Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The servant appeared precisely at dawn.
Khorrek straightened from where he’d stood guard all night, his body protesting the hours of stillness with a dull ache he’d learned to ignore. Sleep was a luxury. Rest was weakness. The High King’s orders were absolute.
Mira stood in the hallway with a breakfast tray. She kept her eyes down, her hands trembling slightly as she held the heavy silver service.
“Breakfast,” she whispered.
He nodded and stepped aside, allowing her to knock. When Thea answered, he unlocked the door and let the maid enter.
He heard Thea’s sharp intake of breath and quickly followed the maid, hesitating in the outer room.
“Is something wrong, Dr. Monroe?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong.” A pause. “But there are two plates on that tray.”
Mira’s voice was barely audible. “Yes, my lady. Master Vorlag said—he said you might wish to share your meal. That you preferred company at breakfast.”
His chest tightened. He already knew what was coming. Could feel it in the way the air seemed to shift.
“Khorrek.” Thea appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was still in her nightgown, her auburn hair in a wild tangle around her shoulders. She looked flushed and sleepy and infinitely desirable.
“Come eat with me.”
Every instinct screamed at him to refuse, but he hadn’t eaten since the previous day and his Beast was restless from hunger and frustration.
“I have already eaten,” he lied anyway.
She tilted her head, studying him with those intelligent grey eyes. Her expression said she knew it for the lie it was. “Then eat again. Humor me. Please.”
How could he refuse that single soft word?
He gave a short, sharp nod and moved to the table, sitting opposite her as Mira set the tray down, immediately knowing it was a mistake. Because sitting across from her, sharing food, and pretending they were anything other than captor and prisoner was more dangerous than any battlefield.
“Anything else, my lady?” the maid asked.
“No. Thank you, Mira.”
The girl fled as if Khorrek were going to bite her. Thea filled her plate, then looked at him expectantly.
“Eat.”
“I told you, I already—”
“Khorrek.” She set down her fork. “I may be new to this world, but I’m not an idiot. You stood guard outside my door all night. You didn’t eat. You probably barely drank any water. So please, stop pretending and just eat something before I start worrying you’re going to collapse.”
“I don’t collapse.”
“Everyone collapses eventually.” She pushed the bread basket toward him. “Even orcs. I assume.”
It was the assumption—the acknowledgment that she didn’t actually know, that she was guessing about his physiology—that made him relent.
She was trying to understand him, trying to bridge the gap between their worlds, and he was being an ass.
The food on the table was far more lavish than he was used to. Fresh bread. Butter and honey. Eggs scented with herbs. Fruit that smelled like summer.
He cautiously took a piece of bread and bit into it. Fresh. Warm. Delicious. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had fresh bread. Usually he ate whatever rations were available. Hard tack. Dried meat. Food as fuel, nothing more.
This was different. This was food worth savoring.
“Better?” she asked, a hint of smugness in her tone.
“Adequate.”
“Liar.”
Despite himself, his lips twitched. Almost a smile. Definitely dangerous. But he kept eating anyway.
They sat in silence for several minutes, the only sound the clink of utensils and the morning birds outside the window. It should have been awkward. Uncomfortable.
Instead it felt… peaceful. No, that was wrong. Peace wasn’t for people like him.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked eventually, and he immediately tensed.
“You can ask. I may not answer.”
“Fair enough.” She took a sip of the delicately scented tea, a far cry from the bitter tea the warriors traveled with. “Where did you grow up?”
He’d expected her question to be about her fate, or even his orders. Instead she’d asked where he grew up, as if he were a normal person. Unfortunately the answer would prove the opposite.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked carefully.
“Because I’m curious. About you.” She met his gaze directly. “You’re more than just one of Lasseran’s warriors.”
He looked away. “No I’m not.”
“I think you are.”
She pushed a plate of fruit toward him, and when he didn’t take any, she picked up a small purple fruit and regarded it thoughtfully. “It’s so strange. The apples are exactly the same as the ones we have on Earth, but I don’t recognize this one at all. What is it?”
He didn’t answer, so she took a tentative bite. Her eyes widened.
“Oh, that’s good. Sweet. Kind of like a mix between a grape and a… hmm. Maybe a plum. But it has this hint of spice I can’t place.”
The simple, unbridled joy she took from a piece of fruit made something in his chest ache.
“Try it,” she insisted, holding it out to him. He stared at her fingers so close to his mouth—at the fruit they held—then looked at her eyes.
He shouldn’t. Shouldn’t get any closer. Shouldn’t accept anything from her.
But he was tired of fighting this. Tired of denying the pull.
He leaned forward and took the fruit from her fingers with his mouth, his tusks scraping gently against her skin.
She gasped, her cheeks flushing.
It wasn’t a kiss. But it was intimate, far more intimate than the casual offering should have been.
He pulled back and chewed slowly. The fruit was good, sweet and spicy and bursting with juice, but that wasn’t what he was thinking about. He was thinking about her wide eyes. The hitch in her breath.
“It’s called a shara fruit,” he said roughly. “It only grows in the southern provinces.”
“Oh.” She quickly pulled her hand back. “Thank you.”
The air between them crackled with unspoken things. Things he shouldn’t want. Things he couldn’t have.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked again, stubbornly refusing to let the moment die.
“The training grounds,” he said finally. “Outside Kel’Vara.”
She frowned. “But… where were you born? Did you have parents?”
“I don’t know.”
Her fork clattered onto her plate. “You don’t know where you were born? Or who your parents were?”
“No.”
“How… why not?”
His grip tightened on his cup, but she’d already heard part of the tale from Vorlag.
