“Apparently.” His smile widens. “Go. I’m not going anywhere.”
I lean down to kiss his forehead. “I’ll be back.”
“I know.” He catches my hand before I can pull away. “Ivy? Thank you. For coming after me. For not giving up.” His voice breaks. “For saving me even after I tried to kill you.”
“That wasn’t you.”
“But you didn’t know that. Not for sure.” His grip tightens. “You came anyway.”
I hold his gaze. See the brother I raised, the boy I protected, the man who made stupid choices for good reasons. “You’re my family. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do.”
He releases me. Settles back against his pillows. “Go find your orc.”
My orc. The words land with unexpected force, spreading warmth through me.
∗ ∗ ∗
I find him on a rooftop three blocks from the healer’s ward.
He’s silhouetted against the brightening sky, sitting on the edge with his legs dangling over the drop. From behind, he looks enormous—shoulders wide enough to block out the sun, arms thick with muscle, the kind of frame that was built for violence and refined by centuries of it. His wounds have been tended, bandages visible beneath the remnants of his armor, but he still looks like he went through a war.
He did. We both did.
I cross the rooftop. My footsteps are quiet, but he hears me anyway—his head turns, smoldering gaze finding me before I’m halfway across. Something shifts in his expression. Softens. The hard lines of his face rearranging themselves into something that makes my heart stutter.
He said he loved me. In the ruins of the Ledger Hall, with the city burning around us, he looked at me and said the words I’d been afraid to name. And then he kissed me—desperate and fierce, tasting of blood and ash and promises.
I settle beside him. Close enough that our shoulders brush. He’s warm despite the morning chill, radiating heat the way orcs do. I lean into it without thinking. Let myself take comfort from his presence.
And that’s when it hits me. Really hits me, in a way it hasn’t had time to before.
I’m leaning into him. Trusting him. Taking comfort from his presence without any part of me screaming that it’s dangerous, that I should be watching my own back, that depending on anyone is a weakness I can’t afford.
When was the last time I did that? Let myself rest against someone without calculating the cost?
Mom. The answer comes without thinking. The last time I felt this safe was curled up in my mother’s arms, before the Ledger Master took her from me. Before I learned that the world was hungry and I had to be hard enough to survive it.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of carrying everything myself. Protecting Gror. Working myself to exhaustion. Lying awake at night, wondering if tomorrow would be the day everything fell apart. I’ve been so tired for so long that I forgot what it felt like to not be tired.
And this man—this scarred, violent, unexpectedly gentle man—threw himself in front of a contract-heart for me. Broke every oath he’d ever sworn. Told the Ledger Master he’d rather die protecting me than live without me.
No one has ever?—
I stop the thought. Can’t finish it. The enormity of it sits in my chest, too big to examine directly.
“You should be resting.” His voice is strained. The gravel-deep rumble that I’ve come to associate with safety. “Your wounds?—”
“Are fine. The healers cleared me.” I look out at the city—at Gravebind sprawled beneath us, adjusting to a world without its master. “Yours are worse.”
A grunt. Neither agreement nor denial. “I’ve had worse.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Silence settles between us. Comfortable. Easy in a way that should surprise me after everything we’ve been through. Days ago, this man was sent to collect me. Days ago, I was terrified of him. Now I’m sitting beside him on a rooftop, watching the sun rise, and all I can think about is how right it feels.
“What happens now?”
He takes his time answering. Studies the city below—the streets already filling with people, the market stalls opening, the ordinary rhythms of life resuming in the wake of catastrophe. Some contracts have voided entirely; I can see the evidence in abandoned enforcement posts, in doors standing open that were locked for decades, in people walking freely who haven’t known freedom in years.
