Chapter 15 Olivia
OLIVIA
By the time Peggy Sue’s Jeep crunches to a halt in front of my cabin, Kursk is slumped against me like a dying furnace—hot, heavy, and all sharp angles. His blood has soaked through the blanket Booger wrapped him in, thick and greenish-black where it isn't outright steaming.
My boots hit the gravel and I practically drag him out. He grunts, barely. His weight is like dragging a damn fridge wrapped in chainmail uphill.
“I’m fine,” he rasps.
“You are not fine,” I snap. “You’re bleeding like a B-movie vampire and smell like roadkill soup.”
He laughs—more a rumble in his chest than anything—but there’s no strength behind it.
Inside, the cabin is chaos.
Books are stacked like barricades. Salt circles glitter on the floor, interrupted only by tripwires strung between doorknobs and windows.
A rake with six kitchen knives duct-taped to it leans against the coat rack.
The coffee table’s been turned into a magical landmine—sigils etched into the wood, a jar of ash at the center pulsing faintly.
My grandma would call it a “cozy deathtrap.”
I lead him to the couch. “Sit. Or pass out. Pick one.”
“I will meditate in pain,” he growls, slumping.
“Great. You do that. I’ll go scream into a pillow real quick.”
He starts unbuckling his armor with fingers that tremble just enough to worry me. His wound—deep across the ribs—isn’t just bleeding. It’s… crawling. Veins around it have turned gray. The skin puckers and flexes like something is trying to push its way out.
I shove his hand away and lean close. “Let me see.”
“It is nothing,” he says.
“It is rotting, you stubborn bastard.”
He doesn’t argue. That’s how I know it’s bad.
I pull open the last few straps and peel the armor back. My stomach clenches. The wound pulses once, like it’s breathing. A black vein surges across his ribs, branching in tiny lightning bolts. Every breath he takes bubbles faint smoke from the gash.
I grab gloves, a rag soaked in mountain sage, and a bottle of banishment oil from my shelf of Very Bad Ideas.
“Hold still.”
He flinches when I touch the rag to the wound, his hand curling around the couch arm hard enough to splinter the wood.
“Just curse me out in Orcish. It’ll help,” I mutter.
He grits out something low and violent-sounding.
“Thanks. That helped no one.”
Behind me, Peggy Sue unpacks a bag of magical detritus onto the counter—spools of enchanted thread, another jar of graveyard dirt, a lantern full of phoenix ash I didn’t even know she had.
“Want a healing charm?” she asks. “Got one soaked in tequila and regret.”
“He needs a miracle,” I reply, then pause. “Wait. Do you still have that chunk of the Spear?”
Kursk growls. “It is not a chunk.”
I ignore him and pull the half-splintered Khallumite core from its iron casing. The crystal thrums faintly, like a dying star. I can still feel it—raw power, furious and old, now flickering like a heartbeat running out of blood.
“You sure you want to do this?” Peggy asks. “That thing’s already dimmer than your ex’s personality.”
“It’s the only way to reach Rand,” I say, throat dry. “If there’s a workaround, we need it now.”
Kursk tries to sit up. “The Spear’s power is not infinite.”
“Neither is your blood supply.”
He starts to argue, but I hold up a finger. “Don’t.”
I carve the binding rune into my palm with the ritual blade—not deep, just enough for blood to drip. The moment it hits the Spear fragment, the air snaps cold. The windows frost. Every candle in the cabin flickers and dies.
The Khallumite glows again. Weak, but aware.
I breathe into it. Focus.
“Chief Rand Starborn,” I whisper, “We call upon you.”
For a second, nothing.
Then a spark. A shimmer. A voice crackling through static, ancient and metallic and impossibly distant.
“Olivia. You’ve burned deep to reach me.”
Kursk tries to rise again. “Rand—”
“You are wounded,” Rand says, already grim. “I can feel the shadow inside you.”
“We lost the trap,” I say. “The Vorfaluka broke containment. It’s adapting faster than we can counter.”
