Chapter 3 Mara
MARA
The sounds of battle fade behind us, swallowed by pine boughs and distance until only the whisper of wind through needles remains.
My lungs burn from the sprint, each breath scraping raw against my throat, but I don't dare slow.
Not yet. Not while Redmoon's war cries might still echo through these trees.
Eira's weight against my chest has grown heavier with each step, her small body pressed tight against mine as I navigate between towering pines.
Snow drifts down through the canopy above, fat flakes that catch in her dark curls and dust my shoulders with cold.
Each footfall crunches too loud in the forest quiet, marking our passage for anyone skilled enough to follow.
"Mama." Her voice is barely a whisper against my collarbone. "The trees are scared."
I shift her weight, adjusting my grip as we pick our way over fallen logs slick with moss and ice. The child says things sometimes—odd things that make me wonder if the stories about mixed blood are true. If there's something in her that connects to this broken world in ways I'll never understand.
"Just the wind, sweet girl." The endearment slips out automatically, though my attention stays fixed on the path ahead. We need shelter. Need distance. Need to find some defensible position before full dark settles and the temperature drops enough to kill.
But even as I plan our next move, part of me marvels at how quickly everything changed.
This morning I was sorting through our meager supplies, calculating how to stretch winter stores.
Now we're fugitives in a forest that belongs to creatures far stronger than us, with nothing but the clothes on our backs, the small pack I grabbed, and whatever mercy the approaching storm might show.
My foot catches on something that isn't root or stone. I stumble, nearly dropping Eira as I fight to keep my balance. She squeaks, small hands fisting in my coat, and I manage to steady myself against a pine trunk rough with bark.
"Sorry, baby. I—"
The words die in my throat.
At my feet, partially hidden by fallen needles and the gathering snow, lies a body. An orc's body, massive even sprawled motionless among the pine roots. My heart hammers against my ribs as every instinct screams run. Leave him. Get Eira away from here. Find shelter and pray this one was alone.
But I don't move.
Something about the scene holds me frozen—the way he's positioned against the tree trunk, back straight despite obvious pain.
His eyes are closed, but not in death. His chest rises and falls in shallow breaths that mist the cold air.
Snow has begun to accumulate on his shoulders and in the silver-streaked hair that's come loose from its braid.
He looks... diminished. Not in size—even unconscious, he dwarfs anything human—but in presence. The threat that should radiate from him feels muted, banked like coals beneath ash. There's something almost peaceful about his stillness, as if he's chosen this place for rest rather than collapse.
"Mama?" Eira shifts in my arms, and I realize I've been staring. "Why did we stop?"
"I..." The practical answer lodges in my throat. Because we found an enemy who could kill us both without effort, if he wakes. Because we should be running.
Instead, I find myself studying the details that make no sense.
The way his hunting leathers are well-maintained but not ostentatious.
The absence of trophies or scalps that mark the Redmoon warriors.
The carved pendant at his throat that catches what little light filters through the canopy—three interlocking circles worn smooth by handling.
This isn't Redmoon. The realization hits with startling certainty. The armor is wrong, the weapons too plain. Everything about him speaks of function over intimidation, pragmatism over cruelty.
Eira wiggles in my arms, her attention fixed on the unconscious orc with the intensity she usually reserves for injured birds or the strange dreams that wake her in the night. Before I can stop her, she's slipping from my grip, small boots finding purchase on the needle-strewn ground.
"Eira, no. Come back here."
But she's already moving, drawn by whatever invisible thread connects her to the world's wounded things. Her steps are careful, deliberate, until she crouches beside the orc's massive form. One small hand hovers over his temple, fingers spread wide.
"He's hurt," she whispers, and I know she's not talking about anything visible. "Inside hurt. Like when the metal tastes bad."
Before I can pull her away, her palm settles against his forehead.
The change is immediate. Her gold-flecked eyes go wide, pupils dilating until they're almost black. Her breathing shifts to match his—shallow, labored. When she speaks, her voice carries an odd distance, as if she's narrating something happening far away.
"Water tastes wrong. Bitter. He drinks it because he's thirsty from the hunt." Her head tilts, tracking movement I can't see. "Stomach burns. Gets worse. Falls down, but people keep walking. They leave him."
My blood chills. Not because of what she's describing—though the image of a hunting party abandoning one of their own makes my skin crawl—but because of how she's describing it. As if she's watching it happen. As if she's somehow there.
"Someone he trusted. She smiles when she hands him the water skin." Eira's voice hardens with an anger that doesn't belong to a five-year-old. "She wants him dead."
Poison. The word crystallizes everything—his labored breathing, the gray pallor beneath green skin, the way he's positioned himself to die with dignity rather than fight an inevitable end. Someone poisoned him and left him to die alone in the snow.
I should be relieved. A dying orc poses no threat. Should make it easier to walk away, to focus on getting Eira to safety before this storm turns deadly.
Instead, I find myself kneeling beside them both.
"What kind of poison?" The question surprises me even as I ask it. "Can you tell?"
Eira's brow furrows in concentration, her connection to whatever visions flow through her touch deepening. "Burns like the bad mushrooms. The ones you said make your belly hurt and your skin hot."
Nightshade family. The knowledge surfaces from half-remembered lessons, fragments of botanical lore my grandmother shared during long winter evenings in the bunker.
Most of those plants work slowly, attacking the nervous system and organs over hours rather than minutes. Survivable, if treated quickly enough.
If being the operative term.
