Page 36 of Wed to the Orc Captive

My hands were tied.

It was the first thing I became aware of, before the strong scent of fennel and licorice root, the tang of bog myrtle and souring grain. My hands were tied, and my head throbbed.

I must have made some sound, because suddenly there was an arm under my head, and someone was putting a cup to my mouth. I fought— ineffectually, God I was weak— and a voice, a woman’s voice but deep, clucked in a language I didn’t understand, chiding. It was a woman, the face that blurred above me, soft and wrinkled, white hair and deep green skin.

I don’t know why I was more comfortable letting a woman kill me. I drank, and it tasted like coriander and mugwort, for fever and for pain.

Her voice was a steady, low patter, like rain— somewhere it was raining, outside, I could hear it— and orange light touched the edges of my vision. A fire. I was indoors. My dress glued to my body with sweat, and nothing seemed real, the grit of sand still on my neck from falling, the parched cracking of my lips, my throat. She brought another cup to my lips, a broth this time, and chuckled when I drank without questions. I was so tired.

“Tch, tch,” the voice scolded again. And I felt it, in the river of sound, that I was safe, that I didn’t have to fight.

There was almost nothing left of me to fight with, only animal reflex and precious little strength. So I trusted the stranger with the coriander and the broth, and I let myself fall back into a fevered sleep, where sometimes I’d see faces, my Father, or the Droth orcs, or the woman with the power. And when I tried to lunge up, to fight, to run, and fell again, I didn’t know if the arms pulling me back were an enemy or a dream.

Sunlight seared at my eyes.

A room swam into focus in front of me in the window-light, a central fireplace with an ample cauldron, shelves on shelves of clay vessels and bulbs and leaves and roots hanging in bunches from the rafters, lavender, wormwood, mint and more I didn’t know, like the forest was hanging from the ceiling.

“Nayah!” An orc woman approached me, the soft face from my delirium, the one with the coriander. She smiled, a shock of white teeth with only one missing. More words flowed off her tongue, but it was all of it foreign, all of it sounds I didn’t know.

I tried to sit up. My hands were bound behind me.

“Tch, tch!” She dosed liquid out of another kettle— how many little fires were in this house?— tested it against her lip before bringing it to my mouth, like a grandmother with a baby’s gruel. Licorice root, coating my throat, soothing the ache of my voice. It was sweet. She said something, a promise, I think, and hustled from the room.

I managed to sit up, the room only spinning a little before I leaned against the clean earthen wall. The light was coming in through windows between the rafters, interspersed to help the drying. I wondered if they’d contracted with a human glassblower, for the window-globes, or if there were orcs heating sand and making glass. I’d never thought about orcs making anything.

I’d never thought about orcs much at all.

The door swung open again, and the woman from before, with the ink-black hair, strode into the room.

I scrambled back against the wall.

My host was saying something, seemingly unafraid of her, and my head pounded, ready to fight.

“You’re the sorceress,” I croaked, winced at the sound of me.

Her eyes were flat. “Mother Grezha says your fever has broken.”

“Where am I?” Memories rushed back in, and I couldn’t panic, not now. I had to bargain, or battle, or— “Where is he? What have you done with him?”

“With the orc we found with you?”

“With my husband.”

Her eyebrows rose, just a moment. “He’s safe. He’s being cared for.” She gestured to the bindings. “You were in no state to be helping anyone else.” Her brows rose again. “May I?”

I didn’t want her near me, especially not behind me. But I couldn’t stay bound.

She sat and started untying the cords, and I tried not to tense like a knife was coming for my back.

“We don’t usually bind the sick. Your delirium had you threatening people, and we didn’t know what you could do with your powers.”

The orc woman she’d called Mother was moving about, tending the fire.

“A cut on my arm got infected.” I looked down to find my sleeve had been cut away at the shoulder, bandages clean around the cut.

“Grezha said it looked like a claw mark.”

“It was. These giant birds…” My throat constricted.