Page 53 of Wed to the Orc Captive

“I fell down a ravine.”

“You fell down a ravine and someone bit you on your arm?”

“No, I…” Right. The half-moon of dark bruises still spread where I’d bit into my forearm, that first night. “No, that was something else.”

“Sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s…” Why was I explaining myself to this man? “It’s nothing. It’s been an intense few days. Weeks? Days.” I didn’t want to talk about my arm, about doing that and why. “You speak Common better than the others.”

“Yes. My cousin, Khal, you’ve met him? I grew up speaking Common around his fire..”

Fragments of what Vrathgar had told me surfaced, about his circle, his “kith.” “You know my husband.”

His smile widened. “Yes, more’s the pity.”

“You’re one of the friends he told me about.” Relief loosened my shoulders, the pain holding me straight. “What’s your name?”

He reached past me, and picked up the water jar, hefting it easily. “I’m Sephar.”

OLD TIES

People still stared when I walked with him, but they didn’t glare as much. Sephar waved easily, conversed in a flowing tongue, nodding to the elderly, bantering with the young women.

“They all seem to like you,” I said. And maybe that was an odd thing to tell someone out loud, but maybe I had been dragged to an orc encampment, and nothing seemed real anymore.

He waved to a group of children, bobbing dark heads ducking behind the brambles. “Not everyone. I take my fair share of censure.”

“I’ve been a pariah since I got here.”

“Vrathgar has been on the outs longer. It’s not your fault the way this looks.” His smile was wan. “He can be a little rough, our wayward son. I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with him.”

I shook my head. “He’s been genteel.”

“Of course, of course.” There was pity in his eyes.

I followed him up the winding path. “What did you mean, the way this looks?”

“Has no one explained anything to you?”

“No,” I said bitterly. “No one has explained anything.”

“I’ll try to be concise.”

I realized we were taking the long route back, and we’d be going past that training circle again, the tables with the gawkers. I started to shrink back, but he moved forward, and he was carrying my jar.

“He’s always been jealous of the way Khal fit in. Seeing that people liked it when Khal brought in a human wife…childish, but…it looks like he decided to try a shortcut to that same power. Additionally,” he said, before I could take a chance to speak, “it looks like he could not find a woman who’d put up with his proclivities and his background among the orcs, so he rejected our ways to find easier prey. To upset the order of things.”

“It’s not like that at all,” I said. “My people captured him. They’d have killed him if he didn’t take me.”

“Is that so?” His eyes were appraising. “How interesting. You are the captor, then?”

That lightness was gone from his tone, and I didn’t know why he made me so uncomfortable. I chastised myself. I could not be cringing from every man and orc I met. “Yes. More or less. My people did.”

“Interesting.” There were a knot of people standing by the entrance to the wooden road, and his face shifted back to smiles.

Orcs stared so much more openly than humans, stood closer, fluttered less. At first it had been so foreign and jarring that it overwhelmed the math of my mind, but now I tried to read the faces of these people, the creased foreheads and little tics.

I had been someone people looked away from for so long that it felt odd having people stare.