4. Chapter 4 #2
Her pulse was racing, yes, but not only from fear. There was heat pooling low in her belly, a flush spreading down her chest beneath the rough wool of her dress. Her thighs had pressed together, and her breath was coming shallow and fast in a way that had nothing to do with the knife in her hands.
She had never been looked at like this. Not once in her whole life.
The men at the holding had looked through her, around her, past her.
She was furniture. When they looked at women, they looked at the pretty ones.
The thin ones. The ones like Iris, with their narrow waists and their sharp cheekbones and their bodies that took up exactly as much space as they were supposed to.
No one had ever looked at Mab like she was something to be wanted.
This orc—Varek—was looking at her like she was a feast and he hadn't eaten in days.
He watched her for a long moment, then eased backward, lowering himself to the floor with his back against the wall opposite the bed, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
"Come here."
Mab's fingers twitched on the knife. "What?"
"Come here." He patted his thigh once, the gesture almost casual. "Let me hold you. Let me learn your smell and shape. Let me warm you."
Mab didn't move.
Her body wanted to. That was the terrifying part. Some traitorous piece of her was already imagining what it would feel like to cross that small distance, to let herself be gathered up against all that heat and solid weight. To stop holding herself rigid for the first time in hours. Days. Years.
But her mind was still running the calculations. The knife in her lap. The children sleeping behind her. The door he'd closed so carefully.
"And tomorrow?" Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "What happens tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow we eat. We rest. My men finish their work here." He didn't look away from her face. "In three days, maybe four, we ride north to Northwatch. You and the children come with me."
"As what?"
"As mine." The word settled between them like a stone. "As someone under my protection. As someone no orc in the Iron Wilds will touch without answering to me."
Mab's throat worked. "And if I don't want to go north?"
"Then I give you coin and supplies and you walk south with the children." His voice didn't change. No anger, no threat. Just a plain statement of fact. "You'll have three days' food, a waterskin, and a knife better than that one. The nearest village is six miles. After that, you're on your own."
Mab stared at him. The firelight had caught properly now, throwing warm light across the room, across the bed where the children slept, across the impossible creature sitting against the wall like he had all the time in the world.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are you even here? Why raid this place and kill all these people? Why spare me? Why give me choices you never gave anyone else?"
"Three winters ago, Cresswick's men raided a settlement at the foot of the Blackspire passes." Varek's voice had gone hard. "Thirty orcs. Mostly elders. Mostly children. Mostly dead by the time the snows melted enough for us to find them."
Mab's stomach turned. She thought of Annie, curled in the bed behind her. Thought of Tibbs, who'd thrown himself at an orc warrior with nothing but a boning knife and a fierce heart.
"The lord claimed it was bandits." Varek's eyes never left her. "We knew better. We always know. But Targesh—our Warchief—wanted proof before he moved. Took two years to gather it. Letters. Ledgers. Testimony from a mercenary captain who liked gold more than loyalty."
"So this is revenge."
"This is justice." The distinction seemed to matter to him.
"Cresswick is dead. His guards are dead.
His steward, who helped plan the raids, is dead.
The people who served him—" He lifted one shoulder.
"They'll be released in the morning. Fed, watered, pointed toward the nearest village. We don't make war on kitchen maids."
Mab thought of Garrad's body, stacked against the wall with the others. She couldn't find it in herself to grieve him.
"And me? Am I justice too?"
His face changed. The hardness that had come into it when he spoke of the settlement was gone.
"You are mine."
The fire crackled. On the bed, Annie whimpered in her sleep, and Mab heard Tibbs murmur something, his arm tightening around the smaller girl without waking.
Mab looked at the knife in her lap. At the door. At the orc sitting against the wall, his eyes on her, unmoving. Then she set the knife down on the floor beside her.
She didn't stand. Her legs still wouldn't cooperate, and she wasn't sure she trusted them anyway. Instead, she crawled. It was only a few feet. Across the carpet, past the edge of the firelight, into the shadow where he waited.
Varek didn't move as she approached. Didn't reach for her, didn't grab, didn't do any of the things she'd braced herself for. He just watched her come to him, and when she was close enough to touch, he lifted one hand and held it open. Palm up. Waiting.
