Page 36 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
"You crushing my leg?" Her voice comes muffled against my throat, warm breath ghosting over rainwater already cooling on my skin.
"Solid bone." I rumble it low. Her faint snort vibrates against me. "Yours."
She tilts her head, lips catching the rainwater trickling down my neck. Just a graze. "Yours," she echoes, but it sounds different. Like possession, not weight. Her big toe draws a slow line down my calf, calloused against damp skin. "Best argument I’ve ever had for getting drenched."
Her ragged necklace glints, a tiny obsidian arrowhead dangling over my chest. It swings faintly as she moves. I cup the back of her head, heavy braid tangled around my wrist.
"Seems the sky hasn't exhausted itself." She props herself up on an elbow beside me. Rainwater runs into the hollow of her throat when she lifts her chin. Her tangled hair spills over my forearm, dark vines against gray-green skin. A single leaf clings to her shoulder blade. That crooked smile plays on her lips, a world away from the defiant wildfire she usually wears.
"Better find somewhere less… drippy." Her finger hooks under the leaf on her skin, flicks it away. "Unless you fancy a slow drowning?"
"Patience." My hand reaches up, catches a heavy bead of water just before it lands on her collarbone. It rolls along the crease of my palm. "Storm tires itself."
A fresh drip plinks onto my brow ridge. She leans over me, blotting it with her thumb. Her gaze travels over my face – the tight braid fanned out on the moss, rain-slick brawn sculpted stark in the flickering light, the filed-down tusks barely shadowing her curved lip.
Not pity. Not fear. Looked at like this, bare and scarred and marked, sometimes feels like being seen for the first time.
CHAPTER 23
IVY
Iwake to the kind of stillness that feels sacred—the kind that settles into your bones and makes you believe, if only for a breath, that maybe things really are going to be okay. There’s a breeze curling through the window, cool and sweet, stirring the curtain like it’s beckoning me back to the orchard. Somewhere out there, birds are fighting over whose dawn song gets center stage, and if I close my eyes, I can almost pretend I’m not still sore in places I forgot existed.
Garruk’s already gone. Or rather, he’s not in bed, which in his language means he’s somewhere within a hundred feet, probably shirtless, probably hammering something, probably acting like he didn’t just bare his soul to me under a storm that nearly tore the sky in half.
I stretch, slow and catlike, muscles aching with the good kind of pain, the kind that means I survived something—and not just physically. Emotionally. Magically. Romantically, even, which is a word I haven’t let myself use out loud but is now starting to settle into my vocabulary whether I like it or not.
When I wander outside in Garruk’s shirt, which hangs on me like a curtain and smells like bonfire smoke and stubbornness, I find him exactly where I expect to—by the house. Or rather,the skeleton of a house. The beginnings of a porch, a frame too rough to be called anything yet, and a pile of wood that I suspect he wrestled into shape with his bare hands.
He doesn’t look up. Just jerks his chin toward a corner marked out with stones and says, “That’s where the fireplace’ll go.”
“Good morning to you too,” I reply, crossing my arms, which is difficult in a shirt that could double as a tent. “Building a house without even asking if I’m staying? Bold move.”
“You’re staying,” he says simply. No hesitation. No uncertainty.
“You’re very sure about that.”
“I know what you look like when you’re trying to convince yourself to leave. And I know what you look like when you’ve already decided to stay.” He finally turns to me, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of one callused hand. “You’re not going anywhere.”
And damn it, he’s right. I’ve already unpacked the parts of myself I swore I’d never show anyone again. I’ve rooted myself in a way that doesn’t feel like giving up or settling down—it feels like finally growing in the direction I was always meant to.
“Then make the porch big enough for a swing,” I say. “And I want a greenhouse. And a reading nook. And a real kitchen this time, none of that open fire pit nonsense.”
He grunts, but it’s the fond kind. “Anything else, your highness?”
“Space for Brody to store his tools. He’ll probably show up whether we want him to or not.”
He does. Three hours later.
Wearing a smug grin and a toolbelt slung over his shoulder like he’s been preparing for this exact moment for weeks. “Well, well,” he says, dropping a bag of nails beside the half-built frame. “You’ve gone domestic.”
I glare at him. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m hilarious. And you’re glowing. It’s gross.”
Garruk doesn’t say much—he never does when Brody’s around—but he hands him a hammer and gets back to work like the two of them have been doing this every summer since birth. I mostly get in the way, offer unsolicited design suggestions, and throw a wrench at Brody when he makes a comment about how the orchard looks happier now that I’ve finally ‘put out.’
It’s not a lie, though. The land does feel… brighter. Not in a loud way. Just in the way it hums underfoot, content and slow, like it’s finally settled into itself again. Like it trusts us.