Rand’s voice is razor-sharp now. “If you do not strike it down soon, Kursk will be anchored to your world.”
I blink. “What?”
“The realm is stitching itself around him. His presence is no longer invasive—it’s becoming native. The longer he stays, the harder the unbinding.”
Kursk looks at me. “I knew this was possible. I didn’t tell you.”
Of course he did. Stubborn, noble, boneheaded.
I clench my jaw. “And the Vorfaluka?”
“It’s worse,” Rand says. “Each day it feeds, it becomes of your world. Soon, it won’t just hide in your shadows. It will be the shadow. Uprooting it will cost more than the Spear can give.”
My blood turns to ice.
Kursk’s face is carved from stone. “We end it. Soon.”
“There is more,” Rand says, softer. “The beast now knows you. It will come for you, not just hide. The hunter has become the hunted.”
The crystal dims again. Rand’s voice fades with it. “May your rage burn brighter than its hunger.”
Dark.
The cabin exhales, like it’s been holding its breath.
I wrap the Spear shard in a cloth and tuck it into a lead box.
Kursk lies back, his eyes still glowing faintly. Sweat beads on his brow. His breathing is shallow, not from pain—but from the knowledge we just heard.
“You should rest,” I whisper.
“No time.”
“Five minutes?”
He smirks. “Ten.”
I sit beside him on the floor, back against the couch, staring at the boarded-up window and the shimmering ward circles slowly fading on the floorboards.
This is no longer a hunt.
This is survival.
And the clock is bleeding.
I don’t sleep. I can’t.
Kursk dozes on the couch, but it’s a shallow thing—more like a warrior’s trance, the kind that lets you wake swinging. His chest rises in slow, ragged rhythms. The infection’s crawling higher, black veins threading across his ribs like ivy drunk on blood.
The fire crackles. Outside, the woods creak and hiss as the temperature drops. Somewhere far off, a coyote howls—and I wonder how long until it stops being coyotes and starts being… something else.
I hold the shard of the Spear in my lap. Wrapped in bloodied linen. Still warm. Still humming.
Barely.
It pulses when I speak to it again, lips barely moving.
“Rand. I need more.”
The air shivers.
Static creeps along my arms, making the hairs stand up. The candles flicker. This time it doesn’t take blood—just desperation. And maybe that’s worse.
“Olivia,” Rand’s voice rumbles, tired and ancient. “You risk collapse.”
“I don’t care.”
He says nothing. Waiting.
I close my eyes, clutching the shard tighter. “There has to be another way. Something to keep him here. Something to anchor him that isn’t death and damnation.”
A long pause. Then, quiet and low: “There is a rite. Old. Forbidden.”
I open my eyes. “Why?”
“It costs the Spear everything. Its power, its essence—it will be snuffed out.”
“To do what?”
“To bind Kursk’s soul to your world. Not as a warrior. Not as an orc. As a man. Mortal. Changed.”
My throat locks.
He could stay. Stay here. With me. Not just as a hunter on borrowed time, not as a weapon cursed with duty—but as Kursk. No ticking clock. No going home to a realm that chews him up. Just us.
“What do I need?” I whisper.
“Blood. His name. The shard’s last breath. And your word.”
I nod once.
“Don’t,” says another voice behind me. Rough. Furious.
Kursk is standing. Barely. One hand braced on the couch, the other clutched around his ribs. His skin is pale, sweat-drenched, and shaking—but his eyes burn like coals.
“You eavesdrop now?” I hiss.
“You speak my death sentence.”
“No! I’m speaking your survival.”
He limps forward. “You would destroy the spear—for me?”
“Yes.”
“That is madness.”
“No,” I snap, standing. “Madness is letting you die because of some dumb honor code you wrote in orc kindergarten.”
His jaw flexes. “You do not understand. The Spear is sacred—”
“I don’t give a damn if it was forged by gods and blessed by a thousand ancestors! It’s a stick if you’re dead!”
He snarls. “I was born to wield it!”
