Page 41 of Her Orc Healer

Iris studied me for a long moment. Then she said, very simply, “Not everyone leaves.”

The wind shifted, cooler now. My hands curled around my mug.

Iris let the silence settle before she spoke again, her voice quiet. “Rowena, what if you’re the one who’s been running all along?”

The thought struck me somewhere deep, somewhere I didn’t want to look too closely.

So I didn’t answer.

I let the silence stretch. Iris didn’t push. The night carried on below. And somewhere in the distance, I imagined the sound of the river still moving—slow, steady, unbothered by what it had carried away.

Chapter 11

Twodaysofsilence.

That was all it had been. Not even forty-eight hours. But the space Kazrek left behind felt bigger than it should have.

The first day, I told myself I was relieved. That it was good he hadn’t come by. That after the mess I made, after the way I’d run like a fool, it was better this way.

By midday of the second, I wasn’t relieved. I was angry.

Not just at him—at myself, at the way my chest kept tightening every time the door creaked open, only for it to be a customer and not him. At the way I caught myself listening for his voice in the street. At the way, despite everything, I noticed his absence.

He had spent a week making himself a part of my life—showing up at my shop, fixing things I never asked him to fix, feeding me, looking after Maeve like she was his own blood—until his presence had become a routine. And now? Just because I panicked for half a second after a kiss, now he had the nerve to vanish without a word?

It shouldn’t have surprised me. People left. So why did this feel different?

I slammed the ledger shut harder than necessary, the sharp crack of parchment and wood ringing through the shop. Maeve, seated on the floor nearby, startled slightly, her wide green eyes flicking up from the little paper boats she had been carefully setting into neat rows.

"What's wrong?" she asked, her tiny brow scrunching in concern.

"Nothing," I said too quickly, forcing my hands to still where they rested on the counter.

Auntie Brindle hummed to herself as she bustled around the shop, rearranging things she had no business rearranging. She was too small to reach the shelves properly, but that didn’t stop her—she had commandeered a wooden step stool from the corner and was clambering up it with an agility that defied her years.

“You’re putting those in the wrong place,” I muttered, watching as she tucked a bundle of dried lavender beside the ink jars.

“Nonsense,” she replied without looking at me, stuffing something else into another cubby. “This shop of yours could use a touch of proper order. Spirits know you’ve been letting it fall into disarray.”

That bristled, but before I could snap back, Maeve gave an amused little hum from the floor and lifted one of her paper boats.

“Brindle’s right,” she said matter-of-factly. “You always say you’ll organize things, but then you don’t.”

I turned toward her with slow, exaggerated offense. “Whose side are you on?”

Maeve giggled, lifting another paper boat to press against her mouth in a poor attempt to suppress her laughter. She didn’t try to answer—she didn’t have to. Traitor.

Auntie Brindle cackled as she stuffed yet another bundle of herbs where it didn’t belong, untouched by my glare.

Maeve, triumphant, lost interest in her boats a moment later and started fiddling with one of my ink pots on the low shelf behind the counter. I heard the scrape of glass against wood and turned just in time to see her little hands twist at the lid.

“Maeve,” I chided, striding over before she could cause disaster, “that isn’t a toy.”

She huffed, reluctantly pulling her hands away. “I just wanted to see inside.”

“You’ve seen inside before.” I turned the ink pot, inspecting the lid for any loose smudges. “And last time you got it on your hands and nearly stained—”

“Will Kazrek be coming back soon?”