Page 4

Chapter 3

T he first thing I noticed was the warmth.

Not just from the fur-lined blankets cocooning me, but from the mattress itself—deep and soft, pulling me down like a slow tide. The scent of something unfamiliar curled around me, earthy, woodsy, laced with something faintly herbal. It clung to the fabric, to the pillow beneath my cheek, to the very air around me.

I breathed in. Exhaled.

For the first time in—I didn’t know how long—I felt weightless. The ever-present ache in my shoulders had dulled. My limbs, usually coiled tight with strain, had loosened into something dangerously close to comfort.

I let myself sink into it, just for a second.

Then—

Memory struck like a stone to the ribs.

The market. Dizziness. Maeve—gone. I bolted upright and instantly regretted it.

The room tilted sharply, and a sharp pulse of pain bloomed behind my eyes. I sucked in a breath, pressing a palm to my forehead. My heartbeat was loud, a drum pounding between my ears.

I forced myself to take in my surroundings.

The room was dim, lit only by a slant of morning light spilling through the half-drawn curtains. The furniture was sturdy, hand-carved from dark wood. A shelf lined one wall, crowded with earthenware jars and rolled-up linens. A basin of water sat atop a low table, a clean cloth folded neatly beside it.

Not my room. Not my home.

And Maeve—

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My feet met thick, furred rugs, the kind that silenced every step. I barely felt them. My pulse roared louder than any sound.

Then, I heard it. A muffled voice. Two voices.

I surged to my feet, still unsteady, and followed the sound to the wooden door set slightly ajar. I pushed it open.

And stilled.

Beyond the door stretched a long, narrow room filled with morning light and the scent of brewing herbs. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with jars of dried plants and labeled bottles. A row of neat cots lined one wall, each draped with clean linens.

A healer's clinic.

And there, at a low table near the window, sat the orc from the market. His broad frame made the wooden chair look almost comically small, but his movements were deliberate as he ground something in a mortar. Beside him, perched on the edge of the table, Maeve leaned forward, watching intently.

"Like this?" she asked, mimicking his grip on an imaginary pestle.

"Mm." His voice was low, a quiet rumble. "Steady pressure. Let the weight do the work."

She furrowed her brows in concentration, her tiny hands mimicking his movements exactly. The sight of it sent a confusing tangle of emotions through me—relief, warmth, something softer. Maeve was safe. She wasn’t scared. If anything, she looked delighted.

The orc watched her with a careful patience I wasn’t used to seeing in people outside of Iris. He nodded slightly in approval, then said something in a low, rolling cadence that didn’t match Common or Elvish.

Maeve perked up immediately. “What’s that mean?”

" Zul'kar gorthul thrak ," he repeated, meeting her wide-eyed curiosity with a tilt of his head. “It means, ‘small hands do great work.’”

She gasped like he’d just handed her a secret. “In orcish?”

He nodded.

She looked at her fingers, sticky with crushed herbs. “Say it again.”

He did, slower this time, enunciating each syllable carefully. Maeve echoed him, tongue fumbling over the sounds but determined. He didn’t correct her. Just nodded again, like it didn’t matter that she got it wrong, only that she tried.

Something in my chest tightened.

Maeve—trusting, fearless Maeve—had just met this towering, scarred orc and was already drinking in his words like they were the most important ones she’d ever heard.

I cleared my throat.

Both of them glanced up.

Maeve lit up. “Ro! You’re awake!” She started to scramble off the table, but the orc shifted his arm just slightly, steadying her before she could spill to the floor.

Something unfamiliar flickered through me at the gesture. Protectiveness didn’t come easy to most people, not when it came to other people’s children. But he had done it with such effortless certainty, like stopping Maeve from falling was as instinctive as breathing. It unsettled me.

“You were sleeping,” Maeve informed me, wrapping her arms around my legs and peering up at me with those bright, trusting eyes. “For a long time.”

I ignored the pang in my chest and smoothed a hand over her curls instead. “I’m fine.” A deliberate glance at the orc. “Where are we?”

“My clinic,” the orc answered, voice steady, unreadable. “You collapsed.”

Collapsed. The word chafed. “I was fine.”

His gaze flicked over me briefly, unimpressed. “You were unconscious.”

Maeve giggled. “Kazrek carried you.”

My stomach flipped. “What?”

“Like a princess,” she added, entirely too gleefully.

