Orc’s Desire (The Veil Lands #8)

Chapter 1

ONE

ARWEN

Blood runs down my forearms. Warm. Slick. The branches don’t care that I’m already bleeding—they reach for me anyway, thorns catching skin, tearing fabric, demanding their own red tribute as I crash through the undergrowth.

Keep moving.

The Thornwood swallows the moonlight before it reaches the forest floor, leaving me blind in a maze of twisted roots and grasping vines. Every breath drags the Bloom’s spores into my lungs—that cloying sweetness coating my throat, my thoughts, making the wanting surge through my blood.

Turn back, something whispers. Surrender. Let them find you. Let it be over.

I slam my bleeding palm against a tree trunk. The pain cuts through the fog, sharp and clarifying. Real.

Nearly a decade. I’ve carried the map of these woods in my head for nearly a decade, memorizing patrol routes and escape paths while I knelt at Father Verantus’s feet and played the broken devotee. I didn’t survive all of that to fail now.

My lungs burn. My legs shake. Somewhere behind me—too close, never far enough—the Keepers are hunting.

The spores thicken as I push deeper into the forest. They hang in the air, visible even in the darkness, and every inhale makes my skin prickle with sensation.

My torn clothing scrapes against wounds that should hurt but don’t—not the way they should.

The Bloom transforms pain into something else. Something the cult taught me to need.

No.

I don’t need. I don’t want. I am empty, hollow, a vessel that holds nothing they can use against me.

The mantra steadies me. I adjust course, angling toward where the trees should thin. The mental map unfolds in my mind—the old oak with the lightning scar, the stream that runs east toward the trade road, the clearing where—

Someone ran through here once. I lost him to this forest long before the cult took the rest of me. I don’t let myself follow that thought. Some wounds are more useful closed.

Focus.

The trees begin to space apart. Moonlight filters through gaps in the canopy, staining everything in shades of rust and dried blood. The Thornwood’s signature coloring—even at night, the forest bleeds.

I’m close. The clearing should be just ahead, and beyond it—

I burst through the treeline and stop dead.

An orc stands in the moonlight.

Massive. Battle-scarred. Gray-green skin stretched over slabs of muscle, his armor stained dark with old blood. He’s cleaning his blade—an executioner’s sword, single-edged, longer than I am tall—with the methodical patience of someone who’s done this a thousand times before.

Bodies surround him. Three of them, torn apart with efficient brutality, their white robes soaked crimson.

Bloom Keepers.

The orc’s gaze snaps to me. I freeze—prey instinct, hammered into my bones by years of learning when to be still, when to be invisible, when to stop existing as anything the predators might notice.

He doesn’t attack. Doesn’t move at all. Just studies me with eyes that hold nothing—no curiosity, no threat, no mercy.

I should run. Every survival instinct I’ve honed over my years of captivity screams at me to bolt back into the trees, to take my chances with the Keepers still hunting rather than face whatever this is.

But the Keepers were hunting me. And he just eliminated them.

My legs won’t move anyway. The exhaustion has finally caught up—hours of running, bleeding, fighting the Bloom’s influence with every breath. I’m shaking so hard my teeth want to chatter.

“You’re from the monastery.”

Gravel and disinterest. No inflection. No emotion. Just observation, delivered with the flat certainty of someone stating fact.

“Escapee or scout?”

I weigh options in the space of a heartbeat. Lie and risk discovery when the truth becomes obvious. Tell the truth and risk—what? He just killed Keepers. That makes him an enemy of the cult. Which could make him an ally.

Or could make him something worse. Another predator who wants something from me. Another set of hands reaching for control.

I look at his face—really look. The crooked nose, broken and badly reset. The filed-down tusks, practical rather than decorative. The weariness in every line of his expression, the crushing exhaustion that comes from hard work done too long without rest.

He doesn’t look like a zealot. Doesn’t have the fever-bright certainty of the Abbot’s followers. He looks like a man doing a job. A bloody, brutal job, but nothing personal.

“Escapee.” The words come out steady. “Since I was fifteen.”

Something flickers in his expression. Gone before I can name it.

He sheathes his blade across his back—the motion smooth, practiced, the leather harness creaking as it takes the sword. His hands come up empty. A deliberate gesture. Non-threatening.

It doesn’t make me feel safer. I’ve learned that hands aren’t the only weapons men carry.

“The warlord’s army sent me to burn the place.” His gaze drops to my arms, cataloging the blood, the torn skin, the evidence of my desperate flight. “You know the layout?”

Burn the place.

The words hit me like water after a drought. Someone finally came. After years of the cult spreading its influence through the region, poisoning trade routes, harvesting souls from isolated villages—someone finally decided to end it.

And they sent an executioner.

Not soldiers. Not healers. Not anyone who would need the inhabitants of that place to survive and testify. Someone had paid specifically for fire and silence, and I was standing in the dark trying to decide if that mattered when the alternative was no fire at all.

“I know every stone.” I step closer before I can stop myself. “Every passage, every patrol route. I mapped it all. Years of waiting for—”

I bite off the words. Too much. Too fast. He doesn’t need my desperation. He just needs my intel.

The orc’s attention sharpens. I feel it—the assessment, clinical and thorough, taking in more than just my appearance. He’s reading my stance, my posture, the way I hold myself despite the trembling.

“Waiting for what?”

For someone to care. For someone to stop them. For a chance—any chance—to make them pay.

“For the right opportunity.” I keep my voice flat. “This seems like it.”

Silence stretches between us. The forest presses close, the Bloom’s spores drifting on currents of air I can’t feel.

My skin prickles with heightened sensation—the brush of my clothing against wounds, the cool night air against exposed skin, the orc’s presence radiating something that might be heat or might be danger.

He’s watching me the way I imagine he watches everyone. Cataloging threats. Measuring weaknesses. Deciding if I’m useful or just another obstacle to remove.

I refuse to look away first.

“You’re shaking.” His observation holds no sympathy. Just fact.

“I’ve been running for hours. The Bloom’s spores are thick tonight. My body thinks it wants to go back.” I bare my teeth in something that isn’t quite a smile. “My body is wrong.”

That flicker again. Interest, maybe. Or recognition. Someone seeing a wound they recognize.

“The Abbot.” The name tastes like poison on my tongue. “Father Verantus. That’s who you’re here to kill?”

“Among others.”

“I want to watch.” The words spill out before I can weigh them. “His death. I want to see it happen.”

The orc goes very still. Not with surprise—with consideration. He’s measuring me again, and this time I know what he sees. The hatred. Pure and undiluted, rooted in bone.

“That’s your price?” he asks. “For the intelligence?”

“That’s my price.”

He nods once. Brief. Decisive.

“Tell me about the defenses.”