Chapter 1 #2
Art snorts, a sharp, undignified sound that cuts through the tension like a butter knife through corporate politeness.
Then, the moment my head swivels in his direction with a heat-seeking missile, he attempts to disguise it as a cough.
It's a pathetic effort. His hand flies up to cover his mouth, his shoulders hunch in a belated attempt at innocence, and he produces a series of unconvincing throat-clearing sounds that wouldn't fool a particularly stupid houseplant.
I catalogue this betrayal for future reference. Art will find his next expense report subjected to extraordinary scrutiny.
My nails dig into my palms. "I assure you, I'm perfectly calm."
"Lies." Thraka leans forward. His eyes are amber, flecked with gold, and far too intelligent for someone who just broke a table with his bare hand.
"I have fought in seventeen territorial disputes and negotiated peace treaties between clans who wanted to eat each other. I know stress. You wear it like armor."
"Mr. Thraka." Pemberton clears his throat. "Perhaps we should let everyone return to their duties and schedule individual meetings to discuss department needs."
"No." Thraka straightens. "I will start here. With this one." He points at me again. "She is the keystone. Fix the keystone, the arch holds."
I open my mouth to inform him that I am not a structural element and I don't require fixing, but Pemberton cuts me off.
"Excellent initiative. Orla, why don't you show Thraka to his new office and brief him on our current projects?"
It's not a question.
It's an order dressed in the careful pleasantry of corporate theater, and I've worked here long enough, survived here long enough, to recognize the difference between a suggestion and a directive.
The subtext is clear. Pemberton wants me out of this conference room before I can voice any of the seventeen objections currently queuing up like planes in a holding pattern.
I stand. Smooth my skirt with deliberate precision, erasing imaginary wrinkles that don't exist because I don't allow wrinkles to exist. Collect my tablet from the table and position it against my ribs like a shield, or perhaps body armor.
The cool weight of it is familiar, grounding.
"Of course," I say, my voice perfectly level, perfectly professional, perfectly devoid of the screaming happening inside my skull.
Thraka picks up his metal briefcase—his "briefcase" that I'm ninety percent certain contains beef jerky and possibly a small weapon. He grins at me with all those teeth, that wide barbaric smile that probably makes enemies flee and apparently makes Art giggle like a schoolgirl.
"Lead the way, anxious one," he says, his voice carrying across the conference room like he's addressing troops before battle. "I will fix you."
The absolute audacity.
The sheer unmitigated gall.
The breathtaking presumption that I require fixing, as if I'm a broken printer or a malfunctioning spreadsheet rather than a highly competent professional who has this entire operation running like a Swiss watch.
I turn on my heel, stilettos clicking against polished floor, and walk out of Conference Room A with my spine straight and my jaw clenched and my Fitbit probably preparing to call emergency services.
Behind me, Thraka's footsteps thud against the commercial-grade carpeting like war drums echoing across a battlefield, each step deliberate, heavy, utterly unconcerned with the concept of inside voice or professional demeanor or any of the other social contracts that hold civilized society together.
This is fine.
This is completely, totally, absolutely fine.
I have handled hostile acquisitions. I have handled budget cuts.
I have handled that time Gerald from Accounting tried to expense a trip to Vegas as "team building.
" I can certainly handle one extremely large, extremely confident, extremely persistent orc who apparently thinks my stress levels are a problem he can solve through sheer force of personality and what I can only assume will be wildly inappropriate therapeutic techniques.
I survived a master's degree in Business Administration. I survived three corporate restructures. I survived the time someone microwaved fish in the break room for a week straight.
I can survive one orc who thinks I smell like coffee and poor life choices.
The elevator is blessedly empty when we step inside. I jab the button for the third floor where the empty corner office sits waiting for whatever fresh hell Pemberton decides to inflict on my carefully maintained ecosystem.
The doors slide shut.
We stand in silence. Me staring straight ahead at the brushed steel doors. Thraka taking up seventy percent of the available space and all of the available oxygen.
"You hold your breath when you are angry," he observes.
I exhale sharply through my nose. "I'm not angry."
"More lies." He sounds delighted. "You are a fortress of lies held together with coffee and spite. I like this. Fortresses are interesting. They have weak points."
"I don't have weak points."
"Everyone has weak points." The elevator dings. Third floor. The doors open and I stride out, but his voice follows. "Finding them is how you know where to apply pressure. Or support. Depending on what is needed."
I lead him down the corridor, past cubicles where people peek over dividers to stare at the massive green figure following me like some kind of fantasy bodyguard.
Rebecca from Accounting drops her coffee mug.
It bounces, spills, creates a beige puddle that I automatically calculate the cleanup time for.
