Page 19 of Wed to the Orc Captive

Vrathgar was more at ease as we moved farther. We stopped at a brook for water. He scaled trees to look behind us less often. When he bartered and paid a lone ferryman to paddle us across the wide expanse of the Vradi, it was like weight dropped off his shoulders, and he finally breathed.

That night he stopped to build a fire.

“We can live like human beings again,” he said, that lightness still in his voice. A metal cook pot came out of his pack, not large, like a kettle. “As a figure of speech.” He started cleaning the red grouse he’d killed with a sling at the gilding of the evening, fast, easy twists and snaps. “Not enough flesh on it for much, but it’ll make soup. If you could find anything to add, I don’t have much by way of spices. I usually pack better but…”

I lost the thread of what he was saying. The orc cookpot gleamed beside the yet-unkindled fire.

We had crossed the river. I could find my way back to the ferryman. The ferryman could direct me to the road. The road could lead me to Merryborough. The powder could⁠—

“Annora?”

I flinched. He was staring at me, over the gutted bird in his hands.

“Are you alright?”

It took me a moment to gather. “I’m…fine. I think…I saw some wild carrot, back on the way. I’ll see what I can find.”

He frowned, but he didn’t comment. “Don’t go far.”

In the woods, out of view, I leaned over and caught my breath. Why was I making excuses? It wasn’t because I was weak, like my mother. It wasn’t because I was sentimental. I had been present for deaths before. I’d watched my father bleed out from his gullet, days ago, the images still painted on my mind. I’d just…I’d never actively chosen to kill someone before.

Was this who I was? Someone who was too weak to kill?

Was I going to wait till Bogdana’s tonic wore off and my belly swelled with child, till there was another creature in this world that I couldn’t protect?

I needed to hate him. I shouldn’t need to. I should be able to just do it, but I needed hate. I needed spite to stay alive, now. Love had been wrung out of me, drop by drop, and there was nothing left.

I gathered shelf-mushrooms in my skirt, the bright yellow splashy against the brown, found a flush of carrots in a sun-dappled glen.

“These’ll do, right?” I spread my skirt out, tapping the soil off the roots.

He nodded. The fire had been built. The water he’d sacrificed hadn’t started to bubble yet.

“So those were your family?” I stabbed out, the first question I could think of. “Those orcs we met.” I needed him to snark something ugly, or at least to snarl at me. Show me I’m right and you’re the monster.

“My father’s side.” He picked up a flat of mushroom from my lap, started breaking it into pieces.

“Will we meet your father?”

“No. He’s dead.” No grief passed over his features, no feeling at all. I could handle this if he had no feeling at all.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, rote.

“Don’t be. I hear he was a piece of work.” He waved a hand at his brow. “Apparently this was a parting gift.” That deep purple scar. “One less in-law for you to worry about. Though I’m told you can thank him for my striking good looks.” He threw the pieces into the pot.

I swallowed. I should stop, but this wasn’t about keeping him happy for survival. This was about my own sanity after I’d finished with him. “And your mother?”

“She’s not a bad person.” He said it immediately, like he was ready to strike.

“I didn’t say she was.”

He pulled out his knife, and my heart stuttered, for the second before he pulled a piece of wood from his pocket. “You’ll meet her. At the enclave. With the rest of the Drashik.”

I let myself return to breathing, let my pulse stop pounding behind my eyes. “Do you often visit your father’s people?”

“Not when I can avoid it. Drazha— one of our chieftains I owe a favor to— sent me to make nice this time. They don’t usually come this far west, and they have people nervous.”

I thought of the men we’d lost to the last raid, of Meryl Potter’s wails over her son. “They had us ‘nervous,’ too.”