The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "Besides," he said, settling into the chair across from me with a creak of leather, "they helped me learn your language."
I leaned forward, intrigued. "Wait—I thought Orcs already spoke English?" At least, that's what I'd read. Though, from experience, their English and mine seemed to exist in different universes.
"We do." He stretched his legs toward the fire, relaxed in a way I hadn't seen before.
"But half of what I hear around the settlement sounds nothing like English," I pressed. "I catch maybe one word in three. The rest is completely foreign."
Something like approval flickered across his face, as if I'd passed a test I didn't know I was taking. "What you're hearing is the old tongue. We slip between languages without thinking—it's instinct when we're among our own." He paused, his gaze going distant, reaching toward something long past. "Old English mixed with the languages of the Native tribes who sheltered us. Centuries of blending, evolving and the language became something that belongs only to us." His eyes found mine again. "Coming to the surface meant learning to speak as you do now. Books were my bridge."
"That's amazing." The throw slipped from my lap as I sat forward. "I had no idea."
"There's much about my people the surface world does not know." The firelight turned his eyes to molten gold. "Much that was lost."
The weight of that hung between us. I pulled the throw back up, suddenly aware of the vast ocean of things I didn'tunderstand, and how desperately I wanted to. "Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Why did you come to the surface?" The question tumbled out before I could stop it. "Most Orcs stayed underground, didn't they?"
Ruka's gaze drifted to the flames, and for a long moment, he said nothing. When he finally spoke, his voice carried weight, sadness. "Once the mining company breached our home, there were battles. Brutal ones." His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "Blood soaked into stone—Orc and human alike. The Orc king saw where that path led. Not to victory. Only to graves."
My breath caught at the bleakness in his tone.
"So he made a choice," Ruka continued. "To send some of us topside. To live as we once did, millennia ago, before we retreated into the earth's embrace. To prove that coexistence wasn't just possible—it was our birthright."
"That's why you're here?"
"In part." He leaned back, the leather of his chair groaning softly. "The king invited humans below first—scientists, mostly. They came with their instruments and their endless questions. But human bodies aren't made for our world. The air is too thin, too heavy with minerals. The darkness presses down like a living thing. The weight of all that earth above..." He shook his head. "They couldn't survive it for long."
I hadn't considered that. "So if there was going to be any understanding—"
"It had to happen here. On your terms, in your world." His eyes found mine again, and something in them made my chest ache. "Some of us had to be willing to leave everything we'd ever known and make this place home."
"That couldn't have been easy."
"Easy?" A bitter smile ghosted across his lips. "No. But necessary things rarely are."
The fire crackled between us, filling the silence. I waited, sensing he wasn't finished.
"My sister, Ryhain." His voice softened, but the pain in it sharpened. "Her mate died in a rockslide just days before the mining company breached our world." His hands gripped the arms of his chair until I thought the wood might splinter. “Lortus was... everywhere. He was a big male, strong as the mountain itself. Every tunnel they'd walked together, every gathering place, every corner of their home—his ghost lived there."
My throat tightened.
"She was drowning in grief. And Ardin with her." The words came slower now, each one carefully extracted. "They couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep. I watched my sister fade like smoke, and her tuskling with her. So I went to the king and volunteered."
"To give them a fresh start," I whispered.
He nodded once, sharp and final. "A place where the shadows didn't whisper his name. Where they could breathe without choking on memory." He gestured toward the window, toward the settlement sprawled beneath the stars. "We built this from nothing. Four years ago, we broke ground on empty land and made it ours."
"You did all this for your sister and her son."
"For my clan," he corrected, but his eyes betrayed him. He'd torn himself from his ancestral home, from the deep places where his people had lived for countless generations, all to save two souls from drowning in their grief. "It was the only choice I could live with."
The magnitude of it stole my breath. "You keep mentioning your clan. How exactly do that work?"
Ruka seemed almost grateful for the shift. "A clan is family, but the word 'family' is too small for what we mean. Blood relatives, yes—but also those who've sworn themselves to us. Those bound by choice and loyalty and shared survival."
"Like a tribe?"
