Page 20 of The Orc Outcast's Conquest

What was this insane babbling about? Why was she so Fades-wretched confusing? “I got this from a boar.”

“A boar?” Her brow furrowed. “You mean like a pig?”

“Yes. One with spikes at the base of its great tusks.” He took a threatening step nearer. “Did you have anything to do with that?”

It wasn’t logical. He knew that the moment the words left his lips. Of course, she didn’t have anything to do with the boar.

And yet he stalked nearer still, looming over her, his very bones wanting to render the truths out of her throat by force.

She fucking bridged the gap between them and lifted the edge of his shirt so she could look at the injury again. Govek froze, shock icing him over.

Her hands were so blasted tender as they grazed his flesh. It made him forget the throbbing agony. “Oh, man, this looks really, really bad. Do you have bandages or anything? I can patch you up.”

Govek adjusted to finally look at himself and his chest seized with shock.

Rapidly, he became aware of his physical condition. He’d been so caught up in the woman he hadn’t realized how hard he was breathing or how clammy his skin was. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead, and his left hip was going numb.

“Are you okay?” His conquest’s worry cut through him. “Are you going into shock? Sit down.”

Ignoring her order, Govek ripped the edge of his shirt away to get a better look at his puncture wound. He found it grisly—oozing blood and pus. Black veins snaked from the hole like shattered glass. His whole side was turning purple.

“Goblin poison. Fuck.”

How the humans had gotten their hands on goblin poison was beyond him, but it did not bode well for the Under-Dwellers. Apparently, their retreat into the structure of Faeda had not been deep enough.

“What’s goblin poison?” Miranda asked with not nearly the amount of worry one would usually have speaking those words. “What are goblins?”

He couldn’t answer her. His mind was foggy and his limbs were starting to tingle with the telltale numbness that came before full paralysis hit.

Paralysis that led to inevitable death.

“Fuck,” he raged, though it came out slurred and sounded odd.

He flung his pack off his shoulder, finding the task alarmingly difficult, and tried to open it. There was nothing inside that would help him. There were no orc-made tinctures strong enough to fight goblin magic.

The Spring of the Fades was his only hope. It would heal him. He turned toward it, only to have his legs collapse. He hit the ground hard, but barely felt it.

The woman said something that sounded like a question, but he was too busy getting his muscles to obey his commands to pay her any attention.

But he should have. He needed aid.

Aid from her? He didn’t even know where she had come from.

His energy evaporated in waves and he laid down on his back in the wet leaves.

“What are you doing? I meant just sit down. Okay, fine. You do you,” the woman conceded.

His eyes were blurry, but he could still make her out. “Fade Spring.”

“What?” She settled down next to him. Her brow furrowed. “Let me help you back up.” She tried to pull on him, groaning with exertion. He could sense the pressure of her grip on his arm, but couldn’t feel the warmth.

“Spring,” he gasped, pointing a single finger as she lifted his arm. She was so fucking weak. “Water. Drench out the... poison.”

“A spring?” She looked into the woods. “Where? I don’t see it.”

For fuck’s sake. He wasn’t even surprised. Not a single person in this miserable world gave a fuck if he died here in the dirt. He shouldn’t have expected this mystery woman to either.

For all he knew, she was the one who had poisoned him. Or at least was in league with the humans who had trussed up the boar. They’d stolen goblin poison. They could have stolen magic that could make her fall from the sky, too.

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