Chapter 3
AWAKENING
The beast was cut down quickly, already blinded.
The animal that had had Tyralk in its jaws abandoned him and fled into the woods.
I stayed in the center of the clearing while they messed about binding him up, concerned voices in a language I didn’t understand.
I pressed my hands against the earth, everything in me pounding terror as I tried not to throw up.
No. No, no no no no…
How many years of nothing and it came now, now that I’d almost escaped, now that I was finally outside the castle walls, no-
The vegetation under my hands was dying, the loam growing warm and crumbling beneath my clawing fingers.
This was a curse.
Khal strode across the clearing, weariness clear in the motion of his shoulders. "No sorcerers in the family, eh?" He slid his sword back into the sheath at his side.
"Don't send me back," I choked out.
"What?"
"Don't send me back. I just got away don't send me back."
His forehead creased. "No one is sending you back."
Vrathgar was walking back, a bloody rag in his hand. "We need to move." His glare seared over me, and he stalked away.
I started to stand, but Khal sat on the ground next to me. "They'll have to make Tyralk a crutch. It will take a few moments. You can rest."
I was still shaking.
"You really didn’t know?" He watched me. "That you had power?"
I fought for my voice. "They tested me every way they knew. I couldn't do it again. Not a spark."
"Again?"
The nausea rolled back up again. "I used power once. As a child. It was a fluke— it was supposed to be a fluke."
"What happened when you accessed it the first time?"
He found me, the words bubbled up, images of terrified guards, the bowery mother's resigned face, a cell so deep I couldn't see the light. They dragged me into the dark.
"I killed someone," I said. "He burned alive in the snow."
He digested this. "Was he deserving?"
"Probably." I ran over the guard’s face in my memory, the clearest part still in my mind, watched it move from jovial to something twisted, ugly, when I tried to pull away. To terror as his face melted off. "It happened quickly."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For what?" I looked up sharply.
"That you had to see that. It would make me not want to use magic as well, to see someone die."
I shook my head. "You're a mercenary. You kill people all the time."
"Do I?" He shrugged, looked away. "I feel like it's different. But also, our group are mostly scouts. They pay us to handle the monsters."
Someone had wrapped some cloth around a construction of bent branches, and Tyralk, the younger orc, was trying it. He was clearly in pain, but still laughed with the others.
Khal reached out a hand. "We'll be moving. Do you want to walk? I could carry you."
I would offend him if I didn't take his hand. I let him pull me to my feet, let go. "I can walk."
He nodded. He glanced at my feet, and a shadow crossed his face, but he strode back to the orcs, interacted with Tyralk. They seemed to be arguing without venom, and Khal took the pack off his back.
"Hey!" Tyralk yelled some insults, and they bantered as Khal swung the rig of bone and hides on top of his own, tying leather straps into place. They all spoke so easily with each other, even with Vrathgar, the scarred one, skulking murderously ahead.
The people in my father's house didn't act like they liked each other like this. Maybe some of the people in the warrens had. I couldn't remember. My chest hurt. Only Thea had been warm, and now she was alone.
But she's safe, my mind whispered. She's safer than you. I stumbled on. I had to believe that. Life had to have purpose, if I was going to survive. Thea wouldn't have escaped, but you will.
As I walked, the old one fell in step beside me. "Good trick," he grunted. "Fire."
I didn't know what to say, nodded.
"Can you do that again? Many times? Or one time?"
"I don't know," I said. "I've never done it more than once."
"Once is good. In winter, you practice. Ice, snow. No spread. The wizards learn that way, grow strong."
I was no wizard. I was a shambling disaster. But I nodded. I had no wish to make yet another orc look on me in disgust.
"Here, look." He stopped, pulled at a vine that crawled up many of the trees. "If weak, you eat this." He pulled off a seed pod, crushed it between his teeth.
If this was a trick to kill me, it could not be worse than a blade. I copied him. It was not unpleasant. Not like the stews at the castle, but crisper and more alive than anything I'd have eaten on the warren streets.
"Good." He smiled, so many jagged teeth.
I nodded.
"Many such things. They keep you alive."
As we walked he pointed out more things; white sprays of flowers we put straight into our mouths, small green berries I would have missed, a gray moss you could pull open to nibble on small green nubs.
This was a good distraction from aching limbs, and my racing mind.
Other things the old orc showed me before throwing them away or tucking them in a pouch.
