“Ceremony.”
Children ran, laughing and shrieking, into the ring ahead.
“The celebration of a child, a coming of age, an alliance.”
Gernaz and another of his brothers helped build our lean-to. Another clasp of his arm, a forehead touching his.
“You have many people who care for you,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I want to be stronger for them, but I…” he trailed off.
“It’s nice to know. That they care,” I finished softly.
He nodded.
I started unstrapping the bedroll from his pack that Krashal had left. I was marshaling the words to ask if we could share it when a voice echoed outside our tent. “Khal?” One of the orcs in his band. “You need to come to the center. You’re being summoned.”
The twilight painted the stones in purple, and the elders I’d seen before, along with so many others, gathered within that massive ring. Drazha was her former bedecked self, and her eyes snagged on Khal as we approached, but she didn’t speak. The older woman from before, her brow creased, stood at the edge of the clearing next to an outer stone. Beside her was Sephar.
“Cousin. Thank you for coming.” This man, Khal’s enemy and his kin, spoke in Orcish. He bowed a little to the chieftains. “I’m sorry to take up your time when so many have waited to do so. But since this is a matter concerning the integrity of the enclave, I wanted to be prompt.”
Drazha’s eyes were ice. “Out with it, whelp.” No love was lost between the chieftain and her nephew.
His smile didn’t waver. He addressed the wider crowd. “It’s been a long time since the warriors of the Drashik were involved in wife-stealing. Forced marriage has been outlawed for us for some time. We are not the Gol Droth. But my cousin has told the assembly, not a seven-day ago, that when he went to the backwards humans to form pacts with them, they acted beyond our laws.”
The crowd murmured. Khal was rigid beside me.
“The humans still sell their wombed children for chattel, and my dear cousin didn’t check if he was making an alliance with a willing bride, or indulging in kidnapping.” The murmur spread. Sephar smiled. “Now, the council has ruled rightly, and my cousin has acted as best he could, as a bumbler who had stumbled into crime. No one argues that the lass should be punished for his error. Rowena has earned a place among us, through the valor of a champion: she’s earned the right to be wed to a warrior. But no one would be cruel enough to say it has to be the same warrior who carried her away.”
Horror writhed in my gut.
Sephar spread his arms. “The stolen sorceress has seen the way into our sanctum. Shemustbecome one of us. Shemustpass through the stones. But I want to offer a more compassionate option to saddling her to her kidnapper.” He held out a hand towards me, and Common rolled off his tongue. “She can marry me.”
ANOTHER WEDDING NIGHT
Iwas going to ruin everything.
My hands were hot against my thighs, and only whatever magic previously kept me and my clothes from incineration kept me from conflagrating. I whipped towards Khal, but he was still rigid, ashen-faced, staring towards the stones.
The petite older woman spoke, her voice rising over the crowd. “Sephar speaks right, that the stolen daughter is not required to mate the one who stole her. The rituals of man are tainted by their wickedness, but the circle must be pure.However,”she shouted, above the rising hubbub. “Though the girl must marry in, by our laws, a woman has a right to choose a husband.” She looked at me, her wrinkled face heavy with concern, offered, in broken Common, “Marry, is you want? This one?”
“No!” I’d shouted it. I’d shouted. They were all being polite, and I was yelling,Iwas coming apart. Again I was the child from the street, screaming at everything. Again, I was the girl that could only be looked at with disgust. “No, I will not marry him! I am not…chattel to be traded around! Oh, one kidnapping didn’t work, so you’ll push me at his cousin? I will die first—" the crowd pulled back. "—because I will burn him. If you do this,I will burn everything, and you will have to kill me.”
Fire, yellow, reflected in her eyes. I looked down, and my hands were lit, two globes of flame. The murmurs of the crowd were shouts now, words that again I couldn’t understand, my threads cut by fire, only fire, and Sephar…Sephar, by the circle…he was smiling.
“Rowena.” Khal’s voice cut through the noise, through the roar. He stepped in front of me, his face haggard and pained, but not afraid. “Rowena, it’s alright. No one is going to make you do anything, alright? Please.” He gripped my hands. His palms were calloused, familiar. Flame was dancing up his wrists. He didn’t burn. My magic refused to burn him. “Rowena,” he repeated. His eyes were lit with my flame. “You’re safe.”
I stared into his eyes, and I stopped burning.
There was still a wide, empty circle around us, so many angry and accusing eyes, so much fear.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My throat was like sand. I threaded the magic back through, into my voice, tried again. “I’m sorry,” I said, and shock rippled over them as they understood me, as my tongue formed slithering, foreign sounds and I addressed the old woman. “I must marry. Is that what you said?”
She nodded. “The law has been invoked. The vital ways must be kept.”
“Then I choose the orc who took me. Surely I have that right? Surely I can choose to keep him?” I tasted tears, but I wouldn’t cry. I wasn’t going to be weak here, wasn’t going to let anyone hate him by proxy of my weakness.
The old woman leaned on her staff. “Khal Drazha's-son. You stole this young woman under a falsehood. Will you wed her in truth? If another needs to be found,” she looked at my hands, “it should be far away, where the risk to the community is diminished.”
