Page 47 of Orc’s Harvest

“I know.” Something in his voice doesn’t quite match the lightness he’s going for. “I still check every time anyway.”

He can always tell the moment I walk into a room, some quiet certainty settling into him the second I’m near enough for the mark to register it. What he apparently cannot do, six months into this bond, is guess correctly why I’m irritated with him on any given afternoon, which I find considerably more entertaining than I probably should.

He’s tried nearly everything at this point — flowers cut from his own overambitious garden, an apology for the wrong offense entirely, one memorable attempt to fix a problem that turned out not to be a problem at all, just me thinking out loud about something completely unrelated to him.

I’ve started keeping a running record of it, a small leather book I’ve titled, with real affection, Things Kalthor Pretends He Remembers. The newest entry concerns the exact identity of whoever broke the kitchen chair during one especially enthusiastic evening three weeks back.

Kalthor maintains, with a straight face I have to respect even while doubting it completely, that the chair was already structurally unsound before either of us so much as looked at it. I’ve added that defense to the book as its own entry, right beside his claim that he’s yet to lose a single argument about where the garden pond should go.

“You’re writing in that book again.” He catches me at it from across the kitchen, not quite hiding a smile.

“I’m documenting history.” I don’t look up. “Someone has to keep an honest account.”

“I remember plenty.”

“You remember what’s convenient.” I close the book, far too pleased with myself. “There’s a difference, and we both know exactly which one you’re practicing.” He doesn’t argue the point. He just crosses the kitchen instead, kisses the top of my head, and steals a piece of festival bread straight out of my basket like he hasn’t just proven my entire argument correct.

Varok commands Ashmoor’s rebuilt defense force now and holds a seat on the council beside, and he’s visibly, obviously closer to Jazine than either of them will admit to anyone, including each other, as far as I can tell. I catch them arguing over patient rotation schedules at least twice a week, standing closer than the argument strictly requires, Jazine’s pen tapping impatiently against her ledger while Varok grins like a man enjoying himself far more than the subject warrants. I’ve stopped pointing it out only because Kalthor’s threatened to start a second betting pool if I don’t, and I suspect he’s only half joking about it.

Darrow trains the Name Guard now, seven Mirefen charms strung across armor he wears with a kind of quiet pride that costs him nothing anymore. His memory gaps are still there — pieces of childhood that never came all the way back, feelings that returned slower than the facts attached to them — but nobody treats the gaps like failures these days, least of all Darrow himself, and he’s stopped apologizing for the moments he still has to ask someone to remind him of something small.

He teaches new recruits how to recognize a Hollow Man’s reach before it ever gets close enough to matter, walking them through the exact moment he lost his own name in the wheat field so they’ll know precisely what to watch for in their own reflections, and every lesson he gives sounds like a man settling old debts he’s finally allowed to consider paid.

Rua and Stone run a festival food stall most weekends, arguing cheerfully over spice measurements the entire time, and they’ve planted a young tree near the Commons for the son whose memory Stone still can’t hold whole, no matter how many times Rua tells the story back to him. He remembers loving him. He doesn’t always remember the boy’s face, and some mornings he wakes not entirely certain why a stranger’s tree matters as much to him as it clearly does. Rua says that’s enough for now. Watching them, I believe her.

At sunset, I lead the valley’s memorial the way I’ve led it every month since the Ascension, standing at the front of a crowd that’s learned to trust me with this exact kind of grief. Lanterns line the field in slow rows, one for every name we’re about to speak, small flames catching against a sky gone the color of an old bruise finally healing. The whole Commons goes quiet the moment I take my place at the front, even the children stilling on their own.

I speak the witches of Lorn’s End first, three hundred years overdue for anyone saying their names out loud with a real apology attached. Then my mother. Then my grandmother. Then every name this valley lost to a sacrificial system that finally, finally stopped asking for more.

Kalthor reads the names tied directly to his own bloodline’s crimes without once asking anyone gathered here to forgive him for carrying them. He doesn’t perform grief he hasn’t earned the right to perform. He simply bears witness, standing in front of the whole valley with nothing left to hide behind, his voice steady through every name even when I can see what it costs him to keep it that way, and I stand beside him the entire time, close enough that our shoulders touch, because that’s exactly the kind of standing beside someone protection was always supposed to mean.

After the ceremony, Kalthor leads me toward a small stone structure at the edge of the eastern field I haven’t had time to properly inspect until tonight, the memorial’s lantern light still glowing faintly behind us across the wheat.

Half greenhouse, half patrol shelter, built with his own hands over the last several months whenever the council could spare him — bloodroot beds along one wall, a weapon rack by the door, a wide map table still scattered with half-finished ward routes, a hearth already laid and ready for winter, and a loft visible through an open trapdoor above. Windows run the length of the eastern wall, looking straight out over fields that finally grow something worth harvesting instead of something worth fearing, and I catch the faint outline of the covenant stone glowing steadily in the distance through the glass.

“Neither farming nor protecting has to be given up for the other.” He says it plainly, watching my face for a reaction he’s clearly been anticipating for weeks. “That’s the whole idea of it.”

“It’s suspiciously well insulated for a simple patrol post.” I run a hand along the thick stone walls, noting the careful joints, the deliberate thickness nobody builds by accident, the kind of care a man puts into something he intends to still be standing in twenty years. “This is a lot of effort for guard duty.”

“Ashmoor winters are cold.” He doesn’t so much as blink, entirely too practiced at this exact lie for a man who’s never had to lie to me about anything that mattered before. “A man’s allowed to plan ahead.”

“And the bed in the loft.” I climb halfway up the ladder to check, and find exactly what I expected — a bed built for someone his size, wider and longer than any patrol post has ever needed, piled with quilts that serve no practical purpose whatsoever, and a second pillow that has no business existing in a room meant for one man taking watch alone. “That’s an unusually large bed for a man who’s supposedly just resting between shifts, Kalthor.”

“Thorough patrol work requires proper rest.” He says it with a straight face that doesn’t last a second, a helpless huff of amusement breaking through despite himself.

“I intend to inspect the structure immediately.” I climb back down, already hooking two fingers into his collar. “Thoroughly. It might take a while.”

We don’t make it inside before a messenger arrives from the northern border, breathless, his horse lathered from a hard ride, carrying a sealed black letter marked with a crest neither of us recognizes.

Kalthor takes it without a word, breaking the seal with a thumb still stained faint gold from the memorial’s lantern oil. He reads it once, silent, jaw tightening by degrees, and I watch whatever peace the last hour gave him drain slowly out of his shoulders as he does.

The report inside is brief and unwelcome. Ashmoor’s restored ward pulse reached well beyond the mountains ringing this valley. Ancient protections in neighboring territories have started stirring after generations of quiet. Creatures once thought extinct are moving again in places that haven’t seen anything worse than deer in living memory. And someone, somewhere north of here, has started asking pointed questions about exactly how Ashmoor managed to destroy a being built entirely out of stolen identities. A traveler carrying an orc royal seal has vanished near the Glass Thorn Mountains, and nobody’s heard from him since.

The messenger asks whether Kalthor intends to send aid, his eyes darting between the two of us like he isn’t entirely sure which of us has the authority to answer.

Kalthor looks at me. I look toward the warm shelter waiting behind us, toward a bed we haven’t had the chance to properly inspect yet, toward one single quiet night I was genuinely hoping might belong to nobody but the two of us.

“We’ll leave at dawn,” I say it before Kalthor finishes deciding how to phrase the same answer himself.