Chapter 1 Ressa #2
I press my palms flat against the table, feeling the rough wood grain beneath my fingers. Anchor points. Falla taught me that trick during one of his visits when I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. Find something solid. Something real. Focus on texture, temperature, weight.
It doesn't work.
The cell. That's what comes next, flooding in with the clarity of a fresh wound.
Damp stone walls that wept moisture, making everything slick and cold.
The smell—rot and waste and something metallic that I eventually realized was old blood.
Mine. Others'. Didn't matter whose. It all smelled the same after enough time.
How long was I there? Weeks. Had to be weeks, though time stretched and contracted in ways that made counting impossible. Dark, then torchlight, then dark again. Sometimes they brought food—scraps, really, things I wouldn't have fed to a dog back in the settlement. Sometimes they didn't bother.
Sometimes they brought knives.
My stomach lurches.
I make it three steps toward the sink before my legs give out. I catch myself on the edge of the counter, both hands gripping hard enough that my knuckles bleach white. The nausea rolls through me in waves, hot and acidic, crawling up my throat.
Entertainment. That's what it was to them. Not interrogation—they never asked questions. Not punishment for some crime—I hadn't done anything except exist in the wrong place. Just... fun. A way to pass the time between whatever the hell else they did with their days.
I remember the first cut. Shallow, across my upper arm. The Stonevein who did it—I never learned his name, but I remember his tusks, one broken at the tip—he watched my face the whole time. Waiting for the reaction. When I didn't scream, didn't give him what he wanted, he went deeper the next time.
They learned quickly that I'd bite through my own tongue before I'd scream for them.
So they found other ways to make it entertaining.
I heave over the sink, but nothing comes up except bile. My ribs protest the movement, that familiar grinding ache that Falla says is normal for broken bones knitting back together. The pain centers me enough to breathe through my nose, slow and measured.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Another trick from Falla. This one works better.
The shaking in my hands subsides to a fine tremor.
I straighten slowly, testing my weight on legs that still feel unreliable despite weeks of healing.
The stiffness is there, that deep ache in my thighs and calves where they kicked me down, dragged me across stone floors, left me crumpled in corners when they got bored.
Nothing broken, Falla had said when he first examined me. Just badly dislocated. Swollen. Damaged but functional.
Lucky, he'd called it.
I turn on the water pump—blessedly simple technology that the Frostfang were able to piece together from our old ruined lives—and splash cold water on my face.
It shocks my system, drives back the nausea another few inches.
I cup more water in my palms and drink, rinsing the taste of bile from my mouth.
The reflection in the polished metal backing of the sink shows a stranger. Too thin, all sharp angles and shadows. My red hair hangs limp around a face that's lost the softness it had before. Before the woods. Before Nia. Before everything went to hell and dragged me down with it.
I look away.
The cabin feels smaller suddenly, walls pressing in with their sparse furnishings and careful emptiness. Saela worries I need more things. Shae keeps offering blankets, cushions, little comforts that would make this place feel less like a cell.
They don't understand that the emptiness is the point. That too many objects mean too many places for memories to hide. Better to keep it simple. Clean. Controllable.
I sink back into the chair—the one Falla made me sit in earlier—and press my hands against my thighs. But the memories keep coming, relentless as a tide I can't outrun.
The worst part wasn't the cutting. Wasn't even the pain, though that was considerable. It was the anticipation. Hearing their boots in the corridor outside the cell, not knowing if this time they'd just bring food or if they'd drag me out for another session. The waiting. The not knowing.
And under all of it, the constant, gnawing fear that Saela was in another cell somewhere, going through the same thing. Or worse—that she was already dead, and I was suffering alone for nothing.
When Kai burst through that cell door, when I saw Saela alive behind him with Falla and another orc I later learned was called Ursik, I didn't feel relief. I felt—
Nothing. Numbness. Like my brain couldn't process that the nightmare might actually be ending.
It still feels that way sometimes.
