Zoric crosses to me. His footsteps are nearly silent despite his size—a predator’s grace that he wears as naturally as his scars. He sits on the bed beside me, the mattress dipping under him, his warmth a counterpoint to the chill that’s settled in my bones.
“You’re not Finn.”
“No. I’m the one who got him killed.” The words scrape out, raw and honest in a way I’ve rarely allowed myself to be. “And now I might get everyone else killed too. Your people. You.”
His hand tips my chin up until I’m looking at him. His eyes hold something I’m still learning to name. “My people chose to stay. And I chose you. We’re not victims of your bad decisions, Aviora. We’re making our own.”
“That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No.” He presses his lips to my temple, gentle in a way that contradicts everything about his size and his scars. “But it makes it shared. You’re not carrying this alone anymore.”
I lean into him. Let myself feel the solid warmth of his body, the steady beat of his heart against my cheek. For years, I’ve run from everyone who got too close. For years, I’ve convinced myself that alone was safer, that caring was weakness, that the only way to live was to never stop moving.
This orc, this broken pirate captain with his guilt and his walls and his raw, terrifying tenderness—he makes me want to stop running. Makes me want to stay, even if staying might kill me.
“When this is over,” I press closer, my arms wrapping around him, “if we make it. I want to try.”
“Try what?”
“Staying.” The word feels foreign in my mouth. Dangerous. “Building instead of fleeing. With you.”
His arms tighten around me. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak—just holds on, his breath warm against my hair, his heart beating steady beneath my ear.
This is different from the beach.
On the beach, we were animals. Adrenaline-drunk, death-fresh, clawing at each other with a hunger that left no room for tenderness. This is something else. Something slower. Something that terrifies me more than any curse ever could.
I undress her carefully.
The borrowed clothes come away piece by piece—shirt buttons, belt buckle, the laces of trousers that were never meantfor her frame. Beneath them, her skin is pale in the lantern light, marked with the history of her life. Scars I haven’t seen before. A rope burn circling her left wrist. A knife slash across her ribs, healed but still visible. The calluses on her palms from years of working lines and handling blades.
I learn each one.
My fingers trace the rope burn first. “This one?”
“Debt collector in Saltmere. Years ago.” Her voice is breathy, her eyes half-closed. “He thought tying me to his boat would make me cooperative.”
“Did it?”
“I burned his boat.”
I kiss the scar. Move lower. Find the knife slash.
“This?”
“Boarding action gone wrong. Finn’s idea—we tried to take a merchant ship that turned out to be a naval vessel in disguise.” A shaky laugh. “I was seventeen. Should have died.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I didn’t.”
I kiss that scar too. Then the next one. Then the next. Mapping her body with lips and fingers, learning the story written in her skin. She trembles under my attention—not from cold, not from fear. From the intimacy of being known.
Her hands find my shirt. Start working the buttons with fingers that shake.
“Your turn.” Barely a whisper. “Let me see.”
I let her undress me.
