Page 27 of Agor

With Agor, I got the thrill of my life when dominating him in his house. But when I needed his skills and experience to fight the bog hydra later, he stepped in and took charge effortlessly.

I remembered how completely I trusted him at that moment. I put my life into the hands of the orc, turning my back to him to face the hydra’s many heads. We fought like a team, needing few words to understand each other. Like true equals.

I remembered how amazing it felt to lean onto someone strong like myself, and I missed that feeling. It proved infinitely more addictive than even the mind-blowing sex.

“Well.” I cleared my throat, fighting the lump of unexpected longing stuck in it. “We should probably head home. Time to clean these mushrooms for dinner and for drying.”

Most days, we had communal dinners. Fried mushrooms tasted the best, but they fed more people when cooked in soups and stews, watered down in huge caldrons. At least, water was the one thing we had no shortage of in the wetlands.

As the trees thinned, with the roofs of our colorful wagons coming into view from the edge of the woods, Faeena pointed at something hanging low on a branch.

“Hey, isn’t it your breast plate?”

I squinted at it, shielding my eyes from the evening sun with my hand. My mother’s armor was hanging in the branches of a black willow tree. The last time I saw the breastplate, it wasgripped tight in the hands of the orc girl who called it “a vest.” I doubted she would’ve brought it here.

“Weird.” I scanned the nearby trees, searching for a trap, but found nothing suspicious—no ropes or snares.

Gripping my knife in my hand, I walked around the tree to make sure no one was hiding behind it, either.

“Do you think he felt bad and returned it?” Faeena asked in a half-whisper, as if someone was watching us and could hear us.

He,notshe.

Faeena also thought the girl wouldn’t have been the one to bring it back.

“Why would he?” I carefully inspected the breastplate before taking it off the branch.

It looked better than when I wore it. The mud had been cleaned off it, the leather looked freshly oiled, and the worn, rusty iron buckles had been replaced with the shiny brass ones. The stretched leather cords that connected the front and back parts on the shoulders had also been replaced with what looked like a braided cord of black snakeskin.

“It looks prettier than ever,” Faeena noted.

I clutched the armor under my arm, determined never to give it up again.

As we approached the settlement, the evening seemed noisier than usual.

“What’s that commotion all about?” Faeena craned her neck, trying to peer between the wagons behind the fence.

I took my knife out again, just in case, and put my armor on.

Shouting came from the main square behind the community hall—the only building we managed to construct in over a year since we’d first arrived in the wetlands. As the only indoor space capable of accommodating the entire population of the settlement, it served as a courthouse, a wedding venue, a place ofworship, and for any other purpose that required gathering a few hundred people under one roof.

On a mild day like today, however, most of those events took place outdoors, in the large open space in front of the hall. That was where the commotion seemed to happen now.

“Is there a fight?” Faeena wondered.

As we rounded the hall, the plaza in front of it came into view. Almost the entire settlement seemed to have gathered here around a massive orc. Tied to the pole in the middle of the square, he towered over the crowd. His long pine-green hair blew in the wind, tied into a high ponytail in the middle of his otherwise bald head. The long beard of the same color looked disheveled and tangled, with its skin-snake tie gone.

I knew exactly who it was.

Agor.

But I didn’t say his name out loud. There was no need to reveal it to anyone yet, at least not until I found out what exactly was going on.

“Cut him up!” someone shouted from the crowd. “Chop his corpse into pieces and toss them all over the woods to teach his kind not to come here again!”

I peered into the crowd to see who was talking. Elder Kazimir pointed with his walking stick at Agor, sharing his gory plan, while people around him nodded in agreement.

The orc glared at the elder but couldn’t do much to defend himself. His hands were tied to the pole, with his arms stretched above his head. The thick rope also coiled around his torso and his legs, tying his entire body to the pole.

---