Page 17 of Wed to the Orc Captive

Vrathgar yanked me backwards, and stepped into the rock.

I hit the ground surrounded by searing sunlight, in a circle surrounded by standing-stones. Vrathgar snatched the pack onto his shoulder and snarled “Move!”

I fled. Fear deadened my pain. As I left the circle of stones he loped alongside me, and I followed him into the trees.

What would we do if they followed? And how would we know if they did? I couldn't run forever. Eventually I was bound to be a liability, and there would come a point where I was more trouble than I was worth to keep.

He grasped my arm and we waded into a stream.

I could be grateful for whatever sense of ownership or duty made him protect me, but I could not depend on it. I was well aware nothing men did out of guilt could be depended on. But as long as we were nearer to orcs than humans, I needed him. After an interminable time of wading, he pulled me up onto the bank.

We ran again.

My lungs were burning when we stopped. I half-fell to the ground, the sunlit glade around us empty of perils, while Vrathgar dropped the pack and scaled a tree.

“I don’t think you can run much longer,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re pursued.” He leapt down, caught his breath. “Still, we shouldn’t stop moving, not till we’re nearer to Drashik lands.” He held out a hand.

He was better than the orcs we’d met in that sanctum. My insides revolted if I let myself think about going with them to bed. He had been dragging me through the woods in sodden skirts that caught the mud, and in contrast to them seemed gallant.

Was this all that falling in love was? Clinging to the least awful monster?

I took his hand.

When we stopped for the night, at an overhang of woven branches that blocked some of the cold, my legs were trembling.

We didn’t make a fire. I peeled off my still damp dress and spread it on a bush, hoping it would be at least slightly dry by morning. I kept the shift. We ate more of the travel bread, and my companion— my husband— laid out the bedroll inside the low shelter.

I should say something to him. Not because he wanted it, but because I needed it. I couldn’t run for hours and hours and then climb into his arms. I needed the illusion of a conversation. I needed the pretense of humanity.

“Thank you. For today,” I sounded too stiff. I was bungling this.

He frowned, still visible in the dying light. “For what?”

“For…saving me.” My face and my neck flushed. I sounded like the maiden in a tinker’s melodrama, like the damsel in a mummer’s show. And clearly he, too, thought I was foolish, because he snorted, disdain.

“Every time I think I know how low humans go, you surprise me again.”

And that…that was unfair. I worked past the smarting in my eyes, my throat, this unfamiliar caring about what an orc would think— clearly I was tired, I was just too tired, and that’s why I was angry and why this hurt. “I’m sorry, sir, What have I done to merit such commentary? In what way have I disappointed you?”

He shook his head, silhouetted against the sky. “That you think you’d have to thank me after running from danger is pathetic. Did you anticipate that your husband would hand you over to be brutalized?”

“My people handed me over to you.” My throat burned.

He tugged on a strap on the bedroll. “Touché.”

A cloud covered the moon. The breeze was cool against my arms and legs, against the thinness of my shift, but I delayed moving to that dark shelter with the blankets a little while longer.

“Apologies,” he said abruptly. “You met my extended family today. You see there’s no love lost. I know what it’s like, to reject a part of what you come from.” He was quiet, added, “I meant no disrespect to you.”

I swallowed, the knot in my throat a little less painful. “It’s fine,” I said. “We are strangers, anyway.” I squeezed my eyes shut, because surely, that was the wrong thing to say. I listened to the darkness, waited for him to reply.

“Yes,” he said into the night. “Yes, I suppose we are.” He stood, and I realized it was so quiet because his clothes didn’t rustle together like mine. “We should sleep.”

Dread gathered in my gut, but I followed him to the overhang’s shelter. He held the blankets open, and, my stomach sinking farther, I climbed in where I’d be trapped against the wall.

I tried to comfort myself, as the warmth of his body flushed against my back, that I would not be cold. If nothing else, selling myself to an orc meant the end of so many chilly nights huddled near dying coals while my father kept the blankets. The orc’s bedding wasn’t threadbare, either.

Now I had come to comforting myself with blanket quality.