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I snapped my focus back to the orc—Kazrek, apparently—who had returned to his work with infuriating calm, as if this was an everyday occurrence. As if carting me through the streets of Everwood had been no more effort than picking up a sack of flour.

“I couldn’t just let you hit the ground,” he said, grinding the pestle against the mortar.

I lifted my arms to cross them over my chest before realizing my sleeves still smelled like him—like warm leather and something faintly medicinal. I dropped them immediately. “Well,” I said, forcing the heat from my voice, “thank you for that. But we should be going.”

Kazrek didn’t look up from his work. “Not yet.”

My back stiffened. “Excuse me?”

That earned me a glance. Brief, assessing. Then he tilted his chin toward the chair beside him. “Sit.”

“I don’t—”

“Sit,” he repeated, slower this time. Still calm. Still entirely unconcerned with my indignation.

Delighted by the back-and-forth, Maeve patted my hip consolingly. “You should listen,” she said sagely. “He’s the healer.”

I scowled. “I am perfectly capable of knowing when I need a healer.”

Kazrek didn’t argue, didn’t push. He simply set aside the mortar, wiped his hands on a cloth, and turned his attention to Maeve.

“You’ve been learning well,” he told her. “But I have one more lesson.”

Maeve perked up immediately, eyes bright. “What is it?”

“Rest,” he said, nodding toward one of the cots lined against the far wall. “A healer’s work is only good if we know when to let the body recover.”

Maeve tilted her head, considering. "Like how you made sure Ro was sleeping so she could get better?"

Kazrek nodded. "Exactly. Even when you're not sick, rest is important for healing, for letting the body rebuild its strength."

For a moment, I thought Maeve would resist. She had endless energy, always bouncing from one thing to the next. But she hesitated only briefly before nodding. “Okay,” she declared, already making her way toward the cot. “But only for a little while.”

Kazrek made a noncommittal sound, amusement flickering in his gaze. “Of course.”

She climbed onto the cot without another word, curling onto her side. Within moments, her breathing evened out, her small body relaxing into the blankets.

I blinked. “How did you—?”

Kazrek merely shrugged. “She listens.”

I frowned. Maeve barely listened to me half the time. But somehow, this orc had convinced her to lie down with nothing but a few words and a patient look.

Kazrek turned back to me, motioning to the chair again. “Now.”

I hesitated, glancing toward the door. I could leave. I could pick up Maeve, walk out, and put this whole mortifying episode behind me.

But the room still wavered at the edges of my vision. My limbs still felt too light, my breath too thin.

Kazrek said nothing, just waited.

Finally, with a huff of irritation, I sank into the chair.

His approval was silent. He stepped closer and reached for my arm. I stiffened as his fingers brushed against my skin, warm and calloused, but he didn’t hesitate, pressing two fingers to the inside of my wrist.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

He tilted his head slightly, unreadable. “Your pulse is weak.”

“That’s normal,” I said with a scowl.

“It isn’t.” He didn’t loosen his grip, his thumb now tracing idle circles over the inside of my wrist, like he was listening, measuring. “When did you last eat?”

I looked away. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Kazrek made a low, disapproving sound. “It’s relevant if you’re collapsing in the middle of the market.”

Heat crawled up my throat. I hated this. Hated being assessed like an unfinished draft, my weaknesses noted in the margins. But Kazrek didn’t look smug, didn’t look like he was savoring some quiet victory over my frailty. He was just watching. Measuring. Unshaken.

“How many hours of sleep?” he asked, his voice the same even baritone.

I exhaled sharply. “Enough.”

“Try again.”

I glared at him. He didn’t flinch.

I thought about lying, but something about Kazrek made dishonesty feel pointless. His dark eyes stayed locked on mine, steady, expectant. Not unkind.

“Four,” I muttered at last. "Maybe."

Something almost like amusement flickered across his sharp features. “Four is not enough.”

I scowled, pulling my hand back instinctively, but he held on for half a second longer before releasing me. My skin still tingled where his fingers had been. I curled my hand into a fist in my lap.

“I don’t have the luxury of sleeping in,” I snapped, irritation flaring to cover whatever else I was feeling.

"Not many people do," Kazrek said, pushing to his feet. He towered over me, making me feel uncharacteristically small. "But not many people work themselves to exhaustion, either."

I bristled. “What would you have me do?"

