Chapter 10 #3
“Anthony is very handsome and charming, or at least I thought so then. He was older and powerful and so sure of himself—the kind of guy who ordered me dinner when we went out, and I thought it was romantic.”
Now I saw it was domineering and dismissive.
“I was so young that when he told me I was stupid and my opinions were wrong, I believed him. He held onto my money and checked my phone often and made me quit my waitressing job. I didn’t realize he was isolating me so I relied on him.”
Dakvaar’s arm tightened around me just briefly, and I realized he was breathing faster. Best to get it all said.
“He liked showing me off—liked choosing skimpy dresses for me, said it was so all his men could see what he owned. More than once, he—”
My voice broke off in another sob, an old pain surfacing before I choked it down and shook my head, unwilling to share all my humiliations yet. “Let’s just say, he didn’t mind having a young, pliant wife.”
“Gods below, Sofia,” Dakvaar whispered harshly. “I should have killed him.”
Someone should have, yes. But I shook my head again. “He’s too powerful.”
“I’m a fucking orc, love. I’m surrounded by males who hit other males for a living. The first orc hockey team played humans, until that first crushed rib cage, and the league was invented so we only play each other. Anthony couldn’t scare us.”
I realized I was smirking slightly at the image, and straightened, my heart lighter. “You protected us.”
“And I always will.”
Always. It was a long time.
But there was something about Dakvaar which made me want to believe him.
I blew out a breath, deciding to get it said.
“Anthony was old-fashioned, and after about eight years of marriage, decided he wanted a son. He stopped my birth control without telling me, and I got pregnant right away. He was ecstatic…until Rosa was born. He told me he didn’t have a use for a daughter.”
I remembered being happy to hear that, thinking maybe he’d leave both of us alone. I’d been wrong.
“He began to talk about her like she was an asset, something he could use to further his power. There’s a guy he owes…
Degas got him out of a nasty situation a few years into our marriage, and the two of them would talk about Rosa like she was…
” I shuddered, then finished in a whisper.
“I don’t know, a bag of money or something. ”
“Thank the gods you got away from them both.”
Eventually. “He started to try for a son right away, but by that point I had something to fight for, something more important than myself.”
“Rosa.”
I heard the anguish in his tone, but kept speaking.
“I found a way to reach a doctor, who gave me an IUD without Anthony knowing. She also connected me with a burner phone and a lawyer and a social worker. It took until Rosa was two years old, and it was horrible, but…” I took a shaky breath, staring down at my daughter’s legs, where they crossed into my lap.
“We got away. I divorced him, got custody…”
“And you ran.”
For a while, the only sound was our breathing—mine still watery, Rosa’s soft and even, Dakvaar’s too harsh.
But finally he shifted, pulling me close enough to press another kiss on my temple. “I will praise the gods each evening for getting you the help and the strength you needed to do that, dkaar.”
My lips twitched, thinking of my mother’s strict Catholic upbringing. But her god hadn’t helped me, so maybe the orcish gods would.
“We started over with nothing; I’d get a job and we’d stay in a city for a few months or more—we were in Albuquerque for almost a year—before there’d be a call or an email or something from my old life, warning me Anthony had tracked us down.
I thought, last summer, that coming to Bramblewood, hiding in such a sweet small town…
I’d be able to outsmart him. He wouldn’t expect that. ”
When I blew out a sigh, Dakvaar growled, “But he tracked you down.”
I nodded slightly.
“He told me he wanted Rosa back. He’d made a deal with Degas for…”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
But Dakvaar nudged me gently. “For what, dkaar?”
“For her,” I rasped. “In ten years, Degas will take her, the way Anthony…”
Oh, Dios.
Dakvaar went rigid beneath me.
Not the fast, hot fury I’d seen in the parking lot—not roaring, not claws. This was worse. This was stillness so complete I could feel his pulse hammering through the arm wrapped around me, the only sign that anything was happening at all beneath that frozen calm.
“Say it,” he said, very quietly. “All of it. I need to hear the whole of it, dkaar, so I know exactly what I am protecting her from.”
So I did.
I told him the rest—the way Anthony had said it to me in that parking lot, flat and reasonable, like he was discussing a college fund instead of a debt paid in flesh.
Sixteen, that was the age Degas wanted her.
Ten years from now, and Anthony had said it like a kindness, like he was giving her time, and I’d wanted to claw his eyes out, and I hadn’t been able to do anything but bleed on the pavement instead.
When I finished, the bus was silent except for the hum of tires and Rosa’s soft, even breathing between us.
“That wasn’t the first time he’d hurt you, was it?” Dakvaar asked in a curiously flat voice.
“No,” I whispered, and felt him tighten his hold on me.
“He will not touch her.” It wasn’t an opinion or a belief, but a vow; certain and untouchable. “Not now. Not in ten years. Not ever.”
“You can’t promise that.” My voice cracked on it. “Nobody can promise that.”
“I can.” His mouth pressed to my temple, marking me as surely as Anthony’s fists, but more perfectly. “And I have.”
I didn’t ask him to explain further. I wasn’t ready to know exactly what an orc meant by made known, not tonight. I only knew that when he said it, something in my chest that had been clenched for years loosened, just slightly, for the first time.
I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing him in—sweat and ice and, underneath it, that thread of cinnamon that made my mouth water even now, even exhausted, even wrung out from crying.
“Dakvaar.” My voice was barely a whisper as I repeated my question. “Did you mean what you said? In the hallway?”
He went still again, but differently this time—not rage, something more like…uncertainty. As if he thought I might take it back for him.
“I meant it,” he said. “I love you, Sofia. I have for longer than I understood what I was feeling. I will say it as many times as you need to hear it, until you believe me.”
I thought about Anthony, who had said those words to me so often a lifetime ago, and made them into a cage.
This didn’t feel like a cage.
This felt like the first safe place I’d stood in years of running.
“Okay,” I whispered, and let my eyes fall shut, Rosa’s small weight warm between us, Dakvaar’s heartbeat steady under my cheek. “Okay.”
I let myself believe him. Just this once. Just enough to sleep.