5. Brannock
Brannock
About twenty minutes later, Rapunzel emerges, cheeks flushed from the heat and damp tendrils of hair curling around her face. I swear she’s trying to kill me.
She moves with a softness that draws my attention in ways I don’t want to think about. Graceful. Natural. She hums a little tune under her breath as she wraps a towel around her shoulders and pads barefoot across the stone floor.
“How was it?” I ask because apparently, I enjoy torturing myself.
“Good,” she says, smiling. “The water’s cold now, but it’s deep. I like to pretend it’s a lake. I read about them once.”
The image sends a whole different set of thoughts through my head. Rapunzel, floating naked on her back in crystal waters, her golden hair spread around her head, her dusky nipples breaking the surface.
Her violet eyes kindle as she looks at me, like she can read my heated fantasies. I’ve seen that look before. In taverns. Once, from a succubus who thought I was her mate. But this—this is something different. Something warmer. Wilder.
Something that makes my already too-tight pants feel like a punishment.
“Can I ask something?” I ask gruffly. “Have you ever tried to leave? I mean, really tried?”
Her smile falters. She crosses to the chair and lowers herself into it, drawing the towel tighter around her.
“I tried once, when I was fourteen,” she says softly. “I cut my hair. I thought if I could separate from it, I could break the bond. But it was… agony. And it bled, like I’d opened a vein. But it grew back overnight. Stronger. Wilder.”
“Gods,” I breathe.
She shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, but it does. I can see it in the tight line of her mouth.
“I was so sure I could get out. That someone would hear me. But no one came.”
“Until now.”
She looks at me. “Until now,” she echoes.
Something shifts between us. A quiet understanding. Two broken people, thrown together by magic, fate, and aggressive roots.
Rapunzel’s eyes flick to my legs. Then up. Then down again. Her eyes widen as they skim over the bulge pulsing against my leather pants, and the flush coating her cheeks could rival sunburn.
“Do you want to use the bath?” she blurts, gesturing toward the bathroom with its crooked little tub and an absurdly cheery purple curtain. She wrinkles her nose adorably. “You sort of smell.”
I look down at myself—crusted leather pants, patches of dried blood, what could be a dollop of bird shit, and whatever else has congealed in the creases. My nose twitches. I smell like I’ve been through a bog and a back-alley brawl with a swamp hag. She’s probably horrified.
“I haven’t exactly had access to modern plumbing,” I mutter defensively.
“I have soap. Several kinds, including chamomile,” she says, all sunshine and sin. She tosses me a bar. “That one’s got goat's milk in it.”
I rise to my feet and take the towel she hands me—the smallest in existence—and make my way to the tub. It’s the size of a wine barrel. I’m the size of three wine barrels. We are not a match made in bathing heaven.
I strip and squeeze myself in anyway. My knees hit my chest. My foot knocks the faucet. The soap shoots out of my hand like a greased piglet.
“Why is this soap so slippery?” I mutter, smacking my elbow on the rim.
Water splashes everywhere. I curse so loudly, I’m surprised I don’t shatter the tub.
I’m only mildly concussed when I finally haul myself out, dripping and grumpy but cleaner than I’ve been for days. The world’s tiniest towel barely covers my crown jewels as I clutch it in front of my groin and step out of the bathroom.
Rapunzel—dressed in a plain white nightgown that hides everything and somehow still manages to be the most seductive thing I’ve ever seen—looks up.
And goes utterly still. Her breath hitches.
I become acutely aware of every droplet tracing a path down my chest, of how her eyes follow them, slow and deliberate, like mist gliding down the slope of a mountain.
“Got a spare shirt?” I ask, pretending I don’t notice the way she swallows hard.
She turns and grabs something from the bed, hurling the fabric at my face, her cheeks bright red. “That’s the best I can do unless you want a corset and petticoat.”
It’s another nightgown. This one floral and ruffled. Designed for someone half my width and a third my height.
“You want me to wear this?”
She shrugs. “I’d give you the bedsheet, but it’s the only one I have.”
I eye the dainty excuse for clothing. It wouldn’t fit my thigh, let alone the rest of me.
Tugging it at the seams, I fashion what’s left into something that vaguely resembles a sarong.
I knot it at my hip with a muttered prayer to the gods of structural integrity while my dignity dies a quiet death in the corner.
Rapunzel claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes dancing with mirth.
I glare. “Say a word.”
“You look… fetching,” she whispers.
I shrug. “Dignity: zero. Comfort: surprisingly high.”
Her mouth twitches. “I never thought I’d see an orc in a floral wrap.” Then she sobers a little. “I’ll wash your clothes.”
I glance at the crusted leather pants and torn shirt abandoned near the tub. “Might be easier to burn them.”
She shrugs. “Maybe. But they’re yours. You’ll want something manly to put back on after your spa day.”
“Are you saying this”—I gesture to the floral sarong hugging my hips—“doesn’t scream raw masculinity?”
“Oh, it screams something.” She giggles, a bright peal of sound that makes my blood heat, gathering my dirty clothes like she’s holding a filth-bomb. “If I die, bury me in the forest and avenge me with great violence.”
“I’ll write your eulogy in blood,” I promise solemnly.
She flashes a grin over her shoulder that does funny things to my heart as she disappears into the bathroom.
I cross the room and drop to sit on the rug in front of the stove, where the fire crackles.
The flames pop and shadows dance along the walls.
I sit cross-legged, warm air curling against my damp skin.
My wet hair drips in lazy rivulets down my spine.
Every so often, I glance toward the bathroom, where I hear Rapunzel humming to herself while scrubbing my clothes.
As she sings, I notice a small flower blooming from one of the roots. I frown. Strange.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I call out. “I’ve lived with worse.”
“I’m sure you have,” she replies, voice light but eyes tracking me carefully. “But you don’t have to anymore.”
My heart stutters. I’m not used to kindness. Not like this. Not from someone soft and sunny. Someone who looks at me like I’m not a monster. Like I’m worthy of care.
She reappears with a small pile of washed clothes, hanging them near the stove to dry. “They should be dry by morning, and then I’ll see if I can repair your shirt.”
“Thank you.”
She sits beside me on the rug, close but not touching. Her bare toes peek out from under her nightgown. Gods, even her toes are cute.
“Where were you going?” she asks softly. “Before my hair yanked you in here?”
I stare into the flames. The words taste like ash before I even speak them. “Nowhere. I was wandering. Lost.”
She’s quiet, waiting.
I exhale slowly. “I was banished from my realm.”
Her brow furrows. “Your realm?”
I nod, jaw tight. “I come from another place very similar to this one. A world where orcs like me had a purpose. Until the Border Wars ended and the peacekeepers decided we were expendable.”
She blinks at me, stunned. “You’re from another world?”
“Yeah.” I glance at her. “After the war, they exiled us. I didn’t take it well.
I drank too much. Fought too often. Ended up in places I shouldn’t have been, doing things I shouldn’t’ve done.
Got into a fight with a necromancer’s zombie, killed it, and that landed me in a void prison.
Magic holding cell. There was no time, no sound, just me and my regrets.
” I pause, then add bitterly, “When they let me out, they didn’t send me home.
They opened a portal and shoved me through. ”
The further I get from the incident, the clearer that particular memory becomes. I was cast out, shoved into her world to be forgotten, just as she’s been chained to her tower to wither away.
Her lips part, eyes wide. “And you landed here?”
I nod. “New world, new rules, same old ghosts.”
She stares at me, eyes soft and wide like she’s seeing me for the first time. “That’s... incredible.”
“It’s punishment,” I mutter.
She smiles. “Or maybe it’s fate.”