‘It’s getting better,’ I say, and it’s only partly a lie. ‘Your plan is working.’
Tom and the others have begun to warm up to me since, at Dane’s request, I started helping them with the building of thecottages. But the rest of the humans still avoid me at the best of times, though I’ve been living here on and off for the past five years.
He gives me a pat on the shoulder in commiseration and then disappears back inside, muttering something about Calder’s agenda.
Out in the sunshine, Halsford is beginning to wake, and I already see more than one fearful glance at my large, half orc stature. I almost wish we had another mission and could go back into the Dark Realms for a few months.
I let out a sigh and start walking with Jak back through the village in silence, wondering what the conjure Dane took off us was meant to do.
‘Do you think it was Locke?’ Jak asks as we walk down the center of the wide road.
‘I hope it wasn’t,’ I say quietly, looking up toward our cottage. ‘But Dane said such intricate magick takes great skill and I remember no other conjurers of such fine ilk.’
‘Not even in Dead City?’ Jak asks. ‘It could have happened there. Plenty of magickal cunts in that fucking place.’
I side-eye him. Does he really think that’s true?
‘Perhaps,’ I say noncommittally.
‘Locke is our friend,’ he mutters, and I can hear the fear of another betrayal in his tone.
‘I forget you were in Varrik’s fold for all those years sometimes,’ I say. ‘I imagine it’s not easy to trust after being lied to for so long…finding out that everything you thought you knew was a lie.’
Jak gives a jerky nod. ‘To have your mind altered with magick, to grow up with it, to realize a person you thought cared for you was actually the worst villain you could imagine… I don’t want to have been used thus by someone else I trusted, Morgan.’
‘I know,’ I say with a deep sigh.
‘Find me if anything comes to you? I’ll do the same,’ he murmurs.
‘Fine,’ I reply, and then hold out my hand as we reach the apothecary door.
He stares at it and then looks vacantly into my face.
‘For fuck’s sake, Jak. The cup! I know you won’t bring it home and itwillgo missing.’
‘Gods, don’t we have a bit more to worry about?’ he mutters, raising his hand where the cup dangles from his fingers by the handle, clearly already half-forgotten.
I shrug. ‘I like to control what I can.’
He places the cup hard in my open palm. ‘I was going to take it back later! And Nora could easily make another if it did disappear.’
I openly sneer at him. ‘They were made as a set. A new one might be a different hue than the others.’
Jak rolls his eyes and goes inside without another word. I put the cup on the doorstep as I go past our cottage. Then, I wander up to the ridge where a few of the other volunteers are already hard at work.
Five more cottages are almost finished. When we’ll need them it’s hard to say. There are missions going on in the Dark Realms even now, some which yield humans who were taken from the Light Realm. Many wish to return to their own villages and homes, but there are some who decide to stay here in Halsford to heal from the horrors of their captivity, and some have no homes to return to.
When the human workers see me, a couple of gazes alight with mistrust, but Tom waves at me and asks me to start with the roof on the last in the row.
It doesn’t escape my notice that it’s the only one where no one else is working, but I nod and climb the ladder easily, sitting at the top and taking a moment to look out at the rest of thebuildings that I can see. Halsford is growing quickly enough that it could soon be called a town, I muse.
It’s been six winters since the first cabin was built here, surprisingly by two orcs, Drakar and Grim, trying to escape the Dark Realms. They brought the first human here, a former slave named Gwen who they helped to escape the Dark and became their mate.
I haven’t seen them since I came back, I realize, not even Gwen who usually spends much of her time in the apothecary. Perhaps I’ll visit with them later.
I pick up a hammer and begin to lay the clay roof tiles in the battens, nailing them down in neat rows from the bottom, slightly overlapping them to make the roof watertight. Over the course of the day, I think only of my task, not letting my thoughts stray to other realms, or the fact that one of my oldest friends might have turned on me,and I can’t remember.
When the light begins to wane, I hear Tom call to the others that he’ll meet them in the tavern. I assume he only means the humans, so I ignore him, instead nailing in the last few tiles, trying to finish before it gets too dark to continue.
