"Then I wait," I say. "I'll be your friend. I'll show up every morning and I'll give you everything you need and I'll be patient for as long as it takes for you to know — really know, not just think, butknow— that I'm not going anywhere and I'm not going to hurt you." I don't move closer. "I can do that. I will do it without a second thought."
She turns.
It's slow, deliberate, the kind of turning that's a decision. She's looking at me now with those green eyes that are always doing three things at once — assessing, guarding, calculating — and underneath all of it something else that I've watched grow for weeks without naming it because naming it felt like pressure she didn't need.
"That doesn't make sense," she says. Her brow draws together, not in anger. In genuine confusion. "Orcs take what they want. I've seen it." Her voice doesn't waver but the wordseencarries the specific weight of someone who means it literally. "They don't give time and space. They don't wait. Theydon't listen or care or any of the things you do, Ursik, and sometimes, I'm not sure what to think of you."
I reach for her. Not grabbing — just my hand, open, moving toward her face slowly enough that she can watch every inch of it, slowly enough that she could step back, turn away, tell me no.
She doesn't.
My fingers find her jaw, just barely, and I tilt her chin up the smallest amount so she's looking at me straight and even and there's nothing between us except six inches of morning air.
"Some orcs might," I say. "Some are cruel and selfish. Just like some people." My thumb moves once, careful, along the line of her cheekbone. I don't tell her I know that her friend sold them, that Wren told me the story and how it cut Aislin personally. I don't admit that I've always known her trust was broken above anyone else's. "All I want is for you to be happy. That's it. That's everything."
She studies me, and I feel like I'm watching her walls finally break. They crumble under the weight of everything I've said.
Not into grief — not the way things broke open in the Stonevein compound, not the way she'd looked the morning she told me about learning she'd been sold in clipped, controlled sentences while we sparred and I'd stood there absorbing every word and not moving until she was done.
This is something else. Her resolve giving way not because it was broken down but because the person who built it up has decided, consciously and at cost, to open the gate.
She closes the six inches between us and kisses me.
21
AISLIN
Ikiss him and I stop thinking.
That's the thing about it — I've been thinking for weeks. Every morning at sunrise with my knuckles wrapped and my jaw set and my brain cataloguing exits and threats and how far we are from the tree line and whether the supply cart is scheduled today or tomorrow.
Every night with my three weapons under the bed and my ear turned toward the door and my body refusing to stop being a fist even in sleep. I have been thinking,constantly, for so long that the absence of it is the most disorienting thing that has ever happened to me.
His hand is still cupping my jaw. I feel the warmth of it against my cheek — enormous, careful, the particular gentleness of something that could break you and has chosen not to — and something in my chest shoves hard against my ribs and I think:I'm sick of this.
Not of him. Not of any of it.
Of the fear.
I am so desperately sick of the fear.
I pull back just enough to breathe and he doesn't chase me, he lets me go the instant there's any space between us, and that —that— is the thing that does it. Every time. Not the teasing or the sunrise sparring or the way he'd run alongside that bloody obstacle course shouting at me until I forgot to be terrified. It's this. The way he stops. The way he's always made stopping look effortless.
"I ran," I say. My voice comes out lower than I expect. "After the first kiss. Today. Every time you've made me see that maybe I don't have to fight this, I've ran."
He looks at me. His hand drops from my jaw but doesn't go far, settling at the curve of my neck where he can feel my pulse against his fingers if he wants to. "You did."
"I was stupid."
Something flickers in his gray eyes — not the teasing version of him, not the loud one that fills up rooms and shouts at obstacle courses. The real one. The one that lives underneath all that noise and has been quietly watching me for weeks and never once asked for anything back.
"You were scared," he says. "That's different."
"Maybe." I reach up and wrap my fingers around his wrist — the one attached to the hand still resting at my neck — and I hold it there because I want it there. "But I don't want to keep running. Not from you." My grip tightens. "I want you. I know my head is screaming at me. I know all the reasons it's a terrible idea and I know what happened the last time I trusted someone and I know — Iknow— I might get hurt." I look up at him straight. No flinching. "But if the result is getting to be with you, Ursik, I don't care. Not one bit."
The breath he lets out is slow. Controlled. Like a man who has been holding something very carefully for a very long time.
"You make me laugh," I say, and the words come up from somewhere underneath all the armor without askingpermission. "You make me feel — like I'm worth something. Like I'm not just a guard dog standing in front of everyone else. Like I'm—" I stop, press my lips together, try again. "You're the only good thing in my life right now, Ursik. The only thing that feelsreal. And I walked away from you because I got scared to trust someone and I'm not doing that again."
