Chapter 12
TWELVE
KIELYNE
The horse stumbles in a gopher hole and goes down hard.
One moment we’re riding through the fading light, pushing forward. The next, the animal’s leg buckles beneath us, and we’re falling—Blorjorn’s arms tightening around me instinctively, his body twisting to take the impact.
We hit the ground rolling. His massive frame absorbs most of the fall, and I end up sprawled across his chest, my hands braced against the hard muscle beneath his shirt.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. His breath comes warm against my face.
His hands grip my hips—steadying me, protecting me, even in the chaos of the fall.
Something twists in my chest. Something I’ve been trying to ignore for days.
I scramble off him, brushing grass from my clothes, refusing to think about how natural it felt to be pressed against him. How warm. How safe.
The horse screams. Its front leg bends at a sickening angle, shattered beyond repair. Blorjorn rises, crosses to the animal, and draws his blade.
The cut is quick. Merciful. I’ve seen him kill before—brutal efficiency, no wasted movement—but this is different. He murmurs something in orcish as the light fades from the horse’s eyes. A prayer, maybe. Or an apology.
The gesture catches me off guard. This orc who’s killed hundreds, who admits without flinching that he’s dangerous—offering last rites to a horse.
I keep learning things about him that don’t fit the monster I expected.
The way he positioned his body to shield me during the fall.
The way he came to me in the darkness when I woke screaming from nightmares, solid and silent, asking nothing in return.
The way he almost-smiles sometimes, just a flicker at the corner of his mouth, when I say something that surprises him.
He’s been kind to me. Kinder than most humans I’ve known.
The thought unsettles me more than I want to admit.
“We need a new plan. We can’t continue running like this.” Blorjorn wipes his blade clean, his voice pulling me back to practicality.
The horse-mounted war band gathers around their captain. Blorjorn looks around. “We need to split up. Go in several directions. We’ll have a better chance if we can ambush them in smaller groups.”
“Good,” Grothak mumbles, “I hate running like a dog with its tail between its legs.”
“We join up at Waypoint in the morning,” Blorjorn continues.
“You still need rest to recover fully.” Vekra has made it toward the front of the band. “There’s an old farmstead nearby. Abandoned during the early wars. If the root cellar is still intact, you can wait out the night while we take care of Hadrin and his men.”
Blorjorn refuses to “hide” as he put it, but once I tell him I need to recover, his mind changes quickly.
We salvage what we can—water skins, weapons, the wolf-pelt cloak he gave me in the building—and start walking as those on horseback race away in all directions of the compass. The sun bleeds red across the horizon, painting the Bloodscar Plains in shades of fire and blood.
I watch him move ahead of me, cutting a path through the pale grass. His shoulders are broad enough to block my view of the sunset. Ritual scars cover his arms, visible where his sleeves are pushed back—stories written in flesh that I find myself wanting to read.
When did I start looking at him like this? When did enemy become something more complicated?
I think it started in the Bonefields. When he told me about his father, his voice rough with old grief. When he let me see past the weapon to the man beneath—worn down, weary, carrying a century of ghosts.
Or maybe it started before that. Maybe it started when he came to me in the darkness after my nightmare, and I asked him to stay, and he did. No questions. No expectations. Just his solid presence at my back until the trembling stopped.
The kiss in the barn structure didn’t help. I’ve been trying to forget it for hours—the bruising pressure of his mouth, the way his hands gripped my hips hard enough to leave marks. The way my whole body lit up at his touch, hungry for more.
I’m attracted to him. Physically, undeniably attracted to an orc captain who could break me in half without trying.
And it’s more than just physical. That’s what scares me.
The farmstead is a ruin.
Stone walls crumble into the earth, overgrown with cloying grass. Whatever family lived here fled decades ago, leaving only ghosts and memories.
But the root cellar remains intact—a stone-lined hole behind the collapsed house, covered by a weathered door that blends into the debris. Blorjorn hauls it open, revealing stairs descending into darkness.
“Underground storage.” He tests the first step. “Deep enough to hide from patrols. The door blocks light if we risk a fire.”
We descend into cool, earthy darkness. The space is larger than I expected—maybe fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling that forces Blorjorn to duck. Empty shelves line one wall. The floor is packed earth, hard as stone.
