Page 56 of Wed to the Orc Captive

“Oh, pardon, yes, this is about my love life.” His voice rose. “Pray, tell me, when in our long and storied relationship did you want me to put that on the table? Was this conversation supposed to be before or after our wedding at knifepoint? Before or after we consummated our marriage inside a cell? Before or after you decided whether to poison me or someone else⁠—"

“Before someone approached me with a spear!” I’d shouted it at him. “Before anyone came at me with a weapon; I don’t need to know all your secrets and you don’t have to tell me whether you love her, I just need to know if I’m not going to be able to fill a jar with rutting water without being confronted by multiple armed people with no idea which ones want⁠—"

“To kill me,” is what I’d meant to say, but my grip gave out. It was such a stupid moment, my arms weak after too long, the loss of coordination and control, and the water jar fell, smashing in clay shards, spreading a puddle across the floor.

I went down on my knees, started picking them up. “I’m so sorry⁠—"

“No, stop—" He was tying the blanket around his waist, bending down.

“I can pick it up and I’ll find something to trade for a new one⁠—"

“I don’t care about the jar.” And then my hands were both caught in his, and I was trapped, looking up— “I don’t care about the jar,” he repeated. His breathing was a little ragged. He swallowed. “Listen to me, alright? You’re going to hurt your hands.”

A tiny trickle of blood flowed from one thumb, down onto my knuckle. I didn’t let the shard go. “It has to be cleaned up,” I got out, and it sounded like a whisper.

“I’ll borrow a broom alright? Or I’ll make one. We need one anyway. Just…stop. Please.”

I let it go.

A knock slammed on the door. “Vrathgar?” An unfamiliar voice called out. The rest was Orcish.

Vrathgar cursed under his breath. “We’re being summoned,” he muttered. “Sephar has convinced them to hold a council.”

I wanted to apologize. I didn’t know for what, just that it felt like something was broken, something I longed to fix and could not.

Vrathgar yelled some Orcish back at the door, and released my hands. “Let me get dressed.”

The orc at the door had a round, honest face, and Vrathgar greeted him with that same embrace, the dip of their foreheads. And then we were walking down the wooden bridgeway again, words spoken and unspoken hanging between us like an impenetrable wall.

How was it only afternoon when this day felt like a month smashed together?

The crowd at the stone-ringed circle was different now, a hush of focus, onlookers around the edge, children with wide eyes in happy green faces scrabbling up the trees. In the center of that circle, the woman who’d slammed my face into the floor earlier today, Drazha, stood with a number of others, a petite older woman with small, white pieces of something braided into her hair, a tall man whose frown deepened as Tyralk stepped to stand next to me.

“Don’t stand with us, whelp,” Vrathgar muttered, not taking his eyes off the chieftains in that circle. “Whatever mud they’re slinging shouldn’t be hitting an infant.”

Tyralk didn’t look back at him. “I’m not standing with you. I’m standing with your wife, because you have to focus on what’s going on, and she has no idea what anyone’s saying, you giant ass.”

Vrathgar’s eyes flicked to me, and he didn’t argue.

The old woman with the white shapes in her hair stepped forward, addressed the crowd.

Tyralk leaned sideways and murmured to me. “She says Vrathgar has brought a wife to the people, and concerns have been raised that because the alliance is with people alien to us, the marriage was made not in our ways.”

Vrathgar stepped forward, raised one arm in salute, touched his forehead. His shoulders were relaxed, and the way his weight avoided the still injured leg just looked like mockery. The words rolled off his tongue, and noise rose from the crowd, sounds of disgust, disbelief.

“He’s explaining that your people engaged in Tar Ivan, that they meant to force alliance with the Droth, but captured him instead.”

A man in the crowd yelled out, and Vrathgar fired back, before Drazha stepped up beside the other woman, yelling them to silence.

Tyralk flinched. “They, uh…recommended he stay with the Gol Droth. Vrathgar disagreed with their premise. Drazha wants everyone to stay polite.”

I did not think he’d merely disagreed with their premise.

Oh, she’d said his name. I heard his name. The rest was an unintelligible flood of consonants, but I'd caught that.

“She’s demanding if he has evidence for this. He’s telling her about the orc who was captured with him.”

“She knows about that.”