"Thank you," I said before I could stop myself.
His dark brows lifted. "For what?"
He was guarded, like he didn't trust gratitude.
"For the orcs. You could've let that fracture. You could've let her have what she wanted. But you didn't."
He looked at me and didn't say anything, and for a heartbeat, he looked… young. It wasn’t in age, but in expression, almost like a man who had once wanted something that wasn’t power.
But his arrogance clicked back into place like armor.
“You assume it was altruism,” he said lightly.
“I assume nothing, but I saw what I saw.”
“What you saw was me keeping the balance because the balance benefits me.”
Maybe.
Probably.
"Why is she after you?" I asked. "Skonk said she blames you. That you disrupted her plan."
"She believes I interfered."
"Did you?"
"Yes, I suppose I did."
"And she obviously doesn't like losing control," I said.
"No."
A cold thread moved through me. "What did you do apart from the orcs?"
He hesitated, and that was almost worse than any answer.
"I reminded her," he said slowly, "that not all blood is hers to command."
My breath caught.
Blood. Family. The missing kin.
My mother's fear.
"What does that mean?"
He looked at me with no mockery and nothing held back.
"It means she'll come for you more directly now." He shrugged.
My stomach dropped. "You're saying you made her attention shift."
"I’m saying that you already have her attention, and she wants yours. You just haven't accepted it yet."
"She showed me a future," I said. "Me in her compound."
"And you believed it?"
