Page 6 of Bound By Blood (Orc Warrior Romances #1)

"A good man. I knew him by sight and reputation, steadfast as mountain stone." I study her face, reading the grief that still lingers there. "Your mother spoke of you often during those later visits. Her pride in your healing skills, her hope that you would carry on her work."

"Work you still haven't explained." Her voice hardens slightly. "What exactly did my mother learn here? What secrets did she carry home?"

I rise and move to one of the herb gardens, running weathered fingers through leaves that gleam silver-green in the filtered light.

The plants here grow nowhere else. Mountain varieties that thrive in these unique conditions, their properties known only to clan healers and the select few they trust with ancient knowledge.

"Tell me, Lady Eirian, what did your mother teach you about the old ways? Before the borders hardened, before fear divided our peoples?"

"Stories," she admits reluctantly. "Legends about a time when humans and orcs worked together, traded knowledge and skills. But they were just tales to explain old ruins, ancient artifacts."

"Were they?" I pluck a single leaf and hold it up to the light.

Veins run through translucent green like silver thread, and the leaf seems to pulse with inner warmth.

"This is heartsease root. It grows only here, in places where two kinds of earth meet and mingle.

Your mother learned to cultivate it using methods both human and orcish. "

I return to the bench, offering her the leaf. She takes it carefully, examining the unusual coloration with obvious fascination.

"The healing properties?"

"Powerful. It can mend flesh that should be beyond repair, restore strength to bodies ravaged by disease or violence. But the preparation requires techniques from both our peoples, alchemy and earthsong, science and old magic working in harmony."

Her eyes meet mine, understanding beginning to dawn. "That's what she was really doing. Not just learning your healing methods, but creating something new. Something that combined the best of both traditions."

"Your mother was a bridge-builder in an age of wall-makers." I lean back against stone worn smooth by countless hands. "The question now becomes whether her daughter possesses the same vision."

Lady Eirian turns the leaf over in her shackled hands, studying it with the intensity of someone recognizing opportunity wrapped in danger.

"And if I do? If I'm willing to continue her work?"

"Then perhaps these chains need not remain permanent fixtures."

The words hang between us like a challenge, or perhaps a promise. In the healing grotto's peace, with steam rising around us and ancient herbs growing in careful abundance, the future seems suddenly full of unexpected possibilities.

The leaf trembles in her bound hands as understanding settles between us like morning mist. I see her process the implications, see the healer's mind working through possibilities and risks.

Her mother had the same expression when first presented with clan knowledge, calculation warring with curiosity.

"My mother never mentioned working with orcs directly." She looks up from the heartsease root. "I always assumed her unconventional methods came from ancient texts, forgotten libraries."

"Easier to maintain that fiction. Your people would have branded her traitor if they knew the truth."

"And your people? How did they react to a human learning clan secrets?"

The question strikes deeper than she knows. I rise and move toward the pool's edge, where mineral deposits have formed crystalline shelves over centuries of patient accumulation. The water here runs clear as mountain air, heated by forces deep beneath the earth.

"My mother opposed it from the beginning."

The admission surprises me. I rarely speak of Kethara, war-chief of the Ironspear Clan, mother to three sons, keeper of traditions older than memory. But something about this grotto, this moment suspended between past and future, loosens tongues that normally stay locked.

"She believed knowledge should stay within clan boundaries," I continue, trailing fingers through the warm water. "That mixing bloodlines of wisdom weakened both. When she discovered the meetings, she forbade further contact."

"But you allowed them to continue anyway."

"I wasn't chief then. My word carried less weight than a war-leader's wisdom." I turn back to face her, noting how she leans forward despite the chains. "The choice was made for me."

Twenty-three summers past. The Bloodmoon Raids.

The memory surfaces through flesh, sudden and sharp. I settle back onto the stone bench, feeling weight that has nothing to do with years or wounds.

"Your borders were expanding then, pushing deeper into contested lands. King Aldric claimed ancient rights to valleys our people had hunted for generations. Diplomatic solutions failed."

