I kicked a loose stone, sending it skittering into the stream. I hated him for making me feel it. I hated myself more for not being able to forget it.
Lost in the tangled mess of my own thoughts, it took me a moment to notice that something was wrong. It wasn't a sound or a sight, but a smell. Faint, but sharp and unnatural. A bitter, chemical tang on the clean mountain air that didn't belong. It reminded me of the tanneries back in Grayfang Pass.
My old instincts, dormant for weeks, snapped to life. I was no longer Kael the confused captive. I wasKael the grunt, and something was out of place on my patrol route.
I crouched by the stream, my eyes scanning the bank. My gaze fell on a patch of moss near the water’s edge. It was slick, iridescent with an oily, colorless sheen that clung to the green. I dipped my finger into the water downstream from it and brought it to my nose. The bitter scent was stronger. Poison. Not a natural toxin from some plant, but something man-made. Something brewed.
My blood went cold. This stream fed the larger river in the valley. The one the stronghold drew its water from.
Someone was trying to poison the entire clan.
I rose slowly, my hand resting on the hilt of the dagger Korvak had given me. I scanned the woods around me. The signs were small, but to a soldier’s eye, they were as loud as a shouting man. A branch bent the wrong way. A footprint in the soft earth, too narrow for an Orcish boot. A piece of dark, homespun thread snagged on a thorny bush—human make.
They were close. Professionals, but not careful enough. They didn’t expect anyone to be looking this far out.
I moved into the trees, a shadow, my steps silent on the carpet of pine needles. I followed the signs uphill, toward the spring that was the source of the stream. My heart was a cold, hard knot in my chest. What was I doing? My gut reaction was to find the threat, to neutralize it. But this was a human threat. This wasmypeople, fighting back against the Orcs who had taken our city. I should be helping them. I should be leading them to the weakest point in the stronghold’s defenses.
But the image of the hybrid children playing in the village outpost flashed in my mind. The memory of Grakka, her stern face breaking into a flicker of pride when I finally pronounced a difficult Orcish phrase correctly. The sound of Korvak’s genuine, booming laughter. Not to mention what Korvak had shared with me on my first morning here.
They weren’t just a horde of monsters. They were a people. And someone was trying to murder them in their homes.
I crept to the edge of a rocky outcrop that overlooked the spring. And I saw them.
Three men, dressed in the dark, practical leather of scout-assassins. They knelt by the pool of crystal-clear water where it bubbled up from the earth, carefully pouring the contents of several large glass vials into the springhead. And standing over them, his arms crossed, was a man I recognized with a sickening jolt. Lieutenant Roric, one of Captain Valerius’s most trusted sycophants. A cruel, ambitious man who enjoyed tormenting new recruits.
“Make sure you get all of it in there,” Roric snapped, his voice a low, unpleasant hiss. “The captain wants every last one of those green-skinned freaks pissing blood by moonrise. The females and the spawn first.”
My stomach turned to ice.
One of the scouts looked up. “And what about the humans, sir? The poison won’t know the difference.”
Roric’s smile was a thin, cruel slash in his face. “Casualties of war. They chose to live with animals, they can die with them. Consider it a cleansing.”
He was going to murder them all. The Orcs, and the humans who had surrendered. Men, women, children. It wasn’t a military strike. It was an extermination. The same quiet, cowardly genocide Korvak had told me about, come again for a new generation.
These were not soldiers. They were the true monsters.
Roric turned, and his eyes met mine.
He froze. For a moment, there was just confusion. He saw a figure in an Orcish tunic, with short red hair. He squinted, and then his eyes widened in grotesque, dawning recognition.
One of the scouts turned. “Sir, is that… Kael?”
Roric’s face twisted, a slow, ugly smile spreading across his lips. “So it is. Kael. Or whatever your real name is.” His gaze roamed over me in a way that made my skin crawl, lingering on the curve of my hip, the line of my throat. It was the look I had spent five years avoiding, the look that had driven me to bind my chest and lie about who I was. “We heard rumors a little grunt bitch was hiding in the ranks and was chosen to breed the orc general. I can’t believe we never noticed.”
One of the other scouts let out a low whistle. “Damn, sir. All that time in the barracks… all those nights. If we’d known there was a cunt hiding under that armor, things would have been a lot more fun for us.”
The casual, brutish statement landed like a punch to the gut. This was it. This was the cage I had run from, standing right in front of me with swords in their hands. This was the fate I had chosen a life of mud and misery to escape.
They began to advance on me, fanning out, their smiles predatory. They didn't see a fellow soldier. They saw a woman they had been cheated out of using.
“Don’t you worry, little girl,” Roric drawled, his voice dripping with a proprietary slime. “You’re just in time for your rescue. You can lead us back in, show us where the big one sleeps. We’ll cut his throat… then we’ll take you back where you belong. You’ll have a much better time with some real men.”
The implication hung in the air, thick and suffocating. I belonged to them. I was their property, and they were here to collect. The last piece of my old life crumbled to dust. I was done.
“No,” I said, my voice low and shaking with a rage so profound it made me feel dizzy.
Roric’s smile faltered. “What did you say?”
