Page 21 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
“I remember,” he murmurs.
And there it is again—that moment, that space between breath and decision where everything feels like it might unravel into something we can’t take back.
So I step away.
I focus on wrapping raffia around a cider sign and not the fact that my heart is trying to escape through my ribs.
An hour later, I find myself tucked behind the tasting tent, wiping cider off a spilled crate of mugs and trying not to think too hard about the fact that I am most certainlynotunaffected by him.
Then I hear laughter—bright, messy, childish—and peek around the canvas.
He’s crouched near the cider booth, massive frame half-shadowed by the tent, surrounded by a cluster of kids.
Little ones.
Three of them—Maeve Fendril’s twin boys and young Elsie Carrow, still clutching a wilted dandelion in one sticky hand.
He’s telling them a story, his voice pitched low, tusks catching the lantern light just enough to look a little magical. Something about forest giants who build bonfires from fallen stars. Elsie gasps, her little hand clasped over her mouth.
One of the twins reaches up to touch his tusk, and Drogath doesn’t flinch, doesn’t shift away. He leans closer, lets the boy explore, patient and kind in a way that tears something open inside me.
He’sgoodwith them.
Gentle in a way you’d never expect from someone built like a mountain.
And watching him—crouched in the flickering dusk, surrounded by joy and soft hands and everything he once thought he couldn’t have—I feel something inside me bend under the weight of it all.
I never stopped loving him.
I just buried it. Under work. Under flowers. Under fear and routines and the belief that love wasn’t something safe enough to want anymore.
But it’s still there.
Still blooming wild in the places I forgot to prune.
And I don’t know what to do with that. Not yet.
So I gather the empty mugs, press my hand to my chest like I’m trying to steady the bloom, and head back inside before I do something reckless like hope.
CHAPTER 10
DROGATH
Rain shears sideways through the orchard, clawing at the wreaths Tessa’s stapled to every fencepost. Thunder cracks hard enough to rattle my molars. Her silhouette flickers through the downpour—small, stubborn, wrestling a ladder in the mud.
I catch her waist mid-climb, hauling her down with a growl. “They’rerotten vines and glue, Tessa. Let them drown.”
She wrenches free, rain sluicing off her chin. “That one has blackthorn cuttings from Mrs. Quill’s wedding!”
“Quill’s been divorced three times. Let the omen have it.” I snatch the ladder before it topples. Lightning flashes, bleaching the panic in her eyes white.
“That’s not—Drogath, your coat!”
“Fuck the coat.” I toss the sodden tailored wool into the mud, start yanking wreaths down in bunches. Dryads could’ve woven these and I’d still incinerate every leaf to get her inside faster. She snarls something hot and sylvan about disrespecting nature and swipes at my wrists.
Thunder booms again. Closer.
She slips—I catch her. She kicks the ladder. I crush her wristful of garland against my chest.