I study the orc's face—the strong jaw beneath those polished tusks, the network of old scars that speak of battles survived.
He looks older than I first thought, maybe late thirties, with the kind of weathered competence that comes from years of responsibility.
Leadership, perhaps. The pendant suggests someone important enough to own heirloom jewelry.
Someone worth killing, apparently.
"Can you see anything else?" I ask Eira, though part of me already knows what I'm going to do. The part that remembers my grandmother's stories about mercy being its own kind of strength.
"Hurts," she whispers, and I'm not sure if she means his pain or her own. "Like fire in his blood. But... but there's good things too. Warm things. He misses someone. Wishes he could see snow fall on water."
The detail hits unexpectedly sharp. Snow on water. Such a simple image, but one that speaks of someone capable of finding beauty even in exile. Someone who notices the small graces that make survival worthwhile.
My hands move before conscious thought can interfere, checking his pulse at the throat.
Strong but irregular, skin fever-hot despite the gathering cold.
His breathing remains shallow, but there's no blood on his lips.
No sign of internal hemorrhaging. Whatever poisoned him works slowly enough to leave time for intervention.
If I choose to intervene.
The smart choice is obvious. Take Eira and keep moving. Find shelter and let the storm cover our tracks. Let this orc die as his enemies intended and count it one less threat in a world full of them.
But the image of him drinking from that water skin, trusting someone who smiled while planning his death, won't leave me alone.
The way Eira described his abandonment—hunting party walking away while their leader collapsed behind them.
There's a cruelty in it that makes my stomach twist, a violation of bonds that should matter even between enemies.
She keeps going, telling me every detail that must be playing through his mind. And then suddenly, she trails off, like she's being sucked into the poison, too.
"Eira, I need you to step back now." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Can you gather some of those pine boughs? The ones with the most needles?"
She blinks, the vision-distance fading from her eyes as she focuses on me. "We're going to help him?"
"I think... yes. I think we are."
The decision settles with surprising finality. Right or wrong, smart or catastrophically stupid, I can't walk away from this. Can't leave him to die alone while snow covers his body like a shroud.
Eira nods gravely and begins collecting branches, her small hands surprisingly efficient at the task. Meanwhile, I inventory what I know about nightshade poisoning and what resources the forest might provide.
Willow bark for the fever. Pine needle tea to help his system flush the toxins. Charcoal if I can make a fire hot enough, though that poses its own risks. More immediately, I need to get fluids into him and shelter over us all before the temperature drops further.
I check his water skin first, unsurprised to find it empty. Either he finished the poisoned water or had the presence of mind to dump it once he realized what was happening. The leather shows no residue, no lingering scent of bitter almonds or other telltale markers.
Professional work. Whoever wanted him dead knew their craft.
Snow crunches under my knees as I position myself beside his head, hands hovering over his shoulders. He's even larger up close, broad enough that my arms barely span his chest. The muscle beneath his leathers feels solid as stone, though fever-heat radiates through the layers.
"Can you hear me?" I keep my voice low, unthreatening. "I'm going to try to help, but I need you to wake up. Need you to drink something."
No response. His breathing doesn't change, doesn't acknowledge my presence in any way. But when I touch his forehead, checking the fever's progress, his eyes snap open.
Blue-gray irises focus on mine with startling intensity. For a moment, neither of us moves. I see the exact instant he catalogs my humanity, my vulnerability, the fact that I'm close enough for him to snap my neck without effort. See him register Eira gathering pine boughs just beyond his reach.
And I see him choose to remain still.
"You should run." His voice comes out as a rasp, barely audible above the wind through branches. "Whatever clan you escaped from... I can't protect you."
"I'm not asking you to." I settle back on my heels, hands moving to my coat pockets in search of the small knife I always carry. "I'm asking you to drink willow bark tea and try not to die while I figure out how to keep us all from freezing."
Confusion flickers across his features—the kind of genuine bewilderment that suggests he's not accustomed to humans offering aid rather than fleeing in terror.
"The poison—"
"Nightshade family. Probably belladonna or something similar.
" I begin stripping bark from a nearby willow, movements efficient despite the tremor in my hands.
"Survivable if we can get your fever down and keep you hydrated.
Though I should mention that if you try to hurt my daughter, I'll finish what your enemies started. "
That earns me a look that might be respect. "Your daughter?"
I glance toward Eira, who's created an impressive pile of pine boughs and begun weaving them into a rough shelter framework as she's learned to do since she can walk. "She's the one that saw you. She's got…magic." I'm not sure if it's dangerous for him to know when this world has so little left.
Understanding dawns in his fever-bright eyes. "She saw..."
"Everything. The betrayal. The abandonment. The fact that you crawled off the path to die with some semblance of dignity." I focus on my work, using the knife to scrape inner bark into strips. "Admirable, in its way. Stupid, but admirable."
"Stupid?"
"Dying serves no one. Living means the chance to make your enemies regret their choices."
A sound escapes him that might be laughter or simply pain. "Revenge?"
"Justice. There's a difference." I pause in my bark-stripping to meet his gaze directly. "Though I suppose that depends on what you choose to do with a second chance."
Snow continues to fall around us, accumulating faster now as the storm gathers strength. Soon the temperature will drop enough to make survival questionable for all three of us. But for now, in this small clearing beneath ancient pines, something unprecedented is taking shape.
A human woman, an orc, and a half-blood child who sees too much, bound together by circumstance and the strange mercy that sometimes blooms in the spaces between enemies.
Whether it will kill us all remains to be seen.