Orc’s Kiss (The Veil Lands #4)

Chapter 1

ONE

AVIORA

The sea wants me dead.

I’ve known it for months now—felt its hunger in every wave that crashed over my deck, every ship that sank beneath my feet.

But knowing something and experiencing it are different beasts, and right now, with my fingers scraping bloody against splintered wood and my lungs burning with salt water, the difference has never been clearer.

Another wave slams me into the wreckage. Pain explodes through my ribs. I cling tighter to what’s left of the mast, my arms screaming, my grip slipping on wood slick with rain and worse.

Hold on. Just hold on.

The storm shrieks overhead, lightning splitting the black sky in jagged veins.

In the flash, I see them—the rocks that gutted my ship, rising from the water in serrated rows.

The Wrecktide. Every sailor from here to Saltmere knows to avoid these waters.

Every captain with half a brain gives this coast a wide berth.

But I’m not here because I wanted to be. I’m here because something brought me.

The lights.

I saw them an hour ago—pale blue, drifting among the reef stones.

Beautiful. Beckoning. Our helmsman turned toward them before anyone could stop him, his eyes glassy, his hands moving on the wheel with mechanical precision.

By the time I reached him, it was too late.

The hull screamed as it struck the first reef, and then the sea poured in, and then—

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the screaming.

But I can’t help it. Jorah’s face as the wave took him under. The cook’s prayers cut short mid-word. The hand that grabbed my ankle in the dark water—frigid, impossibly frigid—and tried to drag me down.

I kicked free. I kick free every time.

The thought tastes bitter. I’ve been surviving for years now. Running. Escaping. Leaving behind everyone who gets too close because staying means watching them die. First Finn. Then crew after crew, ship after ship, each one claimed by the curse I’m too stupid—or too stubborn—to outrun.

My hand finds the pouch at my belt. Still there. Still sealed against the water.

This is your fault.

They don’t answer. They never answer. They just pull, their icy need seeping through the leather, through my skin, into the hollow places where better emotions used to live.

Another wave. Another mouthful of water that burns going down. My arms are giving out, muscles tearing, strength bleeding away with every second I spend in this churning hell. The mast is drifting, caught in a current that’s pulling me deeper into the reef maze. Toward the rocks. Toward death.

Move.

I force my legs to kick. Pain shoots through my left ankle—twisted when the deck buckled beneath me, maybe broken, definitely useless.

The cold has numbed everything else, turned my body into a clumsy, unresponsive thing.

But I kick anyway, fighting the current, fighting the exhaustion, fighting the seductive whisper at the back of my mind that says I won’t let go.

I haven’t survived this long by giving up.

The reef rises on my left—jagged teeth reaching for soft flesh. I twist away, feel stone scrape along my hip, ripping fabric and skin in a single burning line. Blood in the water now. Blood and salt and the taste of my own desperation.

Lightning again. And in the flash—

Stone. Not reef. Something built. Rising from the water in clean geometric lines, a wall or a platform or—

A harbor.

The realization hits harder than the waves. A harbor means a shore. A shore means survival. My arms find new strength, fueled by hope I thought I’d forgotten how to feel.

The current fights me. The sea fights me.

Everything in this cursed stretch of water seems determined to claim me before I reach safety.

But I’ve been fighting my whole life—fighting poverty, fighting circumstance, fighting the endless procession of people who looked at a dock rat and saw nothing worth saving.

You’re worth saving.

My hand strikes stone. Real, solid, immovable stone, crusted with barnacles that slice my palm open but I don’t care because it’s something to hold, something that won’t shift or sink or disappear beneath me. I haul myself up, every muscle screaming, every breath a victory torn from the sea’s grip.

The platform is narrow—maybe four feet across—slippery with spray and rain. I collapse onto it face-first, coughing water, tasting blood, trembling so hard my teeth rattle. For a long moment, I just lie there. Breathing. Living.

Get up. This isn’t over.

No. It isn’t. The storm still rages overhead. The cold is still eating into my bones. And somewhere in the water behind me, I can feel them watching.

The drowned.

I push myself to my knees, then my feet. The ankle screams but holds. Above me, torchlight flickers against black walls—massive walls, stretching up and up until they disappear into the storm. A fortress carved into the cliff face, its stones so dark, they seem to drink the lightning.

Shouting. Multiple voices, barely audible over the wind and waves.

I try to call out. Manage a croak that wouldn’t carry three feet, let alone the fifty between me and whoever’s up there. My legs decide standing is overrated and I drop to my knees again, the impact jarring through my twisted ankle with enough force to blur my vision.

Don’t pass out. If you pass out, you die.

Boots on stone. Someone’s coming. I reach for my knives—still at my belt, miracle of miracles—and find my fingers too numb to grip them. Perfect. Just perfect. Survived a shipwreck and a monster-infested reef only to be murdered by whoever’s manning this particular piece of nowhere.

A figure emerges from the rain. And I forget how to breathe.

He’s massive. Easily the largest person I’ve ever seen, towering over my kneeling form with shoulders broad enough to block the wind.

The torchlight catches his skin—gray-green, weathered, marked with scars that tell stories I don’t want to read.

His arms are thick with muscle, his hands rough with calluses visible even in the dim light.

An orc.

I’ve seen orcs before. The Saltmere docks aren’t picky about who loads cargo, and there’s good money in work that requires strength humans can’t match.

But I’ve never seen one quite this... present.

He fills the space around him, his stance balanced, his attention absolute.

