But Grak is committed. He drops to one knee, a gesture of fealty that is the most insubordinate act I have ever seen. He is not addressing my father. He is addressing the clan.
“Chieftain Borin,” he says, his voice ringing with false piety. “I do not challenge your son to a duel of strength. His body is strong. But the strength of a chieftain is in his spirit, his judgment. I formally challenge his right to be your heir. I ask that a clan council be convened, as is my right by the old laws, to judge his fitness to one day lead the Fire Sun people.”
The air is sucked from the hall. A formal challenge. It is an ancient, almost forgotten law, a move of brazen political aggression. He is not just questioning my honor; he is questioning my sanity, my very soul.
My father studies me, his eyes full of a fire I have not seen since I was a boy. Then he looks at Grak, and his expression turns to stone. He is a chieftain, and he is bound by the laws he is sworn to uphold.
“The law is the law,” my father’s voice is heavy, a thing of iron and stone. “The challenge is made. It must be answered.” Heraises his voice, addressing the entire, silent hall. “A clan council is convened. In three days’ time, the fitness of my son, Xylon, to be heir will be judged.”
A slow, triumphant smirk spreads across Grak’s face as he rises to his feet. He looks from me to Dina, who stands behind me, pale and trembling. His gaze lingers on her, a look of pure, venomous contempt.
“Let the clan decide,” he sneers, his voice a low poison meant for me, but loud enough for all those nearby to hear, “if we should be led by a fractured beast… and his human pet.”
27
DINA
The joyous sounds of the celebration are a distant, mocking echo. In the quiet of the guest quarters I have been given—a room with warm furs and a glowing hearth, more luxurious than any place I have ever known—Grak’s words fester like a poison.
A broken beast… and his human pet.
Sleep is an impossibility. Every time I close my eyes, I see the contempt in his gaze, I hear the sneer in his voice. He did not see a hero, a friend of the clan. He saw a liability. A weakness. A sickness Xylon had brought home. And as I lie in the darkness, the terrible, sickening truth of it coils in my gut. He is right.
I am the cause of all of this. The joy of Xylon’s return lasted only until he presented me. I am the crack in his armor, the flaw in his victory. The challenge to his birthright, the whispers of his weakness, the shadow that now falls over his future—it all began with me. The guilt is a stone in my chest that makes it hard to breathe.
The next two days are a blur of quiet agony. I watch him from a distance, a ghost haunting the edges of his life. He is preparing for the clan council, and seeing him among his people is a revelation that both thrills and shatters me.
I watch him in the training yard, a vast, open arena carved from the mountain stone. He moves with a grace and power that takes my breath away. He wields a great, two-handed Orcish battle-axe not as a brutish weapon, but as an extension of his own body. The clang of his axe against a sparring partner’s shield is a sharp, clean song of strength. He is a warrior prince, a vision of deadly, masculine beauty, and the other Orcs watch him with a mixture of awe and deep, abiding respect. He belongs here. This is his world, his birthright.
And I am a former slave with nothing to my name but the brand on my neck and the love of a man I am about to ruin.
I see the weight of the political battle on his shoulders. I see him in long, intense meetings with his father, their heads bent over maps and scrolls. I see the grim, weary lines around his eyes when he thinks no one is watching. He carries the burden of his ordeal, and now he must carry the burden of Grak’s challenge. A challenge that exists only because of me. He would be stronger without me. He would be undisputed, his honor clean, if he had not returned with a “human pet” at his side.
The realization settles not as a thought, but as a cold, hard certainty. My love for him, the thing that feels like the only true and real part of my existence, is a danger to him. To save him from the curse, I was willing to die. Now, to save him from the consequences of saving me, I must do something that feels even harder. I must disappear.
On the third morning, the day the council will convene, I make my decision. Before the first hint of dawn streaks the sky, I rise. My hands do not tremble. My heart is a cold, dead stone in my chest, my resolve a suit of ice. I dress not in the fine wool tunic the Orcs gave me, but in my old, rough-spun slave’s clothes I had kept, a bitter reminder of what I am. I wrap a piece of bread and a hard-smoked fish in a cloth and slip a small waterskin over my shoulder. It is more than I have ever owned in my life.
I creep through the sleeping stronghold, my footsteps silent echoes of a lifetime spent moving unnoticed. I reach the great gate. It is barred for the night, but a smaller door is cut into the massive oak, a postern gate for single travelers. It is unguarded. Freedom, and the certain death of a lone human in the winter mountains, is just one step away.
My hand is on the iron latch when a shadow detaches itself from the deeper darkness beside the gate.
“You were not just going to leave, were you, Dina?”
Xylon’s voice is not angry. It is something far worse. It is quiet, and it is utterly, completely heartbroken.
My stomach plummets. I turn slowly to face him. He stands there, a great, powerful silhouette against the gloom, and the pain in his dark eyes is a physical blow. He is not wearing armor, just simple leather leggings and a tunic, and he looks not like a warrior prince, but like a man who has had his heart torn from his chest.
“I… I have to,” my voice is a choked, broken whisper. “Grak is right. I am a weakness. I am costing you everything. Your clan, your birthright… they will not accept you with me. You will be stronger without me.” The words tumble out, a pathetic, desperate explanation.
He listens, his expression unchanging, but the pain in his eyes deepens with every word, a visible wounding. When I am finished, he is silent for a long, terrible moment.
“You think so little of me,” he says, his voice rough with unshed tears. “You think my love, my honor, is so fragile that it can be broken by the ramblings of a fool like Grak?” He takes one step closer. “You think, after everything we have endured, that I would simply let you walk away?”
He stops in front of me, so close I can feel the heat of his body. He does not shout. He does not rage. He just looks at me,his heartbreak a raw, open thing. “I did not fight my way back from the darkness only to lose my light.”
He reaches out, his large, warm hands coming up to gently cup my face. His thumbs stroke my cheeks, wiping away tears I did not even know I was crying.
“You are my home now,” he whispers, his voice thick with a raw, unshakeable devotion. “There is no clan, no chieftainship, without you. We do not run from this. We do not break. We face this together.”
