"You're not walking anywhere on this." His hands began wrapping her ankle with the same methodical care he'd shown her arms, immobilizing the joint with strips of cloth and something stiffer—bark, maybe. "Not for days. Possibly a week."
"I don't have aweek." The panic was rising now, cold and sharp-edged. "They'll find me. They'll—"
"They will not take you."
The words cut through her spiral like a blade.
Ralvar finished wrapping her ankle, secured the bindings with a knot, and finally looked up. His eyes were steady and certain. There was no doubt in them. No hedging, no qualification, no maybe or possibly or we'll see.
Just absolute conviction.
"They will not take you," he said again, slower this time. "I won't allow it."
"You don't even know me."
"I know enough."
"I'm—" She stopped. Swallowed past the lump in her throat. "I'm just some girl who ran into your territory. You have no reason to—"
"You don't have to earn safety,” he said. His hand was still on her calf, steady and warm, an anchor in the storm of her confusion. “You don't have to prove you deserve protection. Those things should be given freely, without conditions. That they weren't—by your own people, by your ownfamily—" His voice dropped lower, rougher. "That is a failing of humans. Not of you."
Delia's eyes burned.
She was not going to cry. She wasnot. She'd survived the wagon, the cold, the night, the terror of meeting an actual orc in the flesh. She was not going to fall apart now just because someone was being kind.
"I don't understand," shewhispered.
"I know." His hand gave her calf a gentle squeeze. "You don't have to understand yet. You just have to trust that when I say they won't take you, I mean it."
She stared at him. At this massive, scarred, impossibly gentle creature who had appeared in her darkest moment and refused to fit any of the shapes she'd been given for him.
"How do I believe that?" she asked. "How do I trust you? I've known you for hours. You're—" She gestured helplessly. "You're anorc. Everything I've ever been told says I should be terrified of you."
"Are you?"
Delia thought about it. Really thought, past the old conditioning, past the stories, past the fear that had been trained into her since childhood.
"Less than I should be," she admitted.
Something flickered across his face. Not quite a smile, but close.
"Then trust that." He released her calf finally, withdrawing his hands to rest on his thighs again. "Trust the parts of you that aren't afraid. They're seeing clearly."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that she couldn't possibly trust a stranger, couldn't possibly believe that anyone would protect her without conditions. But his hands were open again. Resting on his thighs, palms up, where she could see them. And her ankle was wrapped. Her scratches were cleaned and bandaged. She was warm, and dry, and fed.
Not one person in that wagon had cared whether she was any of those things.
"The guards," she said slowly. "If they come. What will you do?"
Ralvar's jaw tightened again. That darkness flickered behind his eyes, there and gone.
"Whatever I have to."
"You can't fight all of them."
"How many are there?"
"I don't—" She tried to remember. The wagon, the darkness, the journey. "Two guarding the workers. But there might be more. Outriders or—"
