"You're home. With me."
His eyes close.
"Move."
He moves.
The bed complains immediately. So do I, for entirely different reasons.
A month of missing him refuses to stay slow. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer and say his name into his shoulder while the light outside the window goes.
When I come, I don't cover my mouth. Why would I? This is my room above my shop, and he's my orc.
He follows with my name against my hair.
Afterward we lie tangled up in a bed that is indeed way too small for an orc. His heart slows under my ear. One hand moves through my ruined hair. Through the floorboards, the shop smells faintly of silk and beeswax.
"Your feet hang off the end," I say.
"Yes."
"By at least a foot."
"I've slept in siege camps."
"We need a bigger bed."
I hear the word after I've said it. So does he.We.
His hand goes still.
I lift my head and look at him. "We need a bigger bed," I say again. "Delivered here. To this address. Where you'll be."
"I still have duties at the Hall."
"I know."
"Some nights I'll have to stay there."
"Then stay there, and come back when you're done."
His hand stills in my hair. “Here?”
"Here."
He looks at me for so long that I start to wonder whether I've broken him. Then he smiles.
I don't count it. I'm going to see too many.
Mirelle marries Cadenin the spring, in the meadow behind the Hall.
The day is so bright it looks suspicious.
The whole vale comes, and so do the orcs, the dryads, and one entire minotaur clan. June, Lyra, and Arabella arrive with three baskets of shortbread. Kenna brings her granddaughters in dresses I finished sixty days ago, because apparently I enjoy terror.
Caden waits at the head of the meadow in a plain, well-cut coat. Valeforth's reluctant heir has sawdust on one sleeve, probably from another box nobody asked him to make. On the table beside him stands a row of badly carved birds. Every one of them. Mirelle made him bring them.
Then Mirelle walks into the meadow wearing the masterpiece, and the whole crowd rises.
