Page 16 of Cider, Spice & Orcish Nights

THORNAK

T he forest is quiet in that soft, brooding way it gets just before dusk.

Long shadows slide over the moss, the underbrush sighs under the weight of the day, and somewhere a distant owl starts calling—too early, eager for nightfall.

I sit on a broad old stump near my cabin, wood shavings scattered all around me, knife working slow and sure over a piece of cherrywood that still smells faintly of sun-warmed fruit.

In my hand, a tiny wolf is taking shape—head tilted back in a silent howl, paws braced on an imaginary ridge. It’s delicate work, finer than any battle-axe swing or timber cut. The sort of thing I never let other orcs see me do when I was younger, for fear they’d mistake care for weakness.

But lately, it feels like something I have to do. Like if I can’t carve these small, gentle things for the kids left behind by skirmishes out east—little ones who barely remember the fathers lost on border patrols or mothers taken by fevers—then the weight of it all might crush me clean through.

I keep them in a battered old sack—tiny bears, foxes, stout little owls. Once a week I haul them into town under cover of dusk, leave them stacked in a basket outside the healer’s hall where the orphan steward makes her rounds. No one ever sees me. That’s how I prefer it.

At least, I thought no one did.

So it startles the absolute breath out of me when Maddie corners me behind the bakery the next evening, flour on her nose, eyes so wide and soft they damn near knock the wind from my chest.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she blurts, voice catching on something raw.

I stiffen, frown digging deep. “Tell you what?”

She holds up one of my carvings—tiny enough to balance on her palm.

It’s a squat badger, all hunched and fierce, tail curled tight around its feet.

“These. Thornak, the steward told me they’ve been finding these every week.

The children sleep with them clutched in their hands.

One boy named his owl after his mother. You… you did that for them.”

I grit my teeth, jaw working. “Wasn’t meant for anyone to know.”

“But why hide it?” she whispers, stepping in so close I can see a faint smudge of sugar dusting her temple. “Why pretend you’re nothing but growls and scowls when you’re?—”

I cut her off with a sharp shake of my head. “Don’t start that. I’m not lookin’ for praise. Just seemed right that they’d have something to hold on to, that’s all.”

For a heartbeat she just stands there, breath shallow, eyes bright.

Then with a tiny, strangled noise she launches herself at me—arms wrapping tight around my neck, face burying in the crook of my shoulder.

I stand there stiff as a felled pine, hands hovering like I’ve forgotten what to do with them.

Then her voice comes, muffled and thick. “You don’t get it, do you? You keep thinking you’re this big, rough monster. But you’re more kind than half the ‘civilized’ men in this town put together.”

I huff out something halfway between a grunt and a scoff, though it catches painfully in my throat. “Reckless woman, you’ve got the strangest way of seeing the world.”

“And maybe you need someone to,” she says, leaning back just enough to look up at me, her hands still curled into the back of my shirt like she can’t quite make herself let go.

Before I can brace for it—she rises on her toes and presses her mouth to mine.

It’s not like that desperate, greedy tumble we shared on her little bed, when the storm outside roared and I thought for sure I’d break in half from wanting her. This is slower, sweeter somehow, though it still lights something low in my gut that’s half pleasure, half panic.

Her lips are soft, tasting faintly of caramel glaze, and her nose bumps my tusk so gently it makes me shiver. I stand there rooted like an oak, every instinct roaring to pull her closer, to deepen it until we’re both gasping.

But then her hand slips up to cup my cheek, thumb brushing over the scar that cuts across my jaw, and I nearly flinch. I’m used to people recoiling from those marks, not caressing them like they’re something worth learning by heart.

When she finally pulls back, there’s flour smudged along my lower tusk and probably all over my mouth. Maddie lets out this half-laugh, half-sob, eyes crinkling.

“You’ve got—oh stars, here—” she fusses with her apron, dabs at me with a corner of it, though her hands are shaking.

“Leave it,” I growl, catching her wrist in my hand. I don’t let go.

We stand there like fools, her pressed up against me, my thumb idly stroking over the flutter of her pulse at her wrist. I want to say something—about last night, about how I still taste her in every breath, about how I woke up this morning with her name tangled on my tongue. But the words won’t come.

Seems they won’t come for her either, because she just tips her forehead forward to rest against my chest with a long sigh.

After that, it’s like some fragile dam breaks between us. We don’t talk about the night we stayed together, the hours I spent with my hands on every inch of her, the sounds she made that still echo in my skull. But we can’t stop touching.

That evening, she sits me down at the little prep table behind the bakery, humming while she rolls out dough. Every so often she reaches out without looking—just finds my hand where it’s resting on my knee and squeezes. I grumble, half-hearted, but don’t pull away.

When she spills flour on her cheek, I swipe it off with my thumb. When she tests a caramel, she presses it straight to my lips without asking, eyes dancing as I grunt and nearly burn my tongue.

Later, I linger at the door longer than makes sense. Maddie stands there in the threshold, hands twisted in her apron, looking up at me with that dangerous softness that cuts deeper than any blade.

“Walk you home?” she asks, voice light, like she’s not sure if it’s too much.

“Don’t need escorting,” I mutter. But when she laughs, something warm unwinds in my chest.

“Maybe I do,” she says.

So I grunt, tip my head, and let her fall into step beside me.

And that’s how it keeps going. We pretend it’s still just a clever arrangement—some contract with neat clauses and careful exit points—but the truth is bleeding out all over the damned place.

It’s in the way she reaches for me without thinking, the way I hover near her like a moth that can’t stop circling its flame.

And every time I close my eyes, all I see is that look on her face when she discovered the little carved badger, like I’d just handed her the world and hadn’t meant to.