She studied me. “You’ve been protecting me this whole time.”
“I've been trying to.”
“From the road, from the mudslide, from the night, from the network.” A complicated expression moved across her face. “Guruk. You could have told me.” Her hand slowly moved to cup my face. “We’re partners. You don’t have to face anything alone.”
“I know.” I met her eyes. Placing a soft kiss on her forehead, I added, “You are precious to me, my heart. And I am an orc. It is in my nature to protect.”
Her cheeks turned a delicious shade of pink. Then, a flash shone in her eyes, and she jumped up abruptly, shouting, “Side quest!”
I smiled at the change in her mood. “What now?”
“A minor mission,” she declared. “Expose the traitor.” Plopping down again cross-legged, she wrote it in her notebook and underlined it twice. “It’s a side quest. We do the main quest first,which is to find my friends. But the deputy doesn’t get to walk away from this Scot-free.”
Before I could ask about this Scot and what he had to do with the deputy, she continued, her pen clicking.
“Stoneclaw needs to know. When we’re home and it’s safe to tell him properly.”
“Agreed,” I said. “If there’s a threat to the village, then the sheriff needs to know.” I swallowed; the stone in my chest a lump of empathy for the male. “Even if it is his deputy.”
She nodded once, sharply. Then, a deep, quiet breath rolled through her. She looked up at the sky, and her face shifted, the tactical focus softening.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
I inched closer to her. “I should have told you sooner.”
“You told me when you were sure.” She leaned her shoulder into mine. “That’s not nothing.”
The stars cameout as the fire burned lower.
Sammy had her head tilted back, tracking a sight overhead. She had been naming constellations for the past ten minutes, not their Havenlore names, which I had been trying to supply, but her own names, invented on the spot, assigned to whatever grouping caught her eye.
“That one’s Abby,” she said, pointing to a loose cluster above the trees, “because she’s surrounded by other stars but slightly apart from all of them. That’s very Abby.”
“And those?” I pointed to a bright pair low on the horizon.
“Robin and Valeria. They’re cousins and always want to be together.” She smiled at the sky. “Mako’s the one that keeps blinking. She’s my bestie and a true Gemini. She flickers between moods. And Tia...” She scanned. “Tia’s that unbroken sweep there. She’s the youngest but her light takes up a lot of sky.”
My tusks curved upward at her delight. “And Raine?”
Sammy found her pick without searching. She pointed at the brightest single star directly overhead, unwavering. She laughed. “Obviously.”
I looked at it for a moment. A constant, bright star, the kind that made the surrounding others seem to organize themselves in relation to it. “A strong star.”
She hummed her agreement, then she was quiet for a while. After a heartbeat of time, she asked quietly, “What was it like? Before?”
I knew what she meant. “Before you?”
“Before any of this. Before the farm, before your role as sacred guardian. When you were deciding what kind of life you wanted.”
I considered the question, letting it sink into my bones. “I knew what I was good at,” I said after a time. “Farming. Lumber. The work of providing. And I was content in that. Content is not unhappy.” I stared into the fire. “But content is also not full.”
Sammy waited.
“After I built the farmhouse, I used to walk around it and think about what it would sound like with people in it. Not quiet people. Loud ones. Arguing over meals. Taking up the chairs. Leaving things where they didn't belong.” I felt, even saying it, the old ache of it. “I wanted the house to be difficult to move through because there were too many people in it.”
“And now?”
I turned toward her. Firelit, cross-legged, her notebook in her lap and the stars reflected in her eyes. “Now I have a mate who keeps her notebooks in my beanbag chair and leaves her boots in the doorway and has introduced an entire village to tabletop gaming.” I paused, wanting her to feel the sincerity in my words. “The house is already more difficult to move through.”
