8. To Share a Fire #3
“Maybe there was.” The words hurt in my throat.
“But my father made sure I hadn’t really talked to anyone in so long, and I wasn’t someone they could ask for things, and…
I wasn’t ready to be a bother.” I ran my fingers over the rough wool of the cloak.
“I wanted to choose what happened to me. And I wanted him to choke on it.”
He was quiet, spoke again. “Spite is not the worst reason someone has chosen me.” He sounded tired, not angry but tired.
“If I can’t be something you’re running to, at least I’m not what you’re running from.
” Why did he sound disappointed? I’d killed for this man.
Had that disappointed him? He didn’t seem the type to want a lack of violence in a wife. “They thought you’d entrance me.”
“Maybe.” My own thoughts were sluggish, my body bone-tired. “They wanted someone married to you because orcs develop bonds, you feel affection.”
“Do humans feel affection?”
“You don’t…you don’t kill your in-laws,” I got out.
He sounded dead-tired. “We don’t kill in-laws, and that translates to sex magic for you.”
There was so little to say, “Lots of people would like to kill their in-laws.”
He let out an explosive breath, and I froze again, fear locking up my spine. But no, he was injured; I could probably take him, and Goddess, I didn’t need to. I didn’t really believe I needed to fight him right now.
“We do develop bonds,” he enunciated. “We do ‘feel affection.’ Am I wrong in thinking you do as well?” There was something raw in his voice.
Denial balanced on my tongue, but that was foolish, and I knew it.
I knew that throwing my lot in with the orc, choosing him, should include giving him whatever he was asking for, my flesh or false assurances.
True assurances. When the power was balanced against you, you gave whatever you had to and you survived.
The power didn’t seem so very balanced in his favor right now, with him slumping from blood loss and my shoulders aching from our pack frame.
The power didn’t seem so very in his favor, when I’d killed three men.
But I found that I didn’t want to harm him.
I just also didn’t want to debase myself with a lie.
“...we do,” I said, and I knew I’d waited too long.
“But you haven’t,” he said.
The words tangled on my lips. “...I don’t know,” I rasped back. And when he didn’t answer, in the blackness, I got out, “You seem well enough. For an orc.”
He didn’t move, in the darkness. I was still fumbling over our equipment, fiddling with the stolen cloak, the pack buckles, the ties, but he was so still that when he spoke, finally, I flinched.
“There will be time to figure this out,” he said, “when we get to the enclave. There’ll be time to determine what comes next.
” His words slurred, just a little, not alcohol, just exhaustion.
My fingers tightened in the fabric on the stolen cloak from which I’d made my bed, and he said, “No good ever came from making choices on nights like tonight.”
I didn’t know what choices he could be thinking of.
I curled up with the wool between me and the cold earth, and I pulled my knees up to my chin, and every part of me hurt, the cut from the talon hot and smarting, the jarring from my tumble into the ravine melding with the burning from pushing every muscle too far.
I hoped the way my thoughts jumbled was exhaustion.
I prayed it wasn’t fever, though it felt like praying had done me little good these last few years.
“You’re owed sanctuary, by the Drashik.” His voice jerked me back from sleep, and I managed a mumbled, “What?”
“My people,” he said. “They owe you sanctuary, since you became my wife. If I die…” White bone caught the light, and I realized he’d hooked his fingers through the dark webbing of that necklace, a small bead caught between his fingers.
“If I die, take this off of me, as a token. Tell them my name. They’ll help you. ”
“Why are you telling me this?” The words tasted ashen on my tongue. “You’re not going to die.”
“I was a fatherless bastard, and they were there when I needed them. If the last thing I leave to this rutting world is a child the same…you’ll need them. If there’s a child…”
Understanding went sick in my stomach. I couldn’t tell him there would be no child.
“If there’s a child, and I’m not here, go to them for help. Promise me. Do not…do not take it back among humans.”
“I promise,” I said, as much to get him to rest as to mean it. “Drashik, necklace, Vrathgar One-Eye’s-Son. Now sleep. I’ll…I’ll kill anything that comes to hurt you.”
The sound he made might have sounded like a laugh, if it wasn’t so bitterly sad.
It should have been impossible to sleep, as much as the exhaustion dragged me down in every limb.
The tears in my eyes that I didn’t understand, for myself, for the blood under my nails, for the orc who worried for a child he’d never see, they should have glued me to the present in the cold and the pain.
But I drifted, and fell, and the night was dreamless.