Page 26 of Bite Sized Bride

TWO YEARS LATER

T he piece of pine wood is warm in my hands, its clean, sharp scent a familiar comfort.

The afternoon sun, a welcome guest in our high mountain valley, filters through the leaves of the tiphe trees, dappling the ground in shifting patterns of gold and green.

My knife, the one Mikana took from a dead Miou warrior, feels like an extension of my own hand now.

Its edge is keen, its balance perfect. It is a tool of death that I have repurposed for creation.

Before me, sitting cross-legged in the soft grass, is the heart of my new world.

She is a small, fierce thing, my daughter.

Her skin is the same deep olive green as my own, a stark contrast to the simple, cream-colored tunic she wears.

Her hair is a wild, tangled mop of black, a chaotic inheritance from my own unruly mane.

She has my tusks, small and white as milk-stones, barely peeking past her full lips.

But her eyes… her eyes are her mother’s.

They are large and dark and watchful, missing nothing, holding a wisdom that seems far too old for her two short years of life.

“Like this, little warrior,” I say, my low voice a soft rumble that is still sometimes a stranger to my own ears.

I hold the half-carved piece of wood, showing her how to angle the blade. I am making a bird, just like the first one I ever made. This one is better. My hands, which once only knew the brutal geometry of an axe-swing, have learned a new, gentler language.

She watches me, her dark eyes narrowed in intense concentration.

She holds her own piece of soft bark, her small, green fingers wrapped around a smoothed, bladeless piece of wood I fashioned for her.

She mimics my movements, her tiny hand scraping the wood with a seriousness that makes the great, aching space in my chest swell with a love so fierce it is a physical pain.

Her name is Lyra.

It was Mikana’s idea. A way to honor the past, to build a bridge between the ghost I was and the man I am becoming.

At first, the name was a fresh wound, a constant, painful reminder of the life I had lost. But now, when I look at my daughter, at her fierce, independent spirit and her mother’s watchful eyes, the name is no longer a ghost. It is a new song.

She lets out a frustrated grunt, her small brow furrowed. Her piece of bark is not cooperating. It is not becoming a bird. She throws it to the ground.

“Mine… bad,” she says, the two words a perfect, concise summary of her toddler’s rage.

I chuckle, a low, rumbling sound. “No, little warrior. Not bad. Just… needs patience.”

I pick up her discarded piece of bark. “See?” I say, using my own knife to shave off a small curl of wood. “The shape is already there. You just have to find it.”

She is not convinced. She crosses her small arms over her chest, her bottom lip pushed out in a pout that is pure Mikana. My heart aches with the beauty of it.

I look at my own hands. The hands of an orc.

Green, calloused, and crisscrossed with a web of white scars.

They are a map of a life I am still piecing together.

I can still feel the echo of the Urog’s curse in them, the memory of claws, of hardened hide, of a strength that was not my own.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake from nightmares where my hands are not my own, where they are covered in the blood of the innocent, where the red storm is roaring behind my eyes.

On those nights, Mikana is there. She wakes with me, her small, warm hand finding mine in the darkness.

She does not speak. She does not offer empty comforts.

She simply holds my hand, her presence a silent, unwavering anchor until the ghosts recede, until I remember that I am Kael, that I am home, that I am safe.

My fingers drift to my neck, tracing the dark, circular brand that is the only physical remnant of the fused collar.

The skin is smooth now, the wound long-healed, but the mark is permanent.

A reminder. It no longer burns with shame.

It is a part of my story. The story of the monster who was saved by the love of a woman with the heart of a warrior and the soul of a scribe.

A soft footfall on the grass behind me pulls me from my thoughts. I do not need to turn. I know the scent of her, the feel of her presence in the air.

“Is the lesson in tactical wood-carving going well?” Mikana asks, her voice full of a gentle, teasing warmth.

I look over my shoulder. She is standing in the clearing, a basket of freshly gathered fylvek grass on her hip.

The sun catches in her dark hair, making it shine.

She is wearing a simple, practical tunic of soft, brown dae-hide, but to me, she is more radiant than any dark elf queen in her silks and jewels.

She is no longer the gaunt, terrified creature I pulled from the ruins of a temple.

She is a woman in full bloom, her body strong, her spirit at peace.

But the watchfulness is still there in her dark eyes.

It will always be there. We are survivors.

The scars do not fade. They simply become a part of the landscape.

Lyra sees her mother, and her pout vanishes, replaced by a wide, joyful grin. “Mama!” she squeals, scrambling to her feet and running toward Mikana on her sturdy little legs.

Mikana laughs, a sound that is still the most beautiful music in the world, and scoops our daughter into her arms. Lyra babbles at her, a torrent of toddler-speak and broken words, pointing a chubby finger at the rejected piece of bark.

“He’s a patient teacher,” Mikana says, her eyes meeting mine over Lyra’s head. “But his student is the daughter of a Stonefang warrior. She has no time for patience.”

I feel a smile tug at my own lips. “She is the daughter of a woman who charged a sorcerer with nothing but a letter opener. Her impatience is earned.”

Mikana walks toward me, settling on the grass beside me, Lyra now happily occupied with trying to braid her mother’s long, dark hair. She leans her head against my shoulder, a simple, comfortable gesture that speaks of two years of shared sunrises and quiet nights.

“I was thinking,” she says, her voice a low murmur. “The garden is doing well. We’ll have enough burgona and tizret fruit to last us through the winter and then some.”

“Good,” I say, my arm wrapping around her, pulling her and our daughter closer.

“And the traps you set by the ridge have been full every morning,” she continues. “We have more meat and furs than we need.”

“Also good.”

She falls silent for a moment, her fingers tracing the intricate pattern of an old battle-scar on my forearm. “We have a home, Kael. A real one. It’s safe. It’s warm. We have enough.”

I know what she is saying. We are no longer just surviving. We are living. We have built a life here, a small, quiet fortress of peace against the dark, violent world that exists beyond these mountains.

I look at her, at the woman who faced down my monster and found a man. I look at our daughter, a perfect, impossible fusion of our two worlds, a symbol of a future I never dared to dream of.

The hollow space inside me, the one that was once a cavern of rage and grief, is full. It is full of the scent of pine wood and cooking fires, of the sound of my daughter’s laughter and my mate’s soft breathing in the night. It is full of a love so vast, so profound, it is a universe unto itself.

“Yes,” I say, my voice thick with an emotion I will never have the words to properly express. I press a kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair, of sunlight, of home. “We have enough.”

The scars of our past are still there. They are etched onto our skin, carved into our souls.

They are the silent, ever-present ghosts of the people we were forced to be.

But they are no longer chains. They are reminders.

Reminders of the price of our peace. Reminders of the strength we found in each other’s darkness.

I pick up the lopsided wooden bird and press it into my daughter’s small hand. She takes it, her dark, watchful eyes, her mother’s eyes, shining with a fierce, possessive pride.

In this small, forgotten valley, a monster, a slave, and their impossible child have built a new clan. A new home.

And the warrior is finally at peace.