Page 103 of Her Orc Healer

The mark on my throat—where he'd bitten me that last night—pulsed with warmth. With memory. The way he'd held me after, like I was something precious. Something worth keeping. And now he was going to leave. Just like everyone else.

Except...

He wasn't running.

He wasn't choosing himself over us. He was choosing what he thought would save us—even if it destroyed him. Even if it meant becoming nothing but shadow and forgotten names.

Sylwen's words echoed in my head:"Are you willing to pay what it costs, healer? Are you willing to carry what comes after?"

And I knew, suddenly, horribly, that he was.

I'd spent so long being strong. So long holding everything together. So long telling myself I didn't need anyone—because needing people meant watching them walk away. But Kazrek had never walked away. He'd stayed. Steady. Present. Even when I pushed him back. He'd seen me at my worst—exhausted, broken, afraid—and hadn't flinched. And now...

Now I could see him. Really see him. The cracks in his armor. The weight he carried. The guilt he’d hidden behind that quiet strength. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't untouchable. He was just as scarred as I was—maybe more.

But he was real.

The shadows reached for him again, promising peace, promising forgetting. Their whispers grew louder, more insistent. The vision of me and Maeve safe and happy without him flickered like a beacon in the dark.

I didn't scream. Didn't beg. Didn't try to run to him. I just stayed. Watched. Let him know he wasn't alone. Because that's what I'd needed all along—not someone to fix me, not someone to save me.

Someone to stay.

Kazrek looked down at Maeve one last time. His thumb brushed a curl from her forehead, trembling slightly. She didn’t stir. Her light was nearly gone, but he still held her like she was more than a vessel. Like she was a child. A girl. A life worth every ounce of what he was about to give.

The shadows pressed closer, their promises growing sweeter, more desperate. But his grip on her tightened, and when he spoke, his voice was rough but steady:

"No."

The battlefield trembled.

"I don't run anymore."

The compass in Maeve's hand flared—sudden and bright, like a star catching fire. Golden light spilled through her fingers, through the cracks in the metal, spreading across her skin in delicate patterns. Not marks of binding. Lines of connection.

Kazrek's magic answered. It flowed into her as he pulled the darkness from inside of her.

It wasn’t a wrenching. It wasn’t clean. It was slow—like unspooling a thread embedded too deep. The runes on her body dimmed. The red light receded, strand by strand, burned out by something warmer. Gentler.

His healing magic.

The kind that listened. The kind that soothed. The kind that stayed.

But it cost him.

I saw it in the way his back arched, in the tremble of his hands, in the flash of pain across his face. Every second the darkness stayed in him, it hollowed him out. Searched for somewhere to root. Somewhere to grow.

But he didn’t let it. He didn’t bind it to himself. Instead, he turned—arms flung wide—and drove it into the earth beneath them.

The ground pulsed. Once. Twice. A rhythm like breathing.

The roots that had been wrong before—twisted and hungry—began to shift. To remember what they were meant to be. Living things. Growing things. Ancient and patient and willing to hold what needed holding. The corruption twisted, coiled, tried to resist—but the earth took it. Drew it in. Held it.

A conduit.

Not a container.

Kazrek gave it somewhere to go.