Because he wasn't wrong.
Her pulse was racing, yes, but not only from fear. There was heat pooling low in her belly, a flush spreading down her chest beneath the rough wool of her dress. Her thighs had pressed together, and her breath was coming shallow and fast in a way that had nothing to do with the knife in her hands.
She had never been looked at like this. Not once in her whole life. The men at the holding had looked through her, around her, past her. She was furniture. When they looked at women, they looked at the pretty ones. The thin ones. The ones like Iris, with their narrow waists and their sharp cheekbones and their bodies that took up exactly as much space as they were supposed to.
No one had ever looked at Mab like she was something to be wanted.
This orc—Varek—was looking at her like she was a feast and he hadn't eaten in days.
He watched her for a long moment, then eased backward, lowering himself to the floor with his back against the wall opposite the bed, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
"Come here."
Mab's fingers twitched on the knife. "What?"
"Come here." He patted his thigh once, the gesture almost casual. "Let me hold you. Let me learn your smell and shape. Let me warm you."
Mab didn't move.
Her body wanted to. That was the terrifying part. Some traitorous piece of her was already imagining what it would feel like to cross that small distance, to let herself be gathered up against all that heat and solid weight. To stop holding herself rigid for the first time in hours. Days. Years.
But her mind was still running the calculations. The knife in her lap. The children sleeping behind her. The door he'd closed so carefully.
"And tomorrow?" Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "What happens tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow we eat. We rest. My men finish their work here." He didn't look away from her face. "In three days, maybe four, we ride north to Northwatch. You and the children come with me."
"As what?"
"As mine." The word settled between them like a stone. "As someone under my protection. As someone no orc in the Iron Wilds will touch without answering to me."
Mab's throat worked. "And if I don't want to go north?"
"Then I give you coin and supplies and you walk south with the children." His voice didn't change. No anger, no threat. Just a plain statement of fact. "You'll have three days' food, a waterskin, and a knife better than that one. The nearest village is six miles. After that, you're on your own."
Mab stared at him. The firelight had caught properly now, throwing warm light across the room, across the bed where the children slept, across the impossible creature sitting against the wall like he had all the time in the world.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are you even here? Why raid this place and kill all these people? Why spare me? Why give me choices you never gave anyone else?"
"Three winters ago, Cresswick's men raided a settlement at the foot of the Blackspire passes." Varek's voice had gone hard. "Thirty orcs. Mostly elders. Mostly children. Mostly dead by the time the snows melted enough for us to find them."
Mab's stomach turned. She thought of Annie, curled in the bed behind her. Thought of Tibbs, who'd thrown himself at an orc warrior with nothing but a boning knife and a fierce heart.
"The lord claimed it was bandits." Varek's eyes never left her. "We knew better. We always know. But Targesh—our Warchief—wanted proof before he moved. Took two years to gather it. Letters. Ledgers. Testimony from a mercenary captain who liked gold more than loyalty."
"So this is revenge."
"This is justice." The distinction seemed to matter to him. "Cresswick is dead. His guards are dead. His steward, who helped plan the raids, is dead. The people who served him—" He lifted one shoulder. "They'll be released in the morning. Fed, watered, pointed toward the nearest village. We don't make war on kitchen maids."
Mab thought of Garrad's body, stacked against the wall with the others. She couldn't find it in herself to grieve him.
"And me? Am I justice too?"
His face changed. The hardness that had come into it when he spoke of the settlement was gone.
