Page 5 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc

IVY

I f the orchard breathes, then the Root Cellar wheezes.

The little shop has always smelled like herbs left too long in a mason jar and regret baked into pie crusts.

Every time I walk inside, I half expect to find frog bones in the floorboards or a spellbook with attitude slapping closed on its own.

Lettie Embervein stands behind the counter, a pair of amber reading glasses perched halfway down her nose and a teacup in her hand that’s probably older than I am.

Halka’s in the back room, humming something vaguely threatening while the scent of burnt cinnamon drifts u. ..

I’m seated on a stool that wobbles every time I shift and doing my best not to let my expression slip into open disbelief as Lettie gestures toward a crudely drawn orchard map that somehow pulses faintly when you look too long at the roots.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, sweetheart,” Lettie says, slapping a bony hand on the table. “Your mother would’ve smacked you twice already and called it a lesson.”

“She also thought bees could predict heartbreak,” I mutter, leaning back. “Forgive me if I’m not buying the idea that the orchard is some kind of sentient moss monster.”

“It’s not a monster,” Halka calls from the back. “It’s old magic. Sacred. Blood-fed.”

That doesn’t make it better.

I sigh and fold my arms. “All I’m saying is—trees don’t talk. I hear wind. I hear rustling. That’s not the land trying to gossip with me. It’s physics.”

Lettie squints at me like she’s trying to decide if I’m possessed or just dense. “It’s been waking up since the moment you stepped foot in town. You think that’s coincidence? Your father held the orchard at bay with sheer stubbornness and rootwork. Now it’s your turn, like it or not.”

“I don’t.”

“Then you best run fast, girl,” she mutters. “Because it’s not letting go easy.”

I leave the Root Cellar with the faint taste of something acrid on my tongue—tea, maybe, or fear.

The elders mean well, I guess. But they speak in riddles and roots, and I don’t have the patience for parables.

I want concrete. I want certainty. I want a world where trees don’t whisper in the dark and the air doesn’t feel like it’s trying to climb inside your skin.

The orchard stretches quiet and gold as I walk through it, light pouring through branches that look almost too still. It’s warm today, warmer than it should be for late autumn, and everything smells like apples and dying things.

Garruk’s waiting by the edge of the creek, shirt rolled up, working a felled log like it insulted his ancestors. His axe rises and falls with deliberate rhythm, each thunk echoing through the woods.

“Hey, Thorne,” I call, trying for casual.

He doesn’t look up. “You smell like regret and rosemary.”

“Thanks. I’m bottling it for fall.”

The axe stills. He glances over his shoulder, and something flickers in his expression. Annoyance. Worry. Maybe a little bit of that slow-burn fire he keeps locked behind his teeth.

“What’d the witches say?” he asks.

“That I’m the Chosen One and should probably marry a tree.”

He grunts.

I keep walking, the brush crunching beneath my boots until I’m close enough to see the sweat gleaming on his forearms and the faint shimmer of glyphs waking beneath his skin. It’s always too much—how he takes up space without even trying, how the quiet around him feels thick enough to drown in.

“They think the orchard is alive,” I say, folding my arms.

“It is.”

I sigh. “Not you too.”

He finally faces me, wiping the axe with a cloth before setting it against the trunk. “You’ve seen what it does. You’ve felt it.”

“I’ve felt wind and weird dreams and a general sense of existential dread. That’s not magic. That’s being thirty and dealing with my family’s estate.”

He steps toward me, slow and steady. “You’re scared.”

“Of you? Always.”

“Of what you are.”

The words hit harder than I expect. My mouth opens, then shuts again.

I look away first. “You’re really annoying when you’re right.”

“Been told.”

I don’t know who makes the next move—maybe we both do—but we end up too close. His shoulder brushes mine as I step sideways to avoid a particularly rude root, and I say something half-mocking about personal space, and he snaps back with a dry comment about city girls being delicate.

And then we’re grappling.

I don’t mean to shove him. He doesn’t mean to grab my wrist. But the tension between us is a live wire, and something in the orchard answers like a drumbeat.

We spin, off-balance, stumbling through brush and tangled branches, and before I can blink, my foot hits moss-slick stone and my entire world tilts.

The creek catches us.

Cold water slams into my back and all the air goes out of me.

I come up sputtering, hair plastered to my face, arms flailing as I try to find footing in the mud.

Garruk’s beside me, already half-standing, soaked and glowering, water sheeting down his chest in a way that would be hilarious if I weren’t freezing and furious.

“You did that on purpose,” I hiss, slapping water away from my eyes.

He wipes a hand down his face and growls. “You started it.”

“You yanked me!”

“You shoved me first.”

“Oh my god, are you twelve?”

We’re standing waist-deep in the creek, water lapping around us, breathless and dripping and snapping at each other like it’s all the orchard’s fault. I hate how his eyes pin me, how every word that leaves his mouth feels like a dare.

“Why do you care what I do with the land?” I demand. “It’s not yours.”

“No,” he says. “It’s yours. That’s the problem.”

I stop moving.

His chest rises and falls like he’s barely holding something back. The light shifts above us, fractured through the canopy, catching the droplets on his skin and making them shine like oil.

“It wants you,” he says quietly. “And I don’t know what that means yet. But you walking away won’t change it.”

I want to say something clever. Something sharp. But the words snag in my throat.

Instead, I do the only thing that feels remotely sane in that moment—I slap water at him.

His head jerks back, stunned.

And then he lunges.

We’re splashing, flailing, laughing—god, when was the last time I laughed?—and it all turns so quickly, from heat to chaos to breathless quiet. His hand catches my wrist mid-throw, and I freeze, water dripping from our hair, our chests heaving.

Our faces are too close.

I feel it, low and tight in my chest—the spark. The shift.

He lets go first.

We climb out of the creek in silence, soaked and shivering. The orchard hums behind us, whispering like it saw everything.

And maybe it did.