“Vorlag told you that one aspect of the Curse is that orcs have fewer children, and most of them are male. That means that they had to seek mates outside of Norhaven. The High King used to allow them to serve in his armies so they had opportunities to meet females from the other kingdoms.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Allow?”
“They were savage, unpredictable.” Or so he’d always been told. “But they—we—are also strong. Lasseran’s father didn’t trust them so he began his own… breeding program. He wanted his own army of Beast Warriors.”
“What happened to the women who gave birth to this army?”
“They couldn’t be allowed to keep the children. It was too dangerous.” Again something he’d always been told. “We were raised from birth to serve.”
“Trained to be useful,” she said, echoing Lasseran’s words.
“Yes.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. “The High King believes in controlling his assets completely.”
“You’re not an asset,” she said quietly. “You’re a person.”
“The High King would disagree.”
“The High King is a monster.”
His hand clenched around his fork. “Careful.”
“Why? He’s not here. And you already know what I think of him.” She leaned forward slightly. “Tell me you don’t see it. Tell me you look at him and see something other than calculated cruelty wrapped in silk and smiles.”
He couldn’t. Because she was right.
But saying so—admitting it, even to himself—felt like treason. And he had been raised to believe that treason was death.
“Eat your breakfast,” he said instead. “You need your strength for the translation work.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she let it drop. “Fine. Deflect. But we’re coming back to this conversation.”
“You’re assuming we’ll have another conversation.”
“We’re having one now, aren’t we?” She smiled, small and determined. “I’m wearing you down, Khorrek. Admit it.”
Yes.
But he’d never say it aloud.
Despite the awkward conversation, they finished eating in companionable silence. He found himself relaxing despite every warning his training screamed at him.
This was wrong. Dangerous. Stupid. But he didn’t want it to end.
And the next morning when Mira brought breakfast for two, he didn’t argue about joining Thea. He didn’t argue the next morning either and he fell into the rhythm of it despite himself.
Breakfast together every morning. Quiet conversation—or sometimes just a silence that was somehow comfortable rather than awkward. Then the library.
Hours and hours in the library.
He stood guard while she worked with Master Vorlag, who seemed less like Lasseran’s spy and more like an accomplice with every passing day.
And he listened. Not because he was ordered to. Not because Lasseran had commanded him to report on the translation’s progress. But because she fascinated him.
The way she attacked the ancient text with the same fierce determination she’d shown when demanding answers from him.
The way her eyes lit up when she made a connection, her whole face transforming with intellectual joy.
The way she’d chew on her lower lip when she was thinking, or push her glasses up her nose when frustrated, or mutter to herself in her own language when something particularly complex appeared.
She was brilliant. Not with Lasseran’s cold, calculating brilliance, but as warm and bright as sunlight.
He brought her water when her voice grew hoarse from reading aloud. Draped a shawl around her shoulders when she shivered. Made sure food appeared at regular intervals, even when she protested that she wasn’t hungry.
He took care of her, because she mattered to him. That was the problem. She mattered more than his orders. More than his duty. More than his own life.
And that was unacceptable.
On the fourth night, she fell asleep over her books again. Her head pillowed on her arms, glasses askew, ink staining her fingers.
She looked young like this. Vulnerable. Beautiful.
He stood there longer than he should have, just watching her sleep. The steady rise and fall of her breathing. The way her hair had escaped its pins to curl around her face.
I should wake her. Tell her to go to bed.
But she’d only argue and insist on five more minutes that would turn into hours. So instead, he did what he’d done the other nights. He carefully gathered her into his arms, and cradled her against his chest. She made a small sound—half protest, half contentment—and burrowed closer to his warmth.
His heart clenched.
This is wrong. Dangerous. Forbidden.
But he carried her back to her rooms anyway. The guards he passed said nothing. Didn’t even meet his eyes. They knew better.
In her bedroom, he laid her gently on the bed, then carefully removed her glasses and set them on the bedside table. He drew the blankets up around her, and she sighed in her sleep, one hand reaching out blindly.
For him.
He froze.
Walk away. Lock the door. Stand guard outside like you’re supposed to.
But her hand was still extended. Still searching. His Beast howled for him to take it. To climb into that bed beside her. To hold her through the night like he had on the journey to Kel’Vara. To claim what his instincts screamed was his.
“Khorrek?” Her voice was soft and thick with sleep.
“I’m here.”
Her eyes opened partway, unfocused without her glasses. “Don’t go.”
“You need to sleep.”
“Stay with me. Please.” Her fingers brushed against his arm. “Just until I fall back asleep. I don’t like going to bed alone.”
Every bit of training he possessed told him to refuse, but the vulnerability in her voice shattered his resolve.
“Just until you sleep,” he heard himself say.
She smiled and scooted over, making room for him.
This is a mistake.
But he laid down next to her anyway, stiff and awkward. She immediately curled into his side, her head finding his shoulder like it belonged there.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For taking care of me.”
“It’s my duty.”
“It’s more than that.”
Yes.
But he couldn’t admit it. He couldn’t acknowledge what was happening between them, because acknowledging it meant accepting that he would eventually lose her to whatever fate the High King had in store. And he wasn’t strong enough to face that yet.
So he lay there in silence, feeling her warmth against his side, and listening to her breathing slow and even out.
He felt more like a person than he ever had before, but he hated himself for it because people had choices. He did not. He was a weapon, and weapons didn’t get happy endings.
When her breathing indicated she was sound asleep, he carefully extracted himself and made sure she was properly covered. Despite every screaming instinct, he didn’t kiss her. Couldn’t. Because if he started, he wouldn’t stop.
And she deserved better than a stolen kiss from someone who could offer her nothing but pain.
So he left her sleeping and resumed his post outside her door. Where he belonged. Alone.