I hear them before the knock. Two voices, one low and warm, one higher and familiar. Shae and Saela. Of course. They coordinate these visits now, tag-teaming their concern like I'm a problem that needs solving from multiple angles.
The knock is gentler than Falla's. More tentative.
"Ressa?" Saela's voice. "It's us. Can we come in?"
I could pretend I'm not here. They might believe it—the cabin's small enough that I could claim I was out walking. But Saela knows my patterns as well as I know hers. She'd know I'm avoiding them.
"It's open."
The door swings inward, and there they are.
Saela in her practical layers, patched trousers and worn boots that match my own.
Her gray-green eyes find mine immediately, sharp and assessing in that way that used to comfort me and now makes me feel exposed.
Shae stands beside her, deep green skin and long black hair, warm eyes that radiate the kind of maternal concern that sets my teeth on edge.
An orc. Right there. Tall and strong and capable of—
I force the thought down, bury it before it can take root.
"Falla just left?" Saela asks, stepping inside. She moves carefully, like approaching a spooked animal. Maybe that's what I am now.
"Yeah. Same checkup as always."
Shae follows her in, and I have to actively stop myself from leaning away. She doesn't come too close—she's learned that boundary—but her presence fills the space in a way that makes my chest tight. Green skin. Strong hands. Orc.
Not Stonevein, some rational part of my brain insists. Frostfang. Different clan. Different people. Shae has been nothing but kind. She checks on me even when Saela doesn't come. Brings food. Offers help without pushing.
My body doesn't care about the distinction.
"How are you feeling?" Shae's voice is gentle, that particular tone people use when they're afraid you might shatter.
"Fine." The word comes out too quickly, too sharp. I soften it with a shrug that pulls at my shoulder. "Healing. You know. The usual."
Saela's eyes narrow fractionally. She knows. Of course she knows. We grew up together, survived together, learned each other's tells so well that lying became pointless years ago. But she won't push. Not here, not in front of Shae.
"Falla says your ribs are coming along well." Shae settles herself on the edge of the table, careful to avoid the wobble corner. She's been here enough times to know its quirks too. "That's good news."
"Great news." I inject false brightness into my tone, aiming for normal and probably landing somewhere near manic. "Two more weeks and I'll barely notice them. Modern miracles."
Saela's jaw tightens, but she doesn't call me on it. Instead, she crosses to the window, giving me space while staying close enough to talk. "We were thinking—if you're up for it—maybe you could join us for dinner tonight. The communal hall. Shae's cooking."
My stomach drops. The communal hall. Full of orcs. Dozens of them. All that noise and movement and—
"I don't think—"
"You don't have to," Saela cuts in quickly. Too quickly. "Just... if you wanted to. Thought I'd ask."
She's trying so hard. They both are. Treating me like spun glass, offering invitations they know I'll refuse, checking in with worried eyes and careful words.
Everyone in this settlement treats me like I'm fragile, like one wrong move will shatter whatever precarious stability I've managed to scrape together.
They're probably right.
"Maybe another time." I aim for apologetic and land on hollow. "I'm still pretty tired. The healing takes it out of me."
Lies. I'm not tired. I barely sleep anymore—every time I close my eyes, I'm back in that cell. But exhaustion is an excuse they'll accept without argument.
Shae nods, understanding and disappointed in equal measure. "Of course. Whenever you're ready."
If I'm ever ready, she means. The unspoken qualifier hangs between us.
Saela turns from the window, and for a moment, our eyes meet.
Really meet. I see the worry there, the guilt that she couldn't protect me, the desperate hope that I'll somehow snap back to the person I was before.
Before the woods, before the Stonevein, before I was stupid enough to get captured and orcs had to save me from other brutal orcs.
The weight of it crushes down on me. They saved me. Kai—an orc Saela loves, who risked himself and his friends to pull me out of that hell. I should be grateful. Should be adjusting, accepting, moving forward.
Instead, I'm here. Hiding in an empty cabin, flinching at shadows, unable to stand in the same room as Shae without my pulse hammering in my ears.
"I'm fine," I say again, and this time even I don't believe it.