Crude. Dim-witted. Disgusting. Murderer. I hate you.
“So then you cling harder to your ways,” Maria finished, wincing, her voice cracking. “You cling to what power you can find. You maybe even show us” — she tried to smile, but horribly failed — “what we expect of you, because that might be safer, wouldn’t it? Rather than showing us who you really are, and then being mocked or rejected for that instead?”
And Simon’s eyes, it was as though they burned into her, seeing through her, boring into her very soul. And when he finally nodded, slow, minute, it felt like a thunder-clap of comprehension, of truth, ringing through Maria’s skull.
“And yet,” she said, searching those eyes, “you still seek a new way? You still want to change your Skai ways? You still want to — to treat women better, and try to change our minds about you?”
And abruptly it seemed impossible, unfathomable, that Simon could truly want to strive for such things — but he was again nodding.Nodding, though his mouth bore a bitter little twist, his hand dropping to cover his eyes.
“But this is no easy, ach?” he continued. “Many Skai yet cling to these old ways. For many of my kin, you are yet only our enemy. You make us weak. You bear what we shall never have. You flaunt our ways, you treat us with dishonour, you face us with shame and scorn and fear. You bear our sons, our onlyhope, and then” — his hand dropped from his eyes, his claw jabbing toward her — “yourun.”
Oh. Ohhhh. It felt like something had kicked Maria in the gut, suddenly, snapping her body rigid over his, her eyes wide and chagrined on his face. Because once again, he was talking about —her.
And good gods, he’d even told her, at the start of all this. Hadn’t he? Maria had brought him shame before his kin, by cornering him with that contract, by breaking his clan’s ways. And while Simon was trying to cling to his power in this, to use it to his advantage, to show his kin a new way — that contract was still there. With the selling, the running. The shame. The…revenge.
And wait, was Maria actuallyhurtinghis cause, in all this, rather than helping him? Because here he was, fighting for the future of his clan, fighting for her right to become a true Skai, without the hunt, or the rut — and here she was, still threatening to run away, andleavehim? To abandon her own Skai son,forever? To fulfill every single horrible belief these Skai orcs held about humans?
Maria’s heart was thundering erratically in her chest, her eyes blinking rapidly toward Simon’s stiff, unreadable face. Because maybe he knew he’d called her out on this, just now. He’d cleansed her, and now he wanted to see her truth.
“Oh,” Maria said, thick, bleak, exposed — and somehow,somehow, she’d jerked sideways on the bed. Grasping down for something, crumpling it as she snatched it up, here, before their eyes.
Their contract. Covered in its rows of clear black ink. Damning Maria as yet another fickle, careless human who only wanted to run.
“So,” she said, her voice not quite hers, her eyes not quite able to lift to Simon’s, “this contract is still useful, right? Since it’s the new way you’ve claimed before your clan, and all. But” — she cleared her throat, blinked down at that incriminating line, the very last on the page — “we probably don’t need to commit to that last bit, right? At least, notnow.”
And gods, it came out sounding so false, so foolishly casual — but Simon surely wasn’t fooled. In fact, his gaze was sheer pointed intensity, boring into Maria, and then into that last line of the contract. The one that granted her the right to leave with his money, and never come back.
“And what, woman,” Simon replied, his voice very even, “should you wish to write instead?”
The heat was prickling uncomfortably all over Maria’s face, her back, her chest. “I — don’t know,” she whispered, wretched. “Can’t we just — tear it off, or something, for now?”
Simon stared at her for another long instant, while blatant disbelief shimmered in his eyes — but then, without looking away from her, he slowly gripped the paper, and then dragged his claw across it, just above that line. Curling it off in a neat little strip, and unfurling something much like relief in Maria’s belly.
And when he tossed the shortened contract aside, leaving only the little strip curled around his claw, there was more relief, almost inexplicable in its strength. And strength, too, in the intensity in Simon’s eyes, as his hand briefly slid down behind Maria, lingering in the mess he’d made between her legs — and when the curl of paper came back, it was covered in his slick, dripping with thick white.
And as Maria watched, struck, breathless, Simon raised it to hermouth. Nudging her lips gentle but purposeful apart, and then slipping the soaked-wet slip of paper inside.
“Then eat this, woman,” he ordered, so soft. “Honour me.”
And somehow, caught in this frozen, unreal moment, Maria…obeyed. Understanding, somehow, as bizarre as it was, that perhaps he needed this. Needed to see her literally eat her own words, coated in his fresh seed. Needed to… cleanse her.Enforceher.
And once it was done, and Maria had gulped those incriminating words down her throat, there was…peace. In her eyes locked to Simon’s, in the press of her fingers over his rapidly beating heart.
She would seek a better way. She would show him. She would…helphim?
And surely, this was the hysteria again. Surely, the determination currently swarming her thoughts was disgraceful, appalling,reprehensible— but in this safe, whispering quiet, Maria couldn’t seem to see why. Not with this orc now carding his claws through the mess of her hair, and bringing it to his face — and then inhaling it, deep. As though it actuallyweresweet. Whole. True.
“So, then, Simon,” Maria heard her distant voice say, her mouth twitching into a small, genuine smile. “If you reallydolike nice pretty things, then what the hell wasthis?”
She flapped her hand toward his room, toward its somewhat tidied state — and Simon sighed, the breath heaving from his chest. “Ach, this,” he said. “If it is pretty and clean, it only gains me more envy. More hunger from those who wish to take it from me.”
Oh. Of course. FromUlfarr, he meant. Ulfarr, who would gain all Simon’s possessions if he killed him. Ulfarr, who already wanted everything Simon touched. Ulfarr, who’d said that all Simon had would be his. Twelve days.
“Shit,” Maria said, squeezing her eyes shut. “You said I should clean it if I wanted, so I thought —shit. I should have asked. I can — mess it up again, and —”
But Simon’s hand had again slipped up to her mouth, his strong fingers pressing against her lips. “No,” he said. “It pleases me, that you did this for me. And this battle now comes for me, with or without this, ach?”
Maria couldn’t find a reply to that, and she studied him for another long, silent moment. Drinking up the darkness still in those eyes, the tension shifting in his jaw.
