Chapter 8 #3
"Very." I could hear the smile threading through her words, feel it in the way she melted more fully against me. She shifted slightly, adjusting her position, and the movement sent liquid fire racing through my veins. "I feel safe with you."
Safe.
The word embedded itself somewhere deep in my chest. She felt safe with me—with an Orc twice her size who could snap her bones like kindling, who would cut off his own hand rather than hurt her.
She trusted me enough to surrender completely in my arms, to let me guide her into darkness, to close her eyes and simply believe I would protect her from all harm.
I tightened my hold on her waist, drawing her a fraction closer, greedy for every second of contact. Tomorrow she would leave. But tonight—tonight she was here, warm and real and pressed against my thundering heart.
"Hold on," I murmured against her hair, and urged Drakkar forward into the gathering night.
The path narrowed as we climbed, winding along the mountain's spine like a serpent carved from moonlight and shadow.
Drakkar moved with the confidence of a creature who'd walked these trails a thousand times, his massive hooves finding purchase where Jordan would see only darkness.
As twilight surrendered to true night, the world before me sharpened—every stone, every gnarled root, every overhanging branch rendered in perfect detail.
While our eyes had become accustomed to the sun over the years, we were still beings of twilight and shadow.
Jordan's fingers tightened on my forearm as we crested a particularly steep section, the ground dropping away sharply to our left.
"I can barely see anything," she breathed, wonder threading through her words rather than fear. "How do you know where we're going?"
"Orcs see well in darkness." I guided us around a jutting outcrop of granite, still warm from the day's sun. "Better than in full light, actually. Bright sun can be... painful. Like staring into fire."
"That must make daytime exhausting."
"We adapt. It's why most Orcish villages hide deep within the forest—the canopy filters the harshest rays." Drakkar navigated a switchback with ease, and I kept us well clear of the drop. "But night? Night is when we truly come alive."
She fell quiet, and I felt the moment she stopped fighting her blindness and simply surrendered to trust, her body melting back against mine with complete faith.
The landscape unfurled before us in breathtaking scope—hills rolling away into shadow-pooled valleys, distant peaks rising like ancient sentinels keeping watch over the sleeping world.
"It's beautiful," Jordan whispered. "Even in the dark, I can tell how beautiful it is. The way the air changes, how the shadows move." She turned her head, trying to capture what her eyes couldn't quite grasp. "I wish I could see it through your eyes. Just once."
My chest constricted. "It's merely different. Not better."
"Maybe. But to move through darkness like it's daylight, to see what others can't..." Her voice carried a note of longing that made something in me ache. "That must be its own kind of magic."
I wanted to tell her that the real magic was this—having her here, her warmth seeping into my bones, her trust a gift I hadn't earned but would treasure anyway.
That I'd ridden this path alone more times than I could count, and it had never once stolen my breath the way it did now with her in my arms. But the words tangled in my throat, so I stayed silent and let Drakkar carry us deeper into the night.
The terrain shifted beneath us, the path widening as we descended into a forest that seemed older than memory itself.
These trees had witnessed centuries pass, their gnarled branches weaving a ceiling overhead that transformed the moonlight into something sacred.
Jordan's hand drifted from my forearm to settle over mine where it gripped the reins, her fingers curling around my wrist with a tenderness that made my breath catch.
"How much farther?" she asked, her voice soft against the night.
"Another half hour, perhaps." The air had already begun to change. I could taste the moisture on my tongue, that particular sweetness that came from water in constant motion. "We're close."
Drakkar's steady rhythm became our heartbeat, the only sound besides the occasional cry of a night bird hunting in the darkness.
Jordan's thumb traced lazy circles on my wrist, and I wondered if she had any idea what those small touches did to me.
How each one felt like a brand, marking me as hers.
How I was cataloging them all, storing them away like precious things to revisit when she was gone and this night was nothing but memory.
The forest began to thin, and the first whisper of thunder reached us—not from the sky, but from the earth itself, a deep rumble that seemed to pulse through Drakkar's muscles and into my bones. Jordan straightened against me, every line of her body suddenly alert.
