Page 98 of Her Orc Healer

I should have asked more questions. I should have pushed harder. I should’ve seen the signs sooner. Should’ve trusted less. Trusted more. I should’ve kept her safe.

That was the one promise I made.

And I had failed.

Because that’s what I did, wasn’t it?

Held the pieces too tight. Refused to let anyone help. Convinced myself I could carry it all. And now Maeve was on that altar, and I was kneeling in the dirt, and—

This was it.

Cold stone. Empty arms. The echo of her name in a place that didn’t care.

Maeve.

Then—

Just as the light reached its brightest point—

A flicker.

Subtle. Barely there. A soft thrum beneath the noise of the ritual. A pulse. Small. Steady.

Not part of the binding. Not born of the spell.

From her.

A beat that didn’t match the others. A tether thin as thread, pulsing once, then again, just beneath her ribs—warm and wrong and resistant.

Something felt it.

Far beneath the stones. Deep in the roots. The earth heard it.

And held its breath.

Chapter 27

Theybegantomovein unison, a slow, measured lift of hands—palms angled toward the sky, sleeves falling back to reveal ink-black sigils scored into skin.

The Woman in Blue stood closest to Maeve, hands hovering just above her chest. Her eyes had gone pale—milky with power or possession, I couldn’t tell. Drev knelt opposite her at the altar’s base.

And Maeve—

Maeve was splitting.

Her glow came in stutters—brief flares under her ribs, then dimming, like warmth replaced by cold. Shadow leaked from her edges, curling down her arms, pooling in the hollows of her collarbones like ink in water. For a moment, her skin looked wrong—too pale, too translucent. Like a girl halfway unmade.

"Maeve!" My voice cracked as I slammed my hands against the ward again. It didn’t even shudder. "Maeve, baby, listen to me, you have to stay with me—open your eyes, come on—”

Her head lolled slightly to one side. Her lips parted, breath shallow and wrong.

The runes on the vines pulsed. The sigils glowed brighter, turning from white to blue to a deep, sickened red.

Around the circle, the robed figures began to chant—not words, not exactly. Syllables that bent wrong in the air, that seemed to catch on my skin and stick. The ground beneath me beat in rhythm, slow and steady. I didn’t feel it through my boots—I felt it in my spine. A low, ancient pulse that didn’t belong to anything living.

The roots responded.

They swelled through the cracks in the stone, thick and veined, curling tighter around the altar’s base. I could see them moving now, subtle but deliberate. Syncing with the rhythm of Maeve’s breath. No—not her breath.