Page 13 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
There’s too much between us. Too many years. Too much silence. And yet, here we are, two people who should be strangers, standing like something's always lived in the space where our hands don’t quite touch.
“Are we a riddle too?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “We’re unfinished.”
And then his hand brushes mine. Just fingers, grazing. Testing. Waiting.
I don’t pull away.
The tree hums above us, branches arching like they know what we’re doing and approve. Garruk’s hand lingers—warm, rough, grounding—and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“I’m not ready,” I whisper.
“I’m not asking you to be.”
We stand there, fingers barely linked, the orchard swaying around us like it’s dreaming again for the first time in years. The moon watches from above, and the wind carries our silence deeper into the trees.
And for the first time since I came home, I don’t feel like I’m running.
CHAPTER 8
GARRUK
Iwake up choking.
Not on air, not on smoke—but on earth. Packed tight behind my teeth, up my nose, between my ribs. In the dream, it wasn’t water that took her—it was roots. Thorned and furious, twisting up from the orchard floor and dragging Ivy down while I stood there, roaring like a fool, watching her vanish into the soil like she’d never been real.
I claw upright in the straw with sweat slicking my back and my glyphs flaring faint gold against my skin. It’s still night. Still dark outside. The barn is silent save for the wind rattling the eaves and the slow creak of old wood settling.
I sit on the cot with my elbows on my knees and try to breathe through it.
The orchard is stirring louder every day. Ever since Ivy touched that breath-stone, its hunger has grown. It reaches for her even in sleep. And it’s not just the land that’s watching her now. It’s the magic in it—the old pulse, the part that doesn’t care who gets broken as long as the bond is sealed.
I can’t protect her from it—not completely. Not if I keep staying quiet.
So I do the only thing I know how to do when the weight gets too much—I carve.
By dawn, I’ve hauled a cedar branch into the worktable and lit the hearth low. I keep the barn windows cracked so the orchard wind can pass through. It carries the sharp tang of apple bark and leaf rot, but under that is something more familiar now. Her.
I pick up the whittling knife and get to work, shaving slivers from the branch in long, steady strokes. I don’t use patterns. Don’t draw anything out. I just let the shape come. The glyphs rise on instinct, following the shape of her name—not the one everyone else says, but the one the orchard whispered to me once, years ago, when I first took the guardian mark.
The talisman takes the form of a leaf at first, but I work in a spiral pattern through its center—a binding weave, meant for grounding, for anchoring the bearer in place. It hums faintly as I finish the final carving, the grain warm from my touch. I wrap a bit of leather cord through the hollow stem and knot it three times. Quiet magic. Old magic. The kind meant to be worn close.
I don’t wrap it. Don’t put it in a box. I just slide it into the small pocket of my jacket and go find her.
She’s behind the house, crouched near the edge of the orchard where the pomegranate trees line the property like sentries. Her curls are a wild halo around her face and she’s squinting up at one of the branches, scowling like it personally offended her.
“Do I want to know what that tree said to you?” I ask, voice still thick with sleep and cedar dust.
She startles slightly but doesn’t turn. “It’s shedding its leaves in heart shapes. I’m deeply suspicious.”
“Maybe it’s flirting.”
She huffs. “I’m not in the mood to be courted by trees.”
“Shame. They’re more polite than I am.”
That gets a snort. She finally turns, brushing her hands on her jeans. There’s dirt smudged on her cheek, and for a second, I just stare. I should tell her. About the dream. About the orchard’s hunger. About how much I want to tear the roots out with my bare hands if it means she gets to walk away clean.
