Page 35 of Her Orc Healer

And then, to my surprise, Kazrek reached for another grape and flicked it at me.

It bounced off my arm.

I blinked.

A slow smile spread across his face, something quiet but amused lurking at the edges of it. “You were getting too serious.”

My mouth fell open. “Did you just throw a grape at me?”

He arched a brow. “It was a gentle toss.”

A startled laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. It wasn’t graceful or delicate—just the raw, unguarded sound of something shaking loose in my chest. “If you think I won’t retaliate, you don’t know me very well.”

Kazrek’s lips curved. “Then I suppose I should prepare myself.”

I picked up a grape and, with great dignity, launched it at him.

It bounced off his shoulder.

He huffed out something like a laugh, low and gruff, and my stomach flipped.

For a moment, just a moment, we weren’t a tired shopkeeper and an orc with ghosts in his past. We weren’t two people weighed down by things we couldn’t yet say.

We were just a man and a woman sitting by the river, throwing fruit at each other in the afternoon light.

And it felt terrifyingly, beautifully easy.

Kazrek reached for another grape, rolling it between his fingers, but he didn’t throw it. Instead, his gaze lingered on me—steady, searching, as if he were trying to commit something to memory. The warmth in my chest turned to something heavier, something that made the ground feel less solid beneath me. The river hummed, a soft, endless sound, but I barely heard it over the rush of my own pulse.

I cleared my throat and turned my attention to the basket, fiddling with the edge of the linen that lined it.

"Maeve will be disappointed to have missed this," I said, my voice too light, too casual. "She would have turned this into a full battle."

Kazrek didn’t look away immediately. I felt the weight of his gaze lingering a beat longer than necessary before he exhaled, shifting slightly, as if giving me space. "I have no doubt she would have won," he murmured.

I busied myself smoothing the fabric over my knees. "She’s competitive," I said, as if that explained everything. "And stubborn."

Kazrek laughed quietly, some of the tension easing from the air. "I can't imagine where she gets that from."

I shot him a look, but the flicker of amusement in his eyes was hard to ignore. I scowled, more for effect than anything else, and plucked at a loose thread on my sleeve. "Her mother was the same," I said. "Finn never backed down from anything. Even when she should have."

The words sat between us like a stone dropped into deep water. I hadn’t meant to bring up Finn again, not here, not now—but her absence was a shadow that never quite left.

Kazrek wiped his fingers on a square of linen and leaned back on one arm, studying me. I braced for a question, maybe a remark about my sister’s reckless nature or the trouble she had left in her wake.

Instead, Kazrek turned the conversation—subtly but surely—away from her.

“You are stubborn too,” he remarked.

I blinked at him, caught off guard. “I—”

He continued, as if I hadn’t tried to protest. “Determined. Fiercely so. It’s not a flaw, but I wonder if you know it’s not always a strength either.”

A flush crept up my neck. “I don’t have the luxury of being anything else,” I said. “Everything I’ve built only keeps standing because I refuse to let it fall.”

“And if you collapse beneath the weight of it?”

I clenched my jaw. “Then I get back up.”