Kazrek’s expression didn’t change. He reached for a steaming cup on the nearby table and pressed it into my hands, his fingers brushing mine. “Drink.”

I didn’t move. My pride screamed at me to push back, to remind him that I had survived just fine without the unsolicited concern of an orc healer. But my bones still felt hollow, my limbs too light, my head too full of cotton.

So I inhaled the sharp, herbal scent curling from the cup and took a slow sip.

Bitter heat spread through my chest, settling into my stomach with surprising comfort. The tension knotting my shoulders loosened—just the smallest degree.

Kazrek leaned against the nearby counter, arms crossed, watching me with an unsettling stillness. “What do you think will happen if you slow down?”

I let out a short, humorless laugh, staring into the cup rather than meeting his gaze.

He said nothing for a moment, then: “The world won’t fall apart if you take a lunch break.” His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “If you take a walk around the neighborhood with your niece. If you sleep in now and then.”

My throat tightened.

Because he was wrong.

Maybe the world wouldn’t fall apart, but my world would. If I stopped and let myself rest, even for a second, it could all catch up to me. The bills I hadn’t figured out how to pay yet. The supplies I still needed to buy. The crushing weight of responsibility, the years of carrying everything alone.

Finola had left. My father had died. Maeve had no one else but me.

I couldn’t slow down.

A sharp inhale stung my nose. I clenched my jaw, gripping the cup tighter as a betrayal of tears pricked behind my eyes. I would not cry in front of this orc.

Kazrek exhaled through his nose, something thoughtful in his gaze. He must have seen it—the way my shoulders curled in and I suddenly refused to look at him—because he didn’t press further.

Instead, he nodded toward Maeve’s sleeping form, his voice quieter this time. “She needs you whole."

A single sentence, but the weight of it pressed against my ribs, and I swallowed hard, blinking against the burning behind my eyes.

The room felt too still. I needed to leave.

Pushing the cup back into his hands, I rose to my feet, crossing the small space to Maeve’s cot. She stirred slightly when I scooped her up, her warm little body settling instinctively against my shoulder.

Kazrek watched but didn’t move to stop me.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said, forcing my voice back to something brisk and even. “But I can handle it.”

I turned, stepping toward the door—

—and the room swayed.

The sudden vertigo hit fast, curling around me like an undertow. My knees weakened, my balance shifting. Maeve’s weight threatened to pull me forward, but before I could stumble, a firm hand grasped my elbow.

Kazrek.

His grip was sure, his strength effortless as he anchored me in place. "I've got her," he said, his voice that same low, implacable rumble.

I wanted to argue, wanted to insist that I could manage. But my limbs were uncooperative, the world still tilting dangerously at the edges.

Before I could protest, Kazrek slid Maeve out of my arms, settling her against his broad chest as if she weighed nothing at all. Her small fingers curled instinctively into the fabric of his tunic, her sleepy sigh muffled against the warm expanse of his shoulder.

"I'm walking you home," Kazrek said.

I stiffened. "That isn't—"

"It isn't up for debate." His eyes met mine, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. "You can argue all you like, but you won't make it a block without tipping over. Neither of us wants to see Maeve dropped in the street."

He said it without malice, without condescension—just facts laid bare. It infuriated me. Mainly because he was right.

I huffed, crossing my arms against my ribs as heat curled low in my stomach. "I don't need a bodyguard."

Kazrek tilted his head slightly, considering. "No. You need rest. But since I doubt you'll allow yourself that, I'll settle for making sure you get home in one piece."

I exhaled sharply, shoving a hand through my hair. “Fine,” I muttered. “But only to my door.”

Kazrek didn’t argue. He just nodded like he’d known I’d come to this conclusion. Like he understood something about me that I hadn’t wanted him to.

That certainty—it unsettled me.

Most people, when faced with my resistance, either pushed back hard or walked away entirely. Kazrek did neither. He just stood, immovable as stone, patient as the tide.

Maeve sighed again against his shoulder, small and trusting. She fit there too easily, curled against him like she belonged in the steady space he carved.

A strange, traitorous thought curled in my mind before I could stop it: Would I fit there, too?

I shoved it away immediately.

Without another word, I turned for the door, ignoring the warmth still lingering where his hands had steadied me.

Kazrek followed.

And no matter how much I told myself otherwise, I felt his presence at my back, solid and sure, a weight I couldn’t shake.