I stare at Steagor, my tired mind struggling to follow his words.
“What?” I ask.
He sighs and turns away from me. At first, I think he might leave the room again, but he takes something from the chest, then drags the three-legged chair closer to the bed and sits facing me.
He offers me the slightly crumpled letter. “You should read this.”
I take my father’s missive from him, smoothing it out on my lap. “Thank you.”
My eyes water at the thought of reading the scribbled words. I can’t. I couldn’t, not even if I wasn’t as weak as I am now.
With trembling fingers, I hold the letter out to Steagor. “Will you read it for me? Please. My head hurts.”
He frowns, then glances at the door, as if he’s thinking of running after Taris and having her inspect me once more. Then he focuses back on me and takes the letter.
“All right,” he says. “I can do that.”
He tilts the paper toward the lantern and meets my gaze. I lean forward in anticipation, my heart thudding loudly.
“My dear friend,” Steagor reads, “I hope this letter finds you well.”
At the greeting, my throat closes up, a painful lump obstructing my breathing. I blink quickly to chase away the tears, and Steagor looks at me, but I wave for him to continue.
“I send it with my daughter—my sweet Poppy—in the hope that you will be able to help her. You are the only man in my acquaintance who will fulfill my request without taking advantage of my daughter.
“My health is failing, and the woman I married in an attempt to give Poppy a mother after my first wife passed away is not fond of her. I do not believe she will do Poppy justice, so I ask it of you.
“You could step into the role of her guardian and help her do what I couldn’t accomplish—find a husband. Help her create a family. She is a kind and hardworking girl, and she would make a wonderful wife to the right man.
“Forgive me for saddling you with this responsibility. If I could, I would travel with her to see you one last time, but my heart has grown weak, and I cannot. I hope you will do right by Poppy. She has no one else in this world.
“Yours in memory,
“Franek.”
Steagor passes the letter back to me. I stare at it, the lines and the letters blurring. I dab my eyes with the sleeve of Steagor’s shirt, but the words don’t get any clearer, though they’re etched into my mind. My heart beats faster, the more I think about what I just heard. My palms dampen, and I know I’m blushing furiously, all the way to my hair. The fateful words echo in my head as if a great bell tolled, loud enough to set my ears ringing.
The responsibility.
Her guardian.
A hardworking girl.
A husband.
Finally, I peel my gaze from the paper and glance up at Steagor. He’s leaning back in his chair, his massive arms crossed over his chest. I want to say something, anything, but words won’t come.
I offer the letter to Steagor, and he takes it, then places it on the bed by my feet. Now that I think about it, the letter is much more creased than it was when I saw it last in the forest—as if he’d crumpled it in a ball, then smoothed it out again.
He probably resents his new role.
Forgive me for saddling you with this responsibility.
Even my father knew that what he was asking of his old friend was too much. They’d corresponded over the years, and letters came regularly, but I was never privy to any of them, so I have no idea if my father ever mentioned something like this to Steagor.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt out in the end. “I won’t be any trouble for you. You don’t have to do any of what he asked.”
Steagor remains motionless, his dark eyes reflecting the light of the lantern. “You don’t want a husband?”
I goggle at him. “What? No, I-I mean, yes, eventually? But I don’t know anyone I’d want to marry, and I don’t see why this should be your—”
“Responsibility,” he finishes for me.
I duck my head, another wave of mortification washing over me. Oh, how I wish this bed would swallow me up whole. Then I wouldn’t have to endure his stare.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I didn’t know the letter was about this.”
Steagor doesn’t answer immediately, so I chance a look at him. He’s studying me closely, even if his posture remains the same. A vein pulses in his neck, testifying to his rapid heartbeat.
He’s not as calm as he seems.
He’s likely furious.
With a groan, I bring my knees up and bury my face in them. “This is a mess.”
The big orc clears his throat. “Why did you come here? If you didn’t know about the…?”
I squint at him and add, “The husband thing?”
He jerks his head in a nod, his frown returning.
I push my fingers through my hair, then remember how tangled it is and pull my hand away. “I’m not exactly sure.”
That seems to confuse him. He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and more of that delicious scent wafts over to me. Is it his own soap? Because Taris certainly didn’t smell that way—I’d only gotten a whiff of lavender and chamomile from her.
“You traveled all the way here without knowing what you wanted?” he asks.
