Page 38 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
She stands beside me, her body close but not crowding, and pulls something from her pocket. It’s small. Carved. A pendant, maybe. She doesn’t say anything at first, just hands it to me like it’s obvious.
The glyph on it is familiar. Not just because I’ve seen it in the orchard—drawn into bark and burned into soil—but because it’s the same shape that marked my skin during the bond ritual. It hums faintly when I brush my thumb over it, warm even in the cold.
“Made it from the heartwood,” she says. “Don’t get excited. It’s not enchanted or anything. I just thought you might want something to... carry.”
I turn it over, hold it up to the light. The grooves are deep, precise. The lines sharp. “You carved this?”
She shrugs, looking almost embarrassed. “Lettie lent me her whittling knife. Said it’d be good for my nerves. I don’t think she expected me to actually finish anything.”
I thread it onto the leather cord she offers, slip it over my head, and tuck it under my shirt without another word. Theweight of it settles against my chest like a promise I didn’t realize I’d been missing.
“I didn’t think you’d wear it,” she says softly.
“I didn’t think you’d make it.”
Her smile is small but steady. “Guess we’re both surprising ourselves lately.”
The wind picks up, rustling the leaves in a way that makes the ridge behind us feel farther than it is. It’s been quiet up there since the storm, but I know better than to trust silence too long. Ivy knows it too.
“We need a campaign,” she says suddenly, turning toward the rise in the land with a tight jaw and a fire I’ve seen before—usually right before she does something reckless. “We need to anchor that ridge. Protect it before something worse slips through. The bond holds the orchard, sure, but it’s not infinite. And that stone line is fading faster than it should.”
I grunt. “What do you have in mind?”
“A perimeter,” she says, eyes narrowing. “New wards. Natural reinforcements. Plants that respond to intrusion. Stone circles carved with glyphs. We anchor it the old way. The right way.”
“And who’s going to fund this?”
“Council approved a co-op, remember?”
“They approved you not blowing up the trees. That’s a long walk from perimeter glyphs.”
She smirks. “Then we fund it ourselves. Maybe Brody wants to pitch in. Maybe Lettie’s got some leftover powder from her ‘magical wart cure’ she won’t shut up about. Maybe we get our hands dirty.”
I stare at her a long while, the coffee cooling in my hand. “You’re not scared?”
“I’m always scared,” she says. “I just learned to keep moving anyway.”
She turns to walk back, but I catch her wrist, just for a moment. Not to stop her—just to feel the pulse there, steady and strong, a rhythm I’ve come to trust more than my own instincts. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Build a ward perimeter?”
“Stay.”
Her expression softens. She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t tease, just leans into me and lets her hand curl against my chest, over the pendant, over the place where the bond thrums quiet and deep. “Neither have I. But we’re doing it anyway.”
We start marking the ridge that afternoon. Brody shows up halfway through, chewing on a reed and pretending he didn’t overhear us from half a mile off. Ivy sketches glyphs in the dirt. I dig trenches. Brody hauls stones. We don’t talk much, and that’s fine. The work doesn’t need words.
What it needs is faith.
And for once, I think we’ve got just enough of it between us to make this hold.
CHAPTER 25
IVY
It starts with a bell. Not a loud one—nothing booming or ceremonial—but a low, lilting chime that rings out across the orchard just as the sun starts to slip past the ridge. The sound hums through the trees like the orchard itself is breathing with it, like even the roots are pausing to listen.
I’m already half-laced into a dress I swore I wouldn’t wear. It’s not white—that would’ve been too cliché even for a town like Embervale—but a deep, soft green that catches the light like moss after a rain. It’s Lettie’s handiwork, mostly stitched by hand and probably enchanted with something subtle like “ward against unexpected nosebleeds” because she insists all rituals have risks. The sleeves are long and floaty, which is exactly the kind of impracticality I never let myself indulge in.
