Page 81 of Wed to the Orc Captive

That muscle in the side of his jaw tensed, visible even from behind. “Yeah. That’s right.”

“This will be the last thing you need me for.” A memory, foggy, surfaced. “Didn’t Khal's mother send for a witness of your kidnapping, to the Droth? Your friend?”

He shrugged. “The party that volunteered didn’t have anyone with a particular urge for speed. None of them care much to help me out. Least of all that snake Sephar.” He rolled his shoulder. “Likely I could use that as an excuse to delay the judgement, but.”

“But?”

“I’m not interested in delaying.”

He must want done with this badly. That made sense, I supposed. That must be why he was so tense, why this black humor rolled off of him. He was ready to be done.

I took a breath. That shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t. “I’m dressed,” I said.

The walk to the circle was not easy, but I didn’t want to be carried. I didn’t want to be seen being, again, toted like a bundle through his people’s home. I held onto his arm, tight, and I focused, one step, another.

At the circle, the moon had risen, full, in that breadth of sky, the only reason I could see.

Larrakh, Khal’s cousin, was there. She looked over me, anxious, before she looked away. Sareet glared across the space, her arms still crossed, like she was still sure she’d done nothing wrong. No sign of Sephar. No sign of Vrathgar’s Droth witness.

Tyralk materialized from the dark next to me. “I can't translate for you this time, sister-in-law,” he said. His eyes were set across that circle. “I'll need to focus, myself. I hope you can forgive me.”

“What should I forgive you for?”

He gave the merest ghost of a smile. “You decide, later.”

Rowena reached my side, shadows on her pale face. She touched my arm, and the sorcery flowed in again, just as I heard my husband mutter at Tyralk in Orcish, “What idiocy are you planning? Leave the recklessness to the grownups.”

“I am a grownup, you miserable ass.”

“I mean it, runt. This is my fight.”

“Far be it from me to keep you from your stupid fight.”

I spoke up then, the twisting magic on my tongue. “What fight?”

Vrathgar clammed up.

I whipped my head to look at Tyralk. “What do you mean, ‘fight?’”

“A lot of trials have a fight in them, little sister.”

“But you won’t need to?” I looked back at Vrathgar, whose mouth had stayed firmly shut. “You’re not going to fight?”

When he spoke, it was a mutter. “Fight is not a good word for what I’m going to do.”

I looked back at Rowena, her own shadowed countenance. She didn’t answer. “What is a good word?” I felt like I was drowning in the air.

He rolled his shoulders again. “Execution,” he said, and, as my heart leapt into my mouth, “Theirs.”

Khal’s mother stepped into the center of that circle, some of the faces of the chieftains with her familiar, some not. She held up her arm for silence. “I have made oaths that several grave matters will be considered tonight.”

I couldn’t step into the circle. If I was called to fight, I would simply die.

“One raised as our own has taken a wife from outside our ways.”

The faces were so cold, around the ring. What if something happened to him?

No, what if he killed them? He was already an outsider without blood on his hands. If he stained himself with theirs, it would never wash away.