Page 5 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
“Found a letter,” I say, trying to fill the silence. “From my father. Said you’re here because he asked you to stay.”
He nods once. “I gave my word.”
“You always keep your promises?” I ask, tilting my head.
His jaw tightens. “When they matter.”
I look away, uneasy with the weight of that. “Why you, Garruk? Why not Brody or one of the town elders or—I don’t know—someone who actually talks in complete sentences?”
He shrugs. “The orchard chose me.”
“That’s comforting.”
“You still don’t believe, do you?”
“I believe in gravity and bad decisions. Everything else is up for debate.”
He steps closer, and I don’t back up. Stubbornness wins out over instinct every time with me.
“You can feel it,” he says lowly. “You just don’t want to.”
I swallow hard. “Feeling something doesn’t make it real.”
“No. But it makes it dangerous to ignore.”
The air between us is thick with everything unsaid. I should walk away. I should turn around and slam the barn door and bury myself in anything other than this heat crawling under my skin.
But I don’t.
Because he’s standing there, shirtless and grim and glowing like the storm’s already inside him, and for all the bitterness I carry, some twisted part of me remembers the boy who used to carve animals from orchard bark and leave them on my windowsill.
“You should put a shirt on,” I mutter, voice uneven. “You’re not as distracting as you think.”
His mouth quirks. “You’re still terrible at lying.”
I walk out before I can say something stupid. Or honest.
Behind me, the wind stirs the trees, and the whisper comes again.
Ivy.
And this time, it sounds like it’s laughing.
CHAPTER 4
GARRUK
The wind doesn’t move the way it used to.
It drags through the orchard heavy as soaked cloth, tugging at the branches like it’s trying to shake the trees awake. I can feel it under my skin, in the soles of my feet when I step too close to the heart of the grove—like a heartbeat pulsing just beneath the soil. The orchard’s not sleeping anymore. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
I drive the spade into the ground and curse under my breath when it hits stone. The fence post is leaning again—third time this month—and I’m beginning to think the land’s fighting back on purpose. The roots here are old. Ornery. They don’t like change, and they sure as hell don’t like Ivy stomping around like she doesn’t still belong to it.
I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, the scent of cedar sap and churned dirt clinging to my skin. Mid-morning sun filters through the canopy above, gilding everything in pale gold, but the light never seems to quite reach the orchard floor. It dapples here and there, soft and deceptive. A trick of the trees.
She’s back in the house. I can feel her—like a weight thrown off balance. Every time she moves, the orchard responds. Thewhispering hasn’t stopped since she arrived. The south orchard bloomed three nights ago, apple blossoms spilling white and pink from dead branches like a fever dream. I found a sprout growing out of one of the rafters in the barn this morning. Sprouting from dry wood.
That doesn’t happen without blood.