"Is that...?"
"The falls." The words came out rough, my chest tightening with an emotion I couldn't quite name.
I'd imagined this moment for days—sharing this sacred place with her—but now uncertainty crept through me like frost. What if the magic that lived here for me was invisible to her eyes?
What if I'd built this up into something it could never be? "Rufus Morgan Falls. Just ahead."
The thunder grew, swelling from a whisper to a roar that I felt in my teeth, in my chest, in the hollow of my throat. The path curved one final time, and then we broke free of the trees—
And the world transformed into silver and shadow and light.
The moon hung impossibly large, a pearl suspended in black velvet, and it had turned the waterfall into something that defied the natural world.
Water poured over the cliff in a wide, shimmering veil—sixty feet of liquid moonlight, each droplet a tiny star falling to earth.
The falls didn't simply reflect the light; they seemed to drink it in and breathe it back out, glowing with an inner radiance that made my breath catch even though I'd seen this sight a hundred times before.
Jordan went absolutely still in my arms. Not just quiet—still, like she'd forgotten how to breathe.
The pool below was a mirror of contrasts.
Black as obsidian where the shadows pooled deep, but where the moonlight kissed the surface, it became molten silver, alive and rippling with captured starlight.
Mist rose in ghostly spirals, creating halos that danced and shifted in the air like spirits at play.
The rocks surrounding the pool gleamed wet and dark, the harsh edges gentled by moss that seemed to hold its own pale luminescence.
"Ruka." My name on her lips was barely audible over the roar, but I felt it—the reverence, the wonder, the way it trembled with something close to awe. "It's... I've never seen anything like this."
I dismounted, my movements careful, deliberate, then reached up to help her down.
My hands found her waist and lingered there, spanning the curve of her ribs, feeling the rapid flutter of her breath.
She didn't pull away, didn't seem to notice, her gaze still locked on the falls as if looking away might break the spell.
The roar of the water wrapped around us, a wall of sound that separated this moment from the rest of existence. We could have been the only two people in the world.
"I come here when the village feels too small," I said, pitching my voice to carry over the thunder. "When I need to remember home. The waterfalls in the underground caverns—they look like this. Silver and white in the darkness, like captured moonlight."
She turned to me then, and the expression on her face made something crack open in my chest. Her eyes were bright, luminous, reflecting the falls like they held their own magic. "I can see why you love it. It's like standing at the edge of a dream."
I retrieved the blanket and basket from Drakkar's saddle, my hands steadier than I felt and found a stretch of grass near enough to the water that the cool mist kissed our skin, but far enough that we wouldn't have to shout to be heard.
The blanket spread beneath my hands, and I smoothed each corner with more care than necessary, hyperaware of Jordan watching me, of the way the moonlight caught in her hair and turned it to spun silver.
"Thank you for bringing me here," she said, settling onto the blanket with a fluid grace that made my pulse quicken. "It's perfect. Absolutely perfect."
"I wanted you to see it properly." I unpacked the basket, focusing on the simple task to keep from staring at her. "Not just a rushed visit before you—" The words stuck in my throat. "Before you leave."
The silence that followed felt heavy, weighted with all the things neither of us was saying.
Before you leave. The reality of it sat between us like a third presence.
She tucked her legs beneath her, moonlight threading through her hair, and I busied myself with the wine before I did something foolish like reach out and touch those luminous strands, see if they felt as soft as they looked.
"The village has been wonderful," she said quietly, accepting the cup I offered.
Our fingers brushed, and heat raced up my arm like wildfire.
"Everyone has been so welcoming. So generous with their time and their stories.
And you..." Her eyes found mine, held them with an intensity that made my heart stutter.
"You've made it special, Ruka. Showing me everything, teaching me about your people, your traditions.
I never expected to feel so... at home here. "
Home. The word burrowed into my chest and lodged itself somewhere near my heart.
"You belong here." The words came out rougher than I intended, scraped raw from somewhere deep in my chest. "More than you realize."