Page 8 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
He grunts.
I keep walking, the brush crunching beneath my boots until I’m close enough to see the sweat gleaming on his forearms and the faint shimmer of glyphs waking beneath his skin. It’s always too much—how he takes up space without even trying, how the quiet around him feels thick enough to drown in.
“They think the orchard is alive,” I say, folding my arms.
“It is.”
I sigh. “Not you too.”
He finally faces me, wiping the axe with a cloth before setting it against the trunk. “You’ve seen what it does. You’ve felt it.”
“I’ve felt wind and weird dreams and a general sense of existential dread. That’s not magic. That’s being thirty and dealing with my family’s estate.”
He steps toward me, slow and steady. “You’re scared.”
“Of you? Always.”
“Of what you are.”
The words hit harder than I expect. My mouth opens, then shuts again.
I look away first. “You’re really annoying when you’re right.”
“Been told.”
I don’t know who makes the next move—maybe we both do—but we end up too close. His shoulder brushes mine as I step sideways to avoid a particularly rude root, and I say something half-mocking about personal space, and he snaps back with a dry comment about city girls being delicate.
And then we’re grappling.
I don’t mean to shove him. He doesn’t mean to grab my wrist. But the tension between us is a live wire, and something in the orchard answers like a drumbeat. We spin, off-balance, stumbling through brush and tangled branches, and before I can blink, my foot hits moss-slick stone and my entire world tilts.
The creek catches us.
Cold water slams into my back and all the air goes out of me. I come up sputtering, hair plastered to my face, arms flailing as I try to find footing in the mud. Garruk’s beside me, already half-standing, soaked and glowering, water sheeting down his chest in a way that would be hilarious if I weren’t freezing and furious.
“You did that on purpose,” I hiss, slapping water away from my eyes.
He wipes a hand down his face and growls. “You started it.”
“You yanked me!”
“You shoved me first.”
“Oh my god, are you twelve?”
We’re standing waist-deep in the creek, water lapping around us, breathless and dripping and snapping at each other like it’s all the orchard’s fault. I hate how his eyes pin me, how every word that leaves his mouth feels like a dare.
“Why do you care what I do with the land?” I demand. “It’s not yours.”
“No,” he says. “It’s yours. That’s the problem.”
I stop moving.
His chest rises and falls like he’s barely holding something back. The light shifts above us, fractured through the canopy, catching the droplets on his skin and making them shine like oil.
“It wants you,” he says quietly. “And I don’t know what that means yet. But you walking away won’t change it.”
I want to say something clever. Something sharp. But the words snag in my throat.
