Page 41 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
“I don’t care about the mud.”
She tilts her head. “Then what do you care about?”
“That you’ll get tired of this. Of me. That I’ll mess it up by needing too much quiet or not saying the right thing or, I don’t know, caring about floorboards when I should be caring about what’s important.”
She steps closer, resting her forehead against my chest, right over the pendant she carved. “Then let me make something clear, you stubborn, beautiful idiot—I chose this. I chose you. Boots and all.”
Later, when she’s out at the ridge again, I go back to the nook. It’s my favorite part of the house, the secret part, the one I’ve been pouring into when she’s not looking. Three tall glass windows that look out over the orchard’s edge, catching the golden light of morning and the silver hush of moonrise. A built-in bench wide enough for her to curl up on, shelves ready for her collection of spellbooks and half-read novels and odd little plant journals. The whole space smells like cedar and new beginnings.
I sand the last corner, polish the wood until it gleams, and tuck a note in the drawer where she’ll find it when she finally explores this side of the house. Just one line. Just the truth.
“The only place more sacred than the grove is where you rest your thoughts.”
When she finds it the next evening, she doesn’t say anything at first. Just stands in the doorway, fingers brushing the windowsill, eyes wide and glassy. She turns slowly, crosses the room in two strides, and pulls me into her arms with a fierceness that speaks louder than words.
“This is perfect,” she whispers into my chest.
“You’re perfect,” I whisper back.
She kisses me. The kind that steals time.
And when we part, boots still in the doorway, I know we’re going to be just fine.
Mud and all.
CHAPTER 27
IVY
There’s a particular type of chaos that only exists when you put a dozen children in one room and give them magical responsibility. It’s not the loud kind, though there is plenty of that—sticky fingers slapping glyph-stamped leaves, giggles that spiral into squeals when someone accidentally animates their own lunch—but the under-the-skin kind. The kind that hums like static just before a spell goes sideways.
Which is why, naturally, I volunteered for this.
“You’re brave,” Lettie had said when I pitched the idea. “Or stupid. Possibly both. But I like your odds.”
Now, standing in front of a loosely assembled circle of wild-eyed five-to-nine-year-olds, each of them clutching their own carefully scribed leaf ward, I’m starting to wonder if she wasn’t right.
“All right, gremlins,” I say, drawing a chalk rune in the air with two fingers. It glows faintly, settling over the classroom like a polite dome of structure I pray will hold for at least ten more minutes. “Who remembers what wedon’tenchant without supervision?”
“Goats!” little Petra shouts, eyes enormous beneath her too-big hat.
“Exactly. And why?”
“Because Brody’s still mad about the floating incident!”
“Correct again. Bonus points for emotional insight.”
They laugh. I smile. It’s not the sarcastic twist of my mouth I usually default to, but a real, open thing I’m still learning how to wear.
The classes started as a side project, a one-weekend-a-month kind of thing to keep the orchard’s magic from slipping back into slumber. But the kids took to it like roots to spring water, and now here I am—three mornings a week, a little under-caffeinated, a little overambitious, and weirdly happy.
Mostly.
That’s when I hear the door creak open and feel the temperature in the room drop three degrees—not literally, but spiritually, like the air just remembered it had something to be nervous about.
Garruk steps inside.
And immediately half the toddlers freeze like startled deer. The other half? They scream.
