Page 11 of Orn and the Real Girl

ORN

BEING WITH Sara had done something to me that felt like magic, and I wondered idly if this is why she’d felt the need to tell me that she was a witch. Had she cast a spell on me? Stolen my soul? Bound me to her service as a thrall?

I decided immediately that none of that mattered, none of it bothered me, and I’d be happy to follow her to the ends of the earth as her devout meat puppet, so long as she kept looking at me like she did. So long as she kept calling me “honey”.

She was shuddering in my arms now, her body so soft and warm and right, and even if stars were still dancing before my eyes and my heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of my chest, I couldn’t help but think this was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.

This sweetness, this tenderness was what was missing from my couplings with other orcs.

Even if I missed my family, this convinced me more than anything else that leaving had been a good decision.

Painful and awful in many ways, but correct.

My mind was scattered like so many dandelion seeds on the wind, so it took longer than I liked to admit to realize that something was wrong.

Sara wasn’t just shuddering from aftershocks, and the warm liquid dripping onto the bicep she was using as a pillow wasn’t sweat.

Her snake pet Lena—or perhaps she was actually Sara’s familiar—slithered her way onto the bed and piled herself onto the exposed side of Sara’s head in a loose, messy pile.

I froze, the afterglow shattering and raw, screaming panic sending adrenaline surging through me.

Sara was crying.

My cock was rapidly softening at the realization, but my knot deflated on its own time, and though I wanted to yank myself free and run from the horror of what I’d done, I was trapped.

“What have I done?” I asked, trying to pull back from her, to give her what space I could. “I hurt you.”

But Sara clung to me, a shaky “no” slipping between the heart-wrenching sobs that she was making freely now.

Lena blinked up at me, tasting the air with her little tongue, and I could almost swear she was trying to tell me something, that there was some reassurance in her tiny black eyes.

All I could do was lie there, holding Sara and trying to soothe her, my brain locked up and most of me frozen as I struggled to understand what had happened and where it had all went wrong.

The only reason I didn’t utterly lose my mind was Sara clinging to me, holding me tight, and even if half of me was screaming that I’d done something bad, something wrong, the other half was insisting that she wouldn’t do that if she feared or hated me.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I kept asking her, “What happened? Did I hurt you?” But it was long moments before she was calm enough to answer me.

Lena still twined through her hair and over her ear, occasionally dipping lower to brush over an eyebrow or a damp eye.

A few times the little hognose even nuzzled at my chest, where Sara now hid her lovely face.

Once Sara quieted, she went so still and silent that I thought at first that she had fallen asleep. But then she took a deep, shuddering breath and spoke into my chest, her voice so rough it hurt to hear it. “You didn’t do anything wrong, honey. I’m...I’m sorry.”

That eased some of the tension in my body, but now I was worried about what else could possibly be wrong that would make this woman—so strong and steadfast and bold—collapse like this. “What’s wrong? What can I do to help?”

She pulled back enough to swipe at her face with one of her delicate little human hands, grimacing at what she wiped away. “Can you get me a handkerchief? Or a rag? And some water would be lovely, too.”

I eased my hips back, making sure my knot was as deflated as it felt, and when I slipped free from her hot, silky cunt I mourned the loss, but I was glad I could fetch her what she needed.

I gathered rags first, stuffing a handful between her legs to catch our spend and handing her another softer one for her face.

Then I rushed to my sink, pumping water into a glass for her to drink and using more to dampen yet another rag to clean her up with.

I used a corner on myself, sucking in a breath at the cold, wet fabric on my sensitive skin, and then held it near the fire for a moment to try to warm it.

Once it was no longer frigid, I returned to her, helping her sit up to drink the water and carefully wiping her gleaming brown skin clean with the damp rag.

Lena re-situated herself into a clumsy sort of hat, and Sara reached up to stroke her little friend.

It didn’t take long for Sara to finish the water, and I took the empty glass and refilled it, setting it nearby for her, and also took the soiled rags and tossed them aside.

I decided she also needed food, so I sprang back to my feet to dug through my icebox until I found the last piece of the apple cake I’d made before the storm hit, setting it on my cast iron pan and letting it heat over the fire while I poured a measure of mead into a cup and handed it to her.

Sara sipped at the mead, her eyes downcast and hollow, and I added a piece of brown bread slathered with my precious honey butter to the plate I put the warm apple cake on, as well as some smoked cheese and nuts.

The more I looked at her sorrowful expression, the more I wanted to add to the plate, but I recalled how little she had been able to eat of breakfast, and forced myself to stop after that.

I handed her the plate, sitting beside her on the bed, but too scared to touch her.

She took the plate, blinking in surprise, then chuckled, a broken smile slipping through the clouds to light her face.

“Thank you, Orn,” she croaked, pinching a chestnut between her fingers and bringing it to her lips.