"I remember the stories. Border tensions escalating into open warfare."

"More than warfare. Extermination." The word tastes bitter even now. "Your king's advisors convinced him that orcs represented a permanent threat, that peace could only come through overwhelming force."

Lady Eirian shifts uncomfortably, chains clinking against stone. "My family opposed those policies. House Thorne voted against the expansion treaties."

"I know. Your mother sent warning through her usual channels, urged evacuation of vulnerable settlements. But warnings mean little when raiders move under cover of darkness."

The night everything changed.

I close my eyes and let the memory surface fully, no longer fighting the tide of recollection that threatens to drown rational thought.

"They came at new moon, when darkness provided perfect cover. Professional soldiers, not border scouts or opportunistic bandits. Three hundred men in blackened mail, moving with purpose toward our harvest villages."

The grotto's peace cannot soften these edges. Steam rises around us, but I feel only the cold wind that swept down from the peaks that terrible night, carrying scents of smoke and blood on its breath.

"My mother led the evacuation of Stoneheart Valley. Women, children, elders, anyone too young or old to fight. She organized the retreat while my brothers and I gathered what warriors we could find."

"How many defended the valley?"

"Forty-seven." The number burns like an old wound. "Against three hundred. But we knew the terrain, knew every stone and stream. We thought that would be enough."

Lady Eirian says nothing, but I see understanding in her storm-gray eyes. She's heard these tales before, from the other side. Victory celebrations in Thorne halls, toasts raised to successful border operations.

"The battle lasted until dawn. We held them at the river crossing, made them pay for every bridge, every ford. But numbers tell their own story."

Korann fell first, my youngest brother, barely eighteen summers and eager to prove himself worthy of warrior's braids. A crossbow bolt through the throat while he rallied the spearmen. He died trying to speak my name.

Theron followed an hour later, cut down defending the village well. His war-cry echoed off the valley walls as he charged alone into a dozen spearpoints. Brave unto death, stupid unto the end.

"By morning, they controlled the valley. The evacuation was successful - most of our people escaped into the high caves. But the cost..." I open my eyes, finding Lady Eirian watching me with something approaching sympathy. "Half our warriors dead or dying. Two of my brothers among them."

"I'm sorry." The words sound genuine, carrying weight beyond mere politeness. "Loss like that changes a person."

"Changes everything." I stand and pace to the herb garden, needing movement to contain the restless energy these memories always stir.

"I found my mother at the evacuation site, tending wounded who would never fight again.

She was binding Jorak's leg when the runner brought news that both my brothers had fallen. "

The sound she made haunts me still. Not a scream or wail, but a low keening that seemed to rise from earth itself, mourning made manifest. Kethara the Ironspear, who had never shown weakness before enemy or ally, crumbled like a tower built on shifting sand.

"She died that morning, of grief and shame and rage too vast for any heart to contain. The healers called it heart-failure, but I knew better. She died because she could not bear to live in a world where her sons bled out on foreign soil while she organized retreats."

The silence stretches between us, heavy with implications neither of us wishes to voice. In the quiet, I hear water bubbling up from deep places, steam hissing against stone, and the subtle whisper of growing things reaching toward light.

"And you became chief."

"The clan demanded vengeance. Blood for blood, raid for raid.

They looked to me to lead them into fire.

" I turn back toward her, noting how she holds herself despite the bonds, dignity intact even in captivity.

"So I did. For ten years, I led them into fire and brought them out again, usually victorious. Always diminished."

"Until you met my mother."

"Until I met your mother." The admission comes easier than expected. "She appeared at our borders during the worst plague outbreak we'd faced in living memory. Alone except for her guard, carrying remedies and knowledge that saved hundreds of lives."

The first time I saw Mirelle Thorne, she was elbow-deep in infected wounds, treating clan warriors with the same care she would show human patients. No hesitation, no disgust, just professional competence and quiet compassion.

"Why did she risk it? Why come to your people's aid when our nations were at war?"