Mab stared at that hand. The knuckles were scarred, the fingers thick as sausages, the palm broad enough to cover half her face. Dried blood still darkened the creases. Redhand. She understood the name now.
She put her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers. Then he tugged, and she let herself be pulled the rest of the way.
He arranged her like she weighed nothing.
One arm hooked under her knees, the other around her back, and then she was in his lap with her shoulder against his chest and her hip pressed to his thigh.
The heat of him was staggering. Like sitting too close to a forge, except the forge was breathing and its heart was beating slow and steady against her arm.
His hand came up and gripped her jaw, tilting her face toward his.
"Look at me."
Mab looked. This close, she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver threading through his beard at the chin. The amber of his irises was brighter than she'd realized, catching the firelight like a cat's.
"You're shaking."
"I'm cold."
"You're scared." His thumb pressed into the soft skin beneath her jaw, hard enough that she couldn't look away.
"You should be. I'm not a kind man, Mab.
I've killed more people than you've scrubbed pots.
I'll kill more before I'm done." His other hand found her hip through the wool of her dress and squeezed. "But I won't hurt you."
Mab's breath stuttered. His hand on her hip was enormous, his fingers spanning from the curve of her waist nearly to the top of her thigh.
"You don't know that," she whispered. "You don't know me."
"I know enough." His thumb traced a slow line along her jaw to the corner of her mouth. "The rest comes later."
"But what about now?" Mab asked. "What happens now?"
She meant it broadly. Tomorrow, the next day. The shape of whatever life she'd just crawled toward on her hands and knees.
"Now," Varek said, "we sleep."
Mab blinked. "What?"
"Sleep."
"I—" She shifted in his lap, suddenly aware of every inch of herself pressed against him. The soft swell of her belly against his stomach. The weight of her thighs across his legs. The way her hip dug into the hard muscle beneath her. "You can't be comfortable like this."
"Can't I?"
"I'm—" The word stuck in her throat. She gestured vaguely at herself, at the whole of her body taking up space in his lap. "There's no way."
That amber gaze found hers in the firelight, and his expression changed. Not anger. Not impatience. Closer to confusion, as if she'd spoken in a language he didn't know.
"No way," he repeated.
"I'm heavy." The admission burned coming out. "I know I am. You don't have to pretend."
His hand was still on her hip. Now it tightened, fingers pressing into the soft flesh through her dress.
Varek leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes falling closed. "I've slept on frozen ground with rocks for pillows. I've slept in trees, in ditches, in the backs of carts with my armor still on. I've slept standing up against a wall with my sword in my hand because sitting down meant dying."
His thumb moved in a slow circle against her hip, almost absent.
"Right now I have a fire, a wall at my back, and a soft woman in my lap who smells like she was made for me." The corner of his mouth lifted, just barely. "I have never been more comfortable in my life."
Mab opened her mouth. Closed it.
Varek's breathing was already slowing, his chest rising and falling in an even rhythm beneath her shoulder. His hand stayed on her hip, heavy and warm, like he'd forgotten it was there. Like holding her was as natural as breathing.
Mab lay rigid against him, waiting for the catch. The trick. The moment when the kindness revealed itself as setup for something worse.
It didn't come.
His breathing deepened. The tension in his shoulders eased by degrees, his head tilting slightly to one side against the stone. The hand on her hip went slack, though it didn't fall away, just softened, his fingers curling loosely against the curve of her.
He was actually sleeping.
Mab let her eyes close.
Just for a moment, she told herself. Just until the fire burned down again. Then she'd move. She'd go back to the bedpost, back to her knife, back to watching the door like she was supposed to.
But the heat of him was seeping into her bones. His chest rose and fell beneath her cheek. Mab's hand was still caught in Varek's grip, her fingers curled loosely against his scarred palm.
She'd move in a minute. Just one more minute of warmth.
The thought frayed at the edges, dissolving into something softer. Her breathing slowed to match his, her body going heavy against the impossible heat of him. The last thing she felt before sleep took her was his thumb, moving once across the back of her hand.
A slow stroke. Almost tender.
Then nothing.