“And what if you die wielding it?” My voice cracks, but I don’t care. “You think I want a statue? A legend? A story to cry over while the world forgets your name? I want you, dammit. Real and alive and here!”
Silence.
He looks away.
I press the cloth into his hand. “You don’t have to be the hero. Not this time.”
He stares at it.
Then drops it.
“No,” he says. “If I cannot defeat the Vorfaluka as I am, I deserve to fall.”
“That’s not noble,” I whisper. “That’s cowardice dressed in armor.”
His face tightens. “Do not—”
“I will! You think being mortal is weakness? You think loving someone enough to fight for time—real time—makes you less? That’s the strongest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I can’t live like that,” he says.
“Then you’ll die like this.”
I turn before he sees the tears.
I storm out.
The door slams behind me with a thud that echoes through the trees. The cold hits like a slap—sharp and bitter. I suck in air until my lungs freeze and then exhale in a shudder. My hands tremble.
I stand under the dark sky, bare branches scraping like claws overhead. Somewhere, something moves in the underbrush. But I don’t care. Let it come.
Let it all come.
Inside the cabin, I hear a crash.
My heart stops.
I run.
He’s collapsed, face down, blood soaking the floorboards.
I spend the first twenty minutes after he hits the floor just trying to get him to breathe again.
He’s dead weight, all muscle and stone, limbs bent like a broken marionette. The blood’s pooled beneath him—too much. The stink of rot and copper and sour sweat makes my stomach twist, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
“Come on, you asshole,” I whisper through gritted teeth, rolling him onto his back. His face is gray. Not just pale—gray. Like ash left in the rain. His tusks look too big for his mouth now, too heavy. His chest flutters under my hands like he’s trying to breathe through water.
I slap his face. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Another beat.
Then a cough.
Wet. Gurgling. Ugly.
But alive.
I choke on a laugh that’s mostly a sob and drag him to the couch again. It takes everything in me. My back pops. My legs scream. But I get him there. I strip the armor, throw it into a heap, and press a warm compress soaked in sage and salt to the wound.
He winces.
“Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “You should feel that.”
He doesn’t respond.
For once, there’s no witty comeback. No growled flirtation. No proud grumbling about his warrior blood. Just silence. Ragged breathing. The faint rattle of death flirting with the idea of sticking around.
The firelight paints him in gold and shadow, but he looks like a corpse pretending to nap.
I settle beside him on the floor, legs curled under me, watching his chest rise and fall.
This man—this orc—has crossed realms for justice. Fought things that have haunted books older than my lineage. And now he’s dying on my couch while I try to remember whether garlic helps with blood rot or just makes it smell worse.
I don’t talk. I can’t. I just keep cleaning, rewrapping, dabbing, checking his pulse every ten minutes like a clock I’m terrified will stop ticking.
I hold his hand at some point. I don’t even realize I’ve done it until my fingers are wrapped around his, warm and trembling, and he stirs just enough to squeeze once before falling still again.
The world goes very, very quiet.
Hours pass.
The fire burns low. The wards hum faintly. Outside, the wind picks up, rattling the wind chimes strung with bones and iron keys.
And that’s when I decide.
He’s not dying here.
Not on my couch. Not on my watch. Not in this damn town that’s always taken too much and given back nothing but ghosts.
He’s staying.
We’re staying.
I don’t care what ancient laws say. I don’t care if I have to break every damn magical contract written since Atlantis sank. I’ll barter. I’ll blackmail. I’ll bleed dry every last enchantment I’ve stored in mason jars and tea tins. I’ll rip open the veil if I have to.
He is not dying.
And I am not letting him go.
Even if I have to lie.
If I have to cheat. Even if I have to steal magic straight from the gods.
He stirs in his sleep. Mumbles something in a language I don’t understand—something guttural and aching.
His brow twitches. I stroke it gently, just once.
Then I curl up on the floor next to the couch, still holding his hand, and stare into the dark until dawn starts leaking in through the shuttered windows.
But peace doesn’t last.
Not far away—maybe across town, maybe across every town—something else stirs.
Something worse.