They'll tear you apart, her father had said.
They take women, old Genna from the market had whispered once, leaning close over her basket of turnips.Take them and keep them and when they're done with them, there's nothing left to send home.
Delia had been twelve. She'd walked home from the market feeling like her skin didn't fit right, like she'd learned something she was too young to understand but couldn't unknow.
Now she was twenty-three, and she was in their forest, and every shadow between the trees looked like it had teeth.
She found the cliff face more by feel than sight. The rock was slick with rain, cold as death, but solid in a way that nothing else had been for days. Her hands spread across it, searching, and somewhere in the darkness she found what she was looking for—a hollow beneath an overhang. Not quite a cave. Just a depression where the stone curved inward, deep enough to block the wind and wide enough to fit even her body.
She crawled into the hollow. The ground was damp but not puddled, carpeted with dead leaves that had blown in and dried over seasons. She curled into the space, pulling her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself in a parody of embrace.
Her teeth were chattering.
Cold, she thought.So cold.
But she was out of the rain. And she couldn't hear the guards anymore. Couldn't hear anything but the drip of water off leaves, the distant murmur of the storm retreating, and the pounding of her own heart.
She'd done it. She'd actually done it.
For now, a voice whispered. It sounded like her mother.You've survived for now. But dawn will come. The guards will search. And even if they don't find you—
She pressed her face into her knees.
Even if they don't find you, something else will.
The forest was quiet around her. Too quiet, maybe. The kind of quiet that meant predators had passed through recently enough to send everything else into hiding. Delia found herself straining her ears, searching for sounds she didn’t want to hear.
Footsteps. Breathing. The crack of a branch under something heavy.
Orcs hunt at night, her father had said.They can see in the dark, they can smell human blood from miles away.
Was any of it even true? She didn't know anything about orcs except the stories, and the stories were designed to terrify. That was the point. That was what kept Valdaran children in their beds at night, kept Valdaran villagers away from the border, kept Valdaran citizens obedient and afraid.
But what if the stories are true?
Delia shivered.
She thought about the guards. About Harren's weak chin and the younger one's mean eyes and the casual way they'd discussed her death.She'll owe double from the food she costs them. Accidents happen.
She thought about the other workers in the wagon. The woman’s hollow cheeks. The boy's too-large eyes. The old man's cough that had sounded more like drowning.
That was going to be me, she thought.Thin and silent and dying on a road to nowhere.
She'd run from that. Run toward this—a hole in a cliff face in monster territory with nothing but wet clothes and raw wrists and an ankle that was swelling inside her shoe.
Better, she thought fiercely.This is better.
The cold was getting worse. Her dress had stopped dripping, but the fabric was saturated, clinging to her skin like a second layer of ice. She couldn't stop shaking. Her body was trying desperately to generate heat it didn't have, burning through reserves she couldn't spare.
At least it's good for something, she thought.All this flesh might keep me alive another hour.
The bitterness of the thought surprised her. She'd spent so long hating her body quietly, politely, in the way she'd been taught—accepting the snide comments and the pitying looks and the way men's eyes slid past her like she was furniture. She'd never been angry about it. Just... resigned.
Now, huddled in a hole in the ground with her life measured in hours at best, something sharp and hot was uncurling in her chest.
They told me I was too much, she thought.They told me I took up too much space. And then they sold me to a worksite where I would die because I wasn't enough—not fast enough, not efficient enough, not WORTH enough to them—
Her nails dug into her arms.
