Page 25 of The Pumpkin Bride

Marigold exited the coop, then held the pail high like a lantern. “Where does this go?”

“Hook above the feed barrel, next to the kitchen door.”

The metallic scrape of the pail’s handle on the hook sent a shiver down her spine. Feed dust covered her hands, and she brushed them together. “What about the horses?” she asked. “Or donkeys? Anything to do for them?”

“I have neither.” He opened the byre door.

She squished her eyebrows together. “No beasts of burden?”

“I am the beast of burden.” His hand, flattened over his heart, covered a third of his chest. “Easier for me to push the plow than to harness creatures.”

“Oh, I—oh.” She stared at his thick shoulders, imagining them straining with effort. Which was not a welcome or necessary thought at daybreak. He was her unwilling host for mercy’s sake, not an object. He had a soul. An irritating grumpy one, but a soul nonetheless.

“I’ll . . .” The word stuck. She cleared her throat. “I’ll handle the eggs?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Was that a question or an offer?”

Must he make everything so difficult? She wasn’t amused by his needling. Far from it. Flustered was more like it.

“An offer.” She let herself back into the chicken yard. The birds’ excited clucking made her raise her voice. “I’m capable of collecting eggs.”

He twirled the pail on his index finger. “If you insist.”

“I do. Go.” She shooed him. “Cow. Milk.”

He cocked his head and continued twirling. “You surprise me.”

She popped her fist on her hip. “Why, because princesses don’t do chores?”

“No, because you used to—” His pail slipped his finger and spiraled over the fence and into the pig’s sty.

“I used to what?” she asked.

He palmed his neck. “Hand out chores to servants. But that’s an assumption, and I hate it when people make assumptions about me. I shouldn’t have made them about you.”

She narrowed her eyes. All she knew of this orc was built upon the last twenty-four hours. But something in what he’d said—or, more accurately, hadn’t said—was the shape and weight of a lie. This was not a time to challenge, however. This was a time to build bridges, so he’d allow her to stay or, better yet, help her get to Mareval.

“I may surprise you yet, Jask Bone-Cracker.”

He’d headed back to the dairy for a fresh pail. She wasn’t sure, but she swore he muttered that she already had.

Chapter 7

With the animals tended, Bram would normally break his fast. Except Marigold would flit around him like a horsefly, asking a thousand questions as he cooked. After a sleepless night spent listening to her sweet sighs, powerfully aware she was mere feet away but forever out of reach . . . he needed distance from her.

Despite the strong rumble in his stomach, he strapped on his carpentry belt and grabbed a spare jagged board from the cast-off pile. Earlier, while releasing Paloma to forage, he noticed a cracked rail on the north side of her pen. His lumber supply was running low after crafting the rocking chairs from the shattered remains of the orchard’s rootstock tree’s heartwood. Until he chopped down another tree for fresh planks, he’d attach a support as a short-term solution.

“Alas, my love, you do me wrong . . .” Marigold’s light voice carried across the courtyard as she sang. Many a time she’d break into song while they hiked through woods, insisting it made the journey shorter. “To cast me off discourteously . . .”

He twisted toward her, ready to shout at her to stop. The word dried in his throat. Saints, she was beautiful. A little paler than he remembered, but magnetic all the same. She’d flung open the door to the root cellar, and as her fingers drifted over the jarred vegetables and braided onions, the morning breeze played with her loose curls. For one second—one brief, glorious, irresponsible second—he let himself fantasize a long future of days like this.

His jaw ached with his clenching.

Fantasy, indeed. She was here for today and today only.

Bram, however, would remain at Grimroot Farm. Forever. What he’d told Marigold about people staring had been true, but the curse also kept him rooted here as surely as a shackle. The sprite’s magic clamped invisible walls around the farm, impenetrable only to him. He’d tried crossing the borders in every way possible—walking, running, leaping, hacking with an axe, flinging himself skyward with a makeshift trebuchet, swimming across Coldpress Lake, digging deeper than any of the graves at Kindlewood Garden of Rest next door.

Escape eluded him at every turn.