Page 41 of Wed to the Orc Captive

“I can get you a spoon⁠—"

“I have a spoon.” I reached into my waist pocket, pulled it out again, roughly carved and crooked. There wasn’t blood on this, at least. Everything else of me had blood, it seemed.

“The last we knew of Vrathgar he had gone to talk with the orcs north of here.”

“The Gol Droth.” The soup was savory, mushrooms, tallow pooling on top. Thyme.

“Yes.” She paused, as if I should know where to continue from there, but I only ate. “I think you can imagine that him returning like this, injured, with a wife in tow, is cause for alarm.”

I cleaned the bowl. “He said the Gol Droth would find prey in the east soon, because the magisters were hiring. So they wouldn’t bother my people any more.”

“And you said…that the people who had hurt you both were dead?”

“No one hurt me. I fell.” The room was silent. I squeezed the spoon. “Yes. They’re dead.”

The quiet one by the fire— the sorceress’s man— spoke up, careful. I realized what was odd about him. There was no accent in his speech. “I am sorry to press you on this,” he said, “but we need to know. The people who did this. Were they Droth?”

An awful calm fell over me. That’s why they were afraid. They thought the Droth had tried to kill us, and that we would be followed. Even here, people were afraid of the orcs that killed my people, so was there anywhere safe?

“No,” I said. “No. Just humans. The Droth…they were scared of him. They left us alone.”

The sorceress sat back with a release of breath. The quiet one kept watching the sorceress like she was going to break. The tall one, Tyralk, reached out, and took the empty bowl from me, spoke when the others wouldn’t. “Can I ask your name?” His eyes were still sad, but he smiled.

“Annora.”

“Annora. Nice to meet you, Annora. I’m Tyralk.” He filled the bowl again. “That’s Khal. That’s Rowena.”

The bowl settled into my hands again, warm. “Thank you,” I croaked.

“You feel better seeing him? You look half-dead, yourself.”

“Tyralk!” Rowena was half on her feet, scolding.

“You dragged her here. I’m trying to take care of the people you drag to my fire, and you brought her and she’s sick. Whatever you’re worried about with Vrathgar⁠—"

“Tyralk.” Khal’s voice stopped the argument, and the tall one just shook his head. Khal, the quiet one, looked back at me. “Zhana should be back soon. She’ll make a place for you to rest.”

And I wouldn’t have admitted it, but I did feel weak. I felt ready to fall over. I needed to look strong, to be useful, but the last days had sucked the marrow out of me. Exhaustion weakened the body’s resistance to fever, and fever exhausted the body, a cycle that meant death so many times.

“You can finish your soup,” the young one said. I needed the strength. I ate it.

When Tyralk’s mother arrived, a tall orc woman with black ink in her skin, she showed me through a curtain to a room I couldn’t really see. There was some kind of glow— Mushrooms? Moss?— on the ceiling, down parts of walls, but my eyes were too weak to resolve much by way of shapes. The woman— Zhana— seemed ready for this, led me by the hand till I bumped against a low bed, what felt like a mattress sewn in layers and straw. She moved my hand to a blanket, murmured something.

“Thank you,” I got out. The curtain rustled, a last flutter of firelight, and she was gone.

The soreness of my muscles after the fight and the fall and the fever appreciated the mattress. The softness brought pinpricks of tears to my eyes, and it seemed like it took so little now, like weakness was right under the surface. Was this what love was? Had I chosen to break myself, and now I was this weak? Was marriage always going to break me?

In the room beyond, by the fireside, someone whispered, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be able to hear them, that again this was my unnatural hearing, bringing me into rooms where no one asked for me.

“Why did you bring her, Rowena?” The quiet one.

Her voice was tight. “Selfishness. Mostly selfishness” Her breath trembled. “If this somehow isn’t terrible, it looks better to have her here, not…displayed at Grezha’s.”

The younger one, Tyralk, muttered, “She looks like a drowned cat, scared of everything. Like you were touchy, but she looks worse off. …what?”

“She asked to see him. I wasn’t just…” She was crying. Again? Why again? Was it normal to cry here? None of the men were crying.

“You did fine,” the quiet one spoke. “She asked, yes? She can’t want to avoid him so badly if she asked. You did what you could.”