She set the plate in her lap, reaching up to lift her snake up and off of her head and draping her around her neck instead.

“And you know you’re not supposed to sit there, young lady,” she told Lena sternly.

Lena’s tiny head rocked a little, and I could have sworn that that was a serpentine shrug of some sort.

Sara picked at her food, tasting no more than a bite of any one thing, and eventually gave up, setting it aside beside her water glass.

She scooted closer to me, tugging on my arm until I realized she was trying to coax me closer.

I moved to sit with my back resting against the headboard, and she dove into me, slipping under my arm and resting her head on my chest. Her arms wrapped around my waist, and she sighed, tugging the blankets up around herself until they were tucked under her chin.

“The things that happened before I came here were very bad,” she whispered, and I tightened my grip on her.

“It was my turn, so I was out foraging for reagents, and when I came back, everyone was gone.

Taken. All of them, all my sisters and my mothers.

My entire coven, just—“ she ended on a sob, the words choked off, and I felt dumb and useless in the face of her grief. I was banished and knew what it was to lose all of your family in one fell swoop, but knowing that they still lived and could find happiness and love even if I wasn’t there to share in it had been a great comfort to me.

It sounded as though Sara had no idea where they were, what had happened to them, or whether they were even still alive, and I could not begin to process how lost and unmoored she must have felt.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her, knowing my words were small and pathetic and useless.

But she squeezed me and gave me her thanks anyway.

I panicked quietly as I struggled to think of what to say, wanting to know more but also wanting to respect her privacy and not dredge up anything worse than I had already.

In the face of her grief, something began to stir in me, something that I couldn’t say I’d really ever felt before. It growled and seethed, coursing through my limbs and making them feel restless. It needed something, this feeling, and I was afraid to focus on it because it reeked of copper.

Once she composed herself, she went on, her voice flat in an attempt to keep the emotion from overwhelming her again.

I hoped she knew she didn’t have to tell me any of this, that I didn’t expect it, but I didn’t want to interrupt her to tell her.

“I don’t know who did it, but there’s those in the hamlet below that fear and hate witches and resent our presence here.

There’ve been attempts in the past to try and get us to leave, but these mountains belong to no one, so they couldn’t exactly evict us.

” She lapsed into silence, sniffling and burrowing closer.

“I just wish I knew what happened,” she continued eventually, her voice small and soft.

“If they’re—if they’re okay, if they’re still alive.

Gods, it’s like I’m missing a huge chunk of myself. A coven is such a sacred thing.”

The smell of copper was joined by a wild drumbeat thundering through my head, my veins, beating against the inside of my ribs.

I’d begun to grind my teeth, tusks catching my upper lip and gouging into it hard enough to hurt.

What was this? What was going on with me that I felt like this?

I’d been angry before, but not like this. Nothing had ever been like this.

Sara squeezed me and seemed to realize just how tense and quiet I’d gone.

She tilted her head back, looking up into my face, and even though I tried to hide my face behind my long black hair, she must have caught sight of my expression anyway.

She sat up, her hands stroking my skin in soft, soothing motions that should have been calming me down.

But for some reason, her sweetness only stoked the fire in my veins hotter and higher.

“Orn? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” She bit her lower lip, her brows coming together in concern. “Was all that too much? I’m sorry, I should have asked before laying that all on you—“

“No,” I ground out, horrified that she thought she’d done something wrong.

I took a deep breath, trying to will myself calm, but the tension remained, the.

..the bloodlust. That was what it was—for the first time in my life, I felt the blood song, birthright of every orc, that had never so much as murmured through me before.

But there was nothing else it could have been.

I grabbed her face and tugged her close, wanting to smash my mouth to hers and claim her again, my cock already awakening despite being thoroughly drained twice already today.

But I paused before my lips made it to hers.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked, my voice a rough stranger in my ears.

In answer she closed the distance left between us, her mouth hesitant on mine for a moment, but she did bloom, and gods what a blooming she was.

She was all that was good and sweet in this world.

I knew it with a perfect clarity that defied our status as barely more than strangers.

And then it clicked, the blood song finally taking on words I could hear and understand.

I tried to sear myself into her skin, devouring her even as I fed her all I had, wanting to mark her in an animal way that it took every ounce of willpower to ignore. It became a goodbye, because I knew that even though the thought was agony, she would be leaving me.

My body ached for something she couldn’t give me.

It howled for blood, for the blood of those who had hurt her by stealing her family.

It was a need greater than any I had ever felt before, more keen than the sharpest hunger, deeper than the worst thirst. I knew from my people’s stories that unless I pursued the song my body would sicken, my mind unraveling, until I couldn’t help but give it what it wanted.

It was why my people were generally feared and thought of as brutal savages; but for this, I didn’t care about how another would see me.

The people who’d hurt my Sara would pay for their crimes. And I would be the one to collect on that debt.