Page 4 of Wed to the Orc Captive

Tenithin was stammering. “Miss Annora, you can come back toward the bars⁠—"

I crouched again by the orc against the wall, addressed my attacker. “I don’t hurt my patients.” I sang.

The problem with song-magic, the danger I'd skirted all my life, was that I reached for what was inside of me, for hope, for pleas, for goodness, what was actually there tried to come out. I was in a prison cell, leaning over the shape of one of their raiders, a violent murderer turned docile by pain the way so many are, a creature who’d been battered by the same anger that threatened to spill out of me so many times, the same helpless, seething rage. I wanted to stay controlled, because of Tenithin, because of the guard who’d be watching now, ready to murmur to others and increase the gauntlet I would run, but the song pitched and came low, rose and crashed like the mourning I couldn’t afford. Like the tears I barely managed to cry. Like wishing I had someone worth mourning. The anger that had been roiling, unable to be spilled, came through in my keening. Fix it. Damn everything, and fix it.

I stopped. The swelling had receded a little, under my fingers. His side moved as he breathed, slower, more relaxed, and he turned, a wide face with a break across his nose, and sat up.

The scarred orc spoke at my back, not to me, more of their tongue, and the one I’d treated answered. I should get up, should get out, but I was drained, by the singing, by something else. Everything about me felt heavy, and I just wanted to pause there, kneeling on the packed earth like all of me would fall apart when I stood.

“You healed him,” the scarred one said.

I shrugged. “I can do a little. Not much.”

“I was wrong. Apologies.”

Tenithin was giving instructions, and I should try to listen, but the orc spoke, and his voice pushed everything back.

“I’m sorry for this, too.” He wrenched me up by my arm.

Should I be getting used to this, his hand on my throat, arms pinned as he pressed me back against him? One day an orphan, and this was my normal now?

“Open the door or she dies.”

Tenithin was squawking.

The orc barked, “If anyone was coming for your screams, they’d have come the first time. Do it.”

A key jangled in the lock.

“Shove it open. All the way.”

A creak. The one guard had his sword held up over his head, his eyes the kind of wide with fear mine should have had, if I’d had anything other than the most basic desire not to die. Tenithin was between his table and the door.

My captor spoke again in their tongue, instructions to the other, who was pushing himself up to stand, saying something anxious in return. “Alright,” he returned to the common tongue. “We do this safely.” He stepped to the doorway, and before anyone could move, he hurled me into the guard’s stomach.

The man stumbled back with an “Oof!” and Tenithin was screaming, “Get them, get them!” Jarreth lunged off his cot to tackle the speaking one, and I watched him drive his elbow into Jarreth’s face with a crunch. The guard with a sword pushed me to the side so he could stumble forwards and try to brain the first orc with the pommel. The orc deflected the blow, the blade scoring red along his arm. He was shouting in Orcish, and I heard a bang as the door to the guardhouse slammed against the frame.

He took the sword-guard down with a punch to the throat, drove Jarreth’s head back against the wall, and was turning towards that door. His eyes lit on me, like he thought I’d do something. Like he thought I could. “Apologies,” he said again. He took one step forward.

And he dropped like a stone.

Tenithin stood behind him, holding one of our brass candlesticks, blood sticky on the dull metal. “You,” he snarled at the guard, the one on one knee, holding his throat. “Get the other one!”

And that’s when I realized the second orc was gone.

There was a lot of blood, normal for a headwound. I helped Tenithin tie him— I was being very helpful today— and I pinched the wound’s edges together and hummed a melody I hoped didn’t sound like hatred. Tenithin needed him alive, and I needed someone in this half-forsaken town who’d be on my side.

They didn’t find the other orc.

It was evening when I made my way with my lighter basket towards the shell of a house that had been ours.

And it was evening when Todderick cornered me.

“You can drop this act where you hate me.” The town overseer’s tall, gangly son smirked down from above me, his arm against the midway-wall blocking the road beyond. I should not have taken this alleyway.

No. He’d have found me anyway. I scanned the street beyond him, mostly empty, only Mrs. Pritch with her chickens, averting her eyes. This was not a good place to scream, but I could if I had to. I would if I had to. “That's right,” he chuckled. “You stay quiet and listen, like a good bird.” He leaned a little closer.

“I’m not marrying you.” I tightened my grip on the basket, like I could swing it. I had the passing thought that Father would be furious if I hurt this boy, but that was silly. Father was in the ground with his intestines piled on top of him. Jack Cooper would never be furious again.