Page 11 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
“I’m not something to be claimed, Garruk.”
“I don’t want to claim you,” I say, softer than I mean to. “I want you to stay. That’s different.”
The wind shifts again, carrying the scent of scorched bark and her perfume, that lavender-cedar thing that shouldn’t unsettle me but always does.
She looks at me for a long time—searching, testing, weighing the shape of what I just said.
Then she nods once, sharp and decisive. “Then show me everything. The orchard. The glyphs. The bond you’re so scared to name.”
My chest aches.
“Alright,” I say.
She steps closer again, still wet from the mist, cheeks flushed, hair tangled, and she’s never looked more rooted than she does in this moment.
And this time, when I offer my hand, she takes it without hesitation.
CHAPTER 7
IVY
The orchard never sleeps.
It rustles and mutters even when the stars hang heavy and low, even when the moon spills herself across the ground like she's trying to soothe something ancient. There’s a weight to the dark here—not threatening, not quite—but dense. Like the trees have lungs and they’re holding their breath for whatever happens next.
I should be inside. Should be curled up on the secondhand couch in the front room with a blanket wrapped around me and a mug of tea slowly cooling at my side like a halfway attempt at normal. But the house is too quiet in all the wrong ways. And I couldn’t sleep if you paid me.
Something called me out here.
I don’t mean that poetically. I mean I woke to wind threading itself through my hair, to my name whispered with more urgency than dream logic can carry. And instead of pretending it wasn’t real, I followed it.
Barefoot.
In October.
I walk past the swing that still tilts crooked, past the rows of pomegranate trees too stubborn to fruit, down the trail thatshouldn’t still be imprinted in my memory but is. The moonlight silver-coats the bark and the leaves and the tips of my fingers when I reach out without thinking.
I stop when I see it.
One of the south trees is in bloom.
A burst of pale-pink petals crowding its limbs like it's forgotten what season it is. Like it’s drunk on moonlight and old grief. I step closer, drawn, and breathe in. It smells like the first time I kissed someone I shouldn't have and the last time I saw my mother press her palm to the trunk of a tree and whisper her name into it.
It smells like something I left behind.
“You’re not supposed to be out here alone.”
I don’t jump—though I should. His voice always lands low and rough, like it was meant to be spoken into the dirt. Garruk steps out from behind one of the older walnut trunks, half-shadow and half-statue, arms crossed over his chest like that’s the only way he knows how to hold himself together.
“You don’t own the orchard,” I say, not turning.
“No,” he says. “But it owns you.”
I roll my eyes and finally look at him. “You’ve got to stop saying things like that unless you want people to think you’ve been spending too much time with Lettie and her allegedly sentient jam jars.”
He doesn’t smile. But he steps closer.
“You heard it, didn’t you?” he asks.
