Page 14 of Wed to the Orc Captive

And while walking, I had time to think, time for the thoughts that had been at bay for days to rush in like wolves. I thought of my father bleeding out on the floor of our cabin. I thought of the choice Bogdana had given my mother, and the horror that I lived because she’d chosen wrong. I thought of the ache I could still feel, of the orc’s body over mine.

We were only supposed to be able to bind them with marriage because they were slaves to sex, because they were controllable, the worst stories about men exaggerated into form. He hadn’t seemed controlled or bewitched. He didn’t feel like I’d made him mine.

The moon rose, and the woods stopped feeling real. I stopped feeling real. A whippoorwill sang, and I wanted to sing back, but I had to follow the orc, this figure whose broad back flickered through the trees.

A cloud passed the moon, and I fell.

The world was cartwheeling past, shadow and pain, and then I was lying, dazed, at the bottom of some shallow ravine, the wind knocked out of me, and everything confused.

A moment’s whisper, and he was looming over me, muttering Orcish that sounded like a curse. “Can you hear me? Annora. Tell me you’re awake,” he hissed.

I pulled my voice back. “I am…awake.”

“Can you move? How badly are you injured? You just walked into a ravine.”

“I can’t see,” I mumbled.

He cursed again. “You hit your head? You can’t see because you hit it?”

“No, it’s dark.”

He cursed again. “We can’t stay here. There will be a patrol.”

I tried to get up. I had my arms, and my legs. From a healer’s standpoint, this wasn’t worse than bruising. I caught his shoulder, and leaned on him. My arm gave out, and I fell.

He cursed a blue streak in the common tongue this time. “I forget how weak you keep your women.”

I didn’t have time to think how his displeasure could affect or shorten my life. His arms were under me, and he hauled me up into his chest.

I think when I’d been younger, when I’d still dreamed girlish dreams, I’d imagined being rescued and carried. But not like this, not by a monster I intended to kill, careless because he owned me, fleeing other monsters under the darkened sky. If I’d imagined this, I would have been so afraid.

Now I was so tired that I didn’t even fight.

I was dimly aware when his lunging and rapid lope through the trees had stopped, when the moon was back and there were no trees overhead. I heard him mutter Orcish again, and felt him clench me tighter. Once I opened my eyes, and thought I saw grand protrusions of stone.

But I was exhausted, and it was warm, and in spite of myself, in the arms of this orc who could indeed do worse to me than he’d done, my consciousness slipped away.

I woke up in semi-darkness, a strange, rippling light moving across my arm in front of my face.

I sat up. I was in a bedroll, alone. Smooth, pale stone walls stretched above me, melding into pillars and worked-stone flowers and vines in that strange light. A pool. There was a pool of water sunken in the floor, glowing from inside, light and warmth and tendrils of steam.

I scooted back, away from this foreign magic, and the slap of my hand on the rock echoed, reverberating off the walls. “Oh,” I gasped, and my voice echoed, too.

And it was such a foolish thing to fix on, an otherworldly thing, that I laughed, the sound bubbling over and across the space. I wasn’t going to drink from the glowing water, but the steam eased my throat.

This place, wide like our church hall, with doorways branching off into darkness, seemed empty. The way it echoed, I was sure I’d hear someone if they approached. So I dared to sing a cadence, to listen to it echo and come back to me, like birdsong.

And then there were runes running up the columns, lit in white, and as the last notes of my song faded, my orc stood in the empty space, a brace of pheasant on his shoulder, a cord of firewood under his arm, and I was silent.

Nothing was betrayed by his face. “Singing,” he said.

I swallowed.

“Does this place make you sick? The magic?”

“No,” I croaked. “Why?”

“The sorcerer bloodlines are supposed to come from the fae, same as this place. Sometimes the journey in…it messes with people.”