A WEDDING NIGHT
Ipulled in breath, willing my heart to still. I couldn’t let fear cloud my senses when I was, once again, the only rescuer I could rely on. The heavy door swung open, and I saw him for the first time, bile rising in my throat.
The orc stood at least six feet tall, the olive green of his skin typical of their kind. Cut muscle and leather armor under furs. My eyes reached his face and his gaze arrested me, golden-amber eyes piercing through me. I had expected someone stupid, but this orc wasn't stupid. His square jaw clenched, those white lower incisors- fangs?- grinding. He was angry. He was angry and I was even more likely to die.
Father's minister shoved me forwards. "There's your payment, orc. She's blood of the baron, as you were promised."
The orc chieftain glared. The guard to his left- of course the orc had guards, and I hadn't even looked at, hadn't counted them- murmured something in their speech, rolling and liquid. My groom spoke. "Do you think I'm a fool?" He spat to the side, dark sputum on the earth floor. Blood? "This is not your princess."
"You dare argue with me?” The minister flushed. “You have received the terms of your?—"
"There are rope burns on her wrists."
I pulled my hands further inside my sleeves.
"You want me to believe your lord bound his own daughter?"
"Discipline within the lord's household is not your concern?—"
"It is if you're trying to pay me with a fake bride. I didn't bleed for you across two battlefields for you to trick me, field-man."
No, no, no, I couldn't let him complain, couldn't let them switch us now. Thea had to be safe. Damn the baron, damn all of them.
"My lord." I took another step forward. "I am his daughter."
He eyed me, silent.
I took another step, towards danger, towards annihilation. "The baron is a hard man, but he is not a liar." Because he has me to lie for him.
The orc king switched to the old language of Ka Morth. "If ye be royal, then you speak their old tongue." There were gasps behind me.
I answered in the same. "A little, and not well. I was a poor student. I will make a better wife." My throat constricted. "Please."
His glare, judging, appraising, seared on my skin. I begged with my eyes.
"I accept," he growled. "When will your priest come?"
The minister spoke impatiently. "It was assumed you would marry her under your own customs."
"I will not give your lord the chance to invalidate this ceremony. Two times your knights have come to steal our brides, in Denethon first and Scarsbad. There is no credit between us. You value oaths made in your own way. We will be married by yourrites and pass the night inyourwalls. You will not trick me, human."
So he meant for me to survive longer than a night. I did not know if that was reassuring or more frightening.
"A priest will be procured."
He looked back to me, used the old tongue. "We are using the ways of savages, but it is customary among my people that you ask something of me. What will you ask?"
My mind went blank. I forced my voice. "Your…your name. What is my husband's name?"
He blinked. "Khal. Drahza's son."
"Khal," I repeated.
I had no magic, not anymore. This had been proven, horribly, time and again. But when I said the name his shoulders stiffened, those amber eyes peering down as if they measured a spell.
More words were exchanged between the orcs and the frustrated minister. I was pulled away to prepare for a wedding to a monster. But I remembered that look.
Khal Drahza's-son expected me to survive this night in some form. If I learned his patterns, the thoughts that went with the movement of those eyes, there was a chance I could escape.
