"Be my mate, Betty. Live with me. That is my Christmas wish. Please... grant it."
His words are a key, turning the lock on a part of my heart I thought was dead and rotten. My sobs catch in my throat, his hope is a shock to my system, a light so bright it hurts. He is offering me a future when all I have ever looked for is an end.
But the cold, hard, ugly knots of guilt don't dissolve. They tighten in one last, vicious spasm.
I pull back from him, my hands slipping from his face, my new, fragile joy instantly poisoned by a lifetime of terror.
He's wrong.
"Threk... I..." I shake my head, my voice a broken, panicked whisper. "You can't... you don't see. What if I am a curse? What if I say yes and... and you're next? What if I'm not strong enough to deserve this? I... I will break you. I break everything I touch."
I am staring at the snow at his feet, crying again, but these are the old, familiar tears of fear and self-hatred. This is safe. This is known.
He doesn't argue. He doesn't shout.
He just waits.
I feel his patience, a warm, solid thing in the cold air. It is infuriating. It is terrifying. It is unshakeable.
Slowly, timidly, I lift my gaze.
He is still there. He hasn't moved. He is not angry. He is not disappointed. His hazel eyes are steady and warm, his love an unshakeable mountain that refuses to be moved by my fear. He is not asking me to be perfect. He is asking me to be his.
He sees my brokenness. He knows my guilt. He knows every ugly, cowardly part of me.
And he is still offering me his world.
And I realize... this is the choice.
My penance isn't to suffer. My atonement isn't to die or to be miserable.
My real penance is to be brave enough to live. To be brave enough to accept this gift and love him back. To run toward happiness, not away from it, even if it terrifies me.
That is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
The tears that fall now are different. They are not for my past. They are not tears of grief or fear.
They are tears of release.
I throw my arms around his neck, pulling his face down to mine, my sob turning into a gasping, wet laugh.
"Yes. Gods, Threk... Yes."
31
THREK
Ihave to duck my head to enter the hovel.
My shoulders, now broad and muscled in the way of an Orc, brush both sides of the doorframe. It has been two weeks since the Wildspont. Two weeks of feeling the world with a mind that is finally my own, and two weeks of discovering that my new body is still too large for this small, human world.
As an Urog, this hovel was a cage. As an Orc… it is still a cage, but it is a warm one.
It is hers. And now, it is ours.
But it is still too small.
"Careful," Betty says from the corner, her voice full of that soft, amused lilt that makes my heart ache. "You already took the old beam out."
