isn’t it? Your wedding. Your funeral.” His lip curled, cruel. “How much do you care about that town?”

My insides were water. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry. He stood there, waiting, just watching me shake. And he was right. He’d owed us nothing, no truth that could have endangered him, no explanation of the hordes he treated with. It was our foolishness that wasted my sacrifice. And to go as tainted loot to our enemies, to be sold and traded again…

I could kill this orc, to save myself. I couldn’t kill a horde.

“Fine,” I croaked out. “It’s fine. Let’s…let’s go.”

He bowed, elaborate, utterly un-Orcish, and returned to his trail I couldn’t see.

South. Bogdana had told me the name of the road in the South. She’d traced in the fine dust of that table where the road met the river, where her aunt’s village of Mereborough would be. Orcs were wanderers without hearth and home, so we’d keep moving. She’d made sure, wherever I’d go, that I could find the way.

I lunged into the rhythm of his steps, the cadence of this path away from everything I knew.

“I did wrong you in one thing,” the orc said, as he swung along the uneven turf as easily as breathing. “It’s our tradition that on accepting marriage, a bride makes a request.”

I ducked under branches. “What is that?”

“No, that’s what I ask you.” He faced me. “You say what you ask for.” The smile from before had gone, his expression cold and smooth, and it struck me that he might have been pretty, if he wasn’t terrifying. “Can’t think of anything?”

My mind was a cold blank.

He turned back. “Let me know when you do.” He walked.

We were still walking when night fell. We didn’t talk, and he still checked, constantly, for some sound, some clue, something I couldn’t see or hear.

My legs were lead. My whole focus was on not tripping in the darkness. I considered using my one request to ask him to stop this interminable trek, but I sealed it back. If that tradition mattered to him, I should save it to survive. Once he stopped to pull a flat of speckled travel bread from the pack, and told me to eat my small piece as we moved. That was the last word spoken. We drank at a brook. We kept walking.