Page 75 of Till Orc Do Us Part

The words blur for a beat before sharpening into focus.

"Find your brave."

I swallow hard.

Jamie watches me with the unflinching gaze only a child can give. “You’re a green giant. You can do brave stuff.”

A rough laugh escapes me—low and soft.

“I will try,” I say.

He grins, satisfied, and plops down beside me on the steps. “Good. I’ll help.”

We sit in silence, the boy’s small warmth a fragile tether against the dark.

I turn the compass in my palm, the needle spinning lazy beneath the taped message.

"North doesn’t always mean right."

"Find your brave."

Perhaps the path is not the one I planned.

But it is the one I must take.

For this place.

For her.

For me.

Later, long after Jamie’s small frame leans sleep-heavy against my side and I carry him back to Liara’s waiting arms, I walk the boardwalk alone.

The night is sharp with cold. The wind cuts clean through the thin fabric of my shirt, but I welcome it.

It keeps me awake.

The planks groan beneath my boots—old wood steeped in stories, in salt, in stubbornness.

I move slow.

Every step a memory.

"You can’t just… do this."

"Then why does it feel like one?"

"I fight for this place."

"And I will stand beside you—or not at all."

Rowan’s voice threads through the dark, tangled with the sea’s low murmur.

I lean against the rail where the love-locks hang—a riot of rusted metal, bright ribbons, names scrawled in fading ink.

Here, beneath the paper lanterns not yet taken down, I remember the way she looked at me—defiant and afraid and aching in ways she could not say aloud.

I run my fingers along the cold metal, the rough edges.