I fiddle with the sleeve of his shirt, trying to find the right answer. “Yes,” I say at last. “I think I was glad I had a way out. Staying at home was, um, not an option. So it was either this or find a job with complete strangers, and I figured some sort of connection was better, even if I only ever heard about you through my father’s stories.”
Steagor watches me intently. “Why was staying home not an option?”
“My stepmother inherited everything after my father passed away. That’s the law, you know?”
I shrug, as if this doesn’t bother me, as if it didn’t hurt that she got not only the house where I was born but also the entirety of the tailor’s shop on the ground floor, where I’d helped my father with his business and learned everything I knew about making beautiful clothes.
“She made it clear that I could either work to stay there or leave,” I add. “And since I would only be working for room and board, that didn’t seem like a good option. So I left.”
That was a simplified version of the truth. I don’t want Steagor’s pity, so I don’t mention the fact that in the days and weeks following my father’s death, my stepmother had confiscated all my belongings and moved me to the servants’ quarters, dismissed the servants, and had me do their work on top of running the shop. I don’t mention her callous disregard of my grief, of how she’d nagged and complained every time she saw me crying. Of how she’d skimped on my father’s funeral and didn’t even get him a tombstone.
I wanted to rail at her for everything she’d done, but as an unmarried woman, I didn’t have any power—or wealth—to fight her. So leaving really was the only choice. That, or I could stay as her indentured servant forever, and that’s not what I wanted to do with my life.
“You left?” he repeats. “Just like that?”
I grit my teeth and nod, even though there’s more to tell. Those wanted posters in Ultrup weren’t completely off base after all. But no matter what my stepmother or the guards might say, I only took what was rightfully mine. Even if the law decrees otherwise, I deserved a fair chance at life, and I set out searching for it, alone.
Steagor leans back once more, pensive. “You look like him, you know.”
I snap my head up in surprise. “My father? You think so? He always said I took after my mother.”
She’d been the one with the curly blonde hair and round cheeks. I barely remember her now, but Father had been fond of telling stories about her. At least until he married Tamra and stopped.
“You have his eyes, so blue. And his chin,” Steagor says. “And if I remember correctly, he was fond of making rash decisions, too.”
I hug my knees, smiling a little. “Not in his later years. But if his stories are anything to go by, he was quite the adventurer in his youth.”
Steagor stands, takes the chair back to the desk, and piles several fur rugs from around the room on the floor next to the bed. Then he opens the chest and takes out a blanket and brings it to the pile.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Getting comfortable while we talk,” he says.
I stare at him. “On the floor?”
He raises one black eyebrow. “Would you rather I join you in bed?”
“Oh,” I squeak. “Um, I—”
He lets out a rough laugh. “Don’t worry, sweet. I’m not going to maul you.”
“I didn’t think you would, I just—”
I stop myself abruptly, then smack a hand over my eyes as he goes to remove his pants.
Oh gods.
Dawn said that orcs didn’t have the same reservations about bodies and nudity as humans do, but I’ve never seen that much male flesh on display since…oh, ever. It’s a good thing his tunic reaches past his groin. Especially as Steagor is massive, his muscled legs long and scarred, and so, so green.
Which I know, because I’m peeking through my fingers.
He catches me in the act, so I dive for the other side of the bed and burrow under the covers. A low chuckle is his only answer, then footsteps sound, moving around the room.
“It’s safe to look now,” he murmurs from somewhere behind me.
I roll over, blinking. He must have blown out the lanterns, because the room is dark. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced darkness this complete—I can’t even see my own nose.
Shuffling from the floor tells me Steagor is getting comfortable there. All of a sudden, a huge swell of gratitude for this strange orc overcomes me, and I’m sniffling again.
“Thank you,” I choke out.
He sighs. “Don’t thank me yet, Poppy.”
I sniffle and pull the blankets higher, right to my chin. “Will you tell me how you met? My father, I mean.”
A pause, as if he’s thinking through his memories. “He never told you?”
I shrug, then remember he can’t see me. “He did. But I-I like listening to your voice.”
It’s a truth that slips out, shared under the cover of darkness. It’s true, his voice, the low timbre of it, soothes something inside me, and I want to hear more of it.
“Very well,” he says.
I swear he’s smiling, and the thought sends warmth through me, like I’ve accomplished something.
“You know I was imprisoned in your hometown?” he starts.
“Mm-hmm,” I say, familiar with that part of the story. “And Father was serving his guard duty.”
