Page 17 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
“Because you said my name,” I growl.
She lets her gaze rest on me. “I meant it.”
I want to say something precious. Something I’ll regret. But before I can, I find my mouth dry.
“Come with me,” I say instead.
A half-hour later, I lead her deeper into the orchard—past the blended scent of rot apples and moss, past trees older than memory, where soil hums underfoot. The moon is rising, a swollen crimson disk behind the ridge, bleeding light through the branches. It’s the kind of moon my people used to call blood-binder, dredging something old in the heart.
I bring her to a clearing around a single ancient oak whose trunk is carved in veins of faded glyphs. The lines loop and intertwine. I kneel at the base and begin tracing them withrough fingers, brushing away moss until the symbols shine pale beneath my touch.
“I don’t understand them,” Ivy whispers, stepping closer, voice catching the hush of bark and night. “I always thought they were just decoration.”
“They’re words,” I say, voice taut. “But only you can read them now.”
She crouches beside me, fingers brushing mine, tracing the glyph shaped like a tree root looping into a spiral. Her palm presses the ancient wood.
And then she’s reading, softly: “Guardian of ancient root, bearer of blood-thread vow, bind the heart to land, keep the promise made.”
She looks up. Eyes shining.
“That’s you,” she says quietly.
I grit my teeth. “And you.”
She closes her eyes. Moonlight flickers in her lashes. “It’s why I stayed. Even when everything in me wanted to run.”
My chest tightens. The dream returns—her slipping into roots. I nearly tell her I had that dream, but I can’t. Not yet.
Instead, I brush my fingertips over the glyphs, then trail upward until my hand settles at hers.
“We share it now,” I say. “The bond.”
She swallows. “I feel it. When I touched the tree, the orchard sighed—eased, like it recognized me at last.”
I keep my silence, letting the night grow.
The crimson moon inches higher. Breathing feels loud in the quiet woods.
She sits back, pulling her knees close. I stay next to her, grazing the rough bark with my fingers—feeling old magic thrumming beneath skin and sap.
“I’m scared,” she says.
I lift my head. “Of what?”
“Of knowing nothing again. Of trusting something I can’t explain. Of what this means for us.”
“And yet,” I say, soft, “you’re still here.”
She meets my eye. “Because you keep all the silence people expect you to carry. Because you don’t let go. Not me. Not this place.”
That nearly undoes me.
We look at each other in the moonlight. The clearing feels older now, pulsing like it remembers the promise carved into the oak’s heartwood.
I brush a stray curl from her cheek. She doesn’t pull away. She leans forward instead.
Our breaths mingle.