"This is your office." I stop at the corner space. Open the door. It's empty except for a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet. Standard issue. Soulless. "You'll need to coordinate with IT for computer setup and Linda can provide you with—"
"It smells like sadness."
I pause. "What?"
"This room. It smells like the dreams of corporate workers come to die." Thraka sets his briefcase on the desk. Looks around with the expression of someone evaluating a battlefield. "No windows to see the sky. No space to move. No glory."
"It's an office, not Valhalla."
"Should be both." He turns those amber eyes on me. "Work should have glory. Purpose. Not just the slow extraction of soul in exchange for currency."
"I'll have Linda send you the onboarding materials. Please review the employee handbook, specifically the sections on workplace conduct and property damage." I gesture vaguely toward where Conference Room A presumably still contains one cracked mahogany table. "We have protocols."
"Protocols." Thraka tests the word like it's a new weapon. "I have protocols too. When someone challenges you, you fight them. When someone needs help, you help them. When someone is broken, you fix them."
"I'm not broken."
He steps closer. Not threatening. Not aggressive. Just closer. I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact because I refuse to be the first one to look away.
"You are held together with willpower and caffeine," he says quietly. "This is not strength. This is the moment before collapse. I have seen warriors fight on broken legs. I have seen leaders command with arrows in their backs. They fall eventually. Everyone falls."
My throat tightens. "I don't fall."
"Then I will teach you to bend." He smiles, smaller this time, almost gentle. "Bending is not weakness. Bending is how you survive the storm."
I should leave. I should turn around and walk out and send him an email with bullet points about acceptable behavior and proper meeting etiquette. I should retreat to my office and update my contingency plans to include "What to do when HR hires an orc who thinks he's a life coach."
Instead, I hear myself say, "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you care if I'm stressed? You just got here. You don't know me. I'm just another employee to brief and forget."
Thraka tilts his head. Studies me the way I study spreadsheets, looking for patterns and variables.
"Because you are interesting," he says finally. "And because when I walked into that room, everyone else looked away. You looked at me. Met my eyes. Calculated whether you could take me in a fight."
"I did not—"
"You did. I saw it. The same look warriors get when they assess opponents." His grin returns. "You decided you could not take me in direct combat. So you would use tactics. Strategy. Weaponize the environment."
He's not wrong.
I absolutely considered whether the fire extinguisher in the hall would be effective against someone his size, and the answer was "maybe as a distraction."
"I will fix you," Thraka says again, but this time it sounds less like a threat and more like a promise. "Not because you are broken in a way that needs discarding. But because you are a blade that has been sharpened so many times there is almost nothing left. And blades deserve to rest sometimes."
My Fitbit buzzes against my wrist, the gentle vibration an unwelcome interruption to this surreal conversation.
I glance down at the screen. The message glows with its usual passive-aggressive concern: "Heart rate elevated. Deep breathing recommended."
Of course my heart rate is elevated. There's an orc in my office telling me I look like an over-sharpened blade while somehow making it sound like a compliment instead of an insult.
I press the side button with more force than necessary, silencing the notification before it can escalate to its secondary alert about sustained cardiovascular stress.
The last thing I need is my fitness tracker judging me too.
Look at the orc standing in a too-small office wearing a too-small suit, promising to fix problems I haven't admitted I have.
"I have a three o'clock meeting," I say, my voice clipped and professional, already mentally pivoting back to the safety of my calendar and its neatly segmented blocks of time.
"Then I will walk you there," Thraka announces, as if this is both logical and non-negotiable.
I blink at him. "That's not necessary. I know where the conference room is. I booked it myself. Six weeks ago."
"I insist." He picks up his briefcase. Waits by the door like some kind of massive, green gentleman. "I must learn the layout of this fortress. And you must learn that I am not a problem to solve. I am an ally you did not know you needed."
I don't need allies.
I need my schedule to stay intact and my blood pressure to return to something that won't trigger a medical intervention.
But Thraka is already holding the door open, and Pemberton made it clear this wasn't optional, and somewhere beneath the irritation and the stress and the cold calculation, something small and buried wonders what it would be like to have someone on my side who thinks corporate warfare should involve actual war cries.
"Fine," I say. "Follow me. And don't break anything else."
His laugh booms through the corridor.
"I make no promises, anxious one. But I will try."
We walk back toward the elevators, and I feel every eye in the office tracking us like we're some kind of bizarre parade.
This is going to be a disaster.
A complete, unmitigated disaster.
My Fitbit agrees.
But for the first time in three years, I have no contingency plan for what happens next, and the lack of control should terrify me.
Instead, it feels almost like relief.