Page 26 of Agor

“Thank gods, you made it too,” I exhaled, coming closer.

She grabbed me into a tight hug, covering me in suds. I allowed myself to enjoy it for just a moment before shifting away.

“I’m drenched in filth, Faeena. You really don’t want to hug me right now.”

She beamed, undeterred.

“Praised be the gracious Queen of the Afterlife for leaving you in this world.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think even the queen wanted me in her realm looking like this. How is Gleb? Ilya? Did anyone get hurt yesterday?”

“We’re good. Everyone is well. We made it. But where haveyoubeen?” Delight shifted to concern on Faeena’s face. “Becca, what happened?” She covered her mouth with her hand, wrapping an arm around my shoulders despite my filthy clothes. “What did the orcs do to you?”

“Believe it or not, the orcs weren’t the worst of it. I’ll tell you everything later.” Or maybe not exactlyeverything. Faeena didn’t need to know the details of my one-on-one time with the orcs’ High Chief. “But first, I need to bathe, sleep, and eat something. Exactly in that order. Here. These are for the girls.” I took out Violette’s squirrel pies from my pockets. They were now cold and flattened but luckily remained unmarred by mud or blood, protected by my deep pockets. And they still smelled delicious. Faeena’s children were too young to remember eating bread. It’d be a real treat for them. “They’re made with real flour.”

“Oh, by the Mother of the World, where did you get these?”

“Later.” I waved her off, stumbling toward my wagon. “I’ll tell you all later. Please.”

No one waited for me inside my modest dwelling. I didn’t even have a cat. There simply was no food to feed a pet. But right now, I was glad just to see my bed again.

Chapter 6

Becca

“We should come back here again,” Faeena said, stuffing her satchel with freshly cut mushrooms

There were plenty of mushrooms this time of year. They also grew close enough to the edge of the woods for us not to risk running into orcs out here. That was the reason our village elders allowed for just the two of us to go forage for mushrooms this afternoon.

Faeena did most of the foraging. I was here to protect her. But wishing to be more useful, I brought my own satchel and had filled it half-way with mushrooms already.

“It’s a good patch,” she said. “We should come here again to get more mushrooms to dry. I’m afraid we still don’t have enough to last us through the winter.”

She sighed. Her worries echoed through my mind with dread. This winter promised to be especially brutal since we had so little extra food to preserve for the cold, hungry months ahead.

“We’ll come back,” I promised, stuffing more mushrooms into my satchel.

Weighted down by worries, we worked in silence for a while, then Faeena asked out of the blue, “You know what I keep wondering about?” She glanced at me with her gray-blue eyes from under a strand of long dark hair that made it out fromunder her embroidered headcloth. “How do orcs kiss? Don’t those tusks of theirs get in the way?”

I focused on cutting the thick, firm stem of a mushroom. There were two kinds that we found today. Bright orange mushrooms with frilly cups shaped like funnels smelled amazing when fried. They made even the boring water spinach dish taste delicious when added to it. The chubby brown ones with wide bulbous stems like the one I’d just cut kept well after being dried over a stove. Women would string them onto ropes, then hang them all over their kitchens to add to soups in the winter. The pleasant woodsy smell of the dried mushrooms had already filled many of our wagons in preparation.

“You don’t have to answer it,” Faeena added quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry. I—”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” I assured her.

For the four days since my return from the orcs’ keep, Faeena had been acting as if treading on eggshells around me. Ever since I told her that I ended up spending the night with an orc, she’d been treating me like a victim, when I refused to think of myself as such. My experience with the orcs’ chief was not traumatizing. Many things that happened that night were brutal. But Agor was not one of them.

I actually liked recalling my time with him. The memories excited me just as much as being with him did. Just last night, I made myself come so hard on my hand, I left teeth marks on my forearm, trying not to scream out loud so as not to wake up the entire settlement, as I imagined riding his pierced cock again.

“But I can’t answer your question,” I said to Faeena. “I don’t know about the tusks. I didn’t kiss the orc.”

“You didn’t?” She stared at me wide-eyed.

I shrugged. “It was just sex, Faeena. Nothing more.”

To him, it probably was. But to me, it wasn’t just sex with Agor that had occupied my thoughts a good chunk of the timesince we parted. He’d made me feel things I’d never experienced with any other man before. And it wasn’t just the sexual things.

I had male friends. I’d had lovers. Over the years of protecting our village, I’d led many men into a battle. Men usually either accepted my leadership completely, looking up to me for commands and directions, or fought my authority at every opportunity, wasting our combined energy on a useless struggle for dominance.

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