"She is mine," he said in Common.
Every orc in the room went quiet. Drogga's chicken leg stopped halfway to his mouth.
Varek didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Long years of command had taught him that the words that mattered most were the ones spoken quietly enough that men had to listen.
"The children are hers." He felt Mab stiffen behind him, felt the sharp intake of her breath. "And so the children are mine. No one touches them. No one speaks to them without my leave. Anyone who forgets answers to me."
The silence held for three heartbeats. Four.
Then Drogga set down the chicken leg and wiped his hand on his thigh.
"Understood." Drogga's voice carried across the hall, loud enough for every orc present to hear.
The other warriors stirred. Some went back to their food. Others exchanged glances that Varek didn't bother to parse. They would talk. They would wonder. Let them.
Behind him, Mab hadn't moved. He did not know yet whether the stillness was understanding or terror. Either was acceptable.
Both could be worked with.
Chapter 4
The children slept like the dead.
Mab sat with her back against the bedpost, the boning knife across her knees, and watched the door. The fire had burned down to embers hours ago, casting the room in shades of rust and shadow. She should add wood. Try to keep the warmth going for Annie and Tibbs, curled together in the center of the massive bed like puppies in a basket. But she didn't move.
If she moved, she might think. And if she thought too hard about any of the last twelve hours, she might shatter into pieces too small to put back together.
The lady's chamber was larger than the entire kitchen wing where Mab had slept for as long as she could remember.
She had recognized it the moment he'd pushed open the door—the pale blue hangings, the dressing table. Mab had been in this room exactly twice before. Once to deliver a tray when Iris was ill. Once to scrub blood out of the carpet after Lady Cresswick's last miscarriage.
Now she was sitting in it with a kitchen knife in her lap and two children breathing soft and slow behind her.
She is mine.
The words kept circling back.
Mine.
She had said it first. In the pantry, with Tibbs's knife still shaking between them, she had looked at an orc warrior twice her size and saidhe's minelike the word meant something. Like it could protect a boy who wasn't her blood, who wasn't her kin, who was nothing to her except a child who was kind to her.
She hadn't thought about it. The word had come out on its own, and he'd heard it.
And then he'd said it back.
Not to her. To a hall full of warriors with blood still drying on their weapons. Marking his territory. She had stood behind him with Annie's hand in hers and Tibbs pressed against her side, and she had watched thirty orcs go silent.
She still didn't know what it meant.
And she wasn't sure how she felt about it.
Mab turned the boning knife over in her hands, watching the ember-light catch on the edge. She had seen men in this holding. She had seen what they did when their pride was pricked, when a scullion looked at them too long, when a stable boy didn't move fast enough. She had seen Garrad backhand Annie across the mouth for dropping a ladle. She had seen Lord Cresswick's steward break a serving man's fingers for spilling wine on a guest.
The orc had watched a thirteen-year-old boy try to gut him, and he had smiled.
Mab's hands stilled on the knife.
She should be planning. The root cellar route was gone, but there had to be other ways. A holding this size had gaps. Drainage grates, coal chutes, the old sally port.