Every inch of him radiates danger the way a blade radiates sharpness.

His face is hard-planed and brutal—jaw set, expression somewhere between assessment and threat.

Eyes the color of thunderheads before they break.

Hair black as the water that tried to kill me, hanging in braids threaded with gold beads.

One of his tusks is chipped, the break speaking to violence I’d rather not imagine.

He looks at me the way a predator looks at something too small to be worth killing. Curiosity edged with dismissal.

“You came through the Wrecktide.” His voice is gravelly and scratchy, deep enough to vibrate in my chest. Not a question. Statement of fact, delivered with the flat certainty of someone who’s seen this before. “No one comes through the Wrecktide.”

“Tell that to the ship I was on.” I cough, taste blood, spit it onto the stone. “What’s left of it.”

His attention sharpens. Those pale eyes drop from my face to my hand—to the pouch I didn’t realize I was clutching. Recognition flickers across his features. Then something darker, something that makes the hair rise on the back of my neck.

“What’s in the bag, thief?”

The word hits harder than the waves. Thief. He knows. Somehow, this orc standing in the middle of nowhere, guardian of a fortress I’ve never heard of, knows exactly what I’m carrying.

My fingers tighten on the leather. Every survival instinct screams at me to lie—play innocent, spin a story, talk my way out of whatever this is. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. Half the reason I’m still alive is my ability to convince people I’m exactly what they want to see.

But I’m exhausted. Half-drowned. The curse is singing in my blood, making me reckless. And there’s something in this orc’s stance that suggests lying would be more perilous than truth.

“Gold.” The word comes out rough, broken. “The kind that kills people.”

He goes very still. The kind of stillness that precedes violence.

“You want to take it from me,” I continue, because apparently near-death experiences have destroyed what little self-preservation I had left, “you’ll have to kill me first. Fair warning—others have tried.”

A beat of silence. The rain hammers down. The wind screams. And the orc just watches me, his expression unreadable, his massive frame motionless.

Then he moves. Not toward me—toward the fortress wall, his hand finding a torch bracket I hadn’t noticed. He wrenches it aside, revealing a gap in the stone just wide enough for a person to slip through.

“Inside. Now.”

“Is that an order or an invitation?”

“It’s a warning.” His attention flicks past me, toward the water I crawled out of. “They followed you here.”

They.

Ice slides down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold. I turn, slowly, dreading what I’ll see.

Lightning splits the sky. And in the flash—

The harbor spreads below the platform, a crescent of dark water sheltered by cliff walls. At its mouth, iron chains stretch across the entrance, thick as my thigh, meant to keep out vessels that would otherwise threaten the fortress above.

Shapes crowd the chains.

Dozens of them. Pale. Luminous. Faces I almost recognize—Jorah’s sharp nose, the cook’s broad shoulders, features blurred by water and death but still somehow human. They press against the iron barrier, hands reaching, mouths open in silent screams.

The drowned. My crew. Whatever those frigid hands in the water made of them.

“They want the gold.” My voice sounds far away. “They’ve been following it for weeks.”

“They want what’s in the gold.” The orc grabs my arm—not gently—and hauls me toward the gap in the wall. “And they won’t stop until they get it. So move. Unless you’d rather discuss this while they take the harbor.”

I don’t resist. There’s no point. The shapes at the chains are pressing harder, their glow intensifying, and I can hear it now—faint beneath the storm, beneath the waves, beneath everything. Whispering. My name. Promises of rest, of peace, of finally stopping.

Just let go.

I shake my head, forcing the whispers back. The orc’s grip on my arm is bruising, painful, real. Real is good. Real keeps me anchored.

The gap leads to stairs—narrow and steep, carved directly into the cliff face. My twisted ankle screams with every step, but I climb anyway, the orc’s hand finding my waist when I stumble. His touch is impersonal, efficient. The touch of someone used to hauling dead weight up steep inclines.

You’re not dead yet.

The stairs open into a corridor—dark stone, low ceiling, walls weeping with moisture that smells of salt and something else. Something older. The orc doesn’t slow, dragging me through passages that twist and turn until I’ve lost all sense of direction.

We pass relics. I catch glimpses in the torchlight—rusted cutlasses hung on walls, broken figureheads with painted eyes that seem to follow movement, glass jars containing... I look away. Some things are better left unexamined.

“Where are you taking me?” I manage between gasps. The exertion is warming me, but my lungs still burn and my ankle is making concerning noises with every step.

“Somewhere the dead can’t reach. For now.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

Fair enough. I’d probably give the same response if our positions were reversed. Never tell a stranger more than necessary. Never give away information that could be used against you. Rules I’ve lived by since I was old enough to understand what living meant.

The corridor opens into a larger space—cavernous, with windows that frame nothing but darkness and rain.

Lightning flickers through the gaps, illuminating stone floors stained with something I don’t want to identify.

Braziers line the walls, their flames burning with a greenish tint that casts everything in underwater hues.

A great hall.

The orc releases me in front of one of the braziers. I nearly collapse, catching myself on the rough stone edge, letting the strange-colored heat seep into my frozen bones.

“Stay here.” He’s moving toward a side passage, shouting orders to people I can’t see. His voice carries even above the storm—commands about sealing halls, lighting ward fires, nobody approaching the water until dawn.

Ward fires. I store that detail. He knows what he’s dealing with. Knows what the dead are and how to fight them. Which means he’s encountered them before. Which means—

Which means he knows what’s in your pouch, and he hasn’t taken it yet. Why?