He’d never been a professional soldier, but all men went through three years of military service sometime between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, depending on the county. My father had been lucky to have gotten a post in our hometown of Morav, since that meant he could still see Mother and me often, even if he had to stay at the soldiers’ barracks most of the time.
“That’s right,” Steagor says. “Well, I was a young orc, too stupid to know better, so I crossed paths with a patrol too close to the city walls one night, and they thought I wanted to break into the city and steal away all the young maidens.”
I chuckle. “Oh, I can imagine how those small-town soldiers would have reacted to seeing an orc.”
He lets out a long sigh. “To be fair, if it had been another one of my clansmen from the old clan, their fears might have been founded in truth.”
“Really?”
Despite my tiredness, I’m intrigued enough by this story that I roll to my side and peer into the darkness to make out even the outline of Steagor’s big form. But all I see is a black void, so I close my eyes, relying on my other senses instead.
“It’s why we left,” he says. “Gorvor, before he became our king, was the son of the old king of the Boar Clan. It was not a good time for us. I was caught returning from a scouting mission for Gorvor, trying to find a place to relocate a good part of the clan who wanted to escape king Trak’s rule.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. “Is Boar Clan the source of all those horrible tales?”
“Aye,” he says. “Most of them anyway. Human imagination is endless, so a lot of the stories were embellished.”
“Mm,” I agree.
“Well, there I was, nineteen years old, lying in a cell, barely alive because they shot me full of arrows. Didn’t even give me a chance to explain what I was doing there,” he continues. “And as I was slowly bleeding to death, one of the guards slipped inside my cell.”
I smile to myself, because I’ve heard this part of the story already.
“I thought he was going to slit my throat,” Steagor says, “given how the other guards had behaved. But he pulled out a needle and a thread and sewed up all my wounds like I was a rag doll.”
“He always used to say that you were lucky to live through that,” I interject.
“But he never mentioned I was an orc?” Steagor asks.
“No,” I admit. “I have no idea why.”
“Hmm.” Steagor pauses, then adds, “I was lucky to live. I would have died without him. He brought me water and small food rations. The other guards all treated me as if I was a dumb animal. He could have gotten in trouble for it, too, but he was clever and didn’t get caught.”
“He told me you two started talking during his shifts,” I say.
“We did. It took me weeks to get my strength back enough to break down the door and get out of there.”
I imagine a young Steagor—one without those scars and without the frown that now seems permanently etched into his face. He must have been so striking.
“He didn’t help you with that?” I ask, surprised. I’d always assumed my father had something to do with the orc’s escape.
“Oh, no,” Steagor says. “I waited until it was someone else’s shift. I didn’t want him to get blamed.”
“That was smart,” I say.
He snorts. “Wouldn’t go that far, but I wasn’t about to ruin the life of the man who helped me.” He pauses, then adds, “He used to talk a lot about you. And your mother.”
My throat closes up again, and I have to swallow before I find my voice. “Really?”
“He loved you very much,” he says in his low rumble.
I know that, I do. But then why didn’t he make sure I was taken care of? I’d stayed home and worked with him in the shop, even though girls my age got married as early as seventeen, sometimes. It hadn’t even occurred to me to do otherwise, because of course it was all going to be mine one day.
One day.
Up until the moment when his heart failed, my father kept saying I would raise my children in the house I grew up in, and he would retire and stay on as the grumpy old grandpa who secretly dotes on his grandkids.
Then he fell ill, and I was left with nothing.
I flip on my back, staring into the dark ceiling. Tears flow freely now, down my temples and into my hair. I don’t even try to stop them. I haven’t really let myself mourn him—or the loss of everything I knew in life, but here, I feel safe enough to maybe let go.
“Don’t cry, sweet,” Steagor murmurs.
I start, wondering how he knows, but he must have heard me sniffling. Quickly, I dry my tears and attempt to pull myself together.
“Sorry,” I rasp. “I’m just, uh, so tired.”
“It’s all right,” he says. “To be sad.”
It’s as if those words are the permission I need. The dam inside me breaks, letting loose a torrential flood of feelings I’ve been holding back for weeks, first because I didn’t want to share them with my stepmother, then because I was too worried about being on the road—and escaping.
I curl into a ball and sob into the pillow, soaking it with my tears. My shoulders shake, and I clench my fists to fight the pain.
Then a large, warm hand closes around my fist. Steagor gently pries at my fingers until I relax them, then slips his hand in mine. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to comfort me with useless words. He simply bears witness to my grief, keeping me company in the dark.