He closes the door above us, sealing us in. My heart stutters at the darkness—trapped, underground—and then he strikes a flint, and firelight blooms between us.
The flames paint his features in gold and shadow. He looks different in this light—less brutal, more human. The hard planes of his face soften. The tension in his jaw eases.
I catch myself staring and look away.
An hour passes. We hear the patrol rumble overhead—hoofbeats thundering across the ruined farmstead, voices calling to each other in clipped commands. Blorjorn’s hand finds his axe. I hold my breath until my lungs burn.
The hoofbeats fade. They followed the false trail Grothak and the others laid. They didn’t find us.
Relief washes through me, leaving my limbs weak. We’re safe. Truly safe, at least until morning.
The fire crackles. Silence settles—heavy with everything unspoken, everything I’ve been trying not to feel.
I find myself watching him again. The way firelight catches the gold cap on his tusk. The breadth of his chest, rising and falling with slow, steady breaths.
He’s beautiful, in a brutal sort of way. The kind of beauty that comes from surviving everything the world throws at you.
The thought surprises me. I’ve never thought of an orc as beautiful before.
“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it.
He looks up. Waits.
“All of it.” I gesture vaguely, encompassing everything—the blood oath, the protection, the way he’s risked his life for me over and over. “Debts are one thing. This is something else. You’ve treated me like I matter. Like I’m worth saving.” I hold his gaze. “Why?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. The fire pops and hisses. When he speaks, his voice comes out raw. Unguarded.
“I’m tired, Kielyne.”
Something in my chest tightens at the exhaustion in his voice.
“A hundred years of fighting. A hundred years of blood and death and watching everyone I care about die.” He stares into the flames, and the light carves deep lines into his face.
“My father. My brothers. My mate and daughter, forty years ago.” His jaw tightens.
“I’ve killed more people than I can count.
Done things that haunt me. And I’m so tired of being nothing but a weapon. ”
Mate and daughter. The words hit me like a blow. He had a family once. Lost them.
“When I saw you on that corpse road, saving Grothak—” He lifts his gaze from the fire, finds mine. “You didn’t have to do that. Any other human would have let him die. But you saved him like it mattered. Like he mattered.”
“He did matter.” My voice comes out softer than I intended.
“Saving one innocent life felt better than taking another enemy’s. That’s the truth. I wanted—just once—to be the reason someone lived instead of died.”
The confession settles into me, finding places I thought I’d sealed shut. He’s not the monster I expected. He’s a man who’s carried too much death, desperate for something that isn’t blood.
“That doesn’t make you good.” The words come out gentler than before. “Saving me doesn’t erase a hundred years.”
“I know.” He doesn’t flinch. “Nothing erases it. Nothing redeems it. I’ll die with blood on my hands, and I’ve made peace with that.” His voice drops. “But you make me want to try anyway. Want to be something other than what I’ve been.”
My breath catches.
He’s looking at me now—really looking, his dark gaze stripping away every defense I’ve built. And beneath the exhaustion, beneath the weariness, I see something that makes my pulse race.
Want. Raw and undisguised. Hunger that mirrors the heat building low in my belly.
“In the building,” his voice is rough, “when I kissed you.”
“I remember.” How could I forget? His mouth on mine, demanding. His hands on my hips, possessive. The way I’d kissed him back without thinking, without caring, lost in the rush of adrenaline and need.
“I’ve been thinking about it.” He holds my gaze. “About you. About what it would be like to have more than a few stolen seconds.”
Heat floods my cheeks. My whole body. I should look away. Should shut this down before it goes somewhere we can’t come back from.
Instead, I hear myself say: “So have I.”
He goes still. Completely, utterly still—the stillness of a predator sighting prey.
“Kielyne.” My name on his lips, low and rough. “If you don’t mean that—”
“I mean it.” I close the distance between us, moving around the fire until I’m kneeling in front of him.
Close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body.
Close enough to see the rapid pulse at his throat.
“I keep telling myself I shouldn’t want you.
You’re an orc. A killer. My enemy.” I reach up, touch his jaw.
Feel the muscle clench beneath my palm. “But you’ve been kinder to me than anyone in years.
You came to me in the darkness when I was screaming.
You gave me your blood to save my life.” My voice drops to a whisper.
“And when you kissed me in that building, I wanted more.”