He held out a mushroom, "Only with fire," he said. "Only cooked." He kept it.
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Gnarlak," he said.
"Gnarlak," I repeated. "Thank you."
"And you are Rowena." His eyes went to the front of the group, and I followed them. Khal glanced back at us, made himself busy with one of the others again, tightening loose straps on someone's bag.
"He watches you." The old one had said it. I looked up quickly. He chuckled.
"He feels responsible for me," I said.
"That boy feels responsible for all of us." Gnarlak muttered. "He does not watch me that way."
My stomach clenched. I did not want to consider what Khal…what my husband thought of when he looked at me. It would be neither of our problem for long, if I could only orient myself to find the city, only be strong enough to go.
"You're good for him," Gnarlak said.
"Hmm?" I wished I could redirect him back to the poisonous mushrooms and sour berries.
"You are better than the one Drazha had set for him.”
I lost my footing, grabbed a branch so I wouldn't fall. "Khal was set to marry someone else? An orc?"
Gnarlak grunted assent. "Aye. That's why we're headed into a hornet’s nest."
"What was she like?" I don't know why I didn't stop myself from asking.
"Everything Drazha was looking for, and precious little Khal was. She'd have eaten him alive." He saw my face and sighed. "A joke. We do not eat people."
I set to climbing over a fallen log, trying to quiet my spinning thoughts.
"You have one thing on her that Drazha can't deny, though."
"What is that?"
The grizzled orc followed me with a casual leap, landed and stretched. "She's never killed anything with fire before."
That night, around the campfire, Khal came to me. "Will you walk with me?"
I didn't protest, got up on my aching legs.
"Hey, Khal, are you sure you should go alone?" A few of them laughed. "What if you meet another Pthralhirgar? You want me to come with you?"
Khal's shoulders tensed. I could feel my face heat.
"I think if something attacks me, I just invited the person who did the most damage today."
There was laughter and hooting behind us. Khal pushed farther into the dark, and I straggled after him, trying to calm my pulse. I was following him away from the camp like an animal to slaughter.
I tried to calm my breathing, focus on the leaves that brushed my fingers, the roughness of bark.
Maybe it would be faster this time; maybe the dress didn't have to come all the way off.
It was already getting so tattered that I tried not to think about it.
It was short now, it would be pretty easy to-
I bumped into him with a yipe. He'd stopped moving and I hadn't noticed.
"Are you okay?" He caught my arms. The waxing moon just illuminated the curve of his jaw.
"F-fine." I grimaced at my stuttering. "I'm fine." He dropped his hands, stepped back.
"The men were out of line. I'm sorry. I'll talk to them."
I nodded, like an idiot.
"Rowena." My name sounded so strange in his lips. "We need…"
My heart drummed.
"...we need to talk about what happened to your feet."
I didn't know what to say, couldn't read mind-games in his silhouette. "I walked on them."
"I know. It's my fault that you got hurt like this. I'm used to traveling in rough conditions; it didn't occur to me that you wouldn't be outfitted. We shod our toddlers better than that." He took a breath. "You're not an orc, and your people are not orcs, and it was on me to remember that."
Was I supposed to nod? How was I supposed to respond to this?
"But Rowena…I need you to tell me when things are wrong. As my wife. I did not take you from your family so you could bleed through your shoes. I did not…make you ours so you could suffer."
He didn't sound angry. Just…tired.
"Your body, your wellbeing here, that is my responsibility. So please, tell me. Tell me if you hurt."
I almost laughed. It sounded like a joke. I would be pressed to name a part of me that didn't hurt right now. Perhaps my teeth? "Alright," I said. "I will remember." Even the most generous men had limits. Best not to waste any crumb of goodwill till I was truly desperate.
He was quiet in the dark. "I should not be the one speaking to you about this. You should have…someone who knows something." He drew breath. "Your magic…"
My throat closed up.
"From the little I know, if your power is awakening, it will continue to awaken.
And it will…it will sap your energy. I don't know if that means we need to feed you more, or if you'll need to rest, or…
" he was fumbling. I almost couldn't follow what he was saying, just focused on, he would not lock me up.
He would not send me back. "If you're more hungry, or you need to rest, please ask. We need you strong."
"Strong as a hostage, or strong as a sorceress?" I whispered.
He drew in a shuddering breath. "Both. You are